Growing Your Audience Is A Pain In The Ass (Here’s Help)
Let's get real. Growing your audience is a huge pain in the ass.
Once upon a time in the wild west days of online business, it was super easy.
Post on social media, run Facebook ads that would cost you a buck, a conversion and instant audience.
Nowadays, forget about it. Finding new people who don't know you exist and enticing them into your world, it's one of the suckiest parts of marketing.
It's such a big job, and it also requires special messaging. I’ll break it down for you today on the show.
(Click play or read the transcript below.)
In this episode, we discuss:
- the “GEO framework” as a structured approach to making marketing more manageable and effective.
- different strategies for growing an audience
- the importance of brand awareness, what it means for a business, and how it's a part of the grow phase.
Learn more about Michelle Mazur:
- Market Like An Expert, 7-Day Course
- Defeat The Marketing Blob Before It Eats Your Business
- The Myth of Audience Growth: What the Web Celebs Aren’t Telling You
- Voice of Customer: The Most Overlooked Piece of the Marketing Message
- Join The Expert Up Club
- Get the Make Marketing Suck Less Newsletter
- Request a free 1:1 Chat
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
Listen on your favorite podcast player or read the Transcript below:
Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: Let's get real. Growing your audience is a huge pain in the ass. Once upon a time in the wild west days of online business, it was super easy. Post on social media, run Facebook ads that would cost you a buck a conversion and instant audience. Nowadays, forget about it. Finding new people who don't know you exist and enticing them into your world, ugh, it's one of the suckiest parts of marketing. It's such a big job, and it also requires special messaging. So I wanna break it down for you today on the show. So let's do this. Michelle Mazur [00:00:44]: Welcome to Make Marketing Suck Less. The podcast that knows marketing is freaking hard, especially when you're a solo business owner trying to juggle it all. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur, author of the 3 Word Rebellion and founder of the Expert Up Club. Forget the latest marketing fads and tactics promising social media stardom. I'm here with research-backed strategies to help you clarify your message and get twice as effective with your marketing. And while I can't promise you'll ever love marketing, I'm here. to make you hate it a tiny bit less. Michelle Mazur [00:01:32]: Remember last week when we talked about the marketing blob? And even if you don't, you'll wanna give that episode a listen. We've hooked it up in the show notes. The marketing blob is straight out of that 1950s horror movie, The Blob. But instead of the blob sucking up trees, pets, people, entire buildings, this marketing blob is an amorphous thing that sucks up all your time, energy, patience, and even hope. The way to defeat this blob is structure, which is why I introduced the GEO Framework on the last episode, Grow, Engage, and Offer. And what this framework does, it really gives our brains a way to wrap our heads around the different jobs marketing does for our business. Because if we can cut up a blob into tiny little pieces and we know the intention behind each piece, that is going to make marketing suck less and it will make it a whole lot easier for you. So, today, we're deep diving into that G of GEO, the Grow phase. And this isn't just about growing your audience. The Grow phase does three key things. Michelle Mazur [00:03:06]: Yes. It can grow your audience, and we'll talk about that one first. It can grow brand awareness, which is not something I've talked about. I've hinted at it in the past. But I wanna spend some time chatting about what that means today. And, also, in this phase, we are growing relationships. So let's break all three of these down, and then I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the messaging required to make the Grow phase work in your marketing. Michelle Mazur [00:03:41]: So first up, growing your audience. Here's the rebel truth. Unless you have a leveraged offer, like a community, a membership, a course, a group program, audience growth probably shouldn't be your main focus in the Grow phase. And we'll talk about what is in a moment. But if you're thinking about, like, okay, but I feel like I need to grow my audience. Everybody says I need to grow my audience. We're going to link up the episode about how big of an audience you need based on your business model. Because, yeah, you might need to know some new people, but you might not need an audience as big as you think. Michelle Mazur [00:04:26]: Now, for me, I am in a different situation. I have a leveraged offer, which is the Expert Up Club, my community for established business owners. And because my goal is to grow the club to a 100 members, we're at 50 right now, I'm halfway there. But what I know is that I do not have the email list size to support that growth. So my goal this year is to grow my list from 3,000 to 5,000 people. But here's the kicker. I am not relying on social media or ads to do it, because that doesn't really work for me and my business, and especially for my own sanity. Michelle Mazur [00:05:14]: Like, doing continuous marketing is really hard for me. So instead, I am borrowing other people's audiences. So I'm hosting the Make Marketing Suck Less summit twice this year. The next one is coming up in March. And I'm doing cross promotions with other business owners who have similar audiences, and those have been super fun. Like, I've really enjoyed those. I've got to meet some amazing people so far, so more of those. And if you want a full breakdown of all the different ways to grow an audience, you should definitely grab my Market Like An Expert free email course at drmichellemazur.com/mle. Michelle Mazur [00:06:02]: That is drmichellemazur.com/mle, or you can just click the link in the podcast app for Market Like An Expert. And this course will help you create a do less but better marketing strategy so you can see more demand for your offers while doing less marketing but it also lays out all the options you have in order to reach new people. So it's a really