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AI-Driven Marketer: Master Practical AI Marketing Skills
The Audience Growth Engine [Full Framework]
01:00:56
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- [00:05]
A
For the last month, we've been going on a journey of trying to become an authority in the age of AI. And we've talked about how the problem of AI content makes it harder to stand out, how it makes everybody kind of seem like an expert and all the things you can do to actually unpack your expertise, your story across podcasting, across the two channel rule that we just talked about in the last episode. But today we want to unpack some more advanced tactics for those who actually have traction, for those who want to go beyond where they're at because they already have something going on. They've already implemented a lot of the things we've talked about. This particular episode is going to go into the deep end. Like, what do you do when you have traction? What do you do when you have momentum and you want to grow your influence farther still? So welcome to the episode on the Audience Growth Accelerator here on the AI Driven Marketer. Again, we are on our podcast podcast to book series called Own the Show. We are turning this into a book using AI. We'll document that at the end and let you know how it goes, if it's any good or if it failed miserably. I'm Dan Sanchez and I'm joined by my co host, Ken Fre.
- [01:18]
B
I am here and ready to rock and roll.
- [01:21]
A
So here we go into the audience Growth Engine can. You know, actually before I got like this was right before I started the AI Driven Marketer, I actually tried to roll up this whole framework we're about to present in this episode as something I sold. And I pitched this multiple times to multiple companies. A lot of people are like, wow, this is, this is good. This is really good. But when you look at it, you're like, this looks like it would take a while and the benefit isn't immediate. And for me to help people do it like cost too much. So it was kind of like too long of a payback cycle. So I never actually ended up rolling this into a product or a service of any kind because I just was too hard to sell. But it was really good and a lot of people saw it as good. So the reason why I'm so excited is I'm like, yes, I finally get to took all this work I put into this and have experimented with and have tried and essentially have used. This is how I grew up. A big part of the AI driven marketer was using a lot of these frameworks. So. And I still need to better implement them still to grow what we have currently going on to be to go even bigger. Like, there's, there's levels of this, and I'm not like the first level of implementing this, but now I get to go and implement more of it. Just reviewing it, getting ready for this episode, but I'm excited to actually put it into an episode. For those who are on more. The advanced side, for those who are kind of already authorities, right, they're already micro authorities and they want to get to a bigger stage, they want to get to a bigger audience. You have to go through these steps. And I broke it down into. In such a way that it can work across platforms. It's fairly agnostic about what channels you're doing. It doesn't even have to be a podcast at all for this. These are basic things that apply to almost all the different audience growth channels out there. But all of this, this particular framework, this audience growth engine framework, focuses on one problem, and it's a problem I discovered on LinkedIn, but it happens on every single channel. It's a really sad thing, but it's something we all run into. If you ever start to grow an audience, eventually, eventually, no matter how good you are, you will run into this problem. And it's what I call the audience growth ceiling. Eventually you get to a point. I figured this out on accident when just using Excel to calculate how fast I could grow an audience for when I was working at Sweet Fish and helping podcasts grow audiences. And I found a consistent way to grow an audience at a, like a kind of a finite rate. So I could add X amount of audience every single month. And what I noticed is if I could add a hundred new audience members to any particular channel over a month, but I had a churn rate of people not engaging with the channel anymore, not even necessarily unsubscribed. They're just not even paying attention anymore, then eventually those two things meet. Yeah. So if I am adding 100 new audience members every single month, but I'm churning 10% of my audience, how big is my audience?
- [04:27]
B
90.
- [04:28]
A
90.
- [04:30]
B
If you're right, you said new people.
- [04:32]
A
Every month, but I'm churning 10% every month.
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B
Oh, you're using that way you'd only have 10 people.
- [04:39]
A
I'd only have 10 people. It's much more intense.
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B
That's why I said 90 you at.
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A
6Am in the morning. Come on, bro.
- [04:47]
B
10% of 100 is 10. So if it's a churn, that would be 90. That's what I was saying initially, 90%. And then you're like, no, I'm like, oh, is he using it as attrition?
- [04:56]
A
But you're adding it, you're accumulating it every single month. But eventually you level off at a very specific number.
- [05:01]
B
Oh, I don't know that number.
- [05:04]
A
So like, let's say you add a hundred people and then the next month you're adding the next hundred people, but you're also losing 10% of the original audience. You lose 10, but you gain another hundred. So you're at 190, and then you gain another hundred, but you're losing 10% of the 190. Right. So that number continues to grow and grow and grow, but eventually that 10% churn rate starts to work against you to the point where you level off. No matter how, no matter what you do, if that 10% remains constant and that hundred remains constant, you level off at a. At a. At a thousand.
- [05:39]
B
Fascinating. You wanted me to do that math at 6am in the morning?
- [05:44]
A
Asking too much, I guess I've already seen in Excel. So it became obvious to me that eventually if you have a thousand people and 10% churn, then it, then the amount you lose every month to churn is the same amount you add. So it levels out at 100. Because you're adding 100, you're losing 100, you're adding 100, you're Losing 100. This is what happens across the board, no matter what channel you run into. It happens on LinkedIn, it happens on Instagram, it sure as heck happens on YouTube. And it's easier to see on YouTube because you can see the views per video and the subscriber count. And it happens to everybody. The you like. It became more apparent to me, like, oh, this is why Gary Vee has 5 million ish or probably more now like subscribers, but his videos only get 60,000, a hundred thousand views. Right? What happened, people? He has a lot of subscribers. It's just his audience isn't paying that much of attention right now. You know, now go back a few years ago and you had like, dude, perfect wildly popular trick shot channel. And they were reaching beyond their subscriber base. Like they had maybe 20 million subscribers at some point and their videos were consistently doing 35, 40 million. Now it's like the reverse. They have like 40 million subscribers. I'm just kind of making this off the top of my head now. But now their videos only reach 5 million people a piece. They have hit their audience grow ceiling and the ceiling is coming down. The subscriber does the subscribe, like how many subscribers you have and this is true for email list to like you have a certain amount of emails and you might even have people that haven't unsubscribed, but they stop reading, but they're not reading it. And if they're not consuming it is, are they really audience now the subscriber numbers is still, it's still a metric and it's still helpful. But your true audience are the people that regularly consume your, your media. So your true reach or your true audience reach is like how much your, how many views you're getting on average per piece after a certain amount of time. So a podcast, usually the general marker is like how many people have listened after seven days. And then of course there's a different marker for 30 days it's a little bit more. But generally you've picked up most of your views in seven days. So the last three episodes past the seven day mark is a pretty good accurate number of like this is how many people listen to your show. That is your audience size. No matter how many followers the platforms are telling you you have, this is your audience size. The thing is, everybody has. You're always increasing at a certain rate and you're always decreasing at a certain rate. You have a certain amount of churn going on and that becomes the battle because people grow faster and faster, but they haven't had a churn rate start to catch up with them yet. And that's what happens to creators everywhere. And it happens to thought leaders, it happens to entertainment creators. It happens that when you're on the rise, you're. You just. I'm like, you just haven't been at it long enough. It just seems like you're going, going. Which is more impressive if you've been on the go for like a years and you're still rising. I'm like, dang, that means they're actually growing that fast that they're out outpacing their churn rate. Her Mosi is one of those people right now. Yeah, he's still growing at a rate even though I know people have churned from listening to him. Like our friend James Carberry has. Like, he doesn't. He's not watching a lot of her mosey on YouTube anymore. He used to watch every video.
