Growing your audience these days can be quite tough. Gone are the golden days of popping up a project, event, business or idea and people joining in their droves. An event for South Coast Arts in beautiful Huskisson reminded me of that.
But you can take some of the guess work out with a few simple tips. And you can keep making progress if you focus your efforts well.
Here’s what to keep in mind with audience building in 2025
Make audience research a mainstay
Photo by Tijs van Leur on Unsplash
Don’t wait for the trend to become popular- ask your audience what they want. A simple chatbot-based survey of 5 questions can get you insights into social media appetite, marketing likes and dislikes, and where your audience wants to meet.
Listen to people who buy, attend, and recommend what you do
We all know everyone has an opinion about great ideas. But only the people who show up with money, resources, or their friends are valuable. Examples of listening to the right people include:
- A small survey of people in the room via a QR code over a big blanket survey shared on all channels online
- A pre-event sign-up form with three questions requesting an email address over a Facebook event Interested/Going registration
- Asking six supportive customers or friends what they want from you via instant message or in a WhatsApp group over asking everyone with an opinion for ideas on social media
Think community conversation over broadcast platform
Treat your audience building as though you are building a group of committed individuals unified by the love of whatever you are creating, selling, and offering. Make conversation, connection, and reasons to engage an experience. Treat your platforms like a regular drop-in centre. Go for content that sparks feelings of belonging, anticipation, and connectivity.
Play to your strengths online
If you are writer, check out Substack. If you’re visual, check out Cara or Bluethumb. If you’re a strategist, LinkedIn or Substack might be your jam. Don’t feel tied to places like Instagram, Facebook or X simply because that’s where the critical mass is. Meta only shows 6% of your actual newsfeed these days, making audience building difficult.
Make safety a guiding principle
Help people feel safe physically, culturally, intellectually, psychologically, and socially. Make that safety possible by knowing your audience, being flexible in what you do, and putting your audience at the centre of your event, space, and agenda design.
Attend events regularly
After years of hardship, hospitality and the arts are really leading the way in how to run nimble, impactful, and successful events. The weirder and smaller, the better! Learn from them.
And challenge yourself to attend online audience events, activities, and groups you wouldn’t otherwise attend. Have lunch with a free online event.
Make a conscious choice to learn by being the audience on a regular basis.
Treat everything like an experiment
Try a bunch of four-to-six-week campaigns with low financial outlay with a key focus on testing a single audience hypothesis. Learn from what you find out and then scale. Don’t build big swings until you know what is practical, functional, and has an audience.
And forget long lead times. People are way too cautious about changeable conditions like weather, financial situations, and their own mood to plan too far ahead. PS: Read Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. It is amazing.
Collaborate with other businesses
Identify places and spaces, allies and businesses where sharing audiences will strengthen you both. People are less concerned with where is this happening? and more interested in what’s in it for me?
Don’t be afraid to put on a gig in an MMA gym or a book-appreciation event in a brewery.
Tend to your audience like it is a garden
Weed out people who try to strangle optimism and enthusiasm with rigidity and an air of superiority. Plant reasons to get together between major events and content drops. Water in between big shows with encouragement and conversation. Seed ownership with your ideas through curated collaboration.
Solve the audience problem
If you’re audience building from scratch, solve the pointy end of the audience triangle first. For example, in a physical venue, design to make it disability accessible and you’ll create a space that suits access needs 99% of people.
In an online community, if you actively protect marginalised voices, it makes it safer for everyone.
And if you’re tempted to say, “those people never come to my events anyway!”, of course they’re not! It isn’t up to your audience to beg for access. Do your homework.
Realise community building is give and take
A lot of people confuse audiences and their communities for a sales funnel. It’s not. What you’re building is a place where people share values through ideas and experiences.
If you know what they value (a chance to explore the world through food, places to feel accepted and safe, opportunities to expand their knowledge, to see themselves reflected in others, ways to explore their curiosity, etc.), you’re on the right track.
Be aware of trends, not suckered by them
Be smart enough to stay up to date with technology and trends but discerning enough not to approach it with a paint-by-numbers mentality.
DM me HOT TAKE style comments may boost on an algorithm, but it also sends unintended messages about who you are and how you sell (spoiler alert: BLERGH).
Be careful how close to the popular audience building trends you fly and always ask “does this suit my brand?” before engaging in techniques.
Aim for diversity
If your entire audience looks like you, you’re not creating something sustainable.
Silo audiences rarely attract enough critical mass to make them viable in the long term. Always look at the diversity of your audience as a clue to how in touch your idea is, even if it’s meant for a niche.
If there are no new faces and/or the faces are all the same gender, age, colour, sexuality, disability profile, socio-economic background, etc, you may be in stagnation territory.
Make self-care a priority
Giving energy to an audience, especially during growth phases, requires a huge focus and a lot of work. Ensuring you have good boundaries, a proper self-care plan, and someone to check in and make sure you’re accountable to your self-care processes is essential. For tips, check out the self-care section.
Want a hand with your audience building?
I can produce a strategy to help you give your ideas legs and keep your audience happy, healthy, and growing in the right direction.