Signs your current audience aren’t your ideal clients—and 3 steps to fix it

Just because you have an audience of followers and subscribers, doesn't necessarily mean that they're the *right* people for your business. In today's episode, I'm sharing the signs to look out for that suggest your current audience are not your ideal clients and how you can change that.

– The likely reasons behind low social engagement and/or low email open rates.
– Why nobody is buying your offer and what you can do to find out the reasons why.
– How understanding what causes you to grow the wrong audience for your business can help you to shift to finding the *right* people instead.
– The importance of messaging, strategy and visibility when it comes to building your audience.

 

 
Today, I'm sharing a couple of signs that your current audience isn't exactly your ideal client for the offers that you sell for the services or maybe the digital products, courses, or group programs that your business sells. 

Now there's this common misconception that if your audience is really big, you will make sales, but just because you have an audience, whether you have followers, subscribers, or whatever platform they are on, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are the right people for your business. That doesn't mean that they're the right people, the ones who are going to buy what you are selling. 

And I'm a really big believer in quality over quantity. 

You can have a huge audience, but if they're not aligned with what you are selling, then you're not going to make sales. When you can understand what having the wrong people in your audience looks like, which I'm going to cover in today's episode, then you can start to make some shifts toward growing your audience with the right people.

And I'll share some steps that you can take to do that as well today. 

So let's start with a couple of signs that you might have the wrong people in your audience. 

 

Sign #1: It feels like you're talking to crickets. 

You're talking to yourself. Nobody is listening. Nobody is engaging. Nobody's opening your emails if you're sending emails. It just feels like dead silence. Now, I do want to say that in some cases, people won't engage if you work in an industry or, if you cover an area, a topic, that is quite a sensitive thing that people don't want to talk about publicly, then it's probably unlikely that they're going to comment on your posts. But in general, your emails and your DMs shouldn't feel like complete silence. It shouldn't be tumbleweeds in there. And if it is, then that's a sign that maybe your audience isn't the right fit.

 

Sign #2: Nobody is buying, and when you ask them why, they tell you it's great, but that they don't need it, or that they don't have the budget for it.

This one is tricky because somebody can choose not to buy for multiple reasons, and it could be that your content just hasn't bridged the magician's gap or it could be that your messaging and your copy don't show them why they need to value this thing, why they need to prioritise spending money on this thing right now but it can also be that they're the wrong people for what you are selling. 

And one that I see often is people who are selling services who then switched to selling a DIY version of their service.

So for example, let's say that you are a website designer and most of your audience comes to you to have their websites designed by you. And then you start selling a course, teaching people how to DIY their websites. Your existing audience doesn't want to DIY. They want you to do it for them. So they're probably not the right audience for the course that you are selling where they're going to DIY.

Now, a really good question that you can ask to uncover whether it's the right audience, and whether it's the messaging is in your non-buyer surveys. So after I launch something, I always send a non-buyer survey. Even if the launch was successful, I will send a survey out asking people who didn't buy, why they chose not to buy.

Now it's totally normal to have different ideal clients for different offers and not everyone in your audience will be the ideal client for everything that you sell. But if you're really finding it hard to get any kind of engagement, any kind of sales, it could be that it's majority of your audience is the wrong person, or it could be that your content is not actually that remarkable, it's not really resonating with the right people. 

 

Three steps to fix this.

 

Step #1: Get crystal clear on who your ideal client is.

Get crystal clear on who your ideal client is, how you can connect with them and where you're going to reach them. So get clear on what is your ideal client struggling with. What language are they using? Where are they hanging out online and offline so that you can start to get in front of them? 

 

Step #2: Create a content strategy.

Create a content strategy that's designed to resonate with this ideal client. We want to meet them where they are not where we want them to be and this can be hard to do when you're good at what you do.

You need to step into their shoes and meet them where they are at and that also means sharing remarkable content, not just tips and tricks and how-to's, but sharing your unique perspectives, sharing your stories, your experiences, sharing content that can't just be replicated by chat GPT, which a lot of tips and tricks and how-to content can be. 

 

Step #3: Build a visibility plan.

Build a visibility plan that gets you in front of the right people. Where are they hanging out online and offline? How can you intentionally put yourself in front of these people? For me, that looks like speaking at events, doing podcast interviews, and sometimes writing guest articles for other websites, right? Not relying on just putting stuff on social media and hoping that the algorithm's gonna get it in front of the right people because this is how you end up with the wrong people.

 

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