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B
Yeah, that's fascinating. He used to be like a fanboy in a good way.
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A
And he still is. He still buys the books, he still shows up to the live events. Shoot, he bought her Moses. Like big, big thing. His playbook thing. Like just so he's still a fan. He's Just not tuning in as much as he used to. We all have this happen. So this audience growth engine is addressing this problem because audience growth is not just about acquisition net new. If you want to be able to lift your audience growth ceiling, you have to attack that churn rate. You have to build and you have to actually build something that's bigger than just the flash in the pan. I actually built this little framework and I'm not going to show it visually, but it's essentially like a roof called the audience growth ceiling. Right. Because everyone's got to sit ceiling, you got to raise the ceiling, which is whatever that number is. You know, it's your, your, your new, your net new minus your churn rate. Right. So if it's 100 and a ten, it's a thousand. That is your audience growth ceiling. You will never get past a thousand, no matter how far you go. If you're only adding 100 and you're churning 10. So you gotta increase the ad rate and reduce the churn rate in order to lift the ceiling. And these are the three pillars. This three essential ways we can address it. We can address acquisition, the growth rate, we can address retention. And I have this third one because it's just worth talking about. And it's elevation. It's more because we have to look at that too. And all of this is standing on top of foundation of just good content marketing and targeting your right audience. Right.
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B
We're doing everything that we've talked about before. This is the three pillars that are needed to grow that audience ceiling.
- [11:00]
A
Yes. This is assuming you're already doing the two channel strategy. You already got a channel or two activated, you're growing in both places. Like, so this is the advanced this, like I said, this is the advanced chapter. This is the advanced episode for those who already have a bit of a platform and want to grow it. Otherwise this doesn't work. You have to leverage everything else we've talked about or do whatever you did do to get to where you're at. And it might be speaking on stages. A lot of ways to grow authority. We've presented one that we think is the best one for online, for using a podcast. There's many ways to do this, but you figured it out somehow and now you want to grow. So anytime I sit down with somebody who wants to grow their audience, I'm like, okay, well, let's look at the three pillars. The first one being acquisition. We have to move beyond the two channel rule. And believe it or not, there's only three Buckets to grow, only three. These are the same three across for marketing, for audience. We have, for audience growth. There's only three major buckets to grow, which is nice.
- [12:03]
B
Believe it or not, when you told me this, I remember thinking, no, there's not. And I try to fight you on it. And you kept be like, nope, that's this bucket. That's this bucket. I'm like, dang it. He's right.
- [12:16]
A
Nokia came up with this back in 2010. So this model really isn't that old. They did it just to organize how to. They did it just to explain their like, marketing plan at Nokia in 2010. And it was so good the way they organized it that marketers have been using it ever since then to organize their, their promotional strategy. Because everything fits into one of these three buckets. Every single growth strategy fits into the three. Okay? And they are paid media, owned media and earned media. And differentiating between them. There's crossovers, of course, but they're pretty easy. Like if you're paying for it, it's paid media, right? If you're paying to play, it's paid media. And that lets like Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, getting it, putting an ad in the newspaper, like old school. There's tons of ways to do this, but paid media has been around a long time. It's fast, it's not easy, but it's the fastest way to get results is paid media. But you know, you got to pay through the nose for it, so that can be hard. The other one is earned media. This is where you don't have permission to do it yourself. You have to ask for permission to get in front of the audience. Someone has to invite you to get in front of their audience, more like, and that's earned media. If you don't, if you, if you have to ask for permission to do it, it's earned media. Okay? Like if you want to get up on stage, earned media, you want to get written up by a journalist in a newspaper, earned media. If you want to get. If being a guest on someone else's podcast, earned media, getting mentioned in a podcast, or being shared by an influencer. Like if an influencer shares Your post on LinkedIn, that's earned media. And then there's lastly, owned media. That's the media you control. You don't have to ask for permission. Permission. That's why all social is owned media, because you don't have to ask for permission. You can post. Now there's obviously you can subcategorize all of these owned Media does have a very distinct one that a lot of people debate marketing called rented media. And where there's a difference between an email list where you can send it to people and there's nothing between you and the audience, there's no algorithm between you and the audience. If there's an algorithm rhythm between you and the audience, we tend to haul everything with an algo in between rented media. Interestingly, podcasts is one of the few where you kind of don't own the list, but it's not. There's no algo in it. So that's considered like owned media. More than rent, just rented media, but social podcast, newsletter, direct mail list. If you're sending people direct mail, that's considered owned media. Trying to think of the other ones, text messaging, phone calling, being able to call them, that's all owned media. Or if you have an app and people are checking out your app or going there for whatever reason, owned media. So those are the three major buckets. Is there anything like, any important ones that I miss? Ken, as far as, like, what are the major things within paid, owned and earned?
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B
No, I mean, there's. I don't know if you, I can't recall if you said, like, SEO would probably be a big one for owned, but that's going to change drastically in the age of AI.
