ep 451:This Should Be Your #1 Marketing Priority
Are you growing your warm audience?
This can look like increasing your email list, social media following, overall reach of your content…
If you’re not seeing these numbers grow week over week with quality, ideal customers, then it’s time to take a look at how you can change that. (hint: let’s look at some actions you can take to bring more consistency and value to your audience)
Honestly, this should be your #1 marketing priority.
Listen in to today’s episode as I dive deeper into why growing your warm audience is so important and how your business can reap the benefits.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
The number one priority that you should have is consistently growing your list and your warm audience with quality ideal customers and showing up and pouring into them and delivering so much value.
You are listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 451.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having an amazing week. Happy November. Happy holiday season. I don’t know, I lit a holiday like smelling candle in my office yesterday and I was like, We are here! It just comes so fast. I went to Target this weekend and I actually bought like a couple of Christmas things. We got matching Christmas pajamas. I’m always late to that, my family, so we never do it because by the time I get to Target, it’s like one of ’em is sold out, the sizes. And so this year I got it and my husband was like, Oh my God, but we’re gonna do it. So anyways, I hope you guys are having a great week. I am. I was driving my kids. I drive my kids to school every morning and it’s a 30 minute drive, but it’s like through the country in hill country, Texas.
And so I actually really enjoy it. It’s like quality time with my kids on the way there. And then while the way back, if I have my two year old, it’s not as nice if I don’t have my two year old. It’s silent and it’s just me. So it depends if my husband has a client or not, but I always do a lot of thinking when I’m driving. And this morning I just hit me like I just did a, I just did a workshop yesterday. I stayed on it for like two and a half hours. It was incredible. I just like, I’m so enjoying the opportunity to connect with so many people who are in my audience. But it hit me as I was driving today and I was like, Wow, like tens of thousands of people listen to my podcast every month and I have tens of thousands of people on my email list who read my emails and follow me.
And I don’t say that to be like, Oh my God, I have this like, great following. But I was like, those are all people that I get to impact that I get to help their business and that I’ve, you know, built this. And I don’t know, I just felt, it might sound silly, but I just felt so grateful. And I think it’s when I do something like I did the workshop yesterday, we only promoted that to warm traffic. So all of you guys who were on there, you either listen to my podcast or you’re on my email list or you follow me. Like we didn’t, any ads that we ran, it was just to my warm traffic. We didn’t do it to cold and it was really successful, but it was this opportunity where I got to talk one on one in these hot seats at the end of the workshop with people who are like, I love your podcast.
I’ve been following it for years. Like, thank you. And just, I don’t know, getting to put like a name and seeing like, wow, this is a business who’s implementing what I say and doing things and like taking my advice and seeing results. I think it’s hard sometimes when you have a platform and a podcast and an email list that things get lost in like the number of like, Oh, I have this many downloads, or my email list grew this much and you forget, like behind each one of those numbers, I don’t forget, but it like, I don’t know, I can’t describe it just like sunk in for me today of like, wow, every one of those numbers is somebody, is a business, is somebody that I get to potentially impact and that I have this opportunity. So I don’t know, it sounds silly probably, but I just felt so grateful and also grateful to myself like, you built this and you have showed up consistently so many years.
And I think sometimes I go to events, I’m like going on a rant a little bit. Sometimes I go to events where I’m in situations where people like, like, Oh my god, Emily, like I’ve followed you for so long, I can’t believe I get to meet you. And I always am like, are you serious? Like, I’m not, I’m not a big deal. Like I’m just me. And I don’t know, it’s always weird for you when that happens, but again, I don’t say this to be like, Oh my God, I have so many followers and I’m so cool. I say this to be like, if you show up consistently and you create that level of relationship with people and don’t get lost in the fact that it’s numbers, it’s just so powerful, which is what inspired this episode today because I wanna talk about this.
