029: Maximize the Value of Your Small Audience

Have you ever told yourself, if I only had a bigger audience, my business would grow? Well, what if I told you I built a multimillion-dollar company with less than 30,000 followers? If I have your attention, come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome, welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'm coming off of a weekend. I just got back from Nashville where I was out at an event that a business friend of mine was hosting, and she invited me to come speak in front of her audience. And when she sent me a message and said, hey, I'm doing this Can you come out and speak? And I was like, sure, what do you want me to talk about? Subscription boxes? Because, you know, I can talk about subscription boxes all day long. And she was like, no, I don't want you to talk about subscription boxes. I want you to talk about how to maximize your audience even though you have a small audience. She said so many of these women are so worried about their audience size and you're the perfect example of how you have to have the right audience and not just a huge audience. And so I was like, oh, okay, I can totally do that. And, you know, it's easy, it's easy for people to get tripped up in those numbers. And for Brooke, Brooke Riley with Refabbed was, um, the business friend that I'm talking about. When you look at her page, she has almost 800,000 followers. Can we just talk about that for a second? 800,000 followers, just a couple hundred thousand shy of a million followers. And so people in her audience look at her and say, well, you have a big audience and this is why you're successful. And so we go through these things where we tell ourselves in our minds, I have to have I have to have a big audience so my business will grow. I have to have a huge following in order to be successful. How many people listening have felt that way at one time or another? I've felt that way. If I could only grow my audience, I could grow my business. And I think that's a false sense of hope that we give ourselves about generating these big numbers. And so it was really interesting to me when she asked me to come speak. And as I started to put my presentation together, I thought, you know what, I do have an amazing audience because what I have done, I have built two separate businesses that have both generated over $1 million in revenue in 2020. And both of those are on track to double this year, both of them. And do you want to know how many followers I have? You look at the retail side of my business, I have 20,253 followers. I barely have 20,000 followers and I'm generating a million dollars in revenue plus on that side of the business. And that's set to double this year. And then if you look at the other part of my business, which is my education and subscription box, how to start a subscription box business, basically. I looked at my following and I have 7,220 followers there. And that business generated over $1 million in 2020. And we're on track to double that again. So for someone that has relatively under 30,000 followers, has a multimillion dollar business, and you might be like, well, Sarah, how does that happen? And it happens because I know my target customer. I'm all about having the right audience and not any audience. And if you're caught up in this vanity trap of numbers where I just need more followers, I need more followers, more followers doesn't always equal more sales. And a lot of times it doesn't equal more sales at all. So how do you find the right customer so that they're going to be in your audience? And there's a quote that one of my mentors says all the time, and he says, when we are for everyone, we are for no one. Let that sink in just a minute. I'm going to repeat it. When we are for everyone, we are for no one. Let that sit with you. Because a lot of us here in this space are creatives. We're creative, we have creative businesses, we have creative products, we create a lot of our products. And so we think of ourselves as creatives. And what is our kryptonite as a creative? Our kryptonite is that we want to do all the things. I say it all the time, all the things, all the things. I can do that, I can do this, I can make that, I can do this. That's our own kryptonite, because when we are for everyone, we are for no one. So our tendency and our drive and our, our want to do all the things is actually what hurts us the most. Because when we tend to be known for everything, we're really not known for anything specific. And there's a saying that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. We can use me as an example. I'm really known for helping people start, launch, and grow a subscription box. That is my niche. That is what I want to be known for. That's how people come into my world. Those 7,000 people that follow me follow me because they are also interested in the subscription box industry. Could I teach people about e-commerce? Yes. Could I teach people how to start a brick-and-mortar store? Yes. Could I teach people how to make t-shirt graphics? Yes. Could I teach marketing for product-based businesses? Yes. Sure I can. I could do all of those things and I could probably do them well. But what happens is when you invite every one of those people into your living room, they're not going to have much in common. They're going to have a few things in common. So you need to think of your business like your living room. So if you invited people through your front door into your living room, what does that door look like? So one of those doors could be e-commerce businesses. One of those doors might be having a brick and mortar. One of those doors could be marketing for product-based business. One of those doors could be me teaching people how to have a monogram shop. People keep coming to my living room, but they keep coming into a diff— in from a different door. They're in my living room and they don't really mix well with each other. Could there be somebody interested in all those things just like me? Sure, there could be. But all those people are there for different reasons. And so when we invite a whole bunch of different people into our living room, we are not able to do what we want to do in that living room. Most people come into your world for one thing. And if you invite people into your living room for that one thing and they get there and there is a whole bunch of other things going on, it's going to be a turnoff for them. They're going to leave out the door they just came in from. And so what you're doing is you're not creating a strong community. You're letting people in the side door. You're telling people to come in the back door. You're opening the garage and telling them to