A reader recently told me he’s struggling to grow his audience and reach the right people.
I asked him a simple question: Are you able to fill in the blanks on this sentence?
“I help [TARGET AUDIENCE] get from [POINT A] to [POINT B].”
“That’s a tough one,” he admitted.
And he’s right.
It’s super tough, but also super important.
Any audience growth strategy — or business for that matter —should start with that sentence and you want to be as specific as possible when filling in the blanks.
It’s OK if you change your mind down the road, but that sentence gives you a north star to guide your efforts as you begin.
It’s easy to get paralyzed searching for a perfect answer to that question, but there are infinite paths you can go down and succeed.
Don’t obsess on finding the right path — just pick a path and figure out how to make it right.
If you struggle to define your target audience, my previous article featuring five ways to identify your ideal audience is a good place to start thinking it through.
The second part of the key sentence — the Point A to Point B part — is crucial because value is created when transformation is created.
Transformation occurs when people who are in one state want to be in another state and your guidance/content/product/service is the bridge that gets them there.
Many creators struggle to grow an audience because they create content about a topic, but not about a transformation.
For example…
I can write about newsletters all day and it may be interesting, but what’s VALUABLE is sharing advice about how you can grow, monetize, or launch a newsletter.
These are transformations:
No newsletter to existing newsletter.
Small audience to large audience.
Newsletter that earns no money to newsletter that generates lots of money.
Because there are people who want to make those transformations, that content will attract an audience (as long as it’s good).
Ultimately, the value and transformation you seek to provide will evolve. For example, here’s how my newsletter has evolved over the past few years…
It was initially for people interested in the world (no real transformation there).
Then, it was for people who want to get better at work, art or life (a vague transformation).
Now, it’s evolved into serving creators who want to better produce, promote, and profit from their creations (clear transformation).
You’ll notice with each evolution of my newsletter, the target audience got smaller/more specific and the transformation became more clear — and therefore more valuable.
It takes time and effort to figure this out for yourself and deliver on it, but you’ve got to start somewhere and the best place to start is to fill in the blanks on this sentence:
“I help [TARGET AUDIENCE] get from [POINT A] to [POINT B].”
That’s where you’ll find the key to your audience growth.
For more help growing your audience check out my For The Interested newsletter.