I think that as we’re looking at the end of this year and going into next year, I wanna talk about this really simple concept that not enough times do. I remind you guys of this, and again, I think it gets a lost in the focus on numbers, which numbers are obviously so important in marketing. Like every action should be driven by data and, and numbers and numbers tell a story. And I’m all about the numbers. But I think you also have to like not forget kind of that realization I had of like behind every number is a person is a potential ideal customer if you’re doing your marketing right? And so I titled this episode, This should be your number one marketing priority because I want you to think are you prioritizing this? And this is inspired from my workshop, from my thoughts this morning in the car.
And that is the consistency of growing your warm audience. And I define your warm audience as anybody who comes into contact with your brand and has some form of an experience. So they watch a video, they follow you on social media, they watch your Instagram story, they listen to your podcast, they join your email list, they get your emails. Like all of those people are your warm audience. And you know, this is definitely marketing 1 0 1. And you have people like Amy Porterfield who have been talking about growing your list for 15 years and how important that is. And I think it gets lost in all of the, the bells in the Shining syndrome and like the bells and whistles of marketing. And that sometimes this simple thing is actually the most important thing you can do is have consistency in growing your warm audience and asking yourself, like if I look at the last 90 days, what was my email list at 90 days ago?
And what is it at today? Has it grown? Or how has it shrunk? Because people unsubscribe. So if it’s not growing, it’s shrinking. And your social media following, same thing, your engagement, your reach, your podcast. And those are just numbers. Yes, not just numbers. They are numbers yes, that you’re paying attention to, but it’s also an indication of people who are trusting your brand and following you and building a relationship with you that for a lot of them, it’s just a matter of time until they potentially turn into a sale. But your priority should be showing up to grow that number, to increase your reach and your impact no matter what. Like for me, if someone listens to my podcast for years and doesn’t buy from me, I don’t, that’s fine. I am so happy for them if they go and implement what I say and they see results and they get value out of what I put out.
Like I don’t do it to have like strings attached, right? And as a byproduct, I get a lot of clients and I get a lot of sales and I’m able to have successful promotions to just warm traffic with no ad spend because I grow this consistently. And so it’s truly one of the, it is truly the biggest asset for your business. And I know I’ve talked about this before, but I want you to, to really sink in. And then I wanna give you an opportunity to reflect, is this a priority in your business or are you lost in I gotta get this funnel to convert into this sale and do this and I need to add this marketing strategy and do a live launch and I should launch a new product. And all those things that come with marketing that are overwhelming and it is real.
And those are oftentimes things that you should be thinking about. But what it boils down to is are you growing your warm audience? Are you growing your email list? Are you growing your social media following? Are you growing reach to whatever form of content, YouTube, blogs podcast that you put out there? Are you seeing those numbers grow week over week, month over month? And if you’re not, why? And how could you change that? What are some actions that you could change to bring more consistency, to bring more value to your audience? And here’s why this is such a cool thing, is because once you have a warm audience, and once you consistently grow that, especially if you’ve committed for like three to six months, you get to reap the benefits of that as a business. So I’ve done this many times, and I’ve done this with clients many times.
It’s my cash infusion process that I teach. But for example, I did a workshop yesterday. It was something new that I tried. It was very successful. We’re actually gonna do another one in December because I had so much fun doing it. It was super cool and really successful. And we charged $37 to come to the workshop. I was like, I don’t wanna run ads, cold traffic to it, I just want warm traffic. Like let’s just try this. Instead of doing a webinar, really great topic to talk about, let’s just try it, let’s just experiment. It could totally fail or not. We only promoted it to my list. We only promoted it to warm traffic. So my list, my podcast social media, and then we ran very low ad spend, warm traffic, like less than $400 and we sold over 55 spots, which is like over $2,000 in revenue for the $37 product, which it wasn’t even about the revenue.
I would’ve done it free, right? But I was able to show up and deliver higher level of value. That’s why I stayed on for two and a half hours to answer every single question and talk to every person and give them all the time that they needed. But also those people, now I was able to build a deeper level relationship to potentially lead them to the next place. Aside from all of that, the cool thing is I was able to put out a promotion to only warm traffic and sell 55 people into the offer without having to do a big launch. Like just putting it out to my audience. And that’s because I’ve earned that right through nurturing, through constant growth, through constant lead generation. And I, I shared this a lot recently in the podcast, but it takes six months for someone to sign up to work with us for our agency.
