054. How to Grow Your Audience to Grow Your Revenue

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Well, hello my friends, how are you? Hope you're having a fabulous day or evening wherever you are. Whatever is going on, I hope it's fabulous. I feel like I haven't recorded a podcast in a little while and I guess I haven't. I was away last week on a mastermind retreat with my coach and my mastermind sisters and we were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which was super fun. I'd never been there before and it was so beautiful there. It was a little different than I expected. You hear a lot about, or I guess I've heard a lot about Jackson Hole and just thought it was going to be very posh and kind of Aspen like, but it's not. It's a little more country, a little more cowboy and I love that part of it. So I really enjoyed it there. It was beautiful and pretty laid back and relaxing and the fall colors were so brilliant. I don't know if you saw any of my stories or I can't remember if I did a reel, but it was really beautiful there and I had a great time. I learned so much. Had a really great opportunity to just step away from the everyday day to day parts of business and just like pull back to that 30,000foot view. And we did a business audit and I spent a lot of time doing that. It was so interesting because I feel like my business is in a well and it has been the past couple of years a really high growth phase and I'm. I have a lot going on and so a lot of it's all moving so fast sometimes that it's really nice to just take a step away and look at everything and just think about how I want to refresh things and you know, just get fresh perspective and get coached. You know, I got my butt coached off, which was awesome. And so I have come back and I feel like I have so many great ideas and so much more clarity and lots of exciting things that I want to teach you and share with you. And the first one being what I'm going to teach you today, which is basically how to grow your audience. And it's so important. I know that we are talking about all the ways that I know of to help you achieve your fourth quarter goal and set you up for all the success in 2023. And so that's where we're going with today's episode. And especially around growing to that first hundred K of revenue or annual revenue in your business. This is one of the ways that will really help you get there. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. So buckle up and get ready. I've got lots of good stuff and lots of good stuff coming in, the episodes coming up and lots of fun announcements and things. I don't know, I'm just so excited for Q4. I really, it's really my favorite year or my favorite time of year in business and my favorite time of year for holidays. I love all the holidays and the food and. Okay, anyway, I digress. Back to business. Here we go. So one thing that I see so often with amazing businesses and amazing women that I meet and that I talk to that have these just gorgeous businesses and great client results that they can point to and irresistible offers that they are have put together and great programs and all the things, but they're just not growing at the speed that they want to. They're not making the money they want to. And so often they're just like, what is going on? What am I doing wrong? I'm posting on social media every day. I'm writing emails to my lists, I'm posting, you know, reels and videos. I'm doing all the things. What is going wrong here? And one of the most common things that I see happening is that, that they have a small audience. Now, I'm not talking, you know, I guess size is relative, right? But, but think about this. If you are have all this great offers, all these things, this great value you're putting out there, but it's going to the same 72 people, your business is not going to be growing, right? And that's not a judgment on the size of your audience. I don't care if you have seven people in your audience or you have 700 or 7,000. We always need to be inviting more people in and new people into our audiences. Okay? So this is not necessarily about the size of your audience. The point is you always need to be inviting new people in. And so if you're offering to the same group all the time, your business cannot grow. We need to be inviting new people in. So we're offering to new people and existing people, right? So we constantly and consistently need to be inviting new people in. And so that's what I'm going to teach you today. And so if you do nothing else in your business in Q4 and just work on bringing new people in. Your business will grow, your money, your revenue, your client base will grow. Okay, and so here's how we're going to do that. Basically what we're doing is meeting new people. And that can be online or in person, right? So we want to be meeting new people and bringing new people in. How do we do that? Each one of us is doing that in a different way. For example, I love in person networking, so I do a lot of in person networking. I'm involved in in person networking and I also am networking online. I'm meeting people online as well. And so let's first talk about in person meeting people at networking functions. Whether it's in person networking function or there's a lot of organizations that are still, not still, but that are doing online networking sessions like Zoom Networking, things like that. So when we're talking about networking, I