ARE YOU FALLING in to the warm audience trap?

Welcome to the LionHearted Marketing Podcast!

What’s this episode about?

If you currently rely on organic social media to grow your business, and you feel like you are struggling to reach new people or it takes people a long time from when they find you to becoming a client, you might have fallen in to the 'warm audience trap'. It's an easy trap to slip in to (I've definitely been there!) but it can be easily fixed with some intentional action!

In this episode I share the 3 strategies I use to help clients move out of the warm audience trap (and prevent them from slipping back in!).

In this episode we cover:

• What is the warm audience trap and how do you know if you've fallen in to it?

• Why most people fall in to it without realising until it's starting to impact their business.

• 3 strategies to use to move out of the the warm audience trap (for good!)

If you enjoyed the podcast, here are some ways you can be a part of my world:

Social:

Love Instagram? Click here to watch a video I made on the Warm audience trap (hint, it's something almost every client struggles with!)More of a LinkedIn fan? I'm there too! Come and follow me here: Sophie Griffiths

Free Resource:

Ready to grow an audience of people who WANT you to sell to them? Radical idea I know, but it shouldn’t be! Click here to get access to my step by step guide to using simple, effective ads to build & nurture a community of superfans,

Work together:

Ready to build an audience of superfans who are excited and ready to buy from you?
Whether you are just starting with Meta (Facebook & Instagram) Ads, you have dabbled but want to build your confidence with your first funnel, or you're already killing it and you're ready for fast growth - I can help! Click here to choose the best option for you

Got questions?

DM me on Insta or LinkedIn
Email me here: hello@sophiegriffiths.co

Thank You for Listening!

• If you found value in this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and mention this episode. It would mean the world to us!

---

Subscribe to the lionhearted marketing podcast

Episodes release every Tuesday. Make sure you don’t miss any by subscribing on your favourite app:

