261 | One Question That Reveals If You Really Know Your Audience

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmitland. I am your podcast growth coach and in this quick episode of Grow the Show, I want to point out a mistake that you might be making as you work to define your audience. So by the end of this episode, you will know if you are making this extremely common mistake that folks are making these days when trying to define their audience. And if you are someone who's making this mistake and you correct it, your show is going to be easier to grow because you will be better at understanding your audience. And the reason I'm making this episode now is because I have had this conversation with several Grow the Show accelerator clients. So my one-on-one clients and also several members of the Grow the Show Academy as well. This keeps coming up particularly right now. Recently, I was having a one-on-one welcome call with a member of the Grow the Show Academy. They had committed to a year up front so they got the bonus one-on-one call. And on that call, we talked about their audience. Now this Grow the Show Academy member has been working on her business for several years. And so I asked her, who are you trying to reach with your podcast? And she immediately said, I am looking to reach women who are Gen X, who are above the age of 40 and who want abundance in their life. They want authority and personal brand and these types of things. And by the way, I'm adjusting the premise a little bit just to allow this number to stay anonymous, but that's essentially what it was. So to me, when I heard that, I said, okay, I know that what I have to push back on, because first of all, that podcaster's premise sounds like pretty much every other podcast that I hear these days, there is a significant percentage of podcasters that I help who say that their show is for women who are Gen X and who are above the age of 35 or 40. And it's something that I often push back on. Now credit to this particular Grow the Show Academy member, I started poking her audience definition and saying, why is it these people? Why is it women who are above the age of 40? And she said, yeah, I've had this conversation a lot. And there have been a lot of men who have said to get more specific around this. And I was like, okay, cool, I hear you, I'm a man, but hear me out, because I am here to help you and I think you can do better than this. And so I poked and I prodded it and I said, okay, have you ever served a client who was a good client who was below the age of 35? And she said, yes. And I said, okay. So why did you let them buy your stuff? If you are here to serve women who are above 35, shouldn't you have disqualified this person? If your audience is women who are age 35 and over, doesn't that mean it is not for a woman who was below the age of 35? And she kind of laughed and she said, well, that's not true. No, this particular client was mature and was very successful in her career and she was looking to establish a personal brand outside of her career. I said, ah, okay. So wouldn't you say then that your audience is women who are established in their career and want to establish a personal brand outside of their career? And she kind of struggled and said, yeah, I guess so. I said, okay, cool. And so where we got to was the actual situation that this Academy members, business and podcast is there to help with. And so I said, while I agree with you and I grant to you that probably most of the women that you serve are over 35, that is not actually your audience. Because there are women who are over 35 who are not a good fit for you and there are some women who are under 35 who are not a good fit for you. We need to define our audience in a way such that everybody who fits our definition is a good fit and anybody who does not fit our definition is a bad fit. What most people do is they use age and generation as a proxy. So I don't only hear this for women. I hear this for men as well. I hear tons of podcasters who say, my podcast is for men who are above the age of 40. Or I've heard my podcast is for boomers. I've heard that too. People often will say that their podcast is for an entire generation. And I always push back on that because what you're doing is you are, first of all, generalizing a certain age. And the fact of the matter is there are so many different 35 year olds. There are so many different Gen Zers, boomers, millennials, men, women. They're all totally different. And so what you're doing is you are using age and generation as a proxy for what you are actually there to help with. And you can kind of get away with that because it's one of those things where, yes, probably most of your clients and customers are of a certain age. But that is not why they have come to you. That is not the main thing. And so if you use that proxy to define your audience, your definition is not correct. It is not clear. Again, the test is if you are saying your show is for people who are 40 and above, are you disqualifying people who are 39? If that is not the case, then you are using a proxy to define your audience. And what that means is your audience is not as defined as clearly as it could be. This is why I say all the time we want to get away from using demographics to define who our audience is. A demographic is something that is concrete and rarely changes. So that's marital status, that might be gender, age, might be parenthood status, where you live. These things are demographics and these things change very slowly if at all. Whereas psychographics, which is your mindset, the situation that you're in in life, your desires, your pain points, your fears, your hopes, those things, first of all, can change at an instant. And second of all, those are the things that indicate what content we consume online. Not our demographics. Now again, demographics can be used as a proxy for a psychographic because they're sometimes is very common overlap, but my message to you today is to look past the demographics when defining your audience. If you can manage to do that, and instead of saying, my show is for women above the age of 40 who want to establish a personal brand and instead say something more accurate, like my show is for women who have achieved success already in their career and are looking to get out of their career and establish a personal brand outside of the company that they work for. That is what my Grow the Show Academy student is actually doing. And so when she says that, then those women who are that exact fit, who have success in a career, want to expand past but are afraid to establish an online personal brand, they're going to see her show and be like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I was looking for. I can't believe this exists. And so my challenge to you today, regardless of how you currently define your audience, is to think about what demographics are you currently using to define your audience? And how can you look past those demographics to convey a psychographic, to convey a symptom and an outcome? What is it that your audience is currently experiencing and what would they rather experience instead? And if you can convey your podcast in that way, this show is for people who are here and instead want to be here, it's going to be easier to grow your show. And the thing is, your audience isn't even going to change. You're going to go from saying, my show is for this demographic or this generation or this ethnicity or identity, then you're instead going to say, this is show is for people who feel this way and rather feel this way. And again, your audience isn't going to change that much, it's just going to grow because it's going to be so much more clear how your show can serve that audience. So whether you're in the early stages of defining your audience for the first time or you might be doing the show for years and years, it's still always a good opportunity to challenge your understanding of who it is that you're serving and say, can I be more clear here? Can I have a more clear understanding and can I articulate this more clearly to my audience? Because no matter how long you have been in the game, the second you start articulating this stuff more clearly is the second that it becomes easier to grow your show, easier to grow your audience and easier to make sales. Because your show is attracting the people who are best suited to follow you and buy from you. So that's going to do it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed. My name is Kevin and I will see you next week. Hey, real quick, if you're currently posting on a bunch of different platforms, you're trying to keep a podcast alive, you're dabbling with YouTube and yet you still can't point to consistent high ticket clients coming from your content, this part is for you. Imagine instead, once a week, you sit down to record. Everything is already done for you. Your intro is scripted, your CTA is written, your episode angle and title are dialed in, and all you do is share your expertise or interview an amazing guest. That one recording turns into a YouTube show that adds 10,000 or more subscribers over the next six to 12 months. It's a podcast that's your best buyer's binge and it all drives a steady stream of warm leads showing up telling you, I've been listening to you for months. Well, that's exactly what we build inside the Grow the Show accelerator. If you're a coach consultant, agency owner or service provider, in 90 days, my team and I will install a podcast and YouTube growth system that does all of that stuff for you. You record and we handle the strategy, titles, thumbnails, editing, email writing and tracking so that your content finally drives real pipeline instead of just nothing. So if you're doing at least 30k a month in revenue with a proven offer and you want your content to become your best salesperson, hit the link in the description and book a demo. Again, hit the link in the description or go to accelerator.growthescho.com, answer the questions, book a time and we'll map out your podcast and YouTube growth system together.