The 3 Pillars of Building an Audience as a Writer

There are three primary categories to build a community around your writing.

Marketers use the language of “funnel” to represent how to get people from unaware of your existence to becoming a paying customer. The top of the funnel is wide, allowing many people to enter. The bottom is narrower and more focused. When you cast your net wide, statistically only a small number of people will follow you. But that's okay. You don't want to appeal to everyone. You want to appeal to the right people.

The customer journey from A (“Who are you?”) to C (“I like you.”) only happens if you have a compelling B. B is your funnel. A funnel is any mechanism you are using to get people who have never heard of you to become a customer, a fan, a supporter, or a subscriber.

There are loads and loads of methods to get someone from A to C, but I believe all those varied methods can be grouped into just three categories, just three pillars that can support your entire marketing strategy. Even better, they all start with B. So, to shepherd an audience that keeps reading and purchasing your books, you can Borrow, Build, or Buy.

Borrow

The Borrow strategy to grow an audience means you "borrow" someone else's audience. Someone else has done the audience building, so you just pop in and reap the benefits of someone else's labor.

Of course, it's not as easy as casually strolling in. You generally have to earn the privilege of speaking to other people's platforms. To earn the spot, you may need to build relationships with key figures in your industry. You might need to shine as an outstanding member of that community before they give you the stage. You probably need to have some kind of compelling story or expertise before you can borrow their audience.

Borrowing an audience can look like posting in a niche Facebook group, being a guest on someone's podcast, guest posting on a blog, having an Instagram Live chat with a celebrity in your niche, or doing a "social media takeover" for someone's account. Find someone who has the audience and see how you can partner with them to "borrow" and benefit their followers.

But how do you get in front of someone else's audience?

A few years ago I was able to share the topic of my most recent book on The Overthinkers podcast. This was the first time I was approached to be on a podcast without having to ask first! Why did they reach out to me? Because I had been an avid fan of the show almost since its beginning and had shared the episodes and rated the podcast. They got to know me because I was a raging fan, so when they wanted to discuss Christian identity they called me up since I wrote a book on the subject. Borrowing other people’s audiences often requires relationship building.

A few warnings: Play nice with the leaders of these communities—if you break the rules of the community, you might get the boot. Also, don't put all your eggs in this basket. A borrowed audience is one you don’t “own,” so it can be taken away from you at any time. Therefore, for the safety of your brand, be sure to funnel the borrowed audience to a platform you own, probably an email list.

Build

Instead of borrowing someone else’s platform, you could just build your own. Build something that interests people, that gets them into your sphere of influence.

For this article, building a “platform” to reach a new audience does not refer to personal websites, author pages, etc.—not the types of home bases where they list your info and books. Those platforms assume people already know you. A platform you build should instead have some clear value exchange that interests new audiences and it should be something people are looking for.

To employ this strategy, pick a niche, give value, and promote your new platform. Remember, be topic-centric, not YOU-centric. By being the perceived expert or community leader, they’ll get to know you, but sorry to say, you yourself aren’t going to get found on search engines unless you already have an audience. Start first with a topic people are already curious about.

Platforms you build could be podcasts, blogs, newspapers/magazines, Facebook groups, or niche websites. Dominate your topic and be seen as THE expert—then people will flock your way. Create the industry hub, the go-to source, or the fun hang-out that will draw people into your projects.

I’ve recently started a newsletter for parents and teachers who want to raise amazing kids where I tell true stories of amazing kids, then pitch my books and other kids fiction books that deal with these themes. I don’t hide that I’m an author, but the focus is primarily about parents and teachers and the kinds of kids they want to raise.

The difficulty in building a platform yourself is that it can take a lot of energy, time, money, and luck. Something like starting a podcast or a blog is relatively easy, but getting it big enough to reach people, build your brand, and become the expert in your field is a real challenge. Building a major niche platform is not for the faint of heart.

You might consider collaborating with other authors to build something together so not all the work is on you—and more people can get exposure for their work.

Buy

In general, spending money saves you time and effort, often leading to better quality. Buying your audience is a shortcut to audience building and can be combined with the previous two methods, as you can purchase access to someone’s audience or buy eyeballs for your own platform. Of course, I'm not suggesting you buy followers or site visitors (that’s unethical), but that you pay for platforms to send you real people.

The most common way to “buy” an audience is to pay for ads. You can run ads directly to your book, your website, or to a free offer—anything to capture people’s attention and get them into your sphere of influence. Make your ads attractive and interesting, but also clear on what action the person needs to take.

While you might be hesitant to pay for advertisements, you need to understand that in the modern age, advertisements are expertly targeted to the exact kind of people you want to reach. Borrowing and building both require a bit of luck that the right people will get their eyeballs on your platform. But with advertising, you can narrow down to the right type of eyeballs with scary accuracy.

In one Facebook ad campaign I did, I targeted Christian fiction writers for a free online summit. I set my ads to show up to Christians who were interested in writing and self-publishing, plus were interested in a select few Christian fiction writers, and then further narrowed it to people who were between the ages of 25 and 40. And after I saw the ads did better with females and a click by a female cost me less money, I changed the ads to only show to females. Ads on social media are pretty much the only place in the world where you can so narrowly select exactly who you want to talk to.

[Be aware though that with privacy concerns on the rise, laws are going into effect that make advertising on many platforms less accurate]

When I first started ads, I was scared to waste money. But then my business coach told me to do the math. Think of it this way: If I have a product that is $50 and I spent $30 on ads that are shown to 1,000 people, then all I have to do is get one person to buy my product to make back the money, but chances are more than one will click and buy (if my ad copy is good). But even when I am advertising a free event, I can collect emails. If I can build a relationship with someone via an email newsletter, I can sell to them again and again, so they are worth way more.

This leads me to a word of advice: sending ads to individual books might not be worth it because books are relatively cheap, unlike the product in the example above. It might make more financial sense to send someone to a freebie to get them on your list because although you’ll lose money in the short term, you can make more money off of one person over time as you produce more books.

(Personally, I want to publish a whole series before I run ads to it—more bang for my buck!)

But don’t let initial costs scare you. If a person on my email list or in my sphere of influence buys hundreds of dollars' worth of books and products from me over their whole lifetime, then an acquisition cost of a few bucks is a steal. While making an ad to one book that’s $9.99 might be pretty expensive, making an ad to a platform where you can capture their information can pay off super well in the future. Ads are great ways to get people into your audience while saving you time and hustle.

Which Method is Right for You?

I recommend dabbling in all three—Borrow, Build, or Buy—to gather an audience around you and your work. At the very least, have a home base like a website so you have some property that you own, as borrowing and buying require you to use someone else's platform, and you should never put everything you have into something that you don’t have full control over.

But there are certainly reasons to choose some strategies over others. It really comes down to what you have a lot of and what you don’t have a lot of. If you have lots of connections and impressive enough credentials, borrowing is a great strategy. If you have lots of time and personal drive, then building a powerful platform is the way to go. If you have lots of money, then go the ad-buying route. As I often preach to creatives, you have to choose between using up your time or using up your money; money speeds things up, but time is free.

The Borrow, Build, Buy model is a solid way to think about your audience-building strategy. Somehow, you need to capture people's attention and funnel them down into your sphere of influence where they will become buyers. But that top of the funnel can be tricky to get started. Adopting either a Borrow, Build, or Buy method (or a combination) can help you organize your next steps in your creative career.

What strategy (Borrow, Build, or Buy) are you going to try first?