come to the garage door. If everybody that was in your living room was there for the same reason, What would change? The connections would change. The people connecting with each other in your living room would change. The depth of conversation that you could have in your living room could change. If you're trying to speak on all these things on your page, in your emails, wherever, you can't go in depth on anything. You're just skimming the surface on so many different things. You're not really creating depth. With what you're known for. Your community would change. And when people start to think about that one thing, they know exactly, they know exactly who to tell them to go through. If someone said, hey, I want to start a subscription box business, you say, oh, you need to go listen to Sarah's podcast, you need to go read her blog, you need to do all these things. If someone said, oh, I'm thinking about starting a monogram business, Am I the first thing that you think about? Probably not. That's not what I'm known for. Can I do it? Yes. Have I done it? Yes. Am I successful at it? Yes. Do I have a lot of knowledge behind it? Yes. But that's not the community that I'm building. And so I want you to think about what community are you building? What do you want to be known for? I want to be known as the subscription box queen. I'm able to find my customer better because I focus on the one thing. I build stronger connections, I go deeper with my talk topics, and people get more out of it than just being surface level on so many things. I don't need to be for all product-based businesses. I want to be known for one thing. So what do you want to be known for? Just think about it. Of all the things that you do, what do you want to be known for? What lights you up? You know, when I, when I really had issues with figuring out what I wanted to be known for, I was in that trap. I was in— that was my kryptonite. I did too many things. I was teaching paint classes. I was making this. I was doing this. I was doing this. And when I really decided that I wanted to be known for subscription boxes, it was— you could instantly tell because my face would light up whenever someone would ask me about it. And that's what lit me up. And I said, that's what I want to be known for. Think about what lights you up. Think about what connects you to people. What are you passionate about? What could you sit down and talk to anybody about all day long? That's what you should be known for. So now that we have that figured out, maybe you do, maybe you don't, maybe you're still struggling with that. What do I want to be known for? And it's not something you have to decide right now. It's something that you need to sit with and you need to figure out, because once you, once you figure out what you want to be known for, now we can start to create raving fans. And those raving fans are the ones that are going to be buying from us. They're going to be generating that revenue for us in our businesses. And so how do we do that? How do we create raving fans? We got to show up. And I know it's hard. I know it's hard. I had a, I had a Zoom meeting with some of my members today and even at their level of business that they're at— one of them has over 800 box subscribers, one of them has an entire brand, and they're doing collabs with other brands— even at their levels, they don't want to show up. They don't want to show up in a way that puts them out there. And you don't have to show up by showing your face, but you got to show up for your people in some way. So how do you show up for your audience? It could be Facebook Lives. It's a great way to connect with people. It's a great way to let them into your world. Let them get to know you. All those funny little quirks that make you, you, they're going to show up on a Facebook Live. You can show up in stories. Little tidbits about the workday or your personal life or the product process, whatever it is. You got to show up. You got to let people see the inside of what's happening in your business. I like to show up with texts. I don't have to show up on camera. I don't have to fix my hair and do my makeup and get out of my pajamas to show up in a text. I connect with people. In a different way. And that's what showing up is about. It's not about posting 3 times a day. It's not about selling. It's about showing up and creating a community. And this community is your raving fans. There's this saying that you have to serve before you sell. And when you're showing up, this is how you're serving people. And so if you just show up and sell, sell, sell, it's gonna, it's gonna fall flat half the time. But if you can serve your audience before you start to sell to them, they're gonna show up for you. They're gonna show up and buy your things. They're gonna be the ones on your live. They're gonna be the ones sharing your post, commenting in the comments, engaging, building excitement. You got to figure out how to serve them before you sell to them. A lot of people can do this by teaching and training, and so that's how you serve your audience. For me, as a subscription box coach, I, I teach you things that will serve you, and so I show up and I do that in a blog. I show up and I do that on a podcast. I show up and do that in a live. But if I only showed up when it was time to sell you something, it's going to fall flat. I have to serve before I can sell. The same goes with our product-based businesses. Even if we're not teaching anything, I can show up and show you that you matter. And it's, it's more of like, you matter because you're part of my world. And it's, it's you matter because I want to be inclusive, and that's a part of my business structure. And just serving those people, that they have a place to be that's bigger than themselves. They're part of something else. And it's just talking to them, talking to them in the comments, chatting with them in a text, talking, answering their question on a Facebook Live, sharing their pictures on my page that shows I'm proud of them for being one of my customers. I want to, I want to share my followers with the rest of my followers because we're inclusive, we're community. So how do you serve before you sell? That's a question we have to, we have to figure out because consistency is king. You've got to be consistent. We talk about it all the time. Don't try to do everything. Just do what you can do and be incredibly consistent at it. There's a quote that says, you don't have to be extreme, you just have to be consistent. We get wrapped up in this, um, mindset that we have to have like a 3-man band and a juggling circus going on for anyone to notice us. And that's extreme. We don't, we don't have to do that. We don't have