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A
Interestingly, SEO is kind of earned. You have to earn your way onto Google. It's just, you're not asking for permission, but you have to play the game. You have to play the game. You earn your way to the top of the board. You don't just get there. Unlike Google Ads, you know, or the blog is certainly owned media.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But that becomes, but like, it's, it's, it's. I don't know. That's why it gets a little fuzzy in between, because SEO kind of fits between owned and earned. But it's. To me, it's earned.
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B
This is, this is the debate Dan and I are always having. Like, where do, where do people put certain things? Because when you start to get down to the nitty gritty, it can be really confusing. Now, I think the important part for people is, as are thinking about their acquisition plan is figuring out where do they want to double down on these three buckets. And if you're doing a podcast, there's a fantastic way to do collaborations and continue to grow the earned media while you're growing your own list or your own email list. And you've probably caught that as we've been talking about this. Like, man, imagine Doing a collaboration with another influencer. Those people now hear you. They come listen to your podcast, they got into your newsletter. Like all those things is how you start to grow. And Dan, you already mentioned it, like the paid media plan, that is a fantastic way to grow fast. We would encourage people not to do that right off the get go. So if you don't have a good content marketing plan, if you don't have your ideal audience in place, man, you're just going to burn cash really quickly if you just do that. And I've seen it time and time again where people just like thought this is going to work. And it's like, no, man, make sure you, you've tested it with your own media or your earned media before you go do paid.
- [17:36]
A
Luckily, if you're getting to this point and you already have strong owned media, owned media is the best, is one of the best ones of the three for sure. Because if you have owned media, the best owned media gets you free earned media. Earned media is always free, but it's not free. None of these are free. All of these cost something. Owned media costs you a freaking ton of time. Earned media cost also a ton of time, like sometimes years worth of building relationships and stuff so that you can actually ask for permission and actually be granted their right. So like earned media takes a freaking ton of time. It's very expensive. Yeah, paid media, obviously you're paying for it, so it costs money. So it's either going to cost time or money. Some cost more money, some cost time. A balance of all three is actually ideal to max to get to get the most out of all three. I tend most people, when you're just starting out, double down on owned media because you don't have any relationships to get the earned media and you don't have any money to pay for paid media. So you do what's free and so you have to commit with time. I found that the more, the more I do owned media well and I grow my own audience, the more I get free earned media. People reach out to me and they're like, hey, can you be a guest on my podcast? Hey, can you speak on my stage? Hey, can I feature you in this newsletter? I'd love to get your take on it. Hey, I'm writing a book about AI. Can I get a mention in it? That's all earned media that I didn't even have to ask for. It came to me. When you actually start to grow an audience, it starts to become very powerful with owned media because the earned media starts to come to you. But you can, of course, come up with a guest outreach strategy. If you want to become a guest on a lot of people's podcasts, there's playbooks for that. But you have to ask yourself, like, which one should I grow? And if I already have an owned media audience and I'm starting to get some earned and I'm thinking about paid, what should you do next? You kind of have to ask yourself, what. What is working for me now? And what are the general things people are like, how are they getting in? And what are they really falling in love with? For example, I was talking to Davey yesterday. Nothing is wasted ministry. He helps people overcome grief, and he does a lot of public speaking. I was like, dang, dude. Like, people just need to hear your story. And that's how they. Oh, they get hooked up and then they show up for his things, his workshops and his course and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, you should probably do YouTube ads because people need to hear the story. They need to hear it from you. And that would be an appropriate place to hook them because people already have the audio turned on. You can run video ads in other places, but people generally have audio off. But if you can hook them and they listen through to the whole ad and they don't skip the click to skip. You only pay when people actually watch, like 10 seconds versus the five seconds. Yeah. Then you could probably sync your story and find. Essentially get the people to raise their hands because they continue listening to story because they're probably experiencing grief of some kind. Then that would be the best way to extend what he already does speaking on stage. So it made sense to go paid media for that, to extend it. And that's what I would be experimenting with if I were him. So there's probably something you're doing where it lends itself more to one thing or the other. You might have relationships already because you're already speaking on stage, and you might be able to get on more podcasts. Like, so getting. Getting earned media and being a best on more podcasts might be the game for you. I will say of all three, paid, owned and earned. Earned is definitely one of the better ones. It's just really hard. It's actually my weakest point of the three. Getting earned media. There's. That's where public relations and PR people are really good at this. But it's a hard game. It's a long game. But there's nothing quite like somebody getting on someone else's platform and then Being like, this person's legit, that's the point where they get to call you thought leader. And that's where authority really starts to happen is in earned media. But you have to. Paid media obviously has the least amount of trust. Earned media has the most amount of trust. Because other people can call it to you. On owned media, you're just sharing it. You're not calling it yourself that. But on earned media, not only are you sharing your expertise, but other people are like, oh yeah, this person's got the goods. You know, I'm like, hard to beat that. Yeah.
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B
And that's where when we go back to the credibility standpoint, like the credibility of that person gets transferred to you.
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A
That's right.
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B
And you didn't have to do much at that point. Right. You have to beforehand. Right. All the work leading up to the relationship. And that's why again, going back to those other stories about like, how do you collaborate, how do you connect with people? The focus, follow up, all that stuff is so important. Engaging people. I mean, even yesterday, probably because we were talking about this, I was like, man, who are the people I haven't engaged with in the last two months? And I just went, started going down the list and I just sent them an encouraging word and they're like, oh man, thanks so much for, you know, remembering me. And I wasn't pitching anything. I wasn't trying to, you know, do any. I was just trying to maintain the relationships.