---

Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. LHM S2 E3 - Solo - Warm Audience Trap === [00:00:00] Hello, and a big welcome to Lionhearted Marketing. This is the podcast where bold businesses learn to evolve from haphazard marketing to creating seamless evergreen customer journeys. You've shifted away from the exhausting cycle of big launches to the more sustainable rhythm of an evergreen sales model, but are now finding that audience growth has become your new issue? I'm here to the next big thing. Instead, we're focused on creating a system and strategy that supports a steady stream of sales by using Facebook ads, strategic email, and content that creates connection. A robust evergreen sales strategy needs a robust evergreen marketing strategy to give you that stability and growth you crave in your business. And that is exactly what we talk about every Tuesday here on the podcast. I'm Sophie, your guide on this journey, a tea enthusiast, marketing strategist, and specialist in demystifying the art of funnels, or as I love to call them, joyful journeys. My [00:01:00] mission? To guide you in building a marketing ecosystem that tirelessly supports your business, ensuring growth without the endless hustle. Join me every Tuesday for a dose from my lionhearted approach to marketing. We'll dive into practical strategies as well as have inspirational conversations that will support you to sustainable business growth and take your business to new heights with a calm confidence. Sophie: Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Lionhearted Marketing. So this week's episode is all about the warm audience trap. Now, this is something that I have mentioned before on here, I think fleetingly and also talked about on social media, but today I really want to go into it in more depth and talk to you about what it is, if you've never heard of it before, why most people, including me, have fallen into the trap. And then three ways that you can move out of it and avoid slipping back into it. Okay, so let's start with what exactly is the warm audience trap? For those of you that [00:02:00] have never heard of it, it's a term that I coined when I had a lot of clients coming to me saying that they'd built their businesses through social media or word of mouth and they had really good relationships. They'd built a really nice community with their audience. They felt really comfortable with them, they felt like they had a good dialogue, they got, you know, reasonable engagement on their social media, they sent out regular emails and got replies. And when I looked at their content, what I could see is they were talking to their audience and they knew they were warm. So they could say things like, you know, I'm going to be reopening my programming night next week and I'm so excited. And they'd get people replying being like, oh, that's so exciting because. They knew what Ignite was, they didn't have to explain like, Oh, it's my group program for these people and this is what it does. Or they'd send out emails every week and they'd kind of give, you know, personal updates, which were absolutely fine, but they'd say things like, you know, Oh, and then Eliza was off school for the day, expecting their audience to know who Eliza is and, you know, what part she is, [00:03:00] plays in their business or their life or whatever. So they were building really nice relationships and a lovely community. And they were creating content that resonated with their audience. , and something that's really key is that they knew that once people started working with them, they were going to, you know, love what they offer, they were going to get great results, and they would like rave about them. And that's how that word of mouth builds. But they almost had accepted that it's, oh, it takes people a really long time to buy from me. People have to be in my world quite a long time. They get to know my personality. They get to know me and consume a lot of my content. Sometimes clients came to me and saying like, you know, it's taking my people who come into my world, anything from like six months to two years to convert. And that's when you know that you're really relying on people getting to know your personality. And creating the time on their own kind of motivation. To read your content. Now, this really does create connection. And I think once people do buy from you, they're often then like lifelong fans. However, it [00:04:00] can be really hard to grow if that's the only way you are building your audience and getting new clients because it's really slow and it's hard to feel that momentum of like new people coming into your world and fresh eyes on your content and commenting when it's just the same people commenting on your polls, replying to your stories, clicking on your links in your email. So you might be wondering what exactly is the trap element of this. So I'm building a lovely community, people love my amazing sparkling personality and I'm getting clients once they get to know me and have built trust and connection. Well, the trap element comes in because you can get a really, really comfortable at using this shorthand with your audience and also kind of accepting of the fact that it's going to take a really long time for people to convert. I find people tend to do less sales type posts, like direct sales, because they get to know their audience. They start to feel like a little bit uncomfortable about it. They tend to assume things like, oh, you know, they'll buy from me when they're ready. Like, I'm not [00:05:00] going to try and push people into buying from me, you know, I have a great relationship with my audience. I know they'll come to me when they're ready. And that can be really, really tricky because often this is based on the fact that when you like launch a program or a new one to one offer, initially you can get a really great response when you have a lovely warm audience like this. Especially if you've been building your audience for, you know, quite a few years. You maybe then bring out a new service and you get like a flurry of people signing up and you can think, Oh my God, right. My messaging is clearly resonating this offer is exactly what people are looking for. And you feel like it's really validated and then maybe, especially if it's evergreen or even if you're doing launches, you then go out again, say a few months later and the results maybe aren't quite as good. I think, Oh, okay, that's weird. Maybe it's the time of year. Maybe it's the, you know, the fact that I didn't do maybe as many emails this time and you can sort of analyze what happens and think, okay, next time it'll be different. And then the next time you try and get people in, it's even harder. and this is often when people come to me and say, something's not right. [00:06:00] Like I just don't feel like I'm getting enough people interested in my offer. Often what has happened is the initial messaging and the initial offer isn't as strong as for people that haven't built up that feeling of trust over a really long period of time. So maybe you're getting new people into your world, like maybe using lead ads, or even just, you know, organically, and they haven't had that six months to two years to get to know you and warm up to you, so they're not buying from you yet. And you're starting to wonder, , you know, if my messaging's strong and my program's great, why aren't they buying? Because the other people that bought were doing so based on the fact that they knew you, they trusted you and even if your messaging wasn't really on point, they had enough trust in you to kind of jump him. I tend to find there's two camps. So either you're getting new people in, but you're talking to them like they should know what's going on. Like, join my free masterclass to celebrate the reopening of Ignite. I mean that, if I've just literally come into your world, I have no idea what Ignite is. That's not an overly compelling message for me. Like, I don't [00:07:00] really care that you're reopening Ignite. What are you actually going to teach me in the masterclass? Like tell me a bit more about who you are, what you offer, why, you know, what's in it for me to join this masterclass? I don't really care that you're, you know, your business is reopening Ignite. What's that going to do for me? The other camp is that you're not really focusing on getting new people. So you are just selling to the same people over and over and over again. And your audience becomes really saturated and stagnant because when people find you, like I've said, you're going to take a really long time for them to get to know you. Your messaging isn't designed to hook them in quickly and you're really relying on them getting to like you and earn that trust for them to buy rather than buying on the strength of your messaging and understanding how you can help them. , now before I go any further, if you're feeling a little bit called out by this, I would just say, most people have fallen into this trap, me included, at some point, it's a really, really easy trap to fall into, especially when you are juggling all the balls, maybe you're growing your business quite fast, and ultimately you've got so much on your plate. [00:08:00] You know, creating course content, , actually working with your clients, dealing with your life, you know, admin, finances, whatever it is. Often bringing new people into our world can be the thing, you know, audience growth that can really slip off the list. And actually it feels much easier to create content that feels safe, that feels comfortable to kind of an audience that, you know, doesn't feel scary. It doesn't, you know, you don't think you're going to get any like trolls on it or people, like the worst thing that's going to happen is that people aren't going to comment on it. It's not the end of the world. So that can be a really, really easy way to start falling into this. And ultimately most of us, or most of the clients that I work with, we want to build communities. Like we want to nurture our audience. We want to them to get to know that, you know, we're a mom and we have two kids and you know what our program is so that we can start to talk to them like that and what I'm not saying is that you cannot do any of that and you have to be really formal and you have to draw, really strong boundaries and you must only talk about business. That's not what I'm saying at all. But there has to be a balance and there has to be [00:09:00] some content and your messaging has to be strong enough to carry what you want to sell without people having to rely on getting to know you. So if this is resonating and you're thinking, yep, okay, I am probably falling into this warm audience trap at the moment, I really need to kickstart. My audience growth, and you know, more importantly, actually growing that warm audience, not just overall audience growth as well. I'm going to talk you through three ways to move out of that and set up systems, crucially, to avoid falling back into it. , now the three things I'm going to talk about, it's probably not a huge surprise that they're related to Facebook ads. And the reason why is because I personally don't believe that relying on willpower and determination to grow your audience is a long term scalable solution. You're human, and with the best will in the world, with the best team in the world, with the best systems in the world, if you leave your audience growth and ultimately your business growth, just in the hands of your own, you know, will, [00:10:00] determination, presence. There will be times when you want or need to step back. Okay. And that's okay. That is normal. And that's when tech needs to step in. That's where the consistency of something happening day in, day out, those little steps, that small pieces of momentum that are going to build your business. That's when tech can do that. And you don't have to. And the quicker you recognize this, the, the faster your business will grow. And there is an analogy which I've talked about before, where between walking and taking the car. So I love to walk. I, I walk every single day and often I will try and walk places instead of taking the car. However, there were some places that are too far, or sometimes I need to get somewhere too quickly to walk and that's really like ads, okay? Sometimes you have to get in the car. even if you'd rather walk and then if you decide not to get in the car and try and walk to get that place that's really far or to get somewhere really fast you can't then be [00:11:00] surprised when you get burnt out or exhausted because that is what's going to happen when the car is clearly the better way to get there. Facebook ads are that car when you want to get somewhere quickly and effectively without you having to do the doing all of the time. Okay, right. I'm going to get off my soapbox now and let's look at the three different ways that you can come out of the warm audience trap. So the first thing that I think is really, really important is this messaging element. So one thing that I do with my clients often is if they are wondering about their messaging or they're not really sure what's resonating with their audience, maybe they've pivoted and they're struggling to kind of work out what's resonating with their audience, or they know they're really deep into this warm audience trap. And, you know, even if they put new messaging out there, then they know their audience are going to respond. So it's not going to give them a clear direction. So my favorite quick and effective way to test your messaging is to do this with video view ads. Okay. So if you create three to five reels of [00:12:00] under two minutes, ideally under 60 seconds, and Each reel has to be specifically focused on like one thread of your messaging. So recently for one of my clients at the moment, she's a coach, we did five different reels and they were each focused on one specific topic. So one was about Why it's so important to choose your niche. Another one was about how just because you've got qualifications You know, you actually need clients as well Another one was about Why marketing is important. Another one was about , the one thing that you need to do to stand out amongst other coaches. So each one was like a different thread of her messaging. So we put all of these ads on, ran them for really small amount of money. So each ad just went on for one pound a day, and then we ran them all at the same time. So we gave out to a cold audience. So people have never, ever heard of her before. But we did, you know, tailor the audience. So ideally it should have been people who were interested in the kind of coaching that she does. And then what we did was we had to look at the results after