Stop Focusing on Building an Audience
Vanity metrics. Have you heard that term before?
Sometimes it can be hard to know which numbers we should be focused on growing because they have an impact on our bottom lines and which ones are just distractions.
In my latest Empire Rising episode, we’ll set the record straight on vanity metrics and get you looking at the RIGHT data.
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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…
Hey, risers. Welcome Empathy Rising.
So what we're going to be talking about today is one of the, a big mistake that I see people making in the online income industry in business we have things called indicators. We have leading indicators and we have lagging indicators. So you've heard me talk about the dominoes before, right? If the dominoes fall and then once it doesn't fall all of a sudden, we know we can fix that domino. We have indicators that happen in the dominoes ahead. And if we learn how to read those leading indicators, we'll be able to predict that this domino doesn't fall. We also have. lagging indicators after if we, this is hard to explain if the domino for some reason wobbles, but it doesn't fall, and then after that, we have some indicators that show this was the problem. Like the problem started back here. Those are called lagging indicators. Leading indicators, if you know how to read them, are obviously better because you can get ahead of something. You can predict and forecast an issue before it actually happens, and you can fix it.
Lagging indicators are basically hindsight's 20/ 20. Lagging indicators tell us, all right, we should have fixed this way back when we didn't know, then we missed it. We didn't read the leading indicator or we didn't see it. So the lagging indicator then tells us, all right, let's do better next time.
What we're talking about today is It could be either a leading or a lagging indicator if you learn how to read it, if you learn how to do some validation early, then you can catch things beforehand. However, the reason I label this as a mistake that people make is because it's usually a lagging indicator. What we're talking about is the difference between attracting leads and building an audience. All right, so building an audience is what everybody's talking about. It's the big buzz, right?
We need an audience to sell to, but actually, that's not the real or the best way to think about it. We don't need just to build an audience. We don't need just a collection of human bodies to talk to. What we need is real leads, because real leads are the people that actually buy from us. Okay. So one thing that's really prevalent, rampant, fill in the blank, whichever word you want to use there in the online industry is this idea of vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are, I have 6, 000 people on my email list, or I have 4, 000 people following me on Instagram, or fill in the blank with any number that you want to, it can be the number of people in your Facebook group.
It can be the number of people following you on social media, the number of people on your email list. The number is just a vanity metric. And what I mean by that is it's just an analytic or a measurement that doesn't actually help our businesses progress. And it doesn't actually give us real measurable data because just because there's 4, 000 people there, there could be 2, 500 people who haven't opened a dang email you've ever sent them.
They send it there. They hit delete from the very beginning, or they marked you as spam a long time ago, and they don't even see that email. So just because there's 4, 000 people there does not mean that there are 4, 000 qualified leads who are going to turn into buyers. And that's what matters. We want an audience of buyers, not an audience of followers. If we have an audience of followers, we have no idea. How successful our business is actually going to be because we're basing on a vanity metric, a metric or an analytic without any substance. You might be able to go around bragging that you've got 10, 000 followers on Instagram. But if none of those people are buying from you, it's all style and no substance is much more profitable for you to have an audience of leads and have that audience be 500 people than it is to have an audience of followers. That's 5, 000 people. So we want to think about attracting people who are actually interested in what we're going to be selling instead of attracting a bunch of. Just random people. So I think this is something that we need to be paying attention to as we're entering into online income. It's not about building an audience.
It's about crafting an offer and attracting the right qualified leads. To that offer, we're going to get into that a lot more today, because if you focus only on accumulating masses of people, if you only focus on the number of people who are following you, there's a few things that happen. The first is that you think you're, you end up thinking you're going to have a much better launch and much higher revenue than you actually will based on the numbers, right?
