/// BREAKING NEWS /// Small audiences suck!
I’m learning more and more about how wrong I was about audience size. Selling tickets, getting TV viewers, snagging big podcast downloads… These are not best built organically. These are not the reason to do what we do. These are the METHODS to do what we do.
A Christmas Story
Last year, I was working for a living doing a bunch of other gigs and stuff. Scot Nery’s Boobietrap when available is on Wednesday nights. It takes up a reasonable amount of my time, but it’s not the way I pay my bills; so when people were telling me to add on weekend shows for the holidays, I flinched. That’s a lot of extra work that wouldn’t really benefit me or anyone involved much.
I had a long chat with Colin Campbell who suggested “What if you do weekend shows to promote the Wednesday shows?”
I had never thought of it this way before. Weekend shows sell out faster, people think differently about going out on a weekend than a week day. We would have a different group of people we could convince of the experience of Boobietrap.
Suddenly it was worthwhile to do a weekend show. Not just more people and more fun, but building on the popularity of the weekly juggernaut.
We rearranged how the system worked and got to pay everyone a little more. The promotions were easy for these special shows. They were also family friendly, so it was cake. The weekend shows were popular and the Wednesday shows grew.
We need big audiences
This is becoming more and more clear to me as I see people working hard for a 15 audience member live stream. You can see it right there on the corner of the video player. 15 people are watching this for free. Or, a video with all kinds of planning and post production getting 110 downloads.
Maybe we’re practicing. Trying out a concept to build the show we’re going to do. Awesome. That can be done and erased from the web, but if we’re presenting a real product, let’s get real and go big.
The downsides of a small audience
I just want to quickly remind the reader all the small parts that go into small audiences sucking.
- less attention for what we do
- less impact on the world
- less legacy
- less direct income ( ticket buyers / subscribers / product purchasers)
- less residual income ( audience building profits, merch sales, secondary sales )
- less 3rd party income ( sponsors, investors, grants, peer donations )
- worse audience experience ( it can be embarrassing to do something only 8 other people are doing )
- worse creator experience ( it sucks to make something for few people )
- because of income, it may not be sustainable. The creator might not be able to stick with it when bills come due and other work -work with paychecks – comes in
- fewer other creatives want to get aboard a sinking ship
Grassroots are dirty
My old thinking — maybe the common thinking — is. “make something great, tell people about it, and it will catch on.” My new thinking is, “make something great, part of it being great is that people want it, part of it being great is that it ensnares audiences, part of it being great is it’s made to grow itself… and then bring in a big audience to start the machine working.”
Small entertainment is hard to grow. Not only do you have little word of mouth, but you create something small, get it working, then it wouldn’t really work big. For example, you start a live stream where your thing is you respond to every comment. You get 1000 viewers and you can’t keep up anymore.
Buy your audience
The simple formula for great advertising is…
[cost of acquisition] + [cost of serving a customer] < [lifetime value of customer]
Basically: The money you spend on advertising is less than you get back. This is important to remember for scaling your business, but at the beginning, you have to spend more on advertising to get a big audience to start because the audience is part of the advertising.
If you don’t have money, you have to use other resources. Possibly legwork. Possibly calling individual people and telling them to download your ebook so that you reach a best-seller status on Amazon.
Before buying your audience, set a Boobietrap
In my fixing church post I talk about keeping audiences. You wanna set up stuff for your entertainment product that 1) keep them around and 2) get money from them. If you have unlimited funds, replace “get money from them” with “make the impact you want” because no matter what I’m sure you’re doing things so that you make a difference.
It would be a total waste to buy an audience just to let them vanish.
If you want repeat customers, you have to be aggressive. To keep them around…
- FOMO what’s built in to what you do that compels someone to come back for more? A few laughs is not enough
- Lock in why does it hurt to walk away from your product?
- Sunk costs what makes it feel like a prudent choice to stick around?
- Fandom what connects with your audience’s highest needs?
- Network effect how does telling every friend make your audience’s experience better
- Remarket what’s a way you can capture your audience’s contact information? it’s a lot easier to talk to someone who already likes you than constantly reaching out to new folks.
To get money from them…
- sell them the product ( I mean the very one they’re experiencing by selling tickets or whatever)
- upsell them a product enhancement ( like buy a beer while you’re here and the show will be funnier )
- use your high audience volume as a way to lure advertisers or other money people.
- sell them something for their fandom ( t shirts or something)
- sell them a different product that taps in to the thing they like about the current product.
If I read this five years ago
I don’t know what I would have thought. It all might have sounded kind of conniving to do all this thoughtful stuff.
Now, I’m thinking if you start without even considering how this stuff will grow, you’re missing out. Starting with a big audience serves everyone involved. The techniques for “trapping” audiences are also the techniques that make experiences fulfilling for them.