In this episode, I explain why growing your audience doesn’t automatically lead to more sales. Visibility is important because it helps more people discover your brand and join your email list, but simply having a bigger audience doesn’t guarantee revenue. Without the right strategy behind your messaging and offers, you can end up with lots of followers but very few people actually buying.
I walk through five reasons why this happens, including attracting the wrong audience, not having a clear pathway for people to buy, focusing too much on education without enough conversion content, and not building enough trust and authority. I also explain why having a strong conversion mechanism — like a launch or funnel — is essential. Ultimately, visibility creates opportunity, but it’s the strategy behind your marketing that turns your audience into paying customers.
3 Key Takeaways:
Attract the Right Audience
If your messaging is too broad or your lead magnets attract the wrong people, you may grow an audience that isn’t interested in your offers. Clarity about who you help and what problem you solve is essential for attracting people who are likely to buy.
Education Alone Doesn’t Convert
Many creators focus heavily on teaching and providing value but forget to include persuasive content that helps people see why they should work with you. Conversion-focused content is just as important as educational content.
You Need a Clear Path to Buy
Your audience needs a clear journey from free content to paid offers. Without a defined pathway — such as an offer ladder, launch strategy, or evergreen funnel — people may enjoy your content but never take the next step to become customers.
If your audience is growing but your revenue isn’t keeping up, this episode will help you identify what might be missing and show you how to turn visibility into real sales.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa’s email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, Subscribe to my Youtube
Transcript
We all know that having an audience is crucial to running your business, but what if you’re doing all the things? What if you’re showing up? You’re creating content, you’re constantly building your audience, and yet the sales aren’t coming. In today’s episodes, I’m gonna be sharing with you five reasons why your growing audience might not be converting.
Hello and welcome to this episode. If we have not met, my name is Teresa Heath Wareing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches, helping them grow their online business in a way that’s aligned with them. In this episode, I am gonna be talking about why visibility is so important.
Not that I think we need to talk about that because we hopefully all know that, and the five reasons why. Even if you are doing all the visibility things. Why those people might not be converting into paying customers. So this weekend, my Grow Launch sale community, I have been doing a challenge with everyone that’s in there, and the challenge is around visibility because I have talked over and over and over and over about why visibility is so important and [00:01:00] ultimately that we are doing visibility to get people into our world, to get them to know who we are, but most importantly to get them onto our email list.
Because if we don’t have an audience, we don’t have a business. We have a really expensive hobby. Now what if you’re doing all the things? So some of the things that I’m suggesting that people do is they speak on stages. If they’re comfortable and they want to do that, they get on other people’s podcasts, they go on social media and ask people to join their email list.
Basically all the different ways in which. We are encouraging people to come into our world to find out about us and ultimately get on our email list. But what if you are doing all of those things and what if you are getting people on your email list and yet you still aren’t able to convert those people into customers?
Well, I wanna share with you five reasons why it might be that these customers aren’t converting. Reason number one, you are getting the wrong audience on your list. Now, yes, we want an audience, and yes, we want visibility, but that’s [00:02:00] absolutely pointless if it’s the wrong people. So when I first started my business and I started speaking and I realized that speaking was a brilliant way to be seen, to be visible, and to get people on my email.
I did it more and more and more and more, and I love it. Okay, so I’m not saying that, you know, if it terrifies you, then don’t think that you have to do it ’cause you don’t. But I love speaking, so for me it’s a really, really good way of doing it. And when I first started speaking, I just said yes to anything because honestly, in those early days I wanted to practice.
I wanted to really see how I felt about speaking. And I just wanted to take any opportunity that really afforded me. Now, what that meant was sometimes I spoke at places where it wasn’t the most perfect fit for my customers. And then of course, being the marketer that I am, I encourage ’em to get my email list, and I wasn’t getting the most perfect people on my email.
So what happens is you then have an email list that’s filling up, but not the right people who want to buy your offer. There’s a couple of things that can affect this. If, A, you [00:03:00] don’t know what your offer is, or B, you don’t know who your customer is, so you really need to know, and hopefully if you’re watching my videos, you do know what those two things are.