three days. [00:13:00] So we looked at which videos got the most views, which videos held people's attention for the longest time And then what we can do from there is use that data to feed into her organic social media strategy, into her emails, into her podcast episodes. And also into the other ads that we're running as well, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. So this data can be incredibly powerful and you don't have to just run that once. So you could run it once, see what the data is, do some more reels, you know, expand on different points, try things from different angles and run it again. Periodically. I like to run it every couple of months for my own business. And it's so, so insightful. So that's one way to start testing your messaging on a cold audience without having to wait, for people to find you on social media. Okay. The second way. So once you've done this, you've got some insight into your messaging, looking at your lead ads. So lead ads are where you can go out to people with your lead magnet and they can join your email list. Now it's a brilliant, brilliant way of [00:14:00] growing your email list every single day without having to rely on you remembering to promote it or, you know, sending it out in an email. And the key to lead ads being successful isn't actually so much in the actual ads. It's much more about the lead magnet and the messaging. You need the right hook to get the right people in and repel the people that aren't your ideal clients. Now using the messaging data from the video views can be really, really powerful here to inform like what your lead magnet is going to be or what the title is going to be or what the hook is going to be. So for example, say you are a coach that works with florists and your best wheel was on choosing a niche and how florists find it really hard. To choose a niche. Your lead magnet could be then a step by step guide for florists to find their profitable niche. I mean you might want to come up with a better title than that, but that would be the essence of it because you know that all the videos you tested, the niche one was the one that really resonated with people. So use that data, like create that lead magnet. [00:15:00] You know that that's what your ideal clients are interested in and that's how , these ads can really start building on each other. And then the third way to come out of this warm audience trap is actually to use all this great content that you've already created for your audience. So yes, we want to get new people in. Okay. So we want to use video views to get new people watching our content. We want to use lead ads to get new people into our world. But ultimately we don't just want to grow our audience. We want to grow our warm audience. So we need to be actively warming people up as they come in. But now often what we do is someone joins your list, we hope that they read our emails, we hope that they come over to our Instagram, you know, in our emails we might say, come and, you know, come and find me on Instagram, I share loads of great tips and we try and get them over there. However, what we don't want to do is rely on them coming over to Instagram, scrolling through our feed, trying to work out which posts might be of interest to them, like which ones are relevant. What we want to do is put posts in front of them that [00:16:00] we know are going to give them the information that we want. So organically, we're going to start creating content that we know will resonate with people who have just found us quite strategically. And then we can use low cost ads to put those posts in front of them. So when someone joins your email list, we can then ask Facebook to start showing them or, you know, key posts that you've got on your social media. Or we can start sending them to blogs on your website. Or podcast episodes that you've done. There's loads of ways that we can get people seeing your content. And that really speeds up the process of someone getting to know you. And ensures that your warm audience is growing all the time and that it doesn't necessarily take people six months to two years to come into your world, get to know you, warm up and buy from you. You know, this process of video views, checking your messaging, lead ads, bringing new people in and then engagement ads, warming them up all the time. That is incredibly powerful and really reduces that speed of someone just finding you to [00:17:00] becoming a client. It's really, really powerful. So that is an overview of the warm audience trap, what you can do to work your way out of it. And this has been quite a short episode for me actually, but I feel like I've got right to the point and told you exactly what you need to do. I'd love to hear if this resonates with you, if you think you're in the warm audience trap and you're just not reaching new people. I find this is particularly tricky for people who run evergreen programs because you need to be enrolling people every single month. So there's that real pressure to always be growing that audience and trying to get people to convert. Like you don't have the luxury of waiting, you know, six months to two years for someone to convert. You need people to come in, get to know you and then start to be ready to buy. So if you know that you are just not growing your audience in that way, but you really, really need to, and it's a priority for you in 2024, they'll have something very exciting for you. So I have got a brand new self paced ads course. [00:18:00] It is my tried and tested system I use for myself and for my clients and it helps you set up everything I've talked about today and more as well. It's not currently available. It is going to be available in the new year. However, I am doing some pre sales. I will be offering some incredible Black Friday offers. So make sure if you are interested in getting some help setting up this kind of system that you sign up to the priority list in the show notes. Now, if you're not ready for this kind of system and you think, well, you know, I hear you, Sophie, I hear that this is really powerful. I'm just not in a place where I'm ready for multiple campaigns and retargeting and, and all that complexity. But you do want to run ads to grow your audience. So grow your email list and, and your social media, the audience builder course is going to be perfect for you. Again, this course is going to be released in January, but I do have a limited number of spaces that are going to be available. For just 48 hours at a very special pre sale rate of [00:19:00] 97 on Thursday, the 16th and Friday, the 17th of November. And it's only going to be available to my email list. So again, get yourself on the priority list if you want to grab one of those spots while you can. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning in with me today. Before you dash off, I have a small but mighty favor to ask. If you could hit the subscribe button, you'll get new episodes delivered straight to you every Tuesday morning. And if this episode struck a chord with you, I'd be over the moon if you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review. Your words not only brighten my day, but they're the magic that helps the others discover our Lionhearted community. Again, thank you so much for spending your time with me, Sophie, here at Lionhearted Marketing. See you next week! Okay.