Patrick is a real-estate entrepreneur who recently wrote and self-published his first book. He has already sold 500 copies, which is no small feat, but he has grand dreams of best-seller lists and sequels.
He wants to know, “How do I build an audience for my work and hit that best-seller list?”
This is a challenge so many entrepreneurs face, whether they are publishing a book or not. We all want to know: How do we get our message in front of the right people? How do we build a loyal community of followers who need what we have to offer? It is a noisy world, and the traditional marketing advice no longer holds.
First and foremost, I’ll tell you a disappointing yet potentially freeing truth: There isn’t one objectively “right” way to share your message. It all depends on your objective and who you are trying to reach. But I have a few ideas to get you started. Read on for three of my tips to help your message be heard.
1. Start where you are needed.
We don’t need to reach everyone; we just need to reach the people who need what we have to offer. Consider, who is an influencer you know in one of the industries that would benefit from your work?
Brainstorm a list of people who would be in alignment with your method and/or teachings. Reach out and offer to send them your book or product for free. If they resonate with your work, they will likely be excited to share your message with their communities and help you get in front of more eyeballs.
However, start small—don’t immediately reach out to the Simon Sineks and Brené Browns, or to every industry your work even remotely touches. Often, as entrepreneurs, we have so much passion, and we try to match our strategy to the size of our vision—we go after every influencer we have ever admired and every industry under the sun. But when we start too big, we end up accomplishing very little.
Start with the industry that needs your work most, the industry you are most aligned with. Make waves in that industry and start to build momentum. In time, that momentum will carry you into other industries, and your influence will grow.
2. Find the “right people.”
Furthermore, our marketing cannot stop at choosing one entire industry to target.
This is a topic that comes up time and time again. Online advertising is crowded. Many of the people we would hope to see our messaging have numbed themselves to the onslaught of ads they see every day. So how do we get them to stop and consider our message amongst the masses?
It is not a matter of how good or bad your content is. In fact, if you are reading this, I would guess your content is quite good.
You need to get more specific: The right people to hear your message live in the micro-niche. The riches are no longer in the niches; they are in the micro-niches. Who is the subgroup of your sub-group? How can you go all-in and laser-focus on one very small micro-niche of people?
For Patrick, his sub-groups may be real-estate agents with many years of experience, versus those with very few. His strategy to reach each type of agent will need to be vastly different. His messaging will stay fundamentally the same, but the way in which he shares it will adjust for each niche.
In a noisy world, the way to build an audience is not to go bigger, but to go smaller. Target your micro-niche and watch your movement grow.
3. Release your limiting beliefs.
When Patrick and I began identifying his micro-niche, he confessed to feeling nervous that those in the same industry as him might feel he is the competition. “Why would someone want to help me when I am just another competitor in their industry?” However, I pointed out to him that this was simply a limiting belief, a story he had crafted in his mind to keep him stuck. Those in the same industry also have the same problems and thus are looking for the same solutions—solutions that he might have!
We have to check the limiting beliefs we are holding onto in order to move forward. More often than not our limiting beliefs only exist in our minds. And oftentimes, those beliefs are holding us back from taking the very step that could make all the difference in our careers.
What limiting beliefs are you allowing to live in your mind and world? What beliefs are you falling victim to? Face them head on and let them go. Think outside of the box and outside of your comfort zone.
Without those limiting beliefs, you just might reach heights you never thought possible.
