Whether your boss has given you free rein to put a plan in motion to start building your audience, or you have branched out on your own and starting your own company – we hope you find the methods below helpful as you begin the process of growing your audience. Not only is it a new year with new goals, but you are now in charge of launching a brand from scratch – which can be both intimidating and extremely exciting.
If you haven’t read Part One of this series, Five Ways to Grow Your Audience – as an Established Brand, we recommend that you check it out. While that article was intended for established brands, you will definitely have takeaways from it that can be easily implemented after you get things off and running – so keep that article in your ‘favorites’ tab for when you are ready.
Now, let’s get to the fun stuff and look at five ways to help grow your audience as a new brand:
1. Be Consistent – Establish Authority and Credibility
Before starting any kind of marketing campaign, this first section is crucial to success.
We want to stress the importance of consistency from every aspect of your new brand. Let’s say for example your content is meant to be edgy…then keep it edgy. The audience is coming to you because of the content you are creating, don’t change your tone because someone does not agree with your style or authenticity on social media. Keep true to yourself and your brand. The loyal audiences will reward you for it as they return for more content.
Wherever your audience goes for your content, either social media, email, newsletters, print, etc. you absolutely MUST be consistent when you are deploying that content. Your audience will come to expect your content when you say you will have your content ready for them. For example, if you say you are going to launch a new weekly newsletter called “Monday Morning Updates” do not send it out at 12:01pm local time.
In being a new brand, you need to establish authority and credibility from the start. Consistency will help to build up trust.
2. Quantity vs Quality – Online Surveys
In part one of this two-part series we talked about focus groups for established brands. While focus groups can be important to your target audience strategy, you first need to focus on gathering as much information about your audience as possible. In this situation, quantity is actually more important than quality. Do your homework and perform research on your target audience and work with other companies you know and trust to see if they will be a part of a study with you to help branch out.
Once you have collected a significant amount of data, it is a preferred practice to perform focus groups. However, until you are able to perform audience focus groups – data, data, data. This will help lay the foundation to your new marketing strategy.
3. Focus on One Strategy – Own Your Strength
A common mistake when launching a new brand is trying to do too much. Make it simple for this new audience to understand who you are and why you are so good at what you do.
Once you know exactly what you are great at and once the right staff is in place, find out where your target audience prefers to receive their information and be the absolute best at it – own it. If your audience is all about podcasts, then become the best at podcasts. That becomes your way to deliver new content and attract your target audience.
Joe Pulizzi from Content Marketing Institute does a great job explaining why it is important to focus on what you are good at and not to launch too many content strategies all at once. It is his “Law 4” of his Content Marketing World presentation in 2019 and he calls it “Do one great thing”. If you become a brand that is trying to do multiple “things” at once you may always be mediocre at all of those “things”. Focus on one strategy and be the best at it.
4. Partnerships – Third-Party Credibility
Begin to build relationships with people and other brands you trust and want to be associated with. This could be a company, an influencer, a potential client or an association in your target market. Once you have established trust with these partners begin to see what kind of marketing opportunities you can create together in order to optimize your audience. Of course, make sure the third party you are partnering with also has the appropriate target audience you are seeking.
By working with partners that are already established, this helps bring in a third-party credibility with their audiences that you may not have built up yet. These partners are vouching for you and thus their audience will begin to trust you. In turn, they will become your audience as well.
5. Don’t be Afraid to Jump – Have Fun and Try New Things
Stop second guessing yourself and trust the due diligence you put in to get this new brand off the ground. Are you going to make mistakes? Yes…and that is okay.
Part of the journey in launching a new brand is trying different things which are sometimes out of our comfort zone. It isn’t easy or everyone would launch something new. Do a lot of A/B testing, try new subject lines, and just have fun with it all. It is also okay to change something if it isn’t working.
The three most critical things to keep mind when developing a new audience are establishing credibility with your target audience, doing your homework, and trusting yourself. If you can fit all your objectives into these three goals, then you will be in a great place to launch a new brand and develop your new audience.