So if you're predicting a launch based off an audience of 4, 000 people, when in actuality there's only about 1, 500 who are engaged with you, you're going to be anticipating between 4 and 12 sales when the truth is your audience is really only going to yield you between 2 and 6 sales. This is when you get set up for disappointment. You're setting yourself up to be disappointed from the very beginning because you're basing off the wrong data. You're basing off the wrong measurements, going out and just trying to get as many people as possible also means that you're going to have an unqualification. There's going to be people who are just maybe interested in your pictures that you post because they're pretty or they're following a hashtag that you're using on Instagram.
And so they just blindly followed you. They're lookers if they're even looking. So there's a couple different categories here. There's people who follow you. Maybe with good intentions and totally intended to learn from you, and they just fell off, they just, life got busy for them, they never, they just don't have the time to open it or whatever, open your emails or look at your posts or anything like that. That's one option. There's another option for people who just randomly follow you. Like literally their thumb could have slipped on the screen and they hit follow or they subscribed for your opt-in and totally meant to unsubscribe and they just never got around to it. So there's people who had good intentions to follow you there's people who didn't have good intentions to follow you.
Those people are not even looking at whatever you're posting or whatever you're emailing. Then, there's the lookers, right? There's the people who have good intentions, and they're definitely looking around, but they're not buyers. They might be, another worst-case scenario is they might be spying on you, just trying to see what you're doing because maybe they have a similar idea. It happens. It sucks. But, They might just be like looky-loos. They might just be like, Oh, I'm going to get in as many different funnels as possible because I want to see how they work and I want to go build my own. There's people who are just looking. There's also people who are just freebie collectors. They might be actually interested in solving the problem that you teach or the problem that you help with, but they're just going around to everybody and just collecting all the freebies on it. And, They have no intention of actually taking action. Okay. Then we have buyers, right? We have people who are actually looking to solve a problem and are actually intending to pay money to solve that problem.
However, they might be buyers immediately, or they might be buyers in six months or a year. So there's totally tons of different levels of qualification for an audience from. Not even seeing what you posted, to watching everything that you do, learning from you, and buying immediately, or maybe buying down the road.
So there's a spectrum of audience. If you're just out there getting people. If you're just chasing that number of people, then you are definitely setting yourself up to have a very slim amount of buyers and everybody else in your audience is going to be somewhere else on that spectrum.
There's going to be very few actual qualified buyers. So what you ultimately end up doing is wasting a crap ton of time. Wasting your energy and wasting your effort. So you're like, I'm going to go pitch this podcast and I'm going to go pitch that podcast. And I'm going to post on Instagram with these hashtags or whatever because they're going to get me in front of the most people, but they end up being the wrong podcasts, the wrong visibility and you're connecting with the wrong people.
So just because you might get a hundred new followers from that hashtag, are they a hundred new buyers? Or are they a hundred new newlookers? Are they a hundred new followers or are they a hundred new leads? And this is a big distinction that we need to make. We want to go for leads, not followers. Cause once you make this shift, there's a few things that actually start happening.
You start focusing on cultivating those leads. You have a higher converting launch. Then industry standard. So going back to the 4000 examples, right? If you had an audience of only 1500, you got rid of those other 2500 people, you scrubbed them from your email list, you got rid of them because they were the wrong people.
And you had 1500 qualified leads, and you spoke directly to those leads, industry-standard would say you'd get two to six sales, maybe because you have the right audience, the right leads talking to them in the right way, you might blow that out of the water and end up with 12 sales. And so you could double the industry standard conversion rate simply because you have leads.
You're talking to the right people. You have cultivated and curated that audience instead of just gone after as many people as possible. This is also the way that you end up with people who buy from you time and time again. Whether you're Offering different workshops in a series. If you're talking to real leads and if your audience is a bill of buyers, they might buy workshop number one.
And then because workshop number two also serves them, they'll buy workshop number two as well. You might also build what I call an Ascension model. And you might start with a course and then move up to something more higher price and higher touch. Oh, and then you might have one-on-one coaching or whatever.
