I had lunch with a past client.  I remember him telling me that after my work with his organization a few years ago, his audiences were blooming!  I was very excited to hear these results.  However, I was updated with the news that the current structure in the organization has abandoned those plans, and now they are losing audiences.

This also happened to another client of mine.  The work of audience development was put aside for the easier, typical marketing route, and he lost over half of his audiences.  The good news is this client went back to his audience development plan, and now he is selling out the events again.

It reminds me of the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. The Tin Man had a heart all along without knowing it. During the process of finding his heart (akin to finding your audiences), he had a lot of work to do during his long journey, constantly having to oil his joints so they didn’t rust out. If he rusted out, he would not have the momentum to find his heart.

If organizations discover that they can have a happy and loyal audience by working with their existing bases of support, and they do the work to build momentum for more audiences, they will find their way to an increase of happy and loyal audiences.  If they do not continue to apply this oil (the work), they will rust out.

Audience development takes work. Some sight capacity issues for not continuing, and I would say to these folks that they have substituted this work with other work and money mongering platforms that do not supply results.  It is a matter of reevaluating what you are doing, getting rid of the money mongers and time suckers that do not produce results, and using this freed up capacity for what does provide bigger and better audiences.  It is also a matter of team building, which takes time at first, but with the momentum in place, it will become a well oiled machine in the near future.

I have built audiences for a variety of organizations and artists.  I know that what I practice and preach works.  I also know that, like the Tin Man, audience development constantly needs to be oiled in order to continue to work.  Taking the easy way out doesn’t work. We can get out of our old rusty mentalities and instead apply our resources toward methods, like audience development, that do work.  It is a choice.

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, ADS