want you to always make sure when you meet people that you have a way to follow up with them. Now I'm not talking about following up with every single one of them. I mean, you could, it's up to you, but just make sure that you have a way to follow up with people. A lot of times what I see happening is that we'll meet someone and we'll have a great, you know, meet him at a networking function. We'll have a great conversation, a great connection, and they're like, oh, give me your business card. And you give them your business card, but then you move on and talk to somebody else and you have no way of following up with them. You maybe. Well, for me I can forget names easily, so I'll even forget what their name was. Right? But you want to make sure that you're having a way to follow up with them. So whether that's collecting their business card or connecting with them right then and there on social, or maybe you have a electronic business card that you share your information that way or the QR code, whatever it is, just take a moment and collect their information so that you can be in touch with them. Okay. And then after you meet them, you want to send a follow up message to them. And so for me, what I do is the next day or a couple days later, after I meet a new person, I will send them a personal email from my personal, you know, it's not like an auto automated, you know, email or any automation thing like that. It's from me personally sending them a message saying it was so nice to meet you at xyz, wherever we met. And then I always will invite them to that next step in creating and building the relationship. So maybe it's, I'd love to get together and have a coffee chat with you. I have done hundreds and hundreds of coffee chats and I absolutely love that. I love getting together and talking to people and hearing their stories and hearing about their business and getting to know them as a person and talking about how I can support them. So you can suggest a coffee chat, whether that's in person or virtual. You can invite them to maybe sign up for an event that you're having or, you know, offer to send them your freebie, if you have a freebie or something. Just think about what is the next small step in creating that relationship. Because remember, marketing is all about creating connections, creating relationships. So think about what is that for them. You know, I know a lot of people will gather business cards and gather contacts and hoard them and never follow up, never reach out to them, never offer to, you know, get to know them, create that relationship. And also, I do not just automatically add people to my marketing email list. I will send them this follow up email from my personal Gmail. And I do invite them in that email if you want to keep up with what I'm doing or you know, how whatever my offer is like, if you want great marketing advice delivered to your inbox weekly, sign up for my email newsletter. And so I invite them to do that, but I do not just automatically put them on my marketing email list. So there are lots of ways to meet new people online, right? Organically, where you're not like paid advertising is definitely one of them. But organically, if you are not one that goes out to networking meetings or maybe you just like. For me, I like being able to network even while I'm, you know, sitting on my couch in my jammies. And you can do that online if you're networking online as well. And for example, Facebook groups, and if you find groups online where your best fit clients hang out, then just go into those. I mean, just think of those as like a networking group, right? You walk in, you go into the group and you're going to serve and meet people, not sell. We're not selling in groups. We're meeting people. We are offering value, we're answering questions. We're just being a normal human making friends, right? And so what happens then is that when you do that, people will reach out to you. They will go and check you out on your social media profile. So if you're in Facebook groups, they're going to go to your Facebook profile and check you out and see what, what you're up to, what you're doing, what kind of business you're in. And then from there, you have to make sure that your social profile will lead them in the next step in that relationship. Whether it's, you know, to download your freebie or message you or, you know, listen to your podcast or whatever it is, think about what's the next easy step for them there. Another way to meet people online and invite new people into your audience and new people to get to know you is by using hashtags. And that's mainly for use on like Instagram or LinkedIn or TikTok. So I would think about what hashtags that your best fit clients are using are looking at. And if you don't know, you can go check out your clients and what they're doing, what kind of hashtags they're using. You could look at what others in your industry, what kind of hashtags they're using. You can even ask your clients, what kind of hashtags do you follow and just do a little research. But start using some hashtags and that allows new people to get exposed to what you're doing on Instagram, LinkedIn and tick tock and other platforms too. And then paid advertising is also a way to be introduced to new people. Now, it is certainly not a requirement. It is not the only way to meet new people, as you've heard. I've mentioned lots of other ways, but it is an option. Right? And