Does it feel like everybody tries to market to beginners? This is something I hear over and over again. Especially with my podcast, I really try to avoid those super beginner basic concepts. However, I do know WHY most people market to beginners, and I’m going to dive into that in this episode so that you can decide for yourself if this should be part of your own marketing strategy.
I have to be honest, I was interviewing on someone else’s podcast and I kind of blurted out something like, “Yes, my podcast is a business and marketing podcast but it’s not really for the masses.” I really do create content for MY people and my people are tired of having beginner-level conversations. Anytime I invite a guest on to talk to you, I’m always like, “Listen, the people listening, they know their shit, okay? They are going to stop the episode and turn it off if it’s too basic”
But that said, I do know WHY people market to beginners, so let’s get into it.
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Table of Contents
Okay. I’m going to start by saying I’m definitely leaning into my more confident era lately, which feels so good. My birthday just passed, and I turned 33, so let me just say this: my thirties have just gotten consistently better for me. I literally love it. Not to say I’m fully confident or done learning, but it just feels like a really good spot to be in, which is why I want to talk about today’s episode. Because what I’m doing with this podcast sometimes goes against traditional advice.
I really, really try not to create a bunch of beginner content. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with creating beginner content. In this episode, I’m actually going to tell you two reasons why I think people do it and why I think it’s actually smart depending on your business model.
1. There are MORE Beginners (always)
First, and this is the biggest reason I think, is that there are more of them.
So I was actually having a conversation with a client I feel like maybe a month or two ago, and we were talking about blog topics and I mentioned to them that one of the things about targeting more advanced people in your niche is that there is less and less of them.
So when you look at targeting more people, and building a scalable business, sometimes it can make a lot of sense to target beginners. In fact, I pulled up my calculator for this sometimes 193x more.
Let me explain where I got these numbers. So imagine I want to create a podcast course. This is a hypothetical example, but “start a podcast” is searched in Google 27,100x every month. In contrast, “grow a podcast”, is searched 140x and “scale a podcast” is searched even less and just 20x.
What this means, is that if I was trying to get in front of as many people as I could to sell my course, it would make sense to have some of that beginner content. I could create content on things like what podcast equipment to buy, or how to get my podcast on Spotify.
Structure Your Nurture Process Based On The Price Of Your Offer
Those kinds of things are higher volume searches. And so if I’m selling something low ticket and not even that low ticket, honestly, even if I was selling $500 course, a thousand dollars course, $3,000 mentorship or whatever it is, doesn’t matter. Depending on the price of your offer, you then need to decide how long the nurturing process is going to be when you market to beginners.
Using my hypothetical example, do I think somebody searching “how to start a podcast” is going to then buy my $3,000 mentorship? No, probably not. But somebody who’s looking to start a podcast and then downloads my podcast freebie, and then is on my email list for three months and is following me on Instagram might (especially if they already have a business that’s making a decent amount of money).
2. It’s Easier to Impress Beginners
This is the second reason that I think it makes a lot of sense to target beginners at this stage of my business. It takes a lot to impress me at this point (not in a bad or snobby way, but because I’m coming into your offer or content with a base level of knowledge already). There’s a good chance everytime I listen to a podcast I’m going to know 80-90% of the information already, and that’s okay. That 10-20% can still make a big difference.
I’m going to give you an example of how the little tweaks make a difference. Right now, I am in a program and they were doing live Instagram audits, and I almost didn’t even go with the call because you guys know that my Instagram is not the primary place where I get my leads. It’s not that important to me to be honest. And when I look at my own Instagram from a marketing perspective, I have a thousand things that I know I could be doing differently better if I wanted to turn Instagram into my moneymaking platform.
I feel like I have a pretty good understanding on what I would do. So anyway, that’s why I almost didn’t go. And so then it was time for my audit and I was like, “yeah, I do a lot of collab posts. I know that that messes up my feed. I’m not surprised by that.” I don’t care.
For me, collaborating with other people when people invite me on their podcast, I’m always going to say yes to a collab. It’s more aligned with my values than a perfect feed, to be honest. And since I don’t post very much, it doesn’t necessarily feel like one collab post every once in a while. If you look at the last 12 posts, it’s like 50% of my feed is not a post by me.
