“You can’t feed a starving man a sandwich over the phone.”
-Anonymous
Sure. That’s not the most profoundly worded quote, but it’s truer today than when it was first coined.
Your audience can’t receive the gift of the story you’ve created if you don’t find your audience and give your story to them wherever they are.
Put another way, the phrase “If you build it, they will come” is nothing but a Hollywood fantasy. That phrase doesn’t work, so don’t believe it.
This point goes back to the Golden Rule of Sales & Marketing from the previous newsletter:
Give customers what they ALREADY want, where they ALREADY are, and at a FAIR price.
The Golden Rule can’t be circumvented, overcome, or ignored, so today’s newsletter focuses on the second part of the Golden Rule – “where they ALREADY are.”
What does that mean?
It means you have to find your audience.
You have to find the audience that already wants the kind of story you’re creating.
You have to tell them where to get it and remind them often.
The greatness of your story won’t magically attract millions of people.
The mere whisper of your name won’t bring hordes running from a single post, email, or text.
Put another way, what we’re talking about here is marketing to get your story out into the world and in the hands of millions of people.
And at the heart of marketing is you, hunting to tell anyone and everyone about your story.
What If You Don’t Find Them?
To drive the point home, let’s look at a few examples of businesses and industries that don’t put the effort into finding their audience.
Starting with the Big 2 Comics Publishers – Marvel and DC Comics – who are the most recognized producers of Western Periodical Comics (WPC), let’s look at how they go wrong.
The #1 distribution path for WPCs is comic book shops. Marvel and DC rely on comic shops to gauge the tastes and interests of the readers to figure out which WCPs to pre-order and stock.
However, most comic shops don’t have huge advertising budgets because they’re small, local, and independent. The audiences they reach are readers who already know the shop exists and come in with regularity.
A teenager who doesn’t know a local comic shop is nearby or doesn’t have the means to get there won’t be coming into the shop, so the shop’s capacity to find new and larger audiences is limited.
Since Marvel and DC don’t advertise regularly, there’s no consistent engagement to inform potential readers about new WCPs and how to direct a potential reader to a shop.
In short, Marvel and DC have largely made finding their audience somebody else’s problem, so the sales continue to suffer for it.
Another example I see too often with indie creators…
Hang out in the indie comic circles for just a few days, and you’ll be struck with the number of creators trying to entice readers to back their Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaigns.
Sometimes, the marketing works. Oftentimes, it does not, and you can see when it doesn’t. Failure usually involves the lack of a clear pitch that targets a specific reading audience and/or a lack of persistent, consistent marketing effort.
Indie comic campaigns that don’t get funded are usually a perfect representation of what happens when you don’t find your audience.
Best Practices for Finding Your Audiences
There’s not enough time or space to get into a full marketing course here, but tag me on X.com (@mrgabehernandez) or email me at [email protected] for a free consultation.
However, there are a few rules of thumb to bridge the gap between the story you intend to release and the audience that will get the most from it.
- Borrow from what already works.
- Chances are you haven’t created a new story genre, so consider what genre your story fits into and look at what people always like about that space. Target their likes and dislikes with your marketing efforts by framing your message to what the audience already loves.
- Use online analytics tools.
- Google Analytics, Google Trends, Answer the Public, and on and on are available for free to search for terms you might use in your story.
- If you’re writing a romance novel, use one of the many free tools available to find out who searches for information about Romance Novels and put your marketing message in their path.
- Check out this killer video on something called the “Give to Ask” ratio. If you’re delivering valuable content online for free regularly, the “Give to Ask” ratio explains how giving leads to an acceptable amount of asking that converts the casual passerby into an audience member waiting for your story
- Here’s the link: The “Give To Ask” Ratio.
- Use the Marketing “Rule of Seven” to set expectations. In a nutshell, it takes seven interactions with a potential audience member before they feel comfortable enough to trust they know who you are, what you’re doing, and if the story you’re creating is worth their time.
What Now?
We’re just scratching the surface. In the weeks ahead, I’ll be digging much deeper into the aspects of connecting a creator with an audience.
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If you have a specific question about this newsletter, DM me on X.com (link) or email me here.
If we get enough questions around the same point, I’ll feature the answer in an upcoming newsletter.
-Gabe