Building an audience from scratch
Learn the fundamentals about why people would want to join your audience and all of the elements necessary to supercharge your audience growth.
Hi,
I have a sizable audience now, but it wasn’t always that way. For years, I launched products to crickets again and again. My first two crowdfunding launches on Indiegogo didn’t even make 20% of their goal…combined!
Over time, I found strategies to help me turn it around, and they turned me from launching a project to crickets into an entrepreneur with a dedicated fanbase that gobbled up my work, helping me raise over $600,000 on Kickstarter and over a million dollars on creative projects throughout my career.
Over time, my revenue has grown from a few thousand a year to hundreds of thousands every year, and the strategies I use now aren’t much different from the ones that helped me turn my whole career around.
The secret? Learning how to build your audience. If you have a fanbase ready to buy from you, you have an business. It’s that simple. This guide will walk you through the steps to build an audience from scratch, one that’s primed to buy from you. Finding your superfans.
This isn’t about vague advice or quick fixes. It’s about practical, actionable steps that create leverage and turn casual customers into devoted fans.
Find your brand
Do you know what the easiest way to not have to do marketing is? To develop a strong brand that speaks for you when you can’t speak for yourself. The louder your brand screams to the right customer, the more you’ll be able to sit back and let organic reach do a lot of the work for you.
Everyone has a brand, whether they realize it or not. Your brand is the sum total of associations people have with you and your work. It’s not just about a logo or a color scheme. It’s about the emotions, ideas, and values that come to mind when someone thinks of you.
Even your grandmother has a brand. It’s true. Close your eyes and think of your grandmother. What feelings come to mind? What imagery? What colors? All of that is your grandmother’s brand. We’re just taking those feelings and making it explicit.
Let’s consider the stark contrast between Abercrombie & Fitch and Hot Topic. Both are clothing retailers, but they appeal to vastly different audiences.
Abercrombie & Fitch cultivates an image of preppy, clean-cut Americana. Their ideal customer likely values fitting in, following trends, and projecting a polished image.
On the other hand, Hot Topic embraces counterculture, alternative fashion, and pop culture fandom. Their ideal customer probably prides themselves on standing out, expressing individuality, and rejecting mainstream norms.
These brands aren’t just selling clothes, they’re selling identities. In high school, there were Abercrombie kids and Hot Topic kids. You could tell them from a mile away, and rarely did the two intersect.
Identifying your brand, and the identity of your ideal customers is exactly what you’re doing as an an entrepreneur.
The more clearly you can define your brand and align it with your ideal customers the easier it becomes to attract the right audience. This alignment creates a powerful resonance. When customers encounter your work, they should feel a sense of recognition, not just of your stories, but of themselves.
The expression of that identity is your brand. It’s not even really about you. It’s about the identity of the person reading your work and how to attract them.
Think about the emotions and ideas you want to associate with your brand. Are you the voice of the outsider, the rebel, the dreamer? Or perhaps you’re the guide for the curious, the explorer of hidden truths? Whatever it is, make it clear and consistent across all your work and communications.
So, how do we find our brand?
1. Interview people who fit your target demographic
Even if you don’t have customers, you’ve likely been on social media for a long time and know the people who seem to resonate with your work.
I would stay away from people you know well or have a vested interest in lying to you; not that they want to lie to you, but they do want to protect you, even if it means lying.
This is about having real conversations with the types of customers you want to attract. It’s not just a quick survey, but an in-depth exploration of their world. When you talk to these potential customers, pay attention to:
The specific words and phrases they use to describe their interests.
The challenges they face in their daily lives. What frustrates them? What keeps them up at night?
Their aspirations and dreams. What do they hope to achieve or experience?
The other media they consume. What shows do they watch? What music do they listen to?
Their purchasing habits.
These interviews can be formal or informal. You might set up structured interviews or simply engage in conversations at conventions, clubs, or online forums. The key is to listen more than you speak and to dig deeper than surface-level answers.
2. Observe their behavior online
In today’s digital age, your ideal customers are likely leaving a trail of breadcrumbs online. By observing their behavior, you can gain insights into their preferences and habits. Once you identify who in your existing network already resonates with your work, here’s what to look for:
Which social media platforms do they use most frequently? Are they more active on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or somewhere else?
What types of content do they engage with?
Who are their influencers? Which authors, celebrities, or thought leaders do they follow and interact with?
What hashtags do they use? This can give you insight into how they categorize their interests.
How do they talk about the thingss they love (or hate)? Pay attention to the criteria they use to judge.
What online communities are they part of? Look at forums, groups, or subreddits related to your genre.
This observation should be ongoing. Online trends and behaviors can shift quickly, so stay tuned in to your audience’s digital habits.
3. Test different messaging and branding
This is where you start to apply what you’ve learned. It’s an iterative process of trying out different approaches and seeing what sticks. Here’s how to go about it:
Create different versions of your bio, each emphasizing different aspects of your brand. Which one gets the most positive response?
Experiment with various taglines or elevator pitches. Which ones make people’s eyes light up with interest?
Try out different visual styles. Which ones seem to attract the most attention from your target audience?
Post different types of content on your social media or blog.
If you have an email list, try A/B testing your subject lines and content. What gets people to open and click through?
The key here is to track your results meticulously. Don’t just go with your gut feeling. Look at the hard data of likes, shares, comments, and, most importantly, conversions to sales or mailing list sign-ups.
This process isn’t about changing who you are as an person. It’s about finding the most effective way to communicate your authentic self to the customers who will appreciate you most. It’s a journey of discovery - both of your audience and of how to best present your unique brand to the world.
Thoroughly exploring these three areas, you’ll gain a deep, nuanced understanding of your ideal customer. This knowledge will inform every aspect of your business. It’s the foundation upon which you’ll build your loyal, engaged audience.
Remember, a strong brand doesn’t try to appeal to everyone. It’s okay, even necessary, to repel some people in order to strongly attract others. Your goal is to be the Abercrombie to your preppy crowd, or the Hot Topic to your alternative scene.
By understanding and refining your brand, you’re essentially creating a beacon for your ideal customers. You’re making it easier for them to find you amidst the noise of the world. And when they do find you, they’ll recognize you as the kind of business, that truly gets them.
4. Plant where you are most comfortable
The truth about “audience building” is that you can build an audience anywhere and in any format. What matters most is choosing a platform that aligns with your strengths and where your ideal customers are likely to be.
Think of it like choosing the right soil for a plant. Some plants thrive in sandy soil, others in clay. Similarly, some flourish on Facebook, while others find their groove on YouTube or blogging platforms. The key is to find your optimal environment.
When selecting your platform, consider these factors:
Your natural communication style: Are you better at short, snappy messages? Long-form content? Visual storytelling? Choose a platform that plays to your strengths.
The preferences of your ideal audience: Remember those customers we identified in Step 1? Where do they hang out online? That’s where you need to be.
The platform’s algorithm: Each social media platform has its own algorithm that determines what content gets shown to users. Understanding how these algorithms work can help you create content that’s more likely to reach your audience.
Your goals: What are you trying to achieve? Building an email list? Driving sales? Different platforms are better suited for different goals.
Once you’ve chosen your platform, commit to it fully. Pick one platform and go hard on it for three months. If it works, keep at it until you get organic traction.
Your real goal isn’t just to build an audience on a third-party platform. It’s to get them into your own ecosystem. Think of social media platforms as fishing ponds. You’re there to catch fish (customers), but you want to bring them back to your own pond (your website/mailing list) where you have full control.
I’ve been running an email list since 2015, after my first big project delivered to backers, and, in that time, I’ve only missed 1-2 weekly emails to my audience. I’m not great at social media marketing, but I’m incredible at finding the right people, sorting them from the rest, and then holding onto them for dear life. A lot of my customers have been following me for most, or all, of those years. It’s literally saved my life, and my career, a dozen times.
This is where the concept of leverage comes into play. The bigger your audience, the more you can do with less work. People with chronic illnesses ask how to become successful with their limited energy and it always comes back to building leverage.
Everything you do on your chosen platform should be about using that platform’s reach and algorithm to bring people to your own space. It makes no sense to be on a platform unless you’re going to use it to create leverage. If you hate how a platform works, abandon it. The only places where you should consider being are places that help you leverage your work.
In practice, this might look like using X to share engaging snippets that lead people to your blog or using Instagram to showcase visual elements of your world that entice people to join your mailing list for more exclusive content.
The key is to always think about how to move people from the platform where you found them to the platforms you own. This is how you build a sustainable business that isn’t at the mercy of algorithm changes or platform policies.
When you’ve successfully attracted someone to your platform or mailing list, the next challenge is keeping them engaged and nurturing the relationship. Here are some effective strategies for what to say:
Share behind-the-scenes content: People love feeling like they’re getting an exclusive look into your process.
Offer value beyond your products: Provide content that enriches your customers’ lives in some way.
Create serialized content: Develop ongoing series of posts or emails that keep people coming back.
Share personal stories: Without oversharing, let your audience get to know you as a person
Curate interesting content: Become a trusted source of information in your niche. Share articles, videos, or other content that you think your audience would find interesting, always adding your own perspective.
Engage in discussions: Ask questions, pose thought experiments, or start debates related to your work or genre. Encourage your audience to share their thoughts and engage with each other.
Provide sneak peeks and teasers: Give your audience glimpses of your upcoming work to build anticipation. This could be cover reveals, chapter excerpts, or hints about future plot developments.
Celebrate milestones: Share your successes with your audience, whether it’s finishing a draft, hitting a sales goal, or receiving an award. Let them feel part of your journey.
Respond to current events or trends: If something happening in the world relates to your work or your audience’s interests, offer your perspective on it.
Run contests or challenges: Engage your audience with contests, fan challenges, or other interactive events that get them actively involved with your brand.
Also, pay attention to what resonates with your audience. Track engagement metrics and adjust your content strategy based on what your specific audience responds to most positively. Every audience is unique, so what works for one business might not work for another.
Remember, the key is to balance promotional content with valuable, engaging material that isn’t directly selling anything. A good rule of thumb is the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should provide value, and only 20% should be directly promotional.
By consistently providing value and fostering engagement, you’ll keep your audience interested and invested in your work, making them more likely to support you when you do have a new release or product to promote.
5. Help customers understand themselves
People don’t just care about your stories for the stories’ sake. They care about how your work helps them understand themselves and their place in the world. Your business becomes a lens through which they view their own experiences and emotions.
Think about popular franchises like Game of Thrones or Star Wars. Fans don’t just enjoy the plot. They deeply identify with certain houses or characters. They use these stories as a way to express aspects of their own personality. The same principle applies to your work, regardless of your genre.
To implement this step effectively:
Create shared language: Develop terms, phrases, or concepts in your work that customers can adopt to describe their own experiences. This could be character archetypes, made-up words, or unique perspectives on common situations.
Foster community discussions: Encourage your customers to engage with each other using the context you’ve provided. This could be through social media, forums, or even in-person events. The goal is for customers to feel part of a community that “gets” them.
Provide frameworks for self-understanding: Your stories or non-fiction concepts can offer customers new ways to categorize and understand their own traits, experiences, or challenges. This is similar to how personality tests like the Enneagram have become popular - people value tools that help them make sense of themselves.
Connect your work to real-world experiences: Help customers see how the themes, conflicts, or ideas you infuse into your work relate to their daily lives. This makes your work feel more relevant and impactful.
Be vulnerable and authentic: Share your own journey and how your work has helped you understand yourself better. This invites customers to do the same and creates a stronger bond between you and your audience.
The goal is not just to entertain or inform, but to give your customers a new context through which they can understand and express themselves. When this clicks into place, your work becomes more than just something to buy. It becomes part of your customers’ identity.
This approach creates a deeper, more loyal connection with your audience. They’re not just buying from you; they’re investing in a way of understanding themselves and the world. This is how you create superfans who will eagerly await your next release and enthusiastically recommend your work to others.
6. Find your superfans
Superfans are the backbone of a successful business. They’re not just casual customers. They’re the passionate advocates who will buy everything you produce, spread the word about your work, and form the core of your community.
To understand superfans, we need to think about the sales funnel. Imagine a funnel with a wide top narrowing to a small bottom. At the top, you have a large number of people who might be interested in your work. As we move down the funnel, the number decreases, but the level of engagement increases. At the very bottom are your superfans.
The process of moving people down this funnel is gradual. It starts with awareness, which is people simply knowing you exist. Then comes interest, where they might follow you on social media or join your mailing list. Next is engagement, where they start interacting with your content regularly. After that comes purchasing, where they buy your work. But the journey doesn’t end there.
The final stage, where superfans are born, is when people become so invested in your work that they feel a personal connection to it. They don’t just enjoy what you sell; they feel that it speaks to them on a deep, personal level.
So how do you find and nurture these superfans? It starts by turning that sales funnel on its side and turning it into a bowtie funnel.
Bowtie funnel
The bow-tie funnel model presents a comprehensive view of the customer journey, from initial awareness to becoming a superfan and brand advocate. Let’s break it down step by step:
The left side of the bowtie represents the traditional sales funnel we talked about, with the narrow middle of the bowtie representing the point of sale.
The right side of the bowtie is where the superfan journey begins:
Adopt: The customer starts to incorporate your work into their life, perhaps by talking about it with friends or seeking out more of your content.
Loyalist: They become a repeat customer, eagerly anticipating and purchasing your new releases.
Advocate: At this stage, the customer actively promotes your work to others, leaving reviews and recommending you.
Brand Ambassador: This is the superfan stage. These customers feel a deep connection to your work and consistently champion your brand.
The circular arrow in the center represents the continuous customer experience. It’s a reminder that building superfans is an ongoing process of learning, changing, and improving how you interact with your audience.
To build superfans through this model:
Focus on providing value at every stage. Even at the ‘Attract’ stage, you should offer content that enriches your potential rcustomers’ lives.
Create smooth transitions between stages. Make it easy for an ‘Engaged’ customer to become an ‘Adopter’ by providing clear next steps and additional content.
Recognize and reward loyalty. As customers move into the ‘Loyalist’ and ‘Advocate’ stages, you can offer exclusive content or experiences to deepen their connection.
Foster community. Especially in the later stages, create opportunities for your most engaged customers to connect with each other, strengthening their bond with your brand.
Continuously gather feedback and improve. Use the insights from your superfans to refine your work and your engagement strategies.
Remember, the goal isn’t just to move customers through a linear process, but to create a cycle where superfans help attract new customers, starting the process anew. This creates a sustainable ecosystem for your business.
Practically, we usually create these superfans by building a value ladder.
Value ladder
A value ladder is a strategic pricing model that integrates perfectly with the bow-tie funnel concept. Let’s explore how these two ideas work together to create a robust business model. It is essentially a series of offerings at increasing price points and value.
The value ladder for an author might look something like this:
Free content like blog posts, short stories on your website, or sample chapters
Low-cost ebooks or novellas
Full-length print or digital books
Signed or special edition books
Book bundles or box sets
Online workshops or courses
Exclusive events or retreats
Now, let’s see how this integrates with the bow-tie funnel for your audience:
On the left side (traditional funnel):
Attract (awareness/interest): Your free content serves as a gateway.
Nurture (engagement): Offer low-cost entry points like a $0.99 ebook, novella, or a discounted first-in-series book. This allows people to sample your style with minimal risk.
Convert (purchasing): This is where customers buy your full-length book, whether it’s an ebook, paperback, or hardcover.
On the right side (superfan journey):
Engage: After reading your book, fans might seek out signed copies, special editions, or companion books that expand on your world or characters.
Adopt: Engaged customers might invest in a box set of your series or a bundle of your books.
Loyalist: Devoted fans might sign up for your onlineworkshop.
Advocate: Your superfans might splurge on exclusive retreats or VIP experiences at book signings.
By integrating this value ladder into your bow-tie funnel, you’re not just moving customers from casual browsers to superfans, you’re providing them with ever-increasing value and deepening their relationship with your brand. This creates a sustainable business where your most engaged customers get the most value, and you build a loyal, enthusiastic fan base that supports your career long-term.
Pump vs. flywheel
Most entrepreneurs are taught to use social media and other promotional tools like a pump, and it’s causing them to burn out. The pump-like approach works as follows:
You put effort into creating and sharing content on social media (input).
In return, you get some engagement, maybe a few sales (output).
This process repeats each time you post or promote.
At first glance, this seems great. You’re getting results! However, there’s a catch: you have to keep pumping constantly. The moment you stop putting in effort, the results dry up. It’s exhausting and unsustainable in the long run.
A funnel offers an improvement over this pump model. With a funnel, you’re creating a system that guides potential customers through a journey:
At the top of the funnel, you attract a wide audience with broad appeal content.
As they move down the funnel, you provide more specific, valuable content.
At the bottom, some of these people become customers, buying from you.
The funnel is better because it’s more strategic and efficient than the pump. You’re not just blindly promoting; you’re guiding customers through a thoughtful process. However, it still has limitations. It’s still somewhat linear, and you need to keep adding new potential customers at the top.