So in this audit, she said a couple of things I was expecting like “create pinned posts” and “redo my highlights.” I feel like that’s pretty standard. But then the thing that was actually the most helpful to me was the fact that she was like, “for your podcast guests, your templates are consistent to your brand, but because you don’t post that much and because it’s sometimes in between other collab posts, you should just use one template and that should just be your template for lots of people.”
I think I had about 7-10 Instagram templates that I use, and she said, “yeah, if you were posting regularly and it was just your content on the feed, 7-10 templates would probably be great, but since it’s not, you need to dial it down so that it’s just very obvious when someone lands on your profile which content is yours and which content.
That BLEW my mind. Such an easy tweak but totally can see how that would make a big difference in how easy it is to scan my feed and hopefully convert more profile visits to followers.
My point here is: when you’re marketing to beginners, you can tell them things like market to your ideal client or create an email list lead magnet and an automated nurture funnel and it all feels brand new and exciting and very interesting.
If you market to beginners, they will also be very loyal to you as their business grows
If you’re thinking about making this part of your strategy, let me give you an example. Shannon at Social Bungalow always stands out to me. If you guys don’t know her, she’s amazing. Right now, she’s really focusing on helping people build group programs, and that’s not a direction I want to take, but if it was, I wouldn’t be looking anywhere else. I would just be hiring her.
At this point, I have bought every one of her programs. But it started with brand new baby Kara buying Bingeworthy Bundle which is a course about caption writing. And it was incredible, so I naturally went on to buy Five Figure Instagram, and then I bought Live Launch Academy, and then I bought the Evergreen one. Anyway, on and on and on it goes. She impressed me with the easier/more beginner content, and I’ve continued to be very loyal to her every since.
Should you market to beginners if that’s not who you “sell” to?
Maybe you’re listening to this and you’re like, “okay, Kara, but I have a higher ticket program that I’m selling, or a service that’s more expensive and not necessarily for beginners.”
For that I would say, being intentional and trying to create beginner content to get people into your world is not necessarily a bad idea because yeah, it might take three months, six months, a year for them to get to the point of hiring you, but when they’re at that point, you’re probably going to be their choice.
BUT, with that said, I obviously don’t create a lot of beginner content because to be honest, I don’t really want to. I’m fine with this business and marketing podcast not being “for the masses.” And certainly, I wish I had a billion fans tuning in every single week, while at the same time, I don’t want to dilute my podcast.
Right now, I try to talk about things like scaling a business, and marketing a business in a way that feels a little more advanced than what other people are talking about. But at the same time, you’re not hearing it from someone who is a thousand steps ahead of you. It’s like, “here’s how I’m scaling my business, what’s going well for me, what I’m learning about, come on this journey with me” versus “I already have a perfectly scaled business, and I’m just going back in time and telling you how I would do it.”
I think I mentioned this in the teaser intro part already, but I literally tell every single guest, “my people will turn off an episode if it’s too basic. We are not interested in that. Most of the listeners are women owned, not all, most are service based, but some have started to diversify the way that they bring in income, and most have been in business for over three years.” Those are the kind of conversations that I want to have.
I’m also aware I sell a service that most new business owners don’t prioritize in their budget (at first)
I also want to say: I sell an expensive service. I don’t think it’s super expensive compared to some other marketing services (like I’m not selling $10,000 sales funnels or $3,000 social media packages), but the truth is that all of my clients are spending four to five figures annually with me. That is a significant investment. It makes sense to focus on the people that I want to talk to and that I want to work with in my marketing, which is why I don’t market for beginners.
So that’s my take. That’s why it’s so hard to find free business advice or advanced conversations that go beyond basic. That’s why so many people are marketing to beginners, and it’s so easy to find beginner business advice. It’s not a bad thing. Like I said, I’m like, I actually feel like in this episode I’m making a pretty compelling case to focus on beginner content, but obviously I’m also not doing it myself. So you can kind of see both sides of the coin. Anyway, love to hear what you think. Send me a DM on Instagram.
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