helpful resource if you want to simplify your marketing. Okay. So we've talked about growing your audience. Now, let's talk about an under discussed area of the Grow phase, and that's brand awareness. Back in my corporate market research days, we measured brand awareness all the time. And simply what brand awareness is, is how many people know about this brand? Like, what type of name ID does your brand have? Because if I say Cheerios, Coca Cola, Nike, there's probably going to be 100% name recognition. Michelle Mazur [00:07:16]: But your business, that is a different story. There are so many people out there that don't know you exist yet. Now I've been in business for, what, 13, 14 years now, and I'm finally at the point where people come to me because they know of me. Maybe they read my book. They heard me on a podcast. Someone mentioned my work to them. They know me from a summit that I was on. It doesn't mean that they're necessarily on my email list or following me on social media. Michelle Mazur [00:07:59]: They just know my name and my reputation. And so when they are ready, they can, you know, jump on the wait list of the Expert Up Club or they send a referral my way. A lot of the times I hear things on sales calls like, oh, my coach really recommends your work, and they tell me who their coach is. And I have no idea who that is, but it's fun to reach out to them and meet them. But that is brand awareness. I have done a good job of growing my brand and my reputation. And part of marketing in the Grow phase, it's you're never gonna be able to measure this, and it is definitely a long game. It's not about instant gratification. Michelle Mazur [00:08:43]: But part of the marketing that you're doing when you are in the Grow phase is about that brand awareness and your reputation because the more people who know about your work, the more opportunities will just naturally come your way. And, finally, let's talk about what I think is the most overlooked part of the G, growing relationships. As a business owner, especially if you are B2B, relationships are your marketing superpower. Think about it. Some of my best clients and best opportunities to share my expertise have come from the relationships that I've built over the years with my clients, with my audience, with other business owners. And this isn't about like sleazy cold calling or sliding into somebody's DMs with, “Hey, girl. How long have you been in business?” It's about genuine connection with other business owners and people in your industry. And so building these relationships might look like having coffee chats, collaborating on projects, checking in with your clients once they've finished working with you, referring businesses to others without expecting anything in return, supporting other people's launches, and even engaging with their content, and not just dropping an emoji. Michelle Mazur [00:10:27]: So relationships, they also take time. There is nothing in this Grow phase that is fast, my friends. But unlike that social media post that disappears into the void after 24 hours, relationships compound over time. The more you invest in them, the more they grow and the more opportunities that naturally flow your way. Now I wanna end with a chat about messaging in the Grow phase and a reminder that when we are actively growing our brand awareness, our audience, or our relationships, we are talking to people who don't know us yet. They are unaware. Or they might be problem aware. Michelle Mazur [00:11:16]: They might know that they have a problem, but they don't know how to solve it, and they definitely don't know you exist. So when you are speaking to people who don't know you, guess what? They don't care about you. So in this phase, you have to focus your messaging on that person. You have to speak their language, understand their lived experience, like what are their problems? What are they thinking? What are they saying? What are they doing? What have they tried? What are they frustrated by? What do they need? So 80% of your messaging in this phase needs to be focused on your people that you're trying to reach, that you're trying to get in front of, and 20% should be focused on you. Most of the time, we have this ratio flipped, but remember, people can't care about you until you care about them. Right? I'm gonna say that one more time. People can't care about you until you care about them. So when you are thinking about the G in Geo, remember, it's not just about frantically growing your follower account or your email list. Michelle Mazur [00:12:38]: It is about creating a sustainable ecosystem of audience awareness and relationships, and this makes your marketing suck a whole lot less. But my challenge for you, if you do nothing else, please get to know the people you want to reach. Deeply understand them. You can start with voice of customer research. We did an episode on that last year that I'll hook up for you, but it's all about the other person and not about you in this phase. Next week, we are gonna deal with the harsh truth that once you've done this heavy lift of people becoming aware of you and growing your audience and relationships, they might not be ready to work with you yet. So what can you do about that? Stay tuned because we'll have more that makes your marketing suck less. Michelle Mazur [00:13:38]: If the Make Marketing Suck Less pod is making your marketing more effective so that your clients can find and hire you, please share the show with a friend. The easiest way to do that is through pod link. You can find the show at pod.link/rebel, and that page will allow anyone you share the show with to subscribe and start listening in their favorite podcast player. That's pod.link/rebel. The Make Marketing Suck Less podcast is a production of Communication Rebel. Our production coordinator is Jessica Gulley-Ward. The podcast is edited by Steven Mills, our executive producer is me, Dr. Michelle Mazur. The make marketing suck less podcast is recorded on the unseated traditional lands of the coast salish peoples, specifically the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, original stewards of the land, past, and present. Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you periodic updates about the podcast. Sign up to receive email updates