to show up on TikTok dancing in our clothes that we're selling. We just have to be consistent with what we're doing, and that consistency is through social media, through emails, through texts, through the products that we sell. If we're selling a whole bunch of different products, we're not being consistent with who we serve. So there's a lot of ways that you can be consistent that we don't have to go to the extremes for. You don't, you don't have to jump out of a helicopter to sell a subscription box. We don't have to be extreme. We just have to be incredibly consistent. And you need to include your audience. When people see themselves in your world, it creates a connection. And I love to include my audience and I include them in a lot of things. Again, I'm talking to them on a Facebook Live. I have people that when I, I use StreamYard. So when you use StreamYard, you click on a comment and their Facebook picture pops up and their comment. People are like, oh my gosh, she clicked on my comment. My comment's on the screen. Like, that's awesome. How do you feel when you go on someone's live and you say hi to them or you ask a question and that person answers it or says hi back? That makes you feel awesome. That makes you feel seen even though they can't see you. So how do you include them? It is such a simple way to include them. I share their wins. When our members are having wins, I love to share wins on social media because one is showing that I see them and they are important, but also it is showing other people that, hey, these are the kind of people that hang out here. Wouldn't you love to come hang out with us? And so there's lots of different ways, and that just includes your audience. I love sharing their pictures on my retail page. I love asking them to share a selfie when they receive their box or when they wear their new t-shirt, send me a selfie. You can do it in text, you can do it on a DM, you can comment in the post below. I love sharing their pictures. It really makes them feel included and seen. And I talk to them as if they're my best friends. I engage with them. I make sure I'm in the comments every day on my pages, just talking with people. And if you could just set a little bit of time out in your day, it's like my first hour. So when I get to the warehouse here, um, I usually have coffee in hand and if I don't, I'm running to the kitchen over here and I'm making it. Um, but I sit down with my coffee and I spend an hour engaging, engaging my I engage on my page. I answer questions. Like you've got to set that time in your day for engagement so that you can build these raving fans. And it comes back to when I had a brick and mortar store and, you know, back in the good old days when we first started our businesses, like I'm, I'm the cashier, I'm the shipper, I'm the maker. I'm the only person that works there. Right. So I do all of the jobs. But how do you greet someone and how do you talk and engage with someone that would walk into your store? And it comes down to, you know, I had a really small store. It was only 600 square feet. So it was tiny. And anytime someone walks in, I'm instantly greeting them. And as customers would be repeat customers, I would be like, oh, how's your mom? How's your sister? How's your daughter? And you just talk to them like they're your friends because you get to You see them, they're in person in your store. So when we talk about online businesses, how do we treat that customer online that might be 10 states away? The same way that we would treat that person that walked through the front door of our shop. And that's what it's about. And that creates the raving fans. And you don't need hundreds of thousands of followers. You don't need that. You just need the right followers, the ones that are engaged with you, the ones that love you and love what you provide, whether that's your subscription boxes or your other products, and they see the value in it. You don't need 300,000 people that don't engage with you on your page. That's a vanity number. You just need the right people because those people show up for you just the way that you show up for them. And so when you think about your audiences, I just recorded a podcast episode, um, earlier with Claudia and it's coming out in 2 weeks, but she's had to start fresh with her audience. She went from 0 to about 300 followers on Instagram. And when she launched her subscription to them, she launched with 106 subscribers. Out of 300 people. She didn't need 3,000 people. She didn't need 30,000 people. She had 300 of the right person and was able to launch her subscription to them. 106 of them joined, and she has basically doubled her salary as a teacher with her subscription box. And so I want you to remember that, like Don't get caught up in these vanity metrics of having to have a big following, but you can really maximize the value of your audience by one, being known for something. So if you're doing all the things right now, let's get out a piece of paper and let's start narrowing it down. Be known for something. Number two, show up. And if you're not showing up right now, how do we start to show up? And if you are showing up right now, how do we show up in a consistent way? Number 3, you need to serve before you sell. You can't just show up and say, buy my thing. You can't do it. How are you serving them before you ask them to buy? What value are you providing for them before you ask them to spend money with you. We got to serve before we sell. Remember, you don't have to be extreme, you just need to be incredibly consistent. You don't have to have a circus going on, you don't have to have monkeys flying around, you just have to be very consistent with what you do. And don't try to take on too many things. If you're trying to do too many things and you can't keep up with any of them, that doesn't serve you. Pick the few things that you can be consistent at and just nail them. And then number 5, love on your people. Treat them like your best friends. Just love on them, engage them, include them, help them feel seen and heard. And you're really going to maximize your audience. And you're going to look back and you'll say, Sarah's right. I didn't need to have hundreds of thousands of followers. These 7,000 people that are in my audience, these 700 people that are in my audience, those are my right people. And you're going to sell to them, and you're going to keep selling to them, and they're going to keep buying from you because they know, like, and trust you. And you don't need— you don't need to jump through hoops to have more followers. You just need the right ones. If the idea of creating a subscription box swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.