Ep 478: Top Strategies For Successfully Nurturing Your Audience
In today’s episode, I’m diving into the topic of nurturing your audience. Nurturing can take many forms, including social media, content, email, and any other way you might be interacting with your audience. It’s essential to be consistent and intentional in your nurturing and to do so without expecting immediate returns <— and that part can be hard. Of course we would all love immediate sales!
But the goal of nurturing is to maintain a valuable relationship with your audience and to create ideal customers for your offer. If you haven’t quite nailed how to successfully nurture your audience, tune in as I share how to build trust, provide no strings attached value, and convert your audience (over time!) into paying customers.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
The goal in nurturing and every place that you nurture is those relationships, which comes from consistency, not necessarily those direct KPIs that we can track through like a lead gen funnel.
You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 478.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I made it last week to Montana. I was sharing on there, we had the craziest storm in Texas, and I, I really did struggle and feel bad leaving, obviously when I planned my trip. I didn’t know an ice storm was gonna come into Texas that week and the damage was a, a good amount. Like there’s trees down everywhere, branches down everywhere. Our whole neighborhood is filled with these huge piles of trees. And so power was out all over Austin. My family lost power for a day while I was gone. So it was a rough, it was rough being gone, but I was meant to go on this trip. And I also learned a really powerful lesson in leaving because I struggle in personal decisions. So I make really fast and I feel very confident in my business decisions.
But when it comes to personal ones, I find myself questioning myself a lot. So I’ll be like, should I go to that event or should I stay home with my kids? It’s usually the pull between kids and doing something for me or without my kids. And so I’ll find myself like, should I go on that trip or should I stay home? Am I traveling too much? Am I a good mom? And like, am I here enough? Are they okay? And my kids are fine. I’m very present with them when I am here. I do travel a good amount. Like if people were to look at it, you may say, I travel quote “too much”, but I also really need that to be a better mom to get a break. Like when I am with my kids, it’s full on and they really need me a lot and I don’t get a break.
And so I come back a better mom, a better person. I’m also a young mom and so I didn’t get a chance to do a lot of that. And so it’s kind of like my husband and my agreement that I get this freedom because I also, you know, breastfed my kids for so many years that I didn’t have that freedom. So anyways, that’s too much. But anyways, I get into a place where I question it. And so this happened when I was leaving for Montana and all day I was like, should I go? Should I not go? I was looking up like, what if I changed my flight to here? What if I canceled my flight? What should I do? I was going back and forth and ruminating in my head and it came time to go and like I ordered the Uber and then the Uber was here and, and like all the stuff happened right before I was leaving and it felt like, oh my gosh, is that the sign that I shouldn’t go?
And I get to the airport and I’m like crying and I’m standing there, literally stood in the airport for 10 minutes before I dropped my snowboard bag off because I knew once I do that and my bag’s gone, I’m going. And then I was calling my husband like, should I go? Should I not go? And I called my friend and he’s like, it’s your decision. I’m not making this decision for you. You need to make the decision. And so I decided after this, like when I make a decision, it’s gonna be done. If I book the trip, that’s my flights. I’m not changing them. If I say I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it. If I’m going to a dinner, I’m not gonna question if I should go or not. If I spend enough time with my kids, if I say I’m not gonna do something and I’m gonna stay home with my kids, because that’s what felt right in the moment as the right thing, I’m not gonna question that and then be like, oh, I’m letting my friends down, or I’m not doing this enough, da da da.
Because that takes way too much energy to do that. So it was a really powerful lesson. I was definitely meant to go on the trip. Even though obstacles were thrown my way, I think I was supposed to get those obstacles to be able to show myself that those obstacles weren’t like a sign I shouldn’t go. It was a sign that I was being challenged to be strong in my decision and what I knew was right when I booked the trip. Anyways, there’s my personal story for the beginning of the podcast. Today’s episode is not about any of that. Today’s episode is about nurturing. I’ve gotten a good amount of questions and I had some good questions during our bootcamp around this that I want to address. So nurturing your audience essentially can look like your social media, your content you put out like a podcast, like a video emails that you send out that are just purely to nurture, to provide value.
And it’s something that we all should be doing a lot of in a very intentional way. And I wanna talk about how to do this well and also see the deeper value and purpose behind it and how this helps you sell better in the long run. So first of all, nurturing has to be very consistent. And it also has to be done without strings attached. Like the worst form of nurturing your audience is where you’re like, well, you haven’t bought for me in X amount of time and so I don’t really care about you anymore type of energy, because you never know when, when that person in your audience is going to convert into a paying customer. It could be in the next six months, it could be in the next six years. We are all playing this long game for our business. And the power of an audience that consumes what you put out is really irreplaceable.
