Chapter 1
Audiences as Assets: Think Like The Boss
[T]he audience is not brought to you or given to you; it’s something that you fight for. You can forget that, especially if you’ve had some success. Getting an audience is HARD. Sustaining an audience is HARD. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.1
—Bruce Springsteen
Quick! What are the most important assets of your business today? Your brand? Intellectual property? Physical facilities? Inventory? Employees?
All of these are likely answers; however, there’s one asset that is constantly missing when I ask companies this very question. Audiences.
Yes, audiences.
This answer tops your list if you’re in the media, sports, or entertainment industries, because you’re in the actual business of putting people in seats. You build audiences for a living and know the competitive advantage to be gained if your audience is bigger, better, and more energetic than the competition’s. Media companies build READERS (print), LISTENERS (radio), and VIEWERS (television). Football teams feed off of FANS. And Lady Gaga . . . well, she loves her “Little Monsters.”
Even lay consumers who aren’t in media or entertainment inherently understand that each of these audiences has monetary value. Loyal FANS pay cash for tickets to a live event, and a percentage of that money goes to the performers. The equation is simple: bigger audiences = more revenue.
You may think that this equation doesn’t apply to you if you work outside of an audience-centric industry, but it does. Do you pay for advertising? Then audience matters. Do you have a website? Then audience matters. Do you want to grow your business? Then audience matters.
Audience is the bedrock upon which every business is built. After all, what were your customers before they were customers? They were members of some audience that was exposed to your products and services.
Not that long ago, companies were totally dependent on print, radio, and television gatekeepers to reach audiences. Today, however, every company can build its own global audiences via websites, mobile apps, email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest (just to name a few). The rapid adoption of mobile devices and social media also gives those same audiences the ability to communicate right back to companies—often, in very public fashion.
Ahh . . . that sounds familiar. You’ve got “a young gal” who works on social media, “a guy” who is in charge of email—and you have some videos on YouTube. Your website “kind of” works on smartphones and you’ve got a LinkedIn profile for your company, so you must be building audiences correctly. Right?
Wrong. These are siloed tactics that produce siloed audiences. Moreover, they’re often managed by people with conflicting objectives and few organizational incentives to collaborate. What I’m advocating—what this book is about—is the creation of an entirely new marketing discipline focused solely on Proprietary Audience Development. To fully appreciate the importance of this cause, we had better check in with The Boss.
The Boss Is Worried
Bruce Springsteen (@Springsteen) is no stranger to proprietary audiences. With over 120 million albums sold worldwide and thousands of live concerts under his belt, he lives for them. And while you might think a veteran performer would be the last person to worry about finding an audience—you’d be wrong. After four decades as a performer, Bruce remains concerned about his ability to build and sustain an audience for his product (i.e., his music) in the Internet age. His quote at the beginning of this chapter sums the challenge up perfectly:
Getting an audience is HARD. Sustaining an audience is HARD. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.
If The Boss is worried about getting an audience, shouldn’t you be worried? Shouldn’t your boss be?
The question of where the next sale will come from has always dogged businesses. Indeed, the entire field of capital-M Marketing rose up to address such fears head on. Over the years, marketers have used a combination of creativity, messaging, and well-placed advertising to help their companies generate the vast majority of their sales—so much, in fact, that we completely lost any fear about on-demand audiences disappearing. After all, there were always print publications, radio stations, and television networks out there, all willing to put your product in front of an audience at a moment’s notice in exchange for cold, hard advertising dollars.
And then, the Internet happened.
New, interactive channels fragmented consumer attention, toppled traditional information gatekeepers, and decimated the business models of traditional media. Consider that: