Build a community, make more sales.
It’s not easy to make a name for yourself in the online marketplace. It takes time, persistence, and dedication. But if you want your products or services to be seen by those who are looking for them, it’s worth the effort.
The key is getting heard – being able to attract the right people with your marketing efforts. Keep in mind, online competition is fierce. To beat it, you need to get serious about your online audience and building your brand’s following.
Gaining an online following takes time and effort, but it’s a form of marketing that hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and businesses are using to land more clients and make more sales.
In this post, we’re giving you proven strategies to grow your online audience.
Advantages of growing your audience
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Your reputation will precede you
Having a large following and an established audience means that the word will get out that your business and services are doing a great job.
If you’re making your current followers happy, then they’re going to tell others about you and recommend you. Pretty soon everyone will know what your brand is about.
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People promote you and you’re not even paying them
Word-of-mouth not only works for traditional marketing but also in the digital marketing realm. You can grow your online audience and not have to pay your loyal followers. They are inclined to spread the word about their great experiences.
What’s even better is the fact that these follower’s numbers are set to grow too.
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Your connections grow
In business, one way of staying on trend and being successful in the market is to have good connections. When you grow your online audience, you’ll make connections with like-minded business owners. Networking online can be incredibly powerful and lead to new opportunities to cross-promote on other people’s platforms.
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More traffic to your blog
Growing your supportive audience means that more traffic will reach your blog and other social channels for that matter. Website traffic is a valuable way to drive people to your offers, services and/or products.
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Make more sales
You don’t necessarily need a massive audience to sell online, but a bigger audience doesn’t hurt. Certainly, a small, highly engaged audience is preferable to a large, unengaged audience but that being said, a larger, engaged audience always wins.
The truth is that you need people to sell to, so the more people who follow you, the better your chances of selling to them.
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Grow on other platforms
An added benefit of growing your audience is that it will make growing your email list, or YouTube subscribers or Facebook group so much easier! Being successful on one platform helps you grow your online audience on other platforms, which reduces your overall risk in the event that you lose your account or a platform totally changes.
How to grow your online audience
Paid advertisements/offers
By far the quickest way to grow your online audience is to put some money behind it.
Yes, you can grow your online audience organically but if you want to prioritise speed over effort, then get serious about doing online marketing.
Running paid campaigns to give potential clients an amazing discount voucher or online brochure (lead magnet) is a great way to grow your email list (ie: they are now a qualified LEAD!).
For information about how we can help you reach more people and make more sales, click here.
Post consistently
It’s called social media for a reason! You need to be visible on your platform of choice in order for people to become familiar with who you are and what you can help them with.
You can’t post today and then ignore social media for a week. Consistency is key!
A content calendar can help you feel in control of the social media machine and remember to cleverly repurpose your content to save time and energy.
Use the free tools
We all know about the dreaded algorithms that show your posts to hundreds of people one day, and only 15 people the next. One way to appease the algorithm is to use their free tools!
Using tools like Reels, IG stories and all the amazing features it gives, Facebook Lives, Facebook Groups and so many more send a message to the platform that you’re invested in it. This boosts your reach which helps you grow your online audience even quicker.
Run a competition
Aside from paid advertising, almost nothing grows your audience faster than a giveaway! If you spend time on social media, you’ll be familiar with posts offering free products, services, holidays, hampers and more.
The trick to growing your audience is in the competition entry requirements! You make include a requirement that they like the post, follow your account and tag a friend in the comments to be eligible to win.
A few more tips:
- Please be sure to spell out the terms and conditions because you don’t want to get burned! If your competition is only open to residents of South Africa, please specify this!
- Specify the closing date, when the winner will be chosen and when/where the winner will be announced
- State that your Facebook/Instagram giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook/Instagram.
Running an online competition or giveaway should bring you loads more followers but you MUST run it correctly and you absolutely MUST deliver to the winner/winners what you promised!
For some additional tips to follow when running social media giveaways, view this article here.
Leverage other people’s audiences
Another great way to grow your online audience is to attract people from someone else’s audience. Think of other brands or businesses that are in a similar field to you, but they aren’t direct competition. How can you work together to cross-pollinate your audiences?
Here’s a practical example: imagine you’re a hairdresser with 5000 followers and you have a friend who owns a beauty salon and she has 16K followers. You can ask her to mention you in her IG stories or you can ask her if you can offer her audience 50% off a cut and blow wave.
Not everyone will take up the offer, but it’s a fantastic way to get eyeballs onto your business. And similarly, you can mention her services to your audience because most people who visit beauty salons would be interested in maintaining their hair as well.
Reach out to these people beforehand so that you’re on the same page and in agreement with the strategy.
You can also pay micro-influencers to endorse your brand.
Don’t ignore analytics
The numbers don’t lie! When you’re a busy entrepreneur, you sometimes are so busy doing the posting that you forget to check what is actually working.
Schedule a 15 – 30 minute spot in your diary every week to check your analytics.
- Which type of posts perform the best? And by performing well, we mean they get engagement.
- What time of the day is your audience most active on the said platform?
- Is your audience mostly women, men or a combination of both?
You’ll also get valuable insights from reading their comments on your posts, getting feedback from your sales team, and checking what customer surveys reveal.
Tips when you grow your online audience
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Be mindful of what you post
It’s great to be on a roll posting content and speaking to your audience. But “cancel culture” is real and saying the wrong thing can sink your online presence.
Try to remember to keep things neutral and not get involved with controversial topics like politics or religion.
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It takes a LOT of time and effort
Regular social media posting as well as running paid campaigns are necessary for online success, yet they take up so much time and energy!
Furthermore, learning how to correctly set up paid advertising campaigns (note, this is NOT the same thing as “boosting” a post!) will take time and requires that you’re technically -minded. If you’re not a marketer, why would you waste your time trying to learn how to run Facebook ads?
The money you think you’ll save by doing it yourself will be better spent by getting the job done right the first time.
Just bite the bullet and get a professional to do it for you.
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Be willing to invest
If you want to be successful online and grow your online audience, you need to change your mindset from “marketing is an expense” to “marketing is an investment”.
The takeaway on growing your online audience
It’s pretty clear that growing your audience won’t happen overnight if you’re just starting out your business, but these tips will help you get there much quicker.
Aside from making money, chances are you started your business to help people. So think of growing your audience as the best way to reach more people who could benefit from your products or services – and hold onto that vision, because it will give you a sense of purpose and drive.
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