The number 1 thing you need in business is sales. If you’re not making sales, you don’t have a business. How you achieve sales is by building a buying audience (the name of one of my courses!) first, and then launching to them.

How you achieve sales is by building a buying audience (the name of one of my courses!) first, and then launching to them.

In my business, I’ve built meaningful relationships with people whose problems I’m able to solve for them then after a period of time, I make offers to them. It’s that simple. This is also what I teach my private coaching clients.

Build your offer around solving your ideal client’s (brand hero) issue/s and what they struggle with, then sell that to them.

Too often, I see people making the mistake of leaping ahead and selling their courses, group programs and workshops because they’ve had the idea “for a while”, but they tend to skip the vital part of taking the time to build an audience who want to buy that product.

The most important thing in business is creating new leads and curating an audience who actually want to buy from you. If you don’t have the ideal audience to sell to, you don’t have a business.

Ways to Start Building an audience

Grow Your Presence Online and Offline

Blogging and social media for Content Marketing is a way to attract your ideal clients by entertaining and educating them. Optimise your Facebook Page, Instagram Account, and LinkedIn profiles. Start growing your followers online, continuously show up (don’t overlook the value of doing live videos) and provide valuable content without any putting out an offer.

Facebook and Instagram stories are growing in popularity (plus Facebook pushes them in the algorithm) and are a great way to give insight into your daily life. This is a great way to personally connect with your audience, show off your client projects or share a preview of an upcoming blog post. Think outside the box – network, guest post on other industry leaders’ blogs and books or get yourself featured on a popular podcast, radio, TV show or in a print magazine. All the positive PR can be leveraged to boost your credibility and in turn – your sales!

Build Your Email List

Create an opt-in Freebie. Your opt-in could be a free pdf (this is one of the easiest), a video series, webinar, quiz, mini-email course, or an audio course. Don’t over-complicate this step, you don’t need to create lots of opt-in freebie types. You just need to create one opt-in that’s going to lead them towards what you’re selling ie. your signature offer.

On the Thank You page, invite them to your Facebook Group. NOW you are building your email list and your Facebook Group at the same time! Thank me later!

Promote your opt-in Freebie on Facebook and Instagram in your bio, your posts, and your stories. Do the same on LinkedIn, add to a LinkedIn Article, on your website’s homepage (on a pop-up) or in a blog post.

It’s important to start building your email list as soon as possible instead of depending on social media for leads and growing a following. One of the social media platforms could go down at any given time or the algorithms could change overnight whereas you own and control your email list.

Write a 7-part Welcome Sequence

The Welcome Email automatically follows after your reader opts in. The best option is to send a 7-part welcome series, also called a Nurture Sequence, one day after the other.

You can use parts of the content from the pdf in the welcome sequence, link to some of your Facebook lives, blog posts, press features (I link to my Forbes article) so they get to know you, and your story. This is also a chance for you to share results ahead of time so that they’re confident you know what you’re talking about. You want your reader to receive so much value from your Freebie that they think “WOW! If this is how much value she is giving away as free content, imagine what it will be like to work with her?!”

Don’t worry about giving away too much in your free content. It usually takes a while for people to take action with something that’s given to them for free. Sometimes they need to invest before they actually start doing the work so that they can see results for themselves.

Create a Facebook Group

A Facebook Group is much more intimate and personalised than a Facebook Page. It creates a sense of belonging in a space with a like-minded community. Your members tend to share more and it is your little space where you are seen as the leader.

Nurture your audience by showing up and giving value using Facebook lives. Some live content you can create in your group:

• Interviews with industry experts 
• Masterclasses
• Video testimonials from your happy clients
• Social proof showing your audience all the “cool things” you’re able to do

You are showing people that you’re knowledgeable on your subject, you know what you are doing, you actually care about their results and that you’re comfortable with teaching.

Go live regularly and give plenty of value. This is almost not negotiable especially when starting and building your Facebook Group. This way, people get to know you, connect with you, develop a sense of trust in you, and they feel more comfortable knowing that you can help them.

Use Facebook Ads

Besides the fact that Facebook Ads are the most targeted form of advertising, they are fast and measurable too. You can use Facebook Ads to direct more traffic to your opt-in page. You can also target new or cold leads, warm audiences (people who watch your Facebook lives), visit your Instagram, your website and even people who are on your email list. If you know your audience well enough you can target them by age, interests, location, behaviour and more. There are billions of people using Facebook, and they use it daily!

One of my private coaching clients came back to me after a couple of months, needing to build a buying audience ahead of time because she wanted to sell a new group program. Despite the fact that she had an existing Facebook Group of +2500 people, they weren’t the right audience to sell her new program to. So, she created a brand new opt-in and she hired me to create and manage her Facebook Ads. She created a new Facebook Group with a new name, a whole new vibe, and audience. I ran her ads for about 3 months, kept my eye on it, tweaked the audience as I went along to ultimately get the audiences just right. We built up the Facebook Group to about 1500 members in 6 weeks and spent around £2000 on Facebook Ads. She showed up and did loads of Facebook lives in the group, nurtured them, answered their questions … ultimately giving loads of value. Finally, when she did a webinar and sold her course, it was an $80,000 launch! So here, you can see how she created a buying audience, nurtured them, and then sold to them.

If you’re an industry leader with extensive experience and you want to start adding mentoring or coaching as an extra revenue stream, book a seat in my Free Webinar: 3 Insider Secrets You Need to Know to go From Being an Overbooked Service Provider to a Money-Making Mentor. Learn how to leverage your experience so that you can create more freedom and flexibility, build the right audience using your personal brand, and the right way to package and sell high-end programs.