Forget About Building An Audience.
Let’s talk about building your empire.
It’s time for these two to be decoupled.
You don’t need to build an audience to build a business. In fact, the two have nothing to do with one another whatsoever. I’ll prove it to you right now.
Let’s take a look.
The dogma of building an audience
Is there a conspiracy theory around the need to build an audience?
Everywhere you turn, every video you watch on YouTube, and every marketing course you enroll in says you need an audience. You have to build your list. You need subscribers.
“The money is in the list!”, they proclaim.
Lo and behold, there’s an element of wisdom behind the gurus’ recommendation.
The underlying reason for building an audience is for you to own the communication channel once you want to sell something to an audience.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you actually own the “TV channel” and the programming that goes on it, you’ll be able to advertise to your audience any time you want, for free — or as close to it as you can get. That’s an enticing proposition for someone who wants to start a business from his parents’ basement.
By having your own channel and programming and, consequently, audience, you can get traffic and eyeballs on command.
At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about: traffic.
Are you good enough?
The rationale makes sense, but it’s not always a good idea to spend time building an audience.
Since the dawn of time, some people have been superior at attracting attention. They’re entertainers. They’re class clowns. They attract attention the way magnets attract iron shavings.
Are you as good as they are?
If not, worry not! The battle is not lost.
You might have amazing solutions, but suck at drawing attention. Or you may have an insanely useful product that doesn’t lend itself to daily content creation. Does it mean that you should invest time becoming good at drawing attention, or in bending and twisting reality just to keep pumping out content to keep an audience entertained?
I suggest that it’s a waste of time of time at best, and the source of a lot of SPAM at worst.
A different approach
McDonald’s has built one of the world’s most successful and lasting businesses.
It’s everywhere you can think of. The Golden Arches can be recognized from miles away in the night. Almost everyone who lives in civilization knows what a Big Mac is — and might even have tasted one or two.
And yet, McDonald’s didn’t build its massive customer base with a Twitter profile.
How did it do it?
It partnered with television channels that had already captivated people’s attention through the use of entertainment, and consistently presented offers to those audiences.
Use existing audiences
People need to solve their problems.
All you need is an ad pointing people to the solution. If you present a good offer, people who need the solution will buy it without needing to consume any content whatsoever. You’ll save them and yourself a significant amount of time.
I buy online products all the time, and I bet you do too.
I go from reading a story on Medium to clicking on a link, reading a sales letter with a compelling offer, pulling out my credit card and buying a product. I wasn’t part of that person’s audience. I didn’t even know they existed prior to buying their product.
I was presented with a compelling offer and I took it.
Best, the writer of the Medium story wasn’t even the product owner. It was a situation similar to McDonald’s and TV channels. The Medium writer clearly had a commercial arrangement with the product owner that incentivized the channeling of her audience to the offer. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
You can do the exact same.
Instead of trying to compete for attention, you can partner with an audience owner to advertise to your potential clients.
Make these potential clients an offer.
It sure as heck doesn’t have to be complicated — just read my article on the Ice Cream Funnel.
Once people start taking you up on your offer, you’ll have your own audience.
With one difference: it’ll be an audience of BUYERS.