- [22:39]
A
So this is probably the most ambiguous part of the plan. It's where you probably need to sit down with the marketer and figure out what channels are best for you, which ones to wind down, which ones to double down on in order to actually grow. This is where hiring someone who really has good marketing chops is really helpful. The rest of the plan is more way more concrete and I think you can implement by yourself the should you go paid, owned or earned or which channel should you expand into, which ones make sense? Talk to your best marketing friend and they'll help you figure it out. They'll at least pick at it because where this makes there's so many options that where it best makes sense for you can can differ quite a lot. But those are the three major buckets to consider. And then each one there's different platforms within them if you want to expand your audience acquisition. But it's good to know that there's really only three buckets. So which one do you want to go after? I generally recommend only starting and activating one at a time. If you already got two channels going or three channels and they're working good. Only add one more. Don't try to activate 5. You'll freaking kill yourself. One channel at a time, and then get it splitting and then get that running before adding the next one. It's generally always do more of the thing that's already working until that's completely maxed out, and then activate the next one, whatever that might be, across these channels. All right. But acquisition's not enough. Again, the churn rate starts to work against you because you can acquire people fast. But if you're. If they're listening to three episodes, being like, ah, I think I got the gist, then churn's a problem. Ken, can you think of anybody you used to listen to a lot and then now you don't?
- [24:16]
B
Oh, tons.
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A
Yeah. Some of them were longer than others. Some of them, you're like, dude, me and Homie were. We were. I was listening to Homie for five years before I unsubscribed there.
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B
There's literally out of, like, all the podcasts I've listened to, there's probably maybe two that have lasted with me for, like, 10 years. Matt Chandler from the village church is one of them. The other one is. Well, he's retired now, but Sam Storms was another person. Those two enjoying God Ministries is Sam Storms. Those two were the main ones. Now that Sam Storms goes, everyone else is kind of like, ebbs and flows. I mean, there's the briefing by Albert Mohler. I'll do sprints of that one, and then I'll stop, you know, marketing the hardest ones, honestly, like, marketing business ones. For me at least, personally, you tell me, Dan. I tend to, like, binge a certain person. Then I'll go find something else, or I'll just need a pause on that.
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A
It's kind of how it goes. Some are a lot longer, some are shorter. I'm looking at my list and I'm like, huh? Who I've been listening to the longest? Al Mahler has been on here a while. My own show's on here. I actually listened to my own show, and I'm like, how could I have made that better? My first millions on here. I've been liking that show. The artificial intelligence show is the only. No, I got, of course, AI explored from Social Media examiner on here, the Next Wave podcast. But I haven't listened to him. I've been downloading his episodes. Haven't listened to an episode. Probably like 10 episodes. I'm like, I'm kind of training for me bro. Sorry Matt Wolf, like it's the podcast isn't what I'm into still listen to his YouTube channel then that can happen. So how do you keep people from churning?
- [26:07]
B
Yep. The other one would I would say was now that I think about it, it was the Flip lifestyle podcast by Shane Samsung. But he actually paused because he life circumstances and he was just like I'm pausing recording this for the last. And it's been eight months, nine months. So that happens too. When you stop creating content, obviously you're going to stop growing your audience. It's just an obvious statement to make but it's something that sometimes people need to be aware of.
- [26:37]
A
So here is the retention plan. After studying how other people had did this, after experimenting myself, this is what I find is the best way you can actually increase retention and do it in a way that's. That's it's predictable, it's consistent. The first one is actually having an activation plan. It's funny because a lot of people think about this for especially like freemium products or through a product LED growth. Right. If you get someone into your new tool, you need to activate them, you need to get them a quick win. But hardly anybody does this for audience growth. But you should. This is why lead magnets in my opinion are really important. It's not for, it's not just for the lead. You want to deliver something that's high value, gives them a quick win, reinforces your beliefs and actually introduces them to your general larger mission. You need to be able to do those three things with the lead magnet. And the lead magnet doesn't necessarily need to deliver the beliefs in the mission. That might just be in the follow up email sequence. I remember Ryan Deiss introduced me to the topic in marketing at least talking about the indoctrination email. And that's kind of like indoctrination can has a negative bent to it. So I'm like just introduce them to your mission and see if they find themselves feeling the pain that all of us are feeling and why this mission is important. You know, that's where that story we talked about starts to become so important. But you have to have a way to bring them in. And there's always new people being introduced to you. So how do you activate new people? Whether you've been doing this for a year or 10 years, you need to get people in to an activation loop. Like what's the start here page? That's why I love start here pages. So people get there and they're like oh, I'm new. Oh, I start here. Okay. I get the gist of what's going on. Right. This is one of the frustrating things that I found about, like, remember I, I, I knocked on Chris Walker for not writing a book because he didn't. He had a bunch of different cool ideas, but he never packaged them into a book. He also didn't have a start here page where people could be like, hey, if you're new, here's what we're all about. Here's the main problem we address, here's our main solution to it. Here's, here's my story, and here's freaking three of my best podcasts that address it. Go check it out. See if you see if it resonates, you know, like something easy like that. You need a start here page. And generally it's best done with the lead magnet. A lead magnet that touches a very specific problem, a very micro niche problem within the broader problem that gives them a quick win so that you can actually start to endear them from the very beginning. Because if you don't start well, well, they're probably not going to hang around long. So you need to be able to hook them from the beginning. I think a lead magnet's one of the best ways to do that.
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B
Yeah. And making sure that the lead magnet is not overwhelming or confusing is huge. Where, like, one of the things I like to think about is when you solve that problem, do they instantly get relief? Or they're like, yes, this is exciting. Like, I finally found the person I could connect with and they understand me, they get me, and they actually help me. I will say that there are some marketers and salespeople that get in trouble for this because the you're trying to grow an audience or you're trying to get sales. Right. It's one I found many times it's one or the other. You can't do both because the sales funnel process, what you're trying to do is you're trying to get them to raise their hand and also starting trying to pitch them right away or pretty quickly. And you just have to be mindful of that. For all of you who are listening to this, there's this crazy, like, balance that you have to make of when you're making a lead magnet. Is it for acquisition or for sales or audience growth or for sales? And if you're trying to do both, it typically goes wrong. And from what I've seen in the.
- [30:21]
A
Past, absolutely now, audience activation isn't the only thing you can focus on. To reduce churn. There is also increasing frequency. So once you activate them, you want to make sure to stay top of mind with them. That's why we use that phrase, top of mind. And a while ago, earlier in this series, we talked about the RFM analysis. Recency frequency. Monetary recency trumps everything else. When's the last time you've provided value to me? That's why being consistent in your social posts, why you should only activate one channel at a time, because if you become inconsistent there, it's like, well, then your recency isn't going to be that good. Because the last time we've interacted might have been two weeks ago, four months ago. Recency is a big thing, so you have to stay consistent, actually getting your value out there, coming up with new ways to be helpful all the time, it's hard. It's hard to show up and be helpful multiple times a day or interesting in some way or have people give them unique insights. But that's the game. I will say it's a lot easier doing it when you've been doing it for a while. It's really hard at first to show up every day and try to find something meaningful or insightful to say. But once you do it every day or multiple times a day for like months and months, that muscle gets stronger. And now I could literally show up on LinkedIn and be like, all right, let me just pick a category. And I could be like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Just like hammer it. Right? Especially if I know like what the issue people, what's top of mind for people, then I could really start being helpful. Yeah.