This is where the flywheel comes in, offering an even better model. The flywheel works like this:
You put in the initial effort to attract customers and create great work (like with the pump or funnel).
But instead of this effort having a one-time effect, it starts a wheel spinning.
As customers engage with your work, they become fans.
These fans then attract new customers through word-of-mouth, reviews, and sharing.
This brings in more customers, who become more fans, spinning the wheel faster.
The key advantage of the flywheel is momentum. Once it’s spinning, it takes less effort to keep it going and can even pick up speed on its own. Your past efforts continue to pay off over time, unlike with the pump where you always start from zero.
For authors, this might look like:
Creating a fantastic product that people love and recommend (initial push)
Engaging with your customers through newsletters or social media (keeping it spinning)
Offering additional value through your website or events (adding more momentum)
Your excited fans bringing in new customers (the wheel spins faster)
The flywheel model encourages you to focus on creating great experiences for your customers at every touchpoint. This not only sells your stuff, but turns customers into advocates who help grow your audience organically.
In essence, while pumps and funnels can produce results, the flywheel offers a more sustainable, momentum-building approach for entrepreneurs looking to grow their customer base and career over the long term.
Why don’t people start with a flywheel? Because it’s a lot easier to start with a pump. When you’re trying to find purchase anywhere, a pump gives you something. A flywheel takes an enormous effort to start, but it gets easier over time until it is much easier than a pump further down the road.
It took me years to get started seeing results with a flywheel. Now, I look at my friends who are struggling and see people who used nothing but pumps until they exhausted themselves.
Don’t think just because you’re not seeing results that you’re setting up a flywheel, though. It takes a lot of intention and work to set up a flywheel properly. If you’re failing, you might just be doing nothing or pumping a dry well.
Cultivating superfans is about more than just selling products and services. It’s about creating a shared experience, a community, and a sense of belonging. Your superfans should feel like they’re part of something special, something that goes beyond just being a consumer of your products.
It’s also important to note that you don’t need a huge number of superfans to make a significant impact. A small, dedicated group of superfans can be more valuable than a large group of casual customers. They’re the ones who will leave glowing reviews and enthusiastically recommend your work to others.
By focusing on finding and nurturing your superfans, you’re not just building an audience; you’re creating a sustainable business. These are the people who will support you throughout your career, eagerly awaiting each new release and sticking with you through thick and thin.
Remember, the journey from casual customer to superfan is a gradual one. It requires consistent effort, genuine interaction, and a willingness to open up and connect with your audience on a deeper level. But the rewards, both in terms of your career success and the rich, meaningful connections you’ll form, are well worth the effort.
Building a successful business is far more complex and nuanced than simply making something great. It’s about creating a profound connection with customers that transforms them from casual consumers into passionate advocates.
The journey begins with deeply understanding your brand, not as a marketing gimmick, but as a genuine expression of the unique perspective you bring to your work. This means carefully identifying the specific type of person who will most resonate with your products.
By providing your customers with a language to understand themselves, by offering increasingly valuable experiences, and by building a community rather than just a customer base, entrepreneurs can create a sustainable model of engagement that supports their creative work. The most successful business owners understand that audience building is not a linear process of constant pushing, but a dynamic, momentum-driven approach more akin to a flywheel. It requires significant initial effort, patience, and a willingness to invest in relationships rather than quick sales.
This means choosing platforms that align with your strengths, creating content that provides genuine value, and focusing on turning customers into superfans who not only buy from you but actively champion your work. It’s about creating an ecosystem where your most dedicated customers feel a sense of belonging, where they see your business as a lens through which they can better understand themselves and their world.
Ultimately, the most powerful marketing is not about selling, but about creating meaningful connections. Your audience is not just a market to be tapped, but a community to be nurtured.
By approaching your business with authenticity, strategic thinking, and a genuine desire to provide value, you can build an engaged audience that supports your creative journey for years to come. The path is not easy, and it requires consistent effort, vulnerability, and a deep commitment to your customers.
For those willing to put in the work, the rewards extend far beyond sales. They include the creation of a lasting, impactful body of work that resonates deeply with those who matter most: your customers.
What do you think?
Do you have a good idea for your brand?
How can you better call out to your best customers.
Let us know in the comments.