Like you can’t put a price on that because it’s so powerful and valuable to your business. So having that and properly nurturing your audience through content, through emails, through social media, should be something that the goal of it is consistency. The goal is not to let me post five social media posts and actually see a direct number of sales from those posts, because that’s not the goal of nurturing. The goal of nurturing is to consistently maintain a valuable relationship with your audience. Okay? Another thing I said in the bootcamp that really hit home for a lot of people was, look at your content and part of what you put out consistently for your nurturing in creating ideal customers for your offer. And you don’t know when they’re gonna turn into an ideal customer. It could be again, years from now or months from now. So the question is, what do they need to hear in order to turn them into an ideal customer in the future?
What, what can get them a result? What can give them a new perspective? What can create understanding that then makes your offer make sense? And thinking about that in your nurturing, that’s obviously not every piece of nurturing that you do requires this, but if you look at it from, okay, if I’m planning my content, what content, what topics are going to help build the trust, help build the confidence, help build the overall relationship with my audience, that they will want to become a customer not win if, right? I mean not if, when they will eventually wanna become a customer. And then you have to do that with no strings attached you. Again, the goal in nurturing and every place that you nurture is those relationships, which comes from consistency, not necessarily those direct KPIs that we can track through like a lead gen funnel. Okay?
So another thing that I like to look at nurturing, and my friend George Bryant uses this term, which is indoctrinate and I love this, I usually call it an nurture, but him and I were having a conversation and he called the same thing indoctrinate. And so basically when you bring someone new into your world, they follow you on social media, they opt into your lead magnet and now they’re in your nurture sequence. Look at it from, the goal is to indoctrinate this person into my world, into my values as a company, into what makes me different, into my unique selling point, into the beliefs that we have, into our statements that are like our, you know, for me it’s like marketing always works as just a matter of when things that are different than what other people think out there and allow you to build that relationship, indoctrinating them into your world, into your business, into your content, into everything about you, which will eventually convert them into sales.
So I like looking at it from that perspective too, that you wanna fully like indoctrinate people and make them become ultimately true believers in your brand. And so that is also the goal of nurturing and the goal of your content, your nurture content. And then another question that I got asked when I did the bootcamp was in just overall like how do I know I’m not being annoying? Like, can I send an email every day? Can I post every day? I’m afraid to be annoying. And here’s the thing with this, and this was my answer that hit home for a lot of people. If you are providing no strings attached intentional but no strings attached, meaning it’s strategic what you’re doing, cuz you’re trying to create ideal customers, you are eventually trying to convert them into customers, but there aren’t strings attached that somebody, you don’t care if somebody listens to your free content for years and doesn’t pay you, you don’t have any ill ill feelings towards that.
So if you are creating content that is truly valuable with no strings attached and you really are giving to your audience, you will not feel bad for doing that because they can take it or leave it, right? It’s there to serve them, it’s there to provide that value, it’s there to build that relationship. They don’t have to open every single email, they don’t have to consume everything you put out and 98% of people will not. So you feel like it’s a lot, but it’s not really to other people. And so you can probably communicate and nurture more than you think. But then also on that note, if you nurture and you give and you show up like that very consistently, you then get to sell unapologetically, right? Because you’re earning the right to sell to people. So you’re nurturing. It’s kind of like that saying I think it was David Gottman in relationships.
I think it’s like 70% have to be positive interactions and 30% can be like the fights or the arguments or the disagreements or whatever. I don’t know if that’s the exact thing, but basically you have to outweigh how much you sell by a lot with value in really good nurturing content. And if you do that, when it then becomes time to sell, you get to do that unapologetically because you’ve earned that, right? It’s like you wouldn’t go into a relationship and only talk to somebody when you’re asking them for something, right? You’d provide value, you’d show up, you’d be there for them, you’d have conversations without strings attached. You’d build a true and real connection. And then if and when you needed something in a relationship, you would have one no problem asking and the person would have no problem that you asked, right? It’s the same thing in marketing.
If you provide that value and you show up and you nurture in that way, and you are unapologetic, I mean not unapologetic, unapologetic with it, you are no strings attached. You’re just giving and you’re showing up in that way, you can then be unapologetic about selling and not feel like you’re too much, not feel like you’re annoying people. Maybe you’ll annoy a few people, but think about all the other people that you’re not annoying. And so this came up with a client where I was planning her launch. This was like a couple months back and she’s like, well, I’m gonna go from my open car straight into a paid workshop and I’m afraid that I’m going to be selling too much. And I said, you know what? You show up every single week on your podcast. You pour into your audience with resources, with valuable things, with constant free content, free value.
You have earned the right to sell them this paid workshop after your live launch. I get it’s an open cart, I get there’s gonna be a lot of sales emails you’ve won, earned that right with your audience. And two, that paid workshop is gonna serve people who didn’t buy your main program. You’re gonna actually be solving a problem for them and they deserve to know. So if you send out one email and you’re afraid and shy and like pulling back in your communication, that is going to not only negatively impact you, of course, but also negatively impact your audience because you’re serving them with what you’re selling. And you’ve also earned that, right? Because you’ve earned that trust, you’ve had more positive, valuable interactions than selling. So this is how it works with your nurturing. And the other piece to nurturing that I wanna mention is the goal with it value does not equal overwhelm.
The goal is not to overwhelm and fire hose your audience with information. The goal is actually that you’re able to break information down into very tangible, actionable, valuable assets and tidbits and tips and information and stories, right? And that actually takes work. Like when I create this podcast for you guys, I have bulleted notes and I’m someone who can riff really well, but some people have outlines. I take the time to prep so that I’m going into this and it says, actionable and effective for you as possible versus rambling and spending, you know, 45 minutes on a podcast. The goal is not for me to fire hose the volume of information out to you. That does not equal value. I don’t wanna overwhelm you guys. That’s why in each podcast I give you a few things that you could go do. I focus in on specific topics and with each one I’m showcasing my skills, my knowledge, my values, our company’s values, our team’s capabilities.
And I’m providing a lot of value to you because that builds trust. And eventually a lot of you’ll become customers and, and you do, right? So value doesn’t mean overload of information. It means the way you deliver it has a value in it. Okay? So there’s a difference there. Okay? So with your nurture content, another final piece I wanna add into this is if you’re struggling with what to talk about, one of my favorite ways to kind of condense and categorize what you should talk about in your nurturing is to create pillars. And those also could be looked at as categories. So for me, I have our nurture content, my podcast, my social media, like what we talk about, and it fits into three pillars. It’s marketing strategy, marketing messaging, and ads strategy. And 90% of my content fits into those pillars. So what happens is, if I don’t know what I wanna talk about, I can look to those pillars and come up with an idea.
And also I know that those are the three pillars that people need to consistently hear from me, to build the trust and to create value in their life and their business to eventually become an ideal customer or become a customer when it is the right time for them. And I am the first choice to the people I’ve fully indoctrinated, indoctrinated and nurtured in my audience that when they wanna go hire some marketing support, they think of me, they come to me because I’ve successfully done that. And the timeline is not up to me. It depends completely on where somebody is in their business when they come into my world. And 90, 95% of people are not going to be ready today to sign up to work with us in our agency. But I have a lot of people who have hung around for two, three years before signing up.
I also have some people who come and sign up that same month. It’s a mix and it’s a value. But no matter what I up on my podcast, I show up on social media, I we send out emails to our list, no strings attached just to deliver that value. And that is the goal with my nurturing. So to recap on a few of these points, first of all, repeat what I just said, which is you could create three pillars for your content. You could also think of them as categories. What does your ideal customer need to hear from you consistently to provide that value to create them into ideal customers? Second, look at the goal of your nurture content to be no strings attached. Consistency. Consistency is the goal with nurturing. And how do you create people into an ideal customer for your offer by providing them value, but giving them clarity, solving a quick problem for them, helping them get a result that then creates them into an ideal customer.
And you may not be able to do all of that through one piece of content, but let’s say you do several pieces of content that give people enough actions, enough things to do that. Now if they do those things, they will now be an ideal customer for your offer. You also are trying to indoctrinate them into your values. What makes you different as a company? What do you believe? How do you stand out? How can you be loud and grab their attention with those things so they trust you? Right? And then don’t be afraid to nurture a good amount and don’t feel like you’re doing it too much because if you’re truly providing value, then you get to nurture and give with no strings attached. And then you get to sell unapologetically when it’s time to sell. And you want to be nurturing like 70% of the time and selling like 30% of the time.
Maybe it’s 70/30, maybe it’s 80/20. It depends on your business. But if you do that, then the interactions where, when you are selling become more well received. Okay. All right, you guys, I hope this was helpful. I know that was a lot of actions in there at once. And stay tuned because coming like mid next week, I have a pretty big announcement. So if you follow me on social media, you’re listening to this podcast. If you do listen to my podcast, just stay tuned. It’ll probably be the Thursday next week’s podcast. So around mid next week. I have a very big announcement to share with you guys and I’m so excited. So all right everybody, I’ll talk to you on Thursday.
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