171: 5 Ways to Build Your Audience Consistently

Audience building is the key to a successful launch, and it's the key to your growth. It's essential to any business, but particularly a subscription box business. Stop trying to do all the things and focus on these 5 ways to build your audience consistently. Grab your notebook and 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 back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today we're talking about audience building. Now we talk about audience building a lot over here on the podcast because it's so important. It is so important and vital to not only starting your subscription box or starting your business, but it's also crucial to growing your business. Now, today we're going to talk about 5 things you can do to build your audience. And I've got 2 different categories for you. So I've got 5 things you can do if you're brand new, how to get your audience established, what you can do to build an audience when you're brand new. And then I've also got 5 things that I want to go over for someone that already has an established audience. And if we can just clear the noise in our head and focus on these 5 things consistently, consistently, our audience is going to continue to grow and grow. And we need our audience to grow, y'all. We need our audience to grow. One thing that's great about subscription boxes is that we can count on our revenue almost every single month. So we can count on that revenue. We have a high lifetime value of our subscribers, higher than any e-commerce business. But one thing that always is true is that we will always have cancellations. So we will always have cancellations. So if you didn't know that, spoiler alert, you're always going to have cancellations. And the only way to fill cancellations and continue to grow is by constantly building an audience, constantly getting in front of new people, welcoming new people into our world and growing our know and trust factor. So today I'm just going to give you 5 simple things that whether you are a brand new business owner, you can do or you're an established business owner that you can do to build your audience. We don't have to make it complicated. We're not sitting around making TikToks all day long hoping we're going to go viral somewhere. That's not what we're doing. We're doing— we're going to take action in a doable, consistent way. We're going to build healthy audience building habits into our business. So if you're a note taker, grab your notebook and let's take some notes here. As I talk through these things, I know it's going to generate some ideas for you. I want you to leave this podcast with some great takeaways that are action-oriented. I don't want you to just listen and not do anything. I want you to listen and implement. Okay. So I'm going to start with our newbies. These are people that are building a new audience. They may have a tiny audience now. They may have no audience now, but we've got to build an audience because I say this over and over and over again. But the people that launch and have a subpar launch is because they haven't done the work building the audience. And I know it's not the fun part. I know it's not the part you enjoy doing. I know the packaging is fun. I know curating the boxes is fun. I know the marketing is fun and the audience building is not so fun, but it's necessary. Or all the efforts you put into building that box and launching that box are going to fall flat every single time. So these are necessary things that you need to do. And if you'll just get out of your head, if you'll just get out of your own way when it comes to building an audience, you're going to be successful at this. Okay. So let's start. I've got 5 things for our new businesses and I've got 5 things for our established business. I'm going to start with the newbies. Okay. So number 1 is building social media content. Now, you probably already have social media established. If you haven't done that, wait, that's ground zero. We've got to get our pages going. But it's really important to build some content before we start looking to have followers. You're not going to have followers if you have no content. So my suggestion for you is that you've got to have a minimum of 10 posts up right away. So if you're building from scratch, you, you're just starting your Facebook page or your Instagram page or your TikTok, I want you to get 10 pieces of content up there right away for people to start to consume. Now I have this great blog that we're going to link in the show notes. It's 10 Post Ideas for New Business Owners, and those are going to give you some great tips. If you're not selling product yet, if you don't have your subscription going yet, this is a great way for you to start building content without having products. Yet, okay? And these can be simple things like how-to information. So people want to be served. People are going to follow you because you're filling a need within them. That could be entertainment, that could be knowledge, that could be a skill, that could be just life hacks. So we want to get some how-tos up there, and they need to be specific within your niche. All of these need to be specific within your niche because that's going to attract the right person. How-tos, maybe a funny meme that would relate to only people in that niche that they would want to share. You need to introduce