- [31:49]
B
And this part is, is important because so many people will give up too soon. They don't see the ROI and they don't, they don't understand what they're doing, what's wrong. But really just staying top of mind is the game and it's what you're having to remind yourself. People are not ready to buy right away. I think, what is it like 5 or 10% of people are ready to buy at any given time. So that means 90% of people are not ready. And what you're doing Instead with those 90% is building the trust, building the relationships, engaging them. And I'll give you a great example. Even since we started recording every day or every other day, it's hard to post every single day before us recording. I probably posted on LinkedIn maybe once, once every day. So maybe five times a week or something like that. I would take the weekends off, but since we've been recording this. It's given me a plethora of content that I've been posting two times a day for since November. And because I've been able to post, and this is the beauty of doing this, I'm getting so much data and every week Danny and I are looking at that data and I'm just saying, oh, look, this is where I've been growing. This is what I've not been getting, not been growing. And I've been able to iterate way faster. And I'm starting to see change way faster because of that. So my encouragement to a lot of you if you're like, I don't want to post. Another reason why podcasting is great is because now you have the content. Now you can double down on posting. And then also the more you post, the more you can start to see what works and what doesn't.
- [33:26]
A
Now, you didn't get to this point and not have already had a rhythm of posting regularly. Yeah. So let me give some more advanced tips on not just increasing frequency, but increasing consumption, creating habits with your audience. And there's a couple different ways I've seen people do this that are really smart. One is anchoring to a specific time of day or time of week and creating in their mind, like, oh, it's Friday afternoon. I need to go check out the Whiteboard Friday video. Which was a Rand Fishkin thing at Moz for a long time. Whiteboard Friday. Whiteboard Friday. And I was reading Moz, Rand Fishkin and other places, but he anchored it in my mind. I'm like, oh, wait, it's Friday. I need to go check out the Whiteboard Friday video. He's probably published it. Yeah. Or, you know, like some, some whole media companies are built on this premise. Morning Brew is built around the premise of you sipping your morning coffee, reading this new email newsletter. It's creating a habit. So what? So it's. You can either attach it to a day, time of day, a time of week. You can be the one who riffs off of seasons. Like all your sales, mattress sales stores. Right. Like, always have a take on what's going on. There's a couple people I go to current events. I want to hear so and so's take on current events. What is that thing? You can also base it off like regular habits within the industry. For example, every, every industry has its rhythms. Can you attach yourself to the rhythm of what marketers do or accountants or whoever you, whoever your expertise is geared towards? What things are they doing regularly and how can you create a consistent consumption habit around that thing where to them it becomes a bit of a ritual? Yeah.
- [35:12]
B
And that's that, you know, that's the game to play for retention that I found is so fascinating of. And what most people don't do is thinking about the rituals and habits. I'll give you a great example. When I was on the full Focus podcast as a co host, you know, it was, the podcast was called Focus on this. It would come out every Monday, right? And we would say like, hey, this is the happiest Monday or the most productive Monday because we're gonna help you with productivity, I kid you not. When we would not post or publish an episode, we would get DMS and emails and people would be on the Facebook group page being like, oh my gosh, is everything okay? Like I where's your Monday post?
- [35:57]
A
Yeah.
- [35:58]
B
Because you're just so used to listening it, listening to it and getting ready your mindset ready for Monday, that week and how you're gonna align your productivity. So that's how powerful it is, man. It truly is. When you start putting that habit in place, it, it's a game changer for people.
- [36:16]
A
Time of day, day of week is the easiest place to do it, but I think the more powerful way to do it is even attaching it to a specific ritual already in their lives. Even when you, like you read Atomic Habits, he calls it habit anchoring, right? Like if you want to put on sunscreen, put the sunscreen next to your toothpaste where you brush your teeth so that you, when you brush your teeth, you're reminded to put on sunscreen kind of a thing, right? This is habit stacking. You can use that to your advantage as a, as, as a, as marketers, you are acting like a marketer in this situation to have it content consumption or thinking about your method or thing, whatever you're trying to do in their minds during those times.
- [36:55]
B
And that's also going to define if you're creating a podcast, for example, how long you go or how long the length of your podcast, right? Because if you're like, hey, I'm only going to do it while they're brushing their, you know, their morning ritual, right? Of like getting ready for work. That means you probably need to only have a podcast that's 15, 20 minutes long, right? But if it's maybe a drive to work, you might be a 30 minute podcast, right? Those are those little habits and things to consider as you're processing this.
- [37:27]
A
The last part of the retention plans we've talked about audience activation, we've talked about increasing frequency. We want to talk about creating depth as the third part of a retention plan. And this is where having long form content's really helpful. Because if you're only on short form channels at this point, like you're only crushing it on LinkedIn, you're, you're drastically missing depth. You have to give people a way to like go for minutes or hours listening to your content, if they binge at all. Can you get by and do really well in just one short, short form platform? Sure. Can you make tons of money from it? Sure. There's plenty of people that just do LinkedIn and crush it. Got it. But if they really want to get to know you, if you really want to create longevity, if you really want to grow your authority, you're going to need a long form channel. Chances are you already have one. Great. How do you create more depth? Well, you can have a podcast, you can have a short form channel. And that's why a book is one of the best ways to create depths, because you're packaging all your best ideas in a really succinct way that even if people had been listening to you for years, will still buy the freaking book, read it, get more out of it. Because chances are while they've heard all this stuff before, they've never heard it packaged all together in just the right sequence. They will get new unlocks from it, and there's always going to be new people who miss some of your previous ideas, are loving your new ideas and need to see it all packaged together. And this is why really big creators, the big guys are almost always releasing a new book every couple of years because they're constantly creating, coming up with new stuff. They're changing themselves, their own brand, their own way of approaching things. They have new, they run, they grow bigger and do better, and they run into new problems. So they figure out how to overcome a lot of these problems. So then they figure it out, they document it, usually podcast about it, and then they package it all on the book becomes the highlight of all the learnings they got in that season of their life. That's what professional creators do, especially in this, like, more B2B. Like I'm helping other people space, especially helping you with business or any of those things. They're usually writing books. I think now it's even easier than ever because you can essentially be working towards it and then have AI like help you write the whole thing every time. So it's going to be more consistent and that's fine. It's good. There'll be more books and less people reading books or less. Less. I'd say if you publish a book, even if you have a following, you'll probably have less people reading the book than before because there'll be so much more competition for books. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. You should still do it because it's still considerate to package all your ideas into a book. But a book's not the only way. I'd say a course is another really great way to do it. There might be some other ways. Maybe a documentary. Can you think of anything else that's like, really substantial, juicy piece of content?
