Audience Is As Important As Ability

Audience Is As Important As Ability

Every week I get to meet lots of people at networking events. What's really flattering these days is that people often ask my advice on building their own profile. Just recently I've been asked how to build a speaking career, how to launch a premium online community, how to promote a book using business networking as a platform, and plenty more besides.

I always try to give as much advice and support as I can in the short time we have together. And the advice is very often the same. You can be the best speaker in the world. You can build the best online community in the world. You can write the best book in the world. None of it matters if nobody knows about it. You need an audience so that other people know how good you actually are.

The gap I see again and again

What I spot, time and again, is people spending huge amounts of time and effort getting their product or service exactly right. Making sure they're a brilliant speaker. Making sure their book is genuinely excellent. But putting nowhere near the same effort into working out who is actually going to work with them, book them, or buy their book.

It was always this way. When I was an estate agent, we knew we worked for a great firm with a great offering. But that meant nothing unless local homeowners knew it too. So back then, if I wasn't showing someone around a house, I was either on the phones talking to people who might want to view one, or out pounding the streets pushing letters through doors of people who might want to sell. We were doing good work, and we were telling people about it. Broadly speaking, that's called marketing.

There's no single right vehicle

My thing is business networking and social media. You might prefer SEO, email marketing, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn advertising, content marketing, direct mail, cold calling, press advertising, or PR. Or, more likely, a combination of several of those. Whichever vehicle you choose, you need to be out there being the biggest advocate for what you do or what you've created. Nobody else is going to do that job for you with the same conviction.

Someone once accused networking of being a beauty parade. He felt he was more qualified to do a certain type of work than a competitor, but that competitor was getting more leads and more sales. What he missed, or didn't want to admit, was that the person getting more leads was simply putting more effort into building his community and giving value. He wasn't better. He was just more visible, more generous, and more consistent.

That's a hard thing to hear sometimes, but it's almost always true.

So what can you actually do to build your audience?

Be realistic about how big your audience is right now. It's more art than science, but the combined number of people on your email list, your LinkedIn connections, and your social media followers gives you a rough idea. Bear in mind most of these people won't be buying from you at any given time. I see people massively overestimate the proportion of their audience who are ready to buy. I've done it myself.

Get out networking. Meet more people. Start more conversations. This part really is simple, even if it isn't always easy.

Get busy with your other marketing. Whatever already works for you, do more of it. Don't be afraid to try something new alongside it. But get busy, and make sure people can't ignore you.

Learn to follow up at scale. Use every tool available to you to keep in touch with your audience and bring them genuine value. Don't follow up purely to chase a sale. Follow up to build deep, strong relationships, some of which will naturally lead to sales over time. Social media, email marketing, and ongoing networking all play a part here.

Work out how to create PR around your business and your story. Talk to your local press about what you're doing and make it genuinely easy for them. Learn how to write a proper press release and get stories out regularly. Some will land, some won't, but more will land if you actually do it consistently. Don't overlook local radio either.

Create content. Written content through blogs and articles, video for social platforms, audio through podcasts. Just get started. You'll improve over time, but starting beats waiting for perfect.

Make it easy for people to buy from you. Don't put hurdles in the way of people making that final decision. In that moment when someone is ready to invest in your services or your product, make the path as smooth as possible. Keep refining it. You're in business, and ultimately everything you do needs to lead people somewhere they can say yes.

Don't be afraid to get it wrong, and don't be afraid to refine. Listen to feedback. Measure and monitor what you're doing. Adjust quickly when something isn't working. And remember that some of the most useful feedback is silent. People simply stop engaging rather than telling you why.

The uncomfortable truth

Whatever you're doing, no matter how good you are at it, you still need people to know about it if you intend to sell it. And if you've read this far, you almost certainly do intend to sell it.

If you really are the best at what you do, once you've built the audience, the sales will follow. But here's the part that stings a little. You will still lose business to the second best, third best, or even the fifth best in your field, if they've built the bigger, more engaged audience.

Ability gets you in the conversation. Audience decides how many conversations you actually get to have.

If you'd like help building your visibility through business networking, or you're looking for a keynote speaker who can bring this kind of thinking to your team or event, I'd love to talk.

Stefan Thomas is a keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and author of Business Networking for Dummies.