yourself. You need to go through some tips, tips and tricks on things that revolve around your business. Go over and check out that blog. It's going to help you with some ideas. And we got to get content built. We got to get them up. We got to get content going so somebody has a reason to follow us. Okay, so that's number 1. We've got to build up our social media content. Now, after you build that up, I need you to get super consistent with posting regularly. If you're not posting regularly, we've got to start now. So that might mean a daily post every single day. I need a daily post from you. If you're posting daily, once we get that habit solidified, we need to start posting twice a day. Okay, so we've got to create habits and consistency around your social media. Number 2, a great way to start building your audience when you're brand new is once you get your content built, once you have something for people to look at, I want you to share some of that content on your personal page. So you're not going to post it on your personal page. You're going to share it from your business page onto your personal page. So they're going to see the business people that you network with. If you think about it, We've been audience building our whole lives. The people that we know, the people that follow us, they probably have things in common with us, and there's probably people that follow you that would be interested in your thing. So we need to go ahead and share that to our personal profile. Again, you just hit share from your business Facebook page and share it to your personal Facebook page, and that way it establishes that page is connected to you, and you can start to see some crossover of people following you from your own personal page. The next thing that I want you to do once we built content, once we get our friends and family involved, I want you to set up a page-like Facebook ad. So this is a really simple ad and I have it all outlined for you step by step inside the Launch Your Box library in the marketing. It's either in the audience building module or the marketing module. I can't remember where it's at the moment, but what a page-like ad is, it's really just an introduction. This is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I represent. If you like what I'm doing, come follow me. And it has the little thumbs up Facebook icon on it, so all people have to do is click that little thumbs up and they're instantly following you. So an example of my page like ad— and by the way, this is something that I run year-round for my business, so it's not just a newbie thing, but it's really important for Newbies to get this page like ad up. It's just a picture of me. I'm wearing a monogram sweatshirt in this picture because that's what I do. I monogram things and I am standing in front of a huge stack of my subscription boxes. So I'm not selling anything in this ad. It's just me with a monogram and the subscription boxes. That's what I do. I sell subscription boxes that are monogrammed. So that image is representing who I am and what I do. And then in the copy, I'm just talking about how I'm a mom from small-town Texas. I love big earrings. I love cute monograms. I love margaritas and chips and queso, all those good things. And I'm just giving an intro to who I am. My warehouse is located in Texas. It's woman-owned, woman-run, and we create personalized items for you. And so people that see that can relate to me instantly. They love a monogram. They're going to check out what I'm wearing. They see all the boxes. They're like, oh, what's this? And then they have just like my little description as if I want to be friends with them and they're going to click the little thumbs up if they like what I'm talking about. I'm inviting them to follow my page on that. And that is a powerful ad. You don't have to spend a lot of money to run an ad like that. You could literally do it for $5 a day. And what I typically recommend is that you look for likes of about $0.50 or less. $1 or less is probably the highest I would go. But 50 cents or less, you can get a page like. And if someone is liking your page, if you're spending, say, $5 at 50 cents a pop, that's 25 likes a day. So you think about running that for 100 days or year-round, you're growing your audience. It's pushing it in front of people you would not get in front of. And they're saying, you I relate to what you do. I love, I want to follow you. And that's how you start building a following. Okay. Now, number 4, video. This consists of short video or live video. You heard in last week's episode, if you haven't listened to last week's podcast that I did, I believe it's episode 170 with Tracy Phillips. I need you to listen to that. We talk about her, how she started on YouTube. She wasn't selling anything, But the video is what created a powerful audience for her. You can do this in short video with Reels or TikToks or YouTube Shorts. You can do this in live video on all those platforms you can do live video on. But video puts you in front of people that aren't following you. The algorithm takes that past your normal followers. And that's what we need to build an audience. So if we can push video out there, whether that's short 10-second videos, whether that's 3-minute TikToks, whether that's a 20-minute live, that is going to get pushed out in people's feeds that don't normally follow you. And that's what we need