- [40:11]
B
I don't know if it's a juicy piece of content, but I think a community is a. Is a huge way to create depth because it's building relationships. So you might just go live at a certain point and just connecting with your people, doing Q and A. It might. You might house your course there. I know several people who. What they do is like, hey, we're talking about this podcast episode. And then right after the podcast episode, they do Q and A. So there's a lot of those little things. So a community would be a huge one.
- [40:42]
A
And the last one, you just. It just came to my mind as you were saying, that is live events. That would be another way to create depth in person. Live events and virtual events, great too. But like, actually there is something to be said just for, like, streaming and virtual events are working really well to create depth with creators. That's why Alex or Mosey's gone deep into Just Live now. So there's something to be said for that. But at the same time, live events, nothing like it. Probably one of the most deep experiences beyond a book or course, that you can do nothing better than that.
- [41:16]
B
I would say a fun little hack that Michael Hyatt taught me was he said, hey, if I were to write a book, moving forward, I would create a course first. Because a course you could iterate, you could develop, you can change. And he's getting feedback. When you start doing that, all of a sudden you start getting all the best distilled ideas that you could then package into a book. And I think that's part of what we're doing here in the podcast is that we are recording all this information. We're getting feedback from people. We're even talking offline, like, oh, we forgot about that. We should add this. We should do that.
- [41:56]
A
Right?
- [41:57]
B
It's helping us to refine Those things. So. And we're learning from our audience. The audience is telling us, oh, what about this? Have you thought about this? So all that's going to go into the book at the end. That's another way that you're creating depth, but also a nice little fun hack is like, if you're thinking about the order of which ones should you create first, that's what I would do.
- [42:19]
A
And if you want to go deeper on this topic of retention, this. I try to find every book I could find on this topic, and there's hardly anything. There's, like, nothing. I'm amazed at how everybody talks about how to get new followers. Hardly anybody talks about how to keep followers. The weirdest thing, because, like, everybody knows that if you're in a subscription business, like, and you have reoccurring revenue, like, retention's the freaking game.
- [42:44]
B
Yeah.
- [42:44]
A
Because we all know that acquiring a customer is way more expensive than keeping a customer. Like, they all know that and they all get that. They all still suck at retention. They still don't do enough, you know, but they at least know it and are trying stuff in audience growth. Nobody thinks about retaining subscribers. Nobody. Like, I never hear anybody talk about it. The one person that I've actually heard talk about it, and he wrote a book. It's not about this topic particularly, but, like, it's. The closest thing I could find was Pat Flynn. This is. I've. This is the only book I've bought from him. But it's a fantastic book. Like, and it's good. It's good through to. Through. Most books are only worth two chapters. This one's actually good all the way through. It's called Super Fans by Pat Flynn. A lot of my best ideas around retaining people came from this book. And it even has, at the top of the book, it's like followers crossed off subscribers, crossed off customers, crossed off superfans. You implement the ideas in this book. This is the best retention game plan book that I've ever read is that's essentially what you're doing. If you create superfans, they stay longer. And the more superfans you create, the longer they stay. And not even that it becomes. At some point, if you create super fans, it becomes an activation channel because they're referring you at a higher rate. So freaking win, win More money. More time and energy spent on retention is always better than the time and attention spent on acquisition. Crazy. But we know it's true. You know, even as I said it, you're like, oh, yeah, so let's move on to the last one, which in my part is. Is even. Is like the most neglected thing, but it's actually probably like one of the most important. The elevation plan. I had to make it a third pillar because it's that substantial. You could get by on just two pillars. But, like, let's talk about elevation. It's probably the more important part. It's the deeper part. Like, once you get past a critical mass, this is the stuff you start to actually focus on. It's even this stuff I'm starting to wrestle with now. Yeah. Even though I've been in the game for two years now, have a good audience, I'm starting to think about this more. It's even part of why we're putting this book out there. As we're starting to think about bigger things, like, where are we going? What's the mission? Starting to double down on this. Human first. AI driven as a mantra. As job creation and job loss starts to become a problem, we need to start elevating human dignity, which is why this book is even coming to existence or this particular series. So let's talk about the three parts to the elevation plan. There's the mission, there's success, and there's monetization. And again, I'm just pulling from a couple of different proven playbooks. Specifically the mission. Like we've talked about it, you have to have a general mission you want to see achieve with your. Your audience. Like, where do you want to take your audience? Big picture. That's going to keep them around longer, and it's actually going to cause more of the impact you want to see. If you want to have authority, this is where it actually starts to happen because you're starting to mobilize people to your way of thinking to attack a general problem in the industry. That's the. That's the most exciting part. Like, come on. Like, what are we doing yet? We forget about that and we just keep going after hack after hack in order to please the algo gods. Right. But you have to actually step back and be like, where are we going? Why are we going there? Why should others care? How often do we take a step back and actually address that?
- [46:01]
B
Yeah, very often. I don't see a lot of creators casting good vision for people to stay on. I'll give you a great example of one creator that I know you love that, like, it's probably more entertainment, but I haven't caught the vision of why I should keep following him.
- [46:17]
A
That's.