So on an average. So what I did six months ago is impacting my sales today. And as soon as you realize that in your business, as soon as you figure out what is that average amount of time it takes for someone to buy when they’re on your list, some of you it might be fast, that’s awesome, some of you it might not. But knowing that impacts your marketing. And so the one thing that you like, the number one priority that you should have is consistently growing your list and your warm audience with quality ideal customers and showing up and pouring into them and delivering so much value because then the sky is the limit. Like you have a cash flow problem, no problem. Put together a really valuable offer. Have something that you can do one time workshop, a mini course, like anything, be creative, put it out to your warm audience and you’re gonna get sales.
If it’s a good offer, you’re gonna get sales. And that’s my cash infusion process that I teach. And so one of the things I said yesterday in the workshop, so I was teaching a Black Friday promotion and I told everybody like Black Friday promotions, you know, 95% of time it’s only your warm traffic. And honestly, when you come into Black Friday, that’s like a test of how well did you do growing your warm audience this year and nurturing them. It’s one thing to also grow your audience and then just not talk to them. Like that’s not gonna work either. You have to show up consistently for them. You have to nurture them. You have, you have to build that relationship. You can’t just grow your list and then email them when you wanna sell something that obviously you would never do that in a real relationship.
So I said this is a true test when you go into Black Friday, if you get sales and if you have success in this, that is an indication that you’ve done a great job this year, growing your warm audience, growing your list, and nurturing them because now it’s time for this sale, this promo, and you’re gonna serve your audience and you’re going to sell them something you know, super valuable and show up for them in this way. And they’re gonna buy from you because they trust you, because you built that relationship because you have a big enough warm traffic. And I also said, now if you’re sitting on this training and you’re like, Oh crap, I didn’t do enough. I want you to still try it. For most people, I want you to still try a Black Friday promo. Everybody on there was already wanting to do it.
That was the whole theme of the workshop. So they wouldn’t have signed up if they weren’t, you know, if they had zero audience. But I want you to try it because at least it gets you practicing, doing the process, implementing the process, the sales conversation. Worst case scenario, you learn from it. You learn that you need a bigger warm audience. You learn that you need to improve your messaging. You learn that you have to shift your offer positioning. You learn where there was confusion. You learn where there was objections because you pay attention because you listen to people. That’s the worst case scenario. Best case scenario is you get sales and you don’t have to pay for any of them, it’s profit because you’ve already paid for the leads before because you’ve already paid for the warm traffic, whether that’s through efforts organically in time or paid ad spend.
And so I think that whenever it’s, you wanna do something like that in your business and you wanna create a cash infusion or you wanna do a promotion or you wanna do a sale, it’s like this test of like, have you done a good job nurturing your warm audience? Have you good, done a good job growing it? There was somebody on there who was like, Well, I keep having to only do sales and then my sales are are not working anymore to be able to like sell my products. And I was like, Well, are you adding new people into your world? Are you adding new followers, new reach, like getting new customers to your website? Are you growing your email list? And she’s like, Yeah, not, you know, really not a lot. And I said, Well that’s why you’re, you keep promoting the same thing to the same people and not making it fresh and not adding and not growing that audience and increasing that.
Like you can’t just keep running promos. You have to also grow your reach. And the way that you do that, if we need to get like a little tactical in that is as you look at am I consistently growing this? It is through really two main ways content, which can be social media and or podcast, blog, video, and doing that consistently at least once a week value based showing up and consistently like that. The goal with that is visibility, brand awareness, and then lead generation and, and getting traffic to actually sign up or get to your website if your e-commerce and actually growing your email list with quality leads and coming up with fresh ideas. Like if you’ve used the same lead magnet or the same webinar for the last six to 12 months, maybe it’s time to refresh it. Maybe it’s time to change the wrapping paper.
