Building a New Audience – Small Business Owners

Last year, I became the accidental admin of a Facebook Group previously sold alongside a somewhat moderately well-known online business course. I say moderately because while it has brought in an estimated $85M for the business owner over the past 10-12 years, most people I talk to say “Who?” when I mention the owners name. But that is a story for another time that I promise I will link to this one for continuity.

So after a year of helping pull this Facebook Group up to being a useful tool, I realized that I was doing a lot of work for free. Now you might ask me why I did that. Let’s just blame the late-stage deep depression I was ruminating in while wondering what I was going to do with my in-person events business, amidst a never-ending panorama of pandemic.

Now other than a year of volunteer work that I did to distract myself from impending doom, the experience did show me that my previous audience that I had been working with in my business coaching focus (the one this site hosts) was not who I REALLY loved working with. Now to no one’s fault – it’s just it involved in a lot of start up questions and I get tired of helping people figure out their podcast platform or even if they really want to do a podcast.

The conversations I want to be a part of really dive into what it means to be a business owner in late stage colonial capitalism and how what we do impacts others around us. I don’t want to talk about icky persuasion tactics when we could be talking about how do reach these audiences we want to work with when we haven’t met them yet to set up those sweet lookalike audiences on Facebook to reach more of.

Part of it was a shift in my focus. I did launch The Create the Rules Catalyst in order for me to do what I loved in the free Facebook group but actually get paid for it. So that helped but I also thought about what were the ways I could reach people that didn’t know me yet but were asking the same questions I was in the world. I came back largely to search engine optimization, podcasts and expanding my own YouTube presence. I realized I was a couple of years behind my content creation mode and so I stepped into high gear creating some messaging for my future folks coming to me. Love letters to my clients. The ones I knew and the ones I wanted to meet. The love letters are here on the site but also can be found around the socials as I wanted to let my fellow business owners they were not alone. The call to be nourished and to nourish employees and the communities they serve was strong.

I was sad to leave my startup business owners slightly behind (we’re here when you’re ready) but also knew that if I didn’t start the leap today, it would never come find me.

Call it scripting, call it hyper sigiling or call it creating content for SEO, I made the decision to just start creating for the business owner I wanted to serve and be a co-creator with. I also made the decision to get paid for it.

I still help out in that free community too but I got used to saying, I would love to go into this in more detail in The Catalyst. Come join me there.

So if you’re ready to pivot or expand your audience to include a different market, here are some things to think about:

  • Why are marketing to this new audience?
  • Who are they and what do they bring you in terms of nourishment and ease?
  • What will you create together?
  • What impact does selling to them have on you, your business, your employees and the communities you belong to?

And then don’t forget to write them a love letter, telling your soon-to-be clients what they can expect from you. If it sounds corny – here’s the practical side of it – all of these questions and exercises becomes your sales pitch or landing page content.
You can even pretend you’re an old-timey poet writing to your new love who lives tragically far away.

Have fun with it.

You and your clients deserve that fun.