Last week we had a look at the Scott Aussie Profit Power Up Calculator. If you remember, we were looking at how, if you’re looking to try and achieve a big difference in your business—maybe doubling your profits—you can focus on something that’s big, saying, “I’m gonna double my sales,” but that’s not all that easy.
In fact, in a lot of ways it’s probably rather unachievable. But, if you were to break it down and look at a number of different areas in your business and aim for a small, say, 5 or 10% increase in each of those, the combined result—when you take all those tiny little improvements together—is that big difference that you were looking for.
So, if you haven’t had a look at last week’s video, I suggest you go back and have a look at that. Have a little play with the Scott Aussie Profit Power Up calculator that we’ve put on the website. Just as a bit of a reminder, the way we’ve set it up, it’s all secure, it’s all private. None of those details that you plug in are recorded or come to us. The only person who sees them is you.
So it’s a great little tool to have a play with and see how these little incremental differences in your business can make a huge difference to your bottom line. Last week we promised that the first element we’d be targeting was your audience reach. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about this week, and let’s dive straight in.
Why Audience Reach Matters
Why are we starting with audience reach, essentially? Because that’s the foundation that everything else is built upon. How many people know about your business in some way? That’s the reason we’re starting here because it is the foundation that everything else is built upon. It’s one thing to say that we’re gonna increase this audience reach by 10%, but a much better way—or a much more important thing to focus on—is ensuring that when you increase it by 10% or by whatever percent you’re aiming for, you increase it by the right percentage, the right people, because increasing your audience size with people that may never buy or will never buy from you is a waste of time.
Years and years ago, when Facebook was in its infancy, a lot of brands spent a lot of money trying to build their audience. Some people came up with this great idea of buying followers, which made the brand look good. This brand had 100,000 or a million people following it. But if you actually looked at who those people were, they were quite often fake profiles or people from other parts of the world. If you’re, I dunno, a restaurant or whatnot in Western Australia, the fact that you’ve got 100,000 followers in India or Bangladesh or China or anywhere—it doesn’t really achieve much.
So that’s what we’re focusing on—increasing your audience size with people that will actually be of relevance to you.
The Importance of Your Ideal Customer Profile
The best way to get a handle on that is by focusing on your ideal customer profiles. This is something we’ve looked at plenty of times before. At Scott Aussie, there’s plenty of stuff on our website and on the blog post articles about how to build your ideal customer profile if you haven’t already.
So we’re not gonna dive into it too deeply, but with everything we’re talking about, your ideal customer profile is the starting point. If you haven’t built your ideal customer profile out yet, then have a look at some of those other resources on the website. As always, if you’re looking for assistance with any of this stuff, that’s what we’re here for.
Let’s assume you know who your ideal customer is, what makes them tick, and how to speak to them.
Boosting Audience Reach Online: Website & SEO
The first place we’re gonna look is your website. Your website is a project that’s never really completely finished. There’s always something more that can be tested and improved.
So, let’s dive in and start having a look at your website. Look at your SEO efforts. Again, this is another element that is never 100% finished. It’s a continual process—having a look at the keywords you’re appearing for in the search rankings.
There’s a lot of talk at the moment in the industry about how SEO may be going the way of the dinosaur because of AI, and how Google now isn’t sending a lot of traffic through to individual websites because it’s answering the questions in that search box or on that front page AI summaries. But here’s the thing: that information still has to come from somewhere, and that’s why SEO is just as important now as it’s ever been.
Have a look at the process you’re going through on your website. Have a look at the keywords that you’re appearing for, and have a look at some of those ones that perhaps you are appearing for, but you’re a little bit further down the line. What work can we do to get that boost up so that you’re either appearing on that first page or even better—so that your content starts appearing in those AI generated summaries? Because if that doesn’t get you a 10% increase in your audience reach, then I don’t think anything will.
Boosting Audience Reach Online: Social Media
Let’s move on ’cause that’s not the only option. On your social media, have a look at what’s working. Have a look at what others are doing that’s getting some traction and try and emulate it. By emulate, I certainly do not mean copy. Everyone can tell when you’re just copying somebody else. That’s not really sharing your brand, it’s not sharing your voice, and it’s probably not gonna appeal to your ideal customer profile.
But have a look at what’s working. Have a look at the trends, and one of the big keys I always suggest is have a look at trends that are working outside of your industry. If your social media feed just looks like every other restaurant or every other accommodation provider, then you’re just one of a hundred people doing the exact same thing. Have a look and follow Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is.
Have a look at social media profiles for businesses that are doing well outside of your industry. Maybe it’s an accountant that’s sharing some accountancy tips, or a mechanic that’s sharing information about what it’s like to run a mechanics workshop. Have a look at what they’re doing outside of your industry and see how you can add your own spin onto it. Let’s see if we can boost that social media profile or those social media views by that 10%.
It’s important: don’t spread yourself too thin. You’re better off focusing on one or two social media platforms and doing it well than trying to be everywhere and making a bit of a mess of it.
Boosting Audience Reach Online: Paid Advertising
Paid advertising. This is a quick way to get some quick wins if you’re looking to try and boost your audience reach by that 10%. But it’s also, when it’s not done right, a really easy way to blow your budget.
So the important thing is to test and measure everything. Let’s use Facebook or Google Ads as the example. Instead of just designing an ad that you think looks great and will appeal to your audience, split your budget across a number of different ads and make them all just slightly differently.
On a regular basis, see which ones are performing well. Test different offers, different images, different colors. Test the wording. The way to do this is, let’s say you’ve got three different ads. Each one of them has the exact same offer, the exact same wording, but the picture is different on each one. If one of them gets much better results than the other two, then stick with that picture and now do three different versions of the ad again, this time changing the offer or some other element. Each time you go through, keep the one that’s working well, and with each iteration, you should see much better results.
Boosting Audience Reach Online: Email Marketing
The same thing goes with your email marketing. It’s the exact same principle and the exact same methodology. If you’ve got a big enough list—and you do need a reasonable size list to be able to make this work and get any sort of statistically relevant results—before sending out your email newsletter or your promotion or whatever it is to your entire list, pick a small segment of it and send them two slightly different versions. The one that gets a higher open rate or more clickthroughs and that type of thing, that’s the one that you then send out to the whole list.
So that is really just a very quick recap of some of the different things you can be doing online to boost your online presence or your online audience by that magic 10% that we’re chasing.
Boosting Audience Reach Offline: Local Connections
What about offline? Have a look at your local partnerships. If you’re in tourism and hospitality and you’re not already working with your local visitor centres or your regional tourism organisations, you absolutely should be. Are there other businesses that you can be reaching out to that offer complementary services that you could partner up with so that you’re sending business their way and they’re sending business yours?
Especially if you’re in regional areas where you have a strong community feel, it does make a big difference to be involved in the local community with things like local sporting teams and sponsorship and that type of thing. You may be wondering how on earth will sponsoring the local football team increase my awareness with people from outside of town? It might not until they arrive in town. If they arrive in town and they can see your logo up on the local sporting field sponsors board, or they see kids in town with your logo on the back of their shirt, et cetera, because you’re involved, then it sounds a little corny. It’s a little bit old-fashioned, but that’s the kinda stuff that goes a long way.
In a world when everyone is so focused on online, digital, and social media, it’s these types of things that can really make a huge difference.
Combining Online and Offline Efforts
The area—or when it makes the biggest difference in my opinion—is when you can combine these online and offline ideas together. Things like in your print advertising, including QR codes that link to interactive elements on your website. Maybe it’s a video tour of the premises or your most up-to-date menu.
Augmented reality is a fantastic thing that’s really still in its infancy, and a lot of people aren’t doing much with it, but it is not that hard to get involved and it makes a big difference. As always, with different tracking links, putting different URLs onto different brochures so that you can keep track of what’s working and what isn’t.
Measure Your Success & Set Goals
Before you go down the path of any of this stuff, have a look at your current reach numbers and have a look at where the easiest 10% gains are gonna be. It’s important to make sure that you keep track of where you’re starting from so that you can measure that level of success. Make sure you set these clear goals for what you’re gonna achieve over the next couple of months.
As always, if you need any support, that’s what Scott Aussie is here for.
Next Week: Increasing Engagement
Next week, we’re going to look at how to increase your engagement level. Once you’ve increased that audience size, how do we get them to engage with your business in some way a little bit more, whether that’s downloading your menu, making an inquiry, and that type of thing? So stay tuned for next week, and we’ll see you then.