to build an audience. So we've got to work on video. And I know it's a scary thing, but start small. Start with some 10-second videos. Work your way up to a few-minute videos and then go live for the first time. You get better at it. I promise that you do. Okay. Number 4, video. Now, number 5 is you've got to set up your email CRM and start collecting emails. It's going to be a huge part. Building your audience is not just building your following. It's also building your list. List. So if you've not set up an email CRM, I'm going to encourage you to do that right away. We've got to use that quickly. And so our favorite email CRM is Klaviyo, and we'll put that in the show notes so you know how to spell it and find it. But this is what you need to do. These are 5 things that you need to do right now to build your audience if you're brand new to business. Number 1, build social media content. I want you to get 10, at least 10 pieces of content on your page right away. Number 2, share those pieces of content from your business page to your personal page. Let your friends and family start to follow you. That's going to help your algorithm. It's going to help your reach. Number 3, set up a page like ad. You can spend as little as $5 a day, but you have to get going and you have to get in front of people. And there's no better way than to do that with a page like ad. And that training is in the Launch Your Box library. After you get those 3 things going, it's time to start on video. And there's so many ways that you can do video, short video or live video. So many different topics, so many different things. You can be educational, it can be entertainment, it can be advice, it can be lots of different things. We're not going to grow very fast if we refuse to do video. And that's just point blank, period. We got to do video. Okay. And number 5, we need to get our email CRM set up so we can start list building. All right. So those are the 5 pieces of homework that you have if you are a new business owner and you're building your audience. Now, let's talk about our established business owners. This could be anyone that is selling products already, is building an audience already, has a subscription box already. I would give myself this own advice. Too. So this would be important for an established business as big as mine as well. Okay, so let's talk about these 5 things that you can do in your business, and I want you to listen to these things and I want you to create a habit out of them. Okay? We should be doing these all year round. Now, number 1, I want you to run a giveaway. This could be a product giveaway or more importantly, a subscription type giveaway. We can build an audience, a list really quickly when we run a subscription giveaway. We can build our following with it. I have a whole training lesson on it in the training library, how to set it up, why we want to do this, what it's for. We can build a following, we can build a list, and we can really make some traction when we run a product or subscription giveaway. So that's number 1. And I don't want you to run these nonstop. I do 2 or 3 of these a year. So I do them before launches typically, but we need to have that in our marketing plan on a yearly basis. Okay. Number 2, for my established business owners, I need you to get a lead magnet created for your ideal customer. Now, a lead magnet is just typically a digital item that we give away for free in exchange for someone's email. There's lots of different ideas you could do for your lead magnet. The one that I use for my subscription box that is the most effective is the free wallpaper. It's a free phone wallpaper. And I also walk you through that in the Launch Your Box library as well so that you could do the same thing for your business. I've seen a lot of different lead magnets. I love Amy's lead magnet for Sub This and That. She uses a It's like a time and temperature chart for sublimation. Every sublimator is going to want to download that and print that and put that by their machines. She's giving them a how-to. You could do this with different subscriptions. You could do this with a pet subscription. How often should I wash my dog's bedding? Or what— how much exercise does my dog need? And here's some exercise routines. You can also do this in the crafting space with tutorials and DIYs and things like that. But every business needs a lead magnet, and we should be running a lead magnet in our business year round. It also ties into number 3, which is run ads too. If you're an established business owner and you're listening right now and you're thinking, okay, I really need to work on my audience building, I need you to ask yourself if you have an ads budget. If you don't have an ads budget as an established business, you really just have a hobby business. Every legit business has an advertising budget. If you've been building your business organically, I salute you for that. But in order for us to gain some traction and really grow, we've got to have an advertising budget. There are really 3 ads that I want you to be running year-round as an established business, like 365 days a year, all the time you should be running these in your business. One is a lead magnet. So you should always have a way to collect email addresses. That could be the giveaway. That could be an opt-in. That definitely— you've got to be collecting emails year round to grow