so the way I use paid advertising personally is I advertise on Facebook and I'm considering expanding that to some other social media platforms. So I'll let you know how that goes. But currently I'm using Facebook, which is also for Instagram, to advertise, to offer my freebie. I have a freebie, which is often a really great next step. When you're meeting, you know, in that relationship, when you're meeting people online, you can offer that freebie. And a freebie or a lead magnet, those are the same things, is basically a giveaway that you give people and you've probably signed up for them yourselves. I know I have. That is aligned with the work that you do that gives your best fit client a quick win. It's kind of like an appetizer to the main, what would be the main meal of the work that you do. So it's aligned with the kind of work that you do, gives a taste of how you work, right? So for example, a cheat sheet. I currently have a cheat sheet that's called the 12 brilliant marketing topic ideas. And so it's like some a collection of prompts for creating marketing content. And so you're always welcome to visit my website and grab it for yourself. It's a really great cheat sheet. I use it myself in creating content. So, so that's one example. You could do a checklist. Like for example a, a client that I work with has a first time home buyer checklist, right. Or maybe a quiz. If you've ever taken any of those personality tests like Disc or Enneagram or any of those, you can find those personality tests online and they're a lead magnet. You take the test and then you have to give your name and email address in order to get your results. So that's like a freebie. Or you can, if you have a subscription or a membership you can offer like a free trial period, a free 30 day trial that gives people a sneak peek into your, your membership or I use these a lot coupons or discounts. So like anytime I go online to order a product and you go to this to their website for the first time and they say if you give us your email you can get 20 off. I always sign up for that. So that's another option. All great freebies that you can use to begin building that relationship to bring these people into your audience, to bring new people in to your audience and into your orbit. And I personally like always to be always moving the relationship toward the email list because it is and intimate communication, it's from me to you. It's also has much higher deliverability than social media posts. You know we know that social media posts are. I don't know, I don't know what the latest statistic is but I think the last one I heard was like 4% of people will see your post. Right. Whereas for email the percentages are a lot higher. Like let's see, let me if I can put my finger on those percentages right now, I don't have it right here in front of me. I thought I did. Sorry guys. But anyway it's much, much higher than 4% and I'm going to be talking much more about email marketing in the next episode and how it is an essential part of growing your business, your revenue and achieving your goals. And so we're going to talk about that. So that's why I don't have that statistic right here. But I thought I did. I thought I had it close By. But I don't. But anyway, the point is, I always like to be moving that relationship to the email list because we have a much more direct connection to the cloud client, to our potential clients, to our clients. And we're not at the whim of the algorithm. We're not at the whim of whatever the social media platforms are doing. I mean, we could wake up tomorrow and they're like, oh, you've got to pay $50, you know, a connection to view your list of connections. Or, I don't know, they could do whatever they want because they own the platform and we are on there at the. At their mercy. Right? So I think social media is an amazing way to connect with new people. But as we're moving the relationship along, we want to be bringing them to that email list. So. So, yeah, definitely, let's be growing our audience and that is how we are going to continue to be growing our business is by bringing new people in. So we always need to think, be thinking about in where in my marketing am I bringing new people in and so that I have new people to make offers to, new people to be developing relationships with, new people to be serving while we're serving those that are already here. And that's how we create that balanced marketing plan, right? We want to be having new people coming in and we want to be serving them in a highly valuable way. So that's what we're going to be talking about next is once we bring all these people in, these new people in, what do we do with them? How are we going to serve them well? What do we offer them? Because this is all part of how we're going to grow, achieve that Q4 goal and set ourselves up for a really successful 2023. And that's what I have for you today, my friends. And I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day and I will be back with you next week. Have a good one. Take care. Bye. If you like this podcast, then you have got to sign up for my free on demand video training, Grow youw Sales, Doing what yout Love, Where I teach you in depth my simple process that you can implement right away to harness your mindset and your skills to grow your sales, sales to whatever level you want. So go grab that now. The link is in the show notes and I'll see you next time.