Maybe it’s time to come up with a new idea that you can leverage and that you can use to attract more people. And so are you consistently doing that? And then what is the consistent nurturing look like? So once you grow your email list, are you emailing them once a week with something of value? Are you sending your podcast out? Are you connecting with those people? And I think this is why today, like I felt inspired to share this is because I realized, and, and this is something that’s like I knew, but I just like a thought hit me and I was like, Whoa, like that is so cool because I was able to put a lot of names to people on my training yesterday who were pod our podcast listeners, are you guys. And so it was like, wow, in each one of them, unique business, unique questions, unique things I can support them with and I just, I don’t know, I was really inspired by it.
Then I also have those of you who come to like every one of my trainings and I recognize you when you get there and I’m like, good to see you. And it’s the same thing has happened with people who have joined Elite and done strategy calls with me where they’re like, I’ve wanted to work with you since 2018 and here we are four years later. That individual probably listened to this episode. I just talked to her yesterday. So I was, I’m, I’m so inspired by that. And also it comes from the constant nurturing and doing it with no strings attached and realize what I was gonna say and realizing like it’s just relationships. And I do think this is in inspired by my friend George Bryant talks about this a lot of, like, a lot of the things we do digitally in our marketing we would never do in person with someone just like I was saying of of only emailing your list when you have something to sell or only like offering what you have to sell one time and then never talking to a lead again.
Those are all things that you wouldn’t do that to an in-person relationship or a true one-to-one relationship. And so we forget about these things when we go online, I think because people get lost in the numbers and they’re like, Oh, well a thousand people on my list is just a thousand people on my list. But actually it’s each one of those is a potential customer that you can nurture, that you can build a relationship with and that you can potentially sell. And when you think this way, you also realize there’s so much opportunity. That’s how I usually feel is I’m like, man, after, after just yesterday, I’m like, there, there’s so much opportunity. There’s so many people who need my help, who I can help and I can support in different ways and get creative with. So if you look at your marketing and you look at next year what you’re planning to do and you look at right now and you reflect on also the last 90 days, is this your number one priority?
And this is also where I talk about marketing should be an investment in your business. That’s because consistently growing your list and your warm audience should be an investment in your business. It should be a non-negotiable that you put money back into because it’s just a matter of time that you’ll make it back like you. That’s why marketing always does work. Maybe the offer positioning isn’t right right now and you’re not making all the sales you wanna make. Or maybe the list the leads in the audience needs to warm up a little more and they need a few more months or they need five more touch points. But you will make the money back like you will because it’s an asset to your business that you are able to sell to when you get the pieces in, in line if they’re not in line right now or being patient and nurturing them.
And then you become the option, you become the choice when it’s right for that person. So is this your number one priority? Is this important to your business? And also are you seeing that growth? Because this will make the biggest difference. And if you end up doing a Black Friday sale, you’ll also see like, how did this year go? Was it successful in adding new people and nurturing them because those type of things will tell you. All right everybody, I hope you guys found this helpful and as I kind of, you know, shared on here, I just wanna express, it sounds so cheesy, but express my gratitude to all of you who listen, all of you, new listeners, regular listeners and just giving me this opportunity. You know, you sit in your office by yourself and record these episodes and then once you record it, it’s kind of like, Oh, what did I talk about last week?
I don’t even remember. But I am just really grateful for the opportunity to connect with all of you. Those of you who send me messages, who share your takeaways from my podcast. It’s, I don’t know when you, when you really step back and you think about it and you think about the ways that you can connect with people in today’s world and the impact you can have, and it’s just amazing. So thank you all of you and, and those of you who have listened since I launched this in 2018, it’s just wild to me. And I’m so grateful and hope to continue to meet you guys on my workshops or work with us clients or talk to you on Instagram or serve you in whatever way I possibly can and I’m just so grateful for the opportunity.
Thanks for listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing, head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh Marketing can help take your marketing to the next level no matter where you’re at today, We help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with Team Hirsh.