- [46:17]
B
That's Mr. Beast. Right? Like, he he, he's for sure in the entertainment category. But even then I'm like, what's the vision? Like, where's, where's he trying to take us? I feel like every single time is just a new, bigger and better idea of just how to give people money in a challenge or something like that. Do I watch some of his stuff? Yeah, like, it's an entertaining, but he's not like the guy that I'm going to be like, oh, he's going to change my life or he's going to. He's taking me somewhere. On the flip side, you know, there are other people that I've, I followed. Like, I'll use Dwayne the Rock Johnson, right? Where he's like, hey, he's an entertainer. He's doing all these things. But he's always telling people, like, I wouldn't have never gotten here without all of you fans. I am here today because of you. And here's where we're going. I'm going to make you guys the best audience ever because of it. Like, he just flips it. He's still entertaining, but he's casting vision all the time of what we can do if we stay with him. And that doesn't mean I'm like a super fan of his, but I follow him enough that I'm like, oh, yeah, what are you doing? What's going on with your family? What's happening? You know, they're both entertainers. Mr. Beast Rock. Right. But one's consistently casting vision.
- [47:33]
A
Yeah, I don't think, I don't think Jimmy has it. You could start to see it kind of show up with this chocolate brand where he's trying to lift children out of poverty, but it doesn't give like an overarching reason why he even wants to do that. You're like, oh, that's good. We all acknowledge it. That's a good thing. Like great fair trade children not working for long hours in cocoa fields. Got it. Why? Don't know. He doesn't say. So you're right. That is a major thing. And he's just really good at. He's just really good at pleasing the algo gods.
- [48:02]
B
Yeah, super good.
- [48:04]
A
Consistently best in class. Probably the best in the world right now is Jimmy Donaldson at getting attention and keeping it and holding it. But it's. He, he will have to figure that out if he wants to go the distance long term, which I think he's. I, I think he's starting to even plateau now, even though his subscriber numbers are going up. His, his, he's starting to hit his gross ceiling for the first time. I think.
- [48:29]
B
Wow.
- [48:31]
A
The reason why I even watch him is because I like to see the mechanics he uses to get and capture attention. And what is he doing because he's so good at it? Like what do his thumbnails look like, titles? What's the first five seconds of his, of his opening video? What are hooks he uses throughout the video? How is he staging things? I even like watching behind the scene here and explain it because it's really, really a masterclass and attention of online media.
- [48:55]
B
I mean even like he's been posting like these 30 minute videos on like Facebook or Instagram, Right. And they're all like these things that you would watch on reality TV shows that would be like six, like 16 episodes. He's doing it in 30 minutes. And I found myself every single time I was getting ready to just like swipe because I was like, ah, okay. He would add a new pivot to the challenge and I'm like, oh, okay, I'm in, I'm in. I'll watch for another few minutes. What's going to happen here? He's great at it. But going back to the mission, it's.
- [49:26]
A
Like, can he weave a strong enough narrative to keep hundreds of millions of people with him for the long haul? Yeah, that will be the thing. And we'll see what he does. It'll be interesting to watch. So that's the mission. You could do that in a micro way for a small niche organ community. Think about everything you've ever been really passionate about probably has this in it. Yeah. Where you get together and you're freaking like, yeah, you're pumped with you and the other people who get it. There's probably a mission involved, a general larger thing going on. Good, good. Software companies build it, even if it's light. But it doesn't have to be. It can be really in depth and meaningful and have a strong manifesto to back it up. Be like, this is what we freaking stand for and this is what we're going to do and we're not going to stop until we accomplish X. But it doesn't even have to be a specific X that you're trying to accomplish. It could be something vague like it's just give us a direction and a reason and why to go after. It's powerful. This is why Andy Raskin strategic narrative is so freaking powerful. Because if you can have a narrative that everyone's like, oh, that hits like as soon as you lay out the story of why and where you're going and what's changing. People tend to come. They people. We all follow stories. And this is the big thing. This is why it's in the elevation plan. It's a major pillar, but it's not the only pillar in the elevation plan, the next pillar. I'm kind of like, I'm embarrassed that even I. I don't even do this, and I need to do this. But I'm like. It occurred to me because I was thinking about, like, okay, what are things we can do in order to actually. Like, what's the point of growing an audience? I, like, years ago, I sat back and like, okay, like, if we really want to crush audience growth, like, what are we trying to do here? Well, we're trying to educate people. Well, how do we know we're educating people? Well, it's probably because they're implementing the things and see, seeing success. But have we ever defined what success looks like?
- [51:15]
B
Yeah.
- [51:16]
A
Do we measure it? Do we report it? Do we track it as a community? This is where the community aspect starts to come in. I have seen some people do this. There's a great channel called income school in YouTube and they have a paid community where you can do this. But, like, they actually track the success of people using. This is. This is. I don't know what they're doing now because they got to be dying now because they were. It was like they had a really proven methodology for ranking on Google with blogs, getting traffic and a bunch of different ways to monetize it. So they were help launching blogging entrepreneurs, essentially. And they were really good at it. But they would track it and they would help you report it and track it as a community. And how many people were doing. They had a little map where everybody had reached certain revenue markers. So they were actually one of the best that I've ever seen across any audience of actually tracking the success of their audience and then reporting on it. I'm like, but they're the only ones I've ever seen do that. Yeah.
- [52:15]
B
And it's challenging because a lot of times people are like, I want people to grow with me from an idea that they have, but they'd never take that idea and make it into an action that people can continue to stay with them. Now, there are times that they do that with monetization. Right. And we'll talk about that next. Where the way they take that idea and move forward with it is, come join me and pay for my stuff. And that's a great way to do it. But overall, for audience growth. Yeah, man, I seldom see, like, what's the goal for growing the audience for just audience sake? Audience growth sake alone.
- [52:55]
A
Yeah. Generally, people will start monetizing this part of it. But if you wanted to really grow an audience and have more influence, then think about what you're trying to accomplish. Like, you have that overall mission. Are you tracking your steps towards it? Nonprofits kind of do this. At least the great nonprofits do. It's amazing how many nonprofits actually don't track the progress they're making towards their mission. That's why nonprofits generally suck. It's probably why giving's down, because they all suck at reporting on actual success.
- [53:24]
B
Dan, tell me how you really feel.
- [53:26]
A
Yeah. After working in nonprofits for a long time, tell I've how I feel about it.
- [53:32]
B
You're jaded. I. I will say the person who. Who has had. The one person I can think of who's had pretty good success in this is Alex Herozi. Like, if you've been following him for a long time, he used to say, like, I. I'm trying to remember the exact verbiage, but he was like, hey, I don't want your money. I don't want you to buy anything from me right now. I am here for the long game. I'm going to give you as much success as an entrepreneur so that when you win, you're actually going to want to buy from me later, because I'm all about acquisitions. And he was like, I don't remember the exact pitch, but he always had the same pitch every single time. And I'm like, okay, cool. You know, he's. He's helping as many people. He had a mission, and he knew what success looked like. And I think that's why he's been immensely successful over the last, you know, five to six years, because he's got a game plan, and he's measuring what success looks like for his. His audience growth.
- [54:25]
A
Dude, talking through this, because I haven't actually looked at this material in probably, like, two years, since I rolled it up and started the show to kind of, like, prove to people that, like, look, this works. Okay, fine, Fricking. No one's buying it. I'm just going to do it myself. This is part of why the show even exists. Just to be raw. I've actually, I think I've said this on a few guest episodes, another podcast, but walking through it again, I'm like, frick. That's why we need to start a free community for AI marketers. Otherwise, how do you. How do you track success across the community? You have. You have to have a community or place people go and log in and report on things in order for you to track it.
- [55:05]
B
Come to my side. Yes.
- [55:07]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [55:09]
B
I pitch. I pitch ideas to Dan all the time. I'm like, hey, Dan, what if we did this? Get shut down six months later? He's like, I think we should do this. I'm like, yes.
- [55:19]
A
Yes. Ken's like, I was right. You win. But I'm right.
- [55:24]
B
I haven't recorded 56 minutes in.
- [55:28]
A
So success. Are you tracking success across your audience? And then the last one of the elevation plan is monetization. Yeah, Come on. That's. It's why we're here for most of it. Like, come on. And this. It's good. You should monetize it. I honestly find, unless you're a nonprofit and you're making your money somewhere else, monetizing is something I feel like a lot of people get ashamed about. But I'm like, it's actually not a bad thing. It's good to make money. It's actually even considerate to give different tiers or different ways you can serve people. At the end of the day, like, the capitalistic system is a forced altruism that the way you get what you want is by helping other people get what they want. And that's why we have money as an exchange for value. That is a good and noble thing, as long as you're doing it with integrity, with high trust. Even better if you're over delivering. But even if you're not, you're trying, you know, like all those things. That's why monetization is important. You need to have good ways to monetize. And it can be high end, it can be low end. Find the right play. That's the most helpful for your audience. Audience oftentimes, if you don't charge money, they don't even take advantage of the material. Think about how much Alex Haro gives away for free, but people don't actually implement because it's free and it's cheap and it's easy. Like, we all know, like, if we actually spent money on a gym and a personal trainer, we would probably get more fit. Yeah, because we're sacrificing freaking money on it. We would show up, you know, so, like, there is something about charging it that actually makes it more valuable. So for that reason, monetization, massive pillar within elevation, because it's actually a tool to not only get people to not only reward you for doing what you're doing, which is the easy part, but also to actually, oddly, to add more value to your community, to let them pay into the thing that they believe in. And honestly, there's no one better at this. No. In my opinion, no company is better at this than Disney.
- [57:32]
B
Oh, yeah. I was wondering who you're gonna say. I was like, oh, thanks, bro. I thought you were gonna say me, but then you said, Disney. I was like, yeah, Disney's better.
- [57:38]
A
Disney. And I freaking love it. I remember growing up as a kid and watching the movies and wanting more options when it came to, like, experiencing the movie. I don't know. Like, when you're a kid and you watch a movie and it just freaking hit, you're just like, dude, I could freaking live in this. I don't want it to stop. I want it, like, give me the video games, Give me the merchandise. I want to go and experience the ride. Like, give it all to me. Like, I want to live in this. This world. Disney's like, yes, and we will charge you for it. But I'm like, take my money. Take my money. Like, people were, yeah.
- [58:19]
B
I remember the first time you went on a Disney cruise. You were like, this is the only cruise I will ever go on moving forward.
- [58:25]
A
Not true. I've been on many other cruises since then. I haven't been on Disney cruise since because they cost so freaking much. But, dang, that was a whole new freaking experience. But they deliver, you gotta say, like, it costs a lot of money, but Disney freaking delivers the goods. Most of the time. I just went. I was at Disney just a month ago, and it was freaking amazing. I was like, whoa. Yeah. And that's why they charged the big bucks, because they're really good at this. Yeah.
- [58:53]
B
The key here is, for some people who are listening to this, I'm just speaking to you specifically. You have a hard time monetizing because you feel selfish doing it. But the reality is that the only way you're going to be able to keep creating new ideas and helping others is by charging. Right? Like, so that you can feed yourself, feed your family. So it's totally okay for you to do that in an ethical way. So I'm actually encouraging you to, like, go find ways to monetize what you're capable of. Don't be always giving everything for free. There should be certain things that you charge for. And it's okay to charge at a premium, too, Right. Sometimes people are like, hey, I'm going to charge so low for an offer. And I'm like, well, you're going to need 30, 50 clients. And they're like, that's okay that I'll do it all the time. I see this with coaches a lot, right? Where they'll be like, the average minimum might be like 3,000 for an offer. And they're like, well, I'm gonna charge 1500 or a thousand just to get my foot in the door. And I get the mindset, right? The mindset is they don't value themselves enough to see themselves to charge 3,000, so they have to start at a thousand. And I totally get that. The problem is that if you stay there, you're going to burn yourself out in the long run because now you need three times as many clients just to keep up, all right, and hit your goals. So that's why I'm always telling people, like, you could do that, or you can just find a medium price or a premium price that you can hit that you're happy with, your clients would be happy with, and you can stay in the game for the long term. And that's what I'm always looking at for people is how can you bring in different streams of income. But also with your core offer, it's priced well enough that you were like, man, I could survive off of this. I'm happy. I'm successful. It's great. Let's keep going.