your email list. So that's number one. You also need to be running Add to Your Page Like ad that I talked about for the newbies. So we need to be building our following nonstop. And then the third one is you've got to have some product ads. So we need to have some conversion ads out there. And so we need to be selling products and really driving cold audiences to purchase from us for the first time. So you need to be running ads right now to grow your audience, to build the audience. We've got to have new people in our world so that when 20 people cancel next month, I have built my audience and I have 60 people that could fill those spots. Okay, we have to do that. And running ads is the best way that we can get in front of cold audiences. Number 4, you've got to go live. You got to go live. You've got to connect with your audience regularly. All right. So you've got to put it on the calendar. You got to do it the same time in the same day every week. You've got to get consistent with that. So your audience knows when to show up for you and you can't back out of it. How many times— just, I can feel it. I can feel the energy in the air as you're listening. How many times have you said you were going to go live and then you talked yourself out of it because something else became more pressing or more important? We're likely to do that. But if we put it on our calendar, like I go live every Thursday at 9:00 AM in my retail business, I go live every Monday at 9:00 AM in my coaching business. If we get it on the calendar, people expect us to be there and we are more likely to show up when people are expecting us to be there. We quit giving ourselves excuses when people are waiting for us to be there. So I want you to create a live schedule that works for you, not that works for your audience, because that's not sustainable. What works in your schedule? I decided that 9 AM lives were where I needed to be because then I wouldn't stress about it all day. I could get in, I could get it done first thing in the morning, be done with my live and move on with my day. And it's worked great for me. Allows me to be consistent because I know I have to do my live first thing and then I can move on. And usually it's better that way because as a business owner, things start to fall apart as the day goes on. You start to put out fires every day. So if I can just get my live over with at the beginning of the morning, I'm good for the rest of the day. I need you to go live and I need you to connect with your audience regularly. All right. And number 5 for my established business owners, I need you to create a consistent social media plan. Okay, we've got to be consistent, and if we have a plan for that, it's easier for us to be consistent. I need you to create a template for posts. How many posts a day and what types of posts are those? Create a plan. I need you to create a plan for video. When will I be doing lives? When will I be doing short videos? Create a plan, put it in the weekly template, and then I need you to know when you're going to switch out ads. Okay, so if I have a lead magnet running, it usually is seasonal. I have a plan for when I'm going to switch that out for the entire year. So I know what's coming. I don't turn ads off without having the backup ad ready to go. I need you to have your posts, your videos, and your ads in a consistent plan so that you're running them every single week. That's how we audience build. You don't have to go dance on TikTok. You don't have to go viral on Instagram. You just have to be consistent. So I'm going to review the 5 for both newbie and established. Newbies, number 1, 1, build your social media content. Number 2, share on your personal profile. Number 3, set up your page like ad. Number 4, do video. Number 5, set up your email CRM. Simple 5 things. That's your homework. For my established businesses, I want you to run a giveaway. I want you to set those up 2 or 3 times a year. Number 2, I want you to create a lead magnet opt-in for your ideal customer. Okay, we need— we can test some of those. We can test a couple of them and see which one is working best. Number 3, I want you to run ads to that lead magnet. I want you to run ads to that giveaway. I want you to run ads for the page likes, and I want you to run some product ads too. We have to establish a routine of running ads in different categories. Number 4, you got to go live and you got to get consistent with that and get it on your schedule so you can plan for it and your audience can plan for it. And you can show up. And number 5, get consistent with social media. Create a plan. I know I'm all over the place from day to day, but if I have a plan for something, I am 100 times more likely to implement it than when I'm just going all willy-nilly and deciding it in the moment. So get a social media plan that talks about posts, talks about videos, and what ads you're running from month to month. If you have a plan, you can implement it. And this is your 5-step audience building plan that all of you can implement right now. Thanks for joining us on the Launch Your Box podcast. If you're looking to grow your audience, head over to launchyourbox.com and grab the 10 steps to help you start building your audience guide. It's packed with practical tips to help you connect with your future subscribers. Until next time, keep launching and growing on your subscription box journey.