When it comes to building your audience as a creative entrepreneur, it can be a rather overwhelming task. I don’t know about you, but I personally would rather spend my days creating rather than doing customer service, and social marketing. Even my favourite email marketing tasks can seem like chores on the days when I’d rather not talk to anyone.

But here’s the thing…

I think we’ve all been taught you have to build a list and build an audience by getting hundreds or thousands of people on your list all at once. That we need to be involved in as many giveaways and bundle sales and summits as we can. And I’m not saying that’s wrong if that’s what appeals to you.

What I am saying is that if you can focus on building your audience one person at a time, it not only becomes much less overwhelming, it can also set you up for lifelong success. Because the bottom line is this…

You don’t build relationships in a huge mass effort. You build relationships one person at a time, and your audience – those people who are going to follow you and open your emails and listen to what you have to say – is made up of those people you have a relationship with.

Here are 8 reasons for building your audience one person at a time:

Reason #1 – It makes it easier to identify your niche

When you’re focused on one person, then doing the research that helps you find them is much easier. If you can narrow down your target market to that one person you really want to reach, you’ll find them much more quickly and easily than if you were looking for everyone in your broad niche.

Here’s a broad example of what I mean:

On this site, I blog about being a creative soulpreneur. I could have just said I was creating content for creative entrepreneurs, but that’s a pretty wide umbrella to put a whole lot of people under. And if I tried to build an audience with such a general term, I’d probably have a pretty high turnover because not everyone who is a creative entrepreneur is going to identify with my self-styled label as a creative soulpreneur.

So, even just narrowing it down that much gets me closer to that one person that identifies with what my philosophy around being a creative entrepreneur is.

Reason #2 – It makes it easier to create content that resonates with your audience

When you know exactly who you’re creating messages for it’s much easier to create content that resonates with them.

For example, if you are creating a sales page for a creative woman over 50 that listens to her heart, and is trying to start a creative online business, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what she is looking for. You can craft your content to speak directly to her, and if you do it well, she should feel like you are talking directly to her.  

Reason #3 – It increases your own productivity and creativity

Building your audience one person at a time also makes it easier for you to figure out what products and services to offer. Knowing exactly who you want to create for becomes all about making sure to give them what they need based on their problems and the solutions you can come up with for them.

And when the audience you’re building is aligned with your own purpose and values, it gets real easy because you essentially create the products that you know YOU need to move forward. If you need something to move forward in your business or life, chances are it’s also something that your audience is also going to need.  

Reason #4 – You get to focus on people who are ready for what you offer

When you build an audience one by one, you’re essentially creating a community of buyers. Since you know who you are serving and what their needs are, you don’t have to convince them,  or trick them, or lure them with false promises or even emotional words to convince them. They see the truth in your words and see the value of your products or services automatically because you’ve created it with them in mind.

Reason #5 – You build a community that aligns with your own soul

I’m sure you’ve seen this in your travels online. Or even in your outside life. People who are so good at communicating with their audience that their followers would seem to do anything for them. I’m not saying become a cult leader or anything, but you do want to create a community that aligns with your own soul purpose and values where you can make a difference in their lives. (And in return, they really do make a difference in yours too!)

Reason #6 – It makes it easier to provide excellent customer service.

Providing customer service is where creating your audience one person at a time really pays off. This is where building relationships with your customers and really getting to know them brings a ton of benefits for both you and your customers.  Excellent customer service should make your customers feel important and cared about, and by taking the time to build those relationships you can give them the service they need and deserve.

Reason #7 – It helps save on the marketing budget

When you’re building your audience one person at a time, you know exactly who you’re trying to reach. And that means if you have done your research, you also know exactly where they are so you know where to put your marketing budget to get the most bang for your bucks.

Reason #8 – It’s a quicker path to success.

When you remember that the alternative to building your audience this way is the “throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks” method, you’ll find that this is definitely the faster path to success. You’ve taken the time to get to know who you want to serve and where to find them, and you know what they’re looking for and how to communicate with them. That makes it so much easier to get positive results, than trying to weed through the general masses to find your people.

Final Thoughts

I hope from this you can see how targeting one person makes everything simpler and more importantly, more effective. Building your audience one person at a time makes sure you are paying attention to the right people and putting yourself in the right places for them to find you.