In the early days where I targeted anybody, ’cause I did the one thing I tell my customers not to do, which is I tried to serve everybody even though I’m a marketer, even though I know way better than that. I still did it myself. What it meant was I built my list to a really good size, but a huge chunk of that list were not my audience.
So when I really started to niche down in the area that I love and should have niched down in a very long time ago, which is the online space and online business owners who are growing their online business, it meant that I then had a ton of people on my list that weren’t my perfect customer. And even though they liked what.
Said, and they liked following me and maybe liked my content. The offer I was giving was not the offer from them, so there was no way they were gonna buy it and no way they should buy it because it wouldn’t have served them. So it’s super important to think about who are you getting on your list, not just getting people on your list.[00:04:00]
And it might be worth reviewing your current list and going, who have I got? How have they got onto my list? What lead magnets have they? Downloaded. So for instance, I would’ve had a lead magnet back in the day that talked about how to start your email list. Well, they’re not the people that I’m talking to today.
The people I’m talking to today have an email list and we need to improve it or grow it more, or make it work better for them. So again, like people who came in in those early days. And also saying, do you wanna start an email list? Well, anyone could want to start an email list. Any business should start an email list.
So again, it wasn’t niche enough to where I am today. So that’s the first thing I want you to look at. And that’s number one. The people on your list, are they the right people? And going forward, ensure that you are only trying to get the right people on your list. A little example, I spoke at an event recently that was open to all business owners and I was super proud to go and do a, um, I was actually closing keynote for this event, but I was also aware that there was a [00:05:00] huge chunk of people in that room who wouldn’t necessarily be my perfect customer.
My talk delivered to the people in the room. I am being paid to speak to that people in the room. So I’m gonna make sure that my content is tailored to those people. However, I don’t necessarily want for them and me, some of those people on my list because they’re not my perfect customer. So what I did in that case was my talk that I delivered was tailored to the room and to the event I was at.
However, when I offered a lead magnet, I specifically said, if you are an online business owner, then you might want to get this. If you are not, this probably isn’t for you. So therefore, I try to ensure that people getting on my list were only really the customers or the people that I want on my list and the ones that I can serve.
Make sure that your lead magnets are talking to your right customer. Make sure you’re not being too broad and probably review the people you’ve got on your list already. Number two, that there is no clear pathway for them to actually buy. You will be amazed, and I am [00:06:00] also gonna include myself in this.
Because I’ve not been brilliant at this in the past, you’ll be amazed at people I look at where I go through their stuff and I’m like, I don’t know what you want me to buy, or I don’t know where the conversion is or what my next step is. And often when people are in their own businesses, if they struggle to convey to me as a coach to tell me.
What is the next step? Then there’s no way on earth your ideal customer is going to be able to do that. If you cannot confidently go, this co offers for this person, and this is when I offer it, then they could possibly move to this offer, or they come into my list here and then I try and convert them here, or then we offer them this point when they’ve done this.
If you can’t tell me those steps, there is no way your customer is going to get those steps. And the other thing I want you to think about with number two in terms of is there a clear pathway, is how often are you actually asking them to buy? Often we’ll [00:07:00] say people aren’t buying. But actually we’re not asking them to buy or we’re not giving them offers enough, or we’re not talking about our things enough.
So if like me, you go through launches, it’s often the case that there’s only a few opportunities where they can buy. So is it, and I ask myself the same question, is it that we need to tweak things? Is it that we need to have other things that they can buy in the meantime? Is it that actually when we are not launching a big launch, that there’s something that we could be doing evergreen, so.
When we say that they’re not converting on, you know, you’ve built your audience, you’ve got them on your email list and they’re not buying, are we actually asking them to buy and do we have a really clear offer ladder so we know someone can come in here and buy at this point? And then once they bought this, this is the next thing I would offer them.
That helps ’em get to the next stage. And once they’re there, I have this offer that could really support them get to the next stage. So. If you are not 100% [00:08:00] clear on your offer and on your offer ladder, there’s no way your customer is going to be, and therefore they’ll be lost and they won’t buy. Which brings me really nicely on to number three, that your content or what you are putting out there is educating them and not convincing them.
Now I am all for adding value. There’s a reason I do this YouTube channel. There’s a reason I spend a lot of time creating content to put out a video every single week. And while I’m here. It would be really remiss of me not to say if you are not subscribed to the podcast or on YouTube, I would really appreciate it if you could just go ahead and hit that button.
If you could gimme a like or a comment or a review, that would be phenomenal. But I am all for adding value. I totally am, and I think it’s important for you to show your customers that you know what you’re talking about. However, there has to be a balance. Now, back in the day when I first started my business, because I come from a marketing background, I have digressed slightly in a few things that I’ve done.
It’s all been marketing. [00:09:00] But to begin with, I used to talk a lot about social media. The irony now that I don’t like social media and I don’t wanna be on it, and I struggle to post. Is not lost on me, but I used to talk about social media and one of the things I used to talk about back in the day was these three buckets of content, and it was the, the three buckets I used to talk about were bucket one was educate.
So again, that adds value. Bucket two was entertained. I was talking specifically about social media and. Very much back in the day. We are talking 11 years ago now. It was our friends that we were mainly paying attention to and marketing and branding was new on the scene, so we had to entertain them as well as educate ’em.
I still think that stands today, and number three was make the offer, and that’s because you had to have a mix of all three. If you were so dry, just educating and asking for sales, then it wouldn’t be. Be particularly engaging and people wouldn’t come back. If you just entertained people all the time, then that would be lovely and funny, but you wouldn’t actually educate them that you [00:10:00] told ’em you knew what you were talking about, and you wouldn’t actually make a sale if you just sold to them all the time.
It would be horrible. No one would wanna follow you. So it needed a mix, and that is still the same in your content. Now, if your content is just constantly talking about the value and educating, but you are never actually saying. What you can do for them, and you are never actually trying to put in some conversion content, then you won’t convert anybody.
You will educate people. They will think you’re awesome, but you have to include some of that conversion content as well. Again, in the online space, some of the things that we often talk about, especially with things like webinar, is you teach the what and the why, but not necessarily the how. For me, the way I look at this is I teach you all about.
Growing your audience, launching your offers and selling online. But my offers that I have, my programs, my Grow launch sale program, my accelerator, my one-to-one work, and my consultancy, what that does is it has me have [00:11:00] eyes on your business. So yes, I could teach. Everything I know about launching and selling online.
However, what that doesn’t give you is someone looking at your sales page going, that’s where I would change that or try this thing. Or actually that webinar that you’re putting out, the title isn’t right. Let’s look at that title. So for me, my offers. Are very much more high touch, hands-on offers so I can do a lot of education content because my education content is never going to be tailored directly to you and your business.
And that’s what my offers do. But I still need to put things in, like mentioning my offers and talking about what I do and encouraging you to get on my list. Even though I do education content, so as a reminder, number three was that you are educating them. You are adding all that value, but you are not asking for the sale.
You’re not trying to convert them. Number four, just because you are visible does not mean that you’ve built up the authority and the trust. Yes. I will argue [00:12:00] with myself that standing on a stage builds authority and trust. However, I want to see anybody that I work with, I wanna see them walk the walk.
And I was having this conversation with someone just the other day in my accelerator group. She has a business where she’s teaching tutors to grow their tutoring business. However, she also has a very successful business of her own, where she has grown her own tutoring business. To the point where she now has other tutors work for her, and she has grown this hugely.
So not only can she talk about the fact that she’s grown her own tutoring business and she can offer the online products such as a course to help someone grow theirs or a community to help someone grow theirs, but she currently also has a hugely successful tutoring business. I want to buy from someone who is doing the thing that I want to do, not necessarily so I can exactly follow [00:13:00] their footsteps or exactly do the things that they’ve done, because there is always such a nuance in that.
However, I want to know that they can do it. I don’t want to go. To a coach that says they can teach you how to be fully booked if they’re not fully booked. I don’t want to be helped on how to speak if the person isn’t speaking. So for me, one of the most important things that I can do is show you that, look, I am doing this.
I have an online business that makes over six figures every year. I want to be able to show you that I consult huge business owners, key people in the online space to grow their online businesses. So it’s really important that. Even though you’re being visible, that that visibility doesn’t always equal credibility and authority and we need those things.
Now, I’m gonna drop in that word that I’ve said a few times that they’re in, we’re in a trust recession, and I do believe there is a trust recession, but I don’t believe that that trust recession means that people won’t buy. [00:14:00] If you are proving your authority, if you are showing people, look, I do this, I have this.
And the other key piece of this is I have been able to help other people do the same. If someone basically says, I’ve grown my, let’s use Instagram, that they’re teaching Instagram, right? If they’re like, I grew my own Instagram to a million followers and I can help you do the same, but they’ve never done it for anybody else, that would be a big red flag to me.
Because doing something for your own business is very different from helping someone else do it for their business. So for me. It’s a balance of the two. It’s am I walking the walk? Am I actually doing it myself and have I done it myself? And can I take what I learned over here and actually execute it with other people in other industries, with other expertise?
And can they successful too? So you need to be ensuring that not only are you visible, not only putting that out there, but you’re proving that. A, you have what they’re after, and B, you can help other people do the [00:15:00] same. And last but not least, number five, you don’t have a conversion mechanism. When I talk about the word launching, I don’t mean for the first time.
Launching in the online space is just a word for a marketing campaign for a period of time where we are. Focusing on selling something, and often if you are not selling something, it’s because you don’t have that conversion mechanism in place. It’s because you don’t have the right launch in place or you’re not doing the right launch for the right people.
One of the episodes I’ve shared previously, and we’ll make sure we link it in the notes, is a video all about what launch should you do for what offer. As an example, most of my offers are high touch and therefore high price. It is very rare. Very unlikely that I would be able to fill a program by just doing one webinar for one hour because that launch mechanism isn’t strong enough to uphold that big product that I’m selling or that big offer [00:16:00] and that big transformation.
When someone comes into my Grow Launch Sale program, they not only get a complete program that is basically a huge course of every way that you can launch, every way that you can grow your audience. Every way that you can sell your offer. We go deep in the detail in terms of how to create sales pages, how to come up with offer titles that work, how to create an offer ecosystem so that you have upsells and downsells, what amazing bonuses actually help you convert.
We then look at every type of launch you can do, and I break down, literally slide by slide, how to do them. I give you templates and swipe files and everything. And then on top of that, I have six months of support where I actually work with you in a group setting to get to know you, your audience, your offer.
And I help you plan out your launches, help you plan out your marketing campaigns, and I am in there with you in the weeds. I’m looking at your sales page, I’m looking at your webinar slides. I’m helping you change them. [00:17:00] So my offer. Big. Okay, so my, it’s high touch. I am invested in people. I am not trying to sell hundreds and hundreds of these because I couldn’t manage.
So that high touch offer requires a high touch launch mechanism, a high touch launch campaign. To basically show people what they’re getting when I make my offer. If you are not doing regular launches or have a really good funnel, that’s funneling people in and trying to convert them, if you have not got these things in place, then you are not going to convert.
So those are my five things that you need to look at in order to convert your visibility, your audience building to actual revenue. So, quick recap. Number one was that you are bringing in the wrong audience, or you currently have the wrong audience on your email list. Number two is that there’s no clear pathway to your actual offer and you are not offering enough.
Number three is that you are doing way too much value in education, but you are not doing enough persuasive content in order to convert [00:18:00] them. Number four is that they have a lack of trust. So, yes, you’re visible, but you’re not actually convincing them that you A, can do the thing and B can help other people do the thing.
And number five, you have no conversion mechanisms. You’re not launching, you haven’t got the evergreen funnel going. You’re basically not creating those opportunities for them to buy. