Building an audience online is a numbers game, but the problem is that most people focus on the wrong numbers.
Your goal with your Pocket Business is to build an audience of true fans. These are the people that love everything that you do.
They consume everything that you put out and have no problem telling others about you.
But this group is a small minority in the larger group of people that will come across you. The issue that you’ll have is that you have no idea how many people in your audience are True Fans.
This is why so many people are disappointed when they build up 20,000 followers on social media and make $200 a month.
It’s easy to follow someone on social media. You simply tap a button. There is no investment involved. And yet people are clawing and scratching to grow their numbers because they believe they will make or break their business.
At the time of creating this lesson, I’ve never had an email list larger than 8,000 or an online following greater than 6,000.
Yet, I’ve done stuff like this.
Yes, that’s over $100,000 in a week. But just to make things a bit more realistic here are some other numbers that don’t showcase my best week ever.
Believe me, I’m not bragging. I wish I had 100,000 people everywhere and maybe one day I will.
I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to believe that the secret to success is growing a large following. You can make great money by focusing on the people that will become True Fans.
You just have to understand how to create them.
The Only Audience Building Framework You Need
Remember, the easier you make things the better you’ll progress. So I’ve come up with a very simple framework that you can remember that will help you build an audience.
Every single student or client that I’ve worked with that has had problems growing an audience of True Fans had troubles because they couldn’t make it through the framework.
It’s called (to nobody’s surprise), The Pocket Business Framework. As I said, it’s simple as hell to remember.
- Get them to notice you
- Get them to pay attention to you
- Get them to trust you
- Convert that trust into money
That’s it.
You don’t get to skip any of these steps. Every single customer has to go through each step.
Some will fly right through them while others will take months. You don’t get to make that call.
All you can do is ensure that you have things in place that help walk people through this framework.
The challenge is that everyone else is also trying to walk their people through this framework and as you know, there are only so many people we will pay attention to online.
So how does this all work? How do you get people to notice you let alone pay attention to you? What tricks must you do?
The secret lies in the two layers of audience building.
The Two Layers of Audience-Building the Gurus Forget to Mention
I’ve always been curious why some people can find massive success online while others fall flat no matter what they do.
Even if one person copied the exact content of another person they wouldn’t find the same success.
Why is that?
Emotions.
But we’re jumping ahead. Let’s tackle Layer 1 first.
Layer 1: WIIFM
Layer 1 is what your audience is consciously looking for when they come across you. It lets them know if there is potential for a good fit or not.
You can refer to this as the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) layer.
It’s what many people focus on when they tell you that you need a cool title or an optimized bio.
So what is Layer 1?
- Outcome(s)
- Problem(s)
- Mechanism(s)
Don’t worry, it’s not complicated.
First, people want to know can you help them get what they want which means you need to show them that you know the outcome they desire.
This is the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) that everyone talks about.
Second, once they see you know their outcome they are looking to see if you have the solutions to the problems that are preventing them from achieving the outcome.
If I say that I know you’re thirsty and you agree then you are very encouraged. But when I start talking about how difficult it is to drink through tiny straws you give me a weird look.
That isn’t your problem. Your problem is that you have no mouth!
Guess I didn’t pass the Problems phase.
Third, if you do show them you know the problems they face then they need to agree to the mechanism you’ve created that will help them solve the problem.
Over at Odd Noodle, we help Odd people build online businesses around digital products. That’s the mechanism so if you’re not interested in creating digital products then you’re not in our audience.
You might’ve made it through Outcomes and Problems but you didn’t pass Mechanisms which means you would waste your time listening to us and we would waste our time talking to you.
This is where 99% of the people struggle. They don’t do a great job of defining these 3 things for their audience so their audience has no idea if they should pay attention.
It’s also why if you live on social media you get tired of seeing the people repeat the same things over and over again. It’s not because they want to (okay, some love to) but it’s because they have to.
They don’t know who is viewing that particular piece of content. They don’t know where they came from. So every new post is a reintroduction.
But there is a bigger problem that is happening.
Everyone Sounds the Same
You might’ve noticed this in certain social media circles.
Everyone in a niche sounds the same. Why is that?
Because everyone wants to believe that everyone else knows what’s best for their growth. So one person sees someone doing well tackling Layer 1 and so they tackle Layer 1 with the exact same content.
Next thing you know 98 other people are doing the same thing. Now we have 100 people that are putting out the same content with very little difference.
But then someone feels like they come out of nowhere and begin to see rapid growth (the good kind) and people wonder what they are doing differently. So they analyze every single tactic and will tell you things like:
- Their videos are XXX seconds long
- They always drink coffee to make themselves feel relatable
- They go heavy with the SEO
- They use trending sounds
- Some other bullshit
And so what do people do? They do the same tactics (we’ll talk about tactics and strategy later) but they aren’t getting the same results.
What gives?
They have no clue about Layer 2.
Layer 2: Emotions Rule the World
There is something in our DNA that causes us to constantly look for our people.
We need our tribe.
And this is where Layer 2 kicks in. But the tribe isn’t built on the Outcomes, Problems, and Mechanisms because as we’ve already said, those things can be copied by anyone.
Instead, Layer 2 is built on:
- Opinions
- Experiences
- Worldviews
It’s the thing that most people miss when they’re trying their best to analyze someone else’s content.
Here’s an example. Let’s say I do a social media post and I start off by saying this:
My ADHD can really slow me down with growing my business, but thankfully I’ve found a system that anyone can use.
What most people would get from this and the rest of the content is that I’m being helpful so they think they need to be helpful (which you should). Some will even take the system I show and make it sound like they came up with it.
But you know what my True Fans are attracted to?
My ADHD can really slow me down…
That’s an experience that some people can connect with. Those are the words that will make some people perk up. And as I said before, it’s the thing most people will overlook because they’re focused on Layer 1.
While you do need to have the knowledge to help your audience (Layer 1), it’s the emotional connections that you make that will keep them around.
If you can’t mix Layer 2 ingredients with Layer 1 then you’re nothing more than Google for your audience. Someone they randomly come across for something before they forget about you again.
Rule the Category
The struggle of building an online business is believing that you have to give people what they need. So you take the time to create amazing resources that are super helpful for people.
But nobody cares.
They don’t care because what people want is someone to guide them to their desired outcomes.
But can’t you do that with Layer 1? Yep, you’re right so let’s fix that statement.
When there are multiple options out there, what people want is someone they like and can relate to, to guide them to their desired outcomes.
People want to feel like they are part of a tribe (thank our ancestral DNA for that) and whether they know it or not they are actively seeking that tribe daily. This is why some social media content takes off while other content falls flat.
Remember strategy versus tactics? Tactics will tell you what time to post each day, what 7 hooks to use, and how to end each video.
Strategy will tell you that if you want to find success with your content then you need to make people feel part of the same tribe. How you do that (tactics) is up to you.
But to make any of that work people have to know that you exist.
Next Lesson: How to Exist Online >>>>>
