“If you build it, they will come.” Or, in this case, provide great content and they will consume it. But what if they don’t? With content marketing, most of the focus is on providing relevant content on a consistent basis. The assumption being that your customers will be there to take it all in. What if you’ve got the content, but no one to check it out? Luckily, Jeff Rohrs has the answer to that side of the equation with his book, Audience – Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans & Followers.
While with Exact Target, Rohrs co-created the Subscribers, Fans & Followers research series. But, rather than compiling this research into book form, he focuses on how to create the “proprietary audience development” (PAD). This is “the comprehensive, collaborative, and cross-channel effort to build audiences that your company alone can access.” Because consumers receive messages every second, we have to earn their attention, action and loyalty. Because of this, PAD is now a core marketing responsibility.
Your company needs to view your proprietary audience as a valuable business asset. Because of this, your marketing efforts should include what he calls “The Audience Imperative”. This means using your paid, owned and earned media in two ways. It needs to sell in the short term. But it also needs to increase the size, engagement and value of your proprietary audiences over the long term. Rohrs gives many examples of brands that have had success going through the steps to do this.
There are many different audience channels you can build into your strategy. Rohrs shows you the steps to build, engage and value your audiences. Yes, there’s some math in determining the value, but he walks you through that as well. As a result of his ability to explain his processes, Audience is a reference book you will come back to often.
This is one of the most useful books I’ve read and I will be implementing many of his steps at my own job. Audience pairs well as a perfect companion with Joe Pulizzi’s Epic Content Marketing. It is the opposite side of the same coin, as Rohrs calls it. You need great content to develop your audience AND a proprietary audience to consume it. I recommend both for clear steps to create a complete marketing plan.
If you’ve read this book, I’d love to hear your views. Even if you haven’t, I’d love to hear your thoughts on audience development. Thanks for reading.