Finding an audience for your digital marketing efforts can be difficult.
Acquiring a media asset like a newsletter, Facebook group, or Instagram page can be an effective alternative to building your own audience or paying to advertise on someone else's page.
I've purchased and monetized all kinds of media assets, from a Charlie Munger fan account on Twitter to a Facebook group for people interested in Mergers & Acquisitions, to local mom groups for my escape room business.
Here’s my advice for acquiring audiences:
As a young lawyer working in mergers and acquisitions, I learned that you should never build what you can buy. Building takes time and effort and always ends up being more expensive than you think it will be at the outset.
“Renting” an audience (e.g., paying for ads or promoting on a group) can be pricey and offers limited control; whereas, owning an audience gives you full control and free access to your members.
If your competitors are promoting on a Facebook group, becoming an owner allows you to ban all promotions other than your own.
It’s a two-for-one: You gain access to your customers and block out the competition (not an easy feat online).
The great thing about a media platform? It lets you build trust, community, and value for your customers, without really needing to advertise. All you have to do is engage.
There are audiences all over the internet, so where’s the best place to start? I always say that rookies should go with the channel they’re most familiar with. But here are two of our favorites:
👬 Facebook groups: Inexpensive. Easy to manage. Often moderated by enthusiastic volunteers.
🤳 Instagram: Helps you get in front of a lot of people, fast. Easy to monetize through sponsored posts. It is easy to move followers over to a newsletter.
📈 Find out how much engagement the asset is getting. If you’re buying a Facebook group, get the seller to do a screen recording that walks you through their Facebook Insights dashboard to make sure their stats are legit.
🖊️ Do a test post. Offer a prize or downloadable gift, or craft an engaging post asking members about their pain points, for a taste of the kind of engagement you’ll get.
😣 Avoid “buying a face.” An audience centered around a topic is a better investment than one centered around a person. I try to find audiences centered around a problem that my customers have, much more than an audience centered around a personality.
Estimate the cost of building an audience from scratch. You can do this by running a few ads to work out what it would cost to acquire a new member.
If the media asset is already monetized, the value is roughly equivalent to the last 12 months' profit.
There are many ways to monetize an audience.
👠 Use it to sell your products or services. We bought a Facebook group where we promoted an online course, and brought in $25k in the first three weeks.
📢 Charge for advertising and promotions.
🎙️ Charge a subscription fee if it’s a newsletter or podcast with high-value, original content.
The best ready-made audiences are labors of love; they’re communities of people coming together to share a passion.
So whether it’s golf products, women's weight loss, telehealth, trampoline parks, crypto tips, or IBS memes, an audience that fits your niche can be a great way to supercharge growth.
If you want a deep dive into this, I made a YouTube Video yesterday, Here's the Link.