Hey Risers, I am so honored and excited to be interrupting you for just a moment here with an invitation to our third annual Side Hustle Open House. For three years in a row, I have been peeling back the curtain, so to speak, and giving you not only a sneak peek but really a deep dive into what is included inside of Side Hustle before you ever enroll.
That way you get to see everything that's included in the curriculum. All of the ways that I facilitate you going from idea to income and building out your online income stream and all of the extras that are included. So the way this is going to work is on October 19th at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific. You guys are going to meet me on Zoom and I'm going to walk you step by step through what is included inside Hustle.
So I go phase by phase, I show you lesson by lesson, and I show you all of the templates. It's trackers, tutorials, workbook pages, everything that's included to keep you accountable, to keep you moving forward, to support you on your journey. Uh, and I explain how I facilitate you in all of that. So that's the first aspect of the open house.
We have our support staff, our copywriter and our graphic designer. They're going to come and show you more about their role in the program. So how they help you produce quality, professional-looking assets. So you look like you have not just cobbled this together on your own. You've really put together a polished product.
And then the third aspect of this open house that I'm always so proud of is our current students and our alumni who not only get to come and show off a little bit for you and show you what they've made over our nine months together, but also to give you a really honest, uh, insight into what it's like to be a Side Hustle student, what it's like to be a newbie, um, and what it's like to balance taking on something new with an existing practice and family and life and all of that stuff.
So, when you go through Side Hustle Open House, you're able to see everything that I offer for you, everything that the support staff offers for you, and get real-life accounts from real life students. I really love this open house because not only do you get to kind of try it before you buy it, but it gives you the opportunity to envision working with me, envision what you're taking on when you go through side hustle, um, and to get to see yourself, uh, mirrored back in these students who are, who are a year out from where you are right now.
So again, I would love to invite you to attend our third annual open house. Really get to see. Uh, and experience this proven program and to decide if it feels right for you. The Open House is taking place on October 19th at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific. And even if you can't attend, you still want to see how SightAlpha works and if it feels like a fit for you, please go ahead and register because that's the way that you'll get the replay.
So, I hope to see you there. I can't wait to meet you, uh, and help you decide if side hustle feels like your right next step for 2023. All right, back to the regular episode.
These people might be served from your introductory offer and from your mid-tier offers and from your highest offers. So having a qualified audience of buyers and leads has them buying from you again and again. It also makes your marketing easier because you. You don't have to do less because you're focused on less on getting a mass of people and more on getting the right people so you can do less marketing and also your marketing becomes more effective because you're in front of the right people with the right message at the right time then they come over to your audience as a qualified lead and a potential buyer.
All right. So we've talked a lot about why you want to be switching the mindset, why you want to be thinking about leads instead of followers.
It's not about the size of your audience. It's about the quality of your audience. It's cliche, but it truly is quality over quantity. And so the reason that this is a big mistake is because, or a big mistake that a lot of people make is they're going after the numbers thinking that. Their conversion rates come, they'll settle for a low conversion rate if they're dealing with a lot of people, because it all washes out in the end.
Yeah, I only had a 1 percent conversion rate, but I converted off of 10, 000 people, so it was a hundred sales, or whatever. And it's okay, or You could have an audience of half that's actually qualified buyers and still get a hundred sales because you're talking to the right people. So it's much more effective and it's easier to build an audience of leads than it is to just go out and try and get an audience of a ton of people.
So how do we do this? This is why you start with offer creation. There are a lot of people out there teaching, Oh, just build the audience and then ask them what they want and then give it to them. And that actually doesn't work that way. It's a heck of a lot harder to go out and build that big audience.
And then when you are. interviewing people and asking them what they want because your audience is so varied and so widespread and everybody has a different opinion and everybody has a different need and a different want, you end up getting 20 different suggestions back. And then you're like then you end up making, the big mistake is that you may end up making 20 different offers.
Okay, I can do that, and I can do that, and I can do that. Talk about burnout. Talk about overwhelm. Talk about feeling like you're throwing spaghetti at the wall or that your hair's on fire. So the more, the easier, the more effective way is to start with an offer and bring people to it. It's like bringing flies to honey.
Get your honey together and the right flies, you'll be able to attract the right flies. I was gonna say the right flies will come and that's not true because they don't just naturally come. They don't automatically come. You have to get them there. But it's so much easier to get them there when they're attracted to the honey.
Instead of going out with this crazy net and running with your hair on fire trying to catch flies, that's what building an audience is like. You're like, I'm just gonna go get all the flies! And then you're trying to take this little tiny thimble full of honey and force-feed it down the fly's throat.
Wouldn't it be so much better and easier and more peaceful to just focus on Cultivating some honey and then just lifting it up in the air and then all the flies are like, wait, what's that? It's honey. Oh my god. I'm going over there. You can tell I haven't been on the mic for a while because I'm just coming up with these random examples, but That's literally how I see this.
So start with your offer first. It just makes so much more sense to start with your offer first now. Another caveat and that does not mean you build the offer. You guys know that we always pre-sell our offer first. So we start with the concept of an offer, a clear construct where we can say, this is what it does.
This is who it helps. This is how it helps. This is why you need it. And that's what we need to bring the honey. Or that's what we need for the honey, and that's what we need to attract the flies. If you build an audience with your offer in mind, that's how you're building an audience of leads.
So here's what you need to check in on. Do you know what your offer is? Do you know the person it helps? Do you know the problem it solves? Do you know the promise that it makes when you know those three things? You can start building your audience, right? Now, if you haven't guessed yet, this is the entire first month of side hustle.
And even more than that. We validate this offer within the first month of side hustle. So not only are you determining the person, problem, and promise, we talk about price as well. We go straight to the flies. We go straight to the market. We say, here's an idea. Do you like it? Instead of the other way around, instead of saying, hey, do you have an idea for me?
That's the way that you get 20 different ideas. Instead, we say, here's an idea, what do you think of it? Here's a concept I've come up with, what do you think of it? And we get feedback directly on a concept instead of getting feedback on nothing and getting suggestions. There's a difference between getting suggestions from people and getting feedback from people.
Once we get that feedback from people, the entire rest of side hustle, especially phase two, is set up to be leading indicators. Like we talked about in the beginning of this episode, we are setting up a bunch of dominoes to see if they fall. To see if they are meeting these benchmarks. And if we're meeting this criteria way before we ever launch, because we can read these indicators and we can see, do we have an actual, are we attracting leads?
We will see if we're attracting leads from the very beginning so that we know, and we can accurately project and predict what the launch will be. We'll be basing off an audience. Of a cultivated audience of legitimate leads. Yes, it might be a smaller audience. However, it's going to be a qualified audience of buyers.
We're going to cut down on all the other sides of that spectrum. And we're going to focus just on attracting buyers. And so not only have you Created your offer idea. You have validated that offer idea. We have set up tons of metrics in place to make sure that's the right idea for the right people at the right time, and that you're talking to them with the right message so that after phase two, when we do go into our launch, it's a successful launch.
It's a successful launch from a monetary standpoint, you are making money, but it's also a successful launch from a helping standpoint, from an impact standpoint, the people who are working with you genuinely had a problem to solve and genuinely wanted to solve that problem. And they're going to walk away from your program with much better results and so you have completed side hustle, not only focusing on income but also focusing on impact. You've built an audience full of leads who are going to buy from you, not only in this first launch but are going to buy your continued products. And the percentage of those who don't buy in this launch are exponentially more likely to buy from you in future launches because they're not just lookers, they're buyers, they just might need a little more time and that's way better than having people who are never going to buy from you at all. So I hope you guys can see the difference between audience and leads. I hope you guys can grasp the idea of a vanity metric and letting go of the total number of people and really focusing on the quality of those leads. Again, corny, but quantity. Is not what's important here. It's quality that's important.
All right, guys, I will talk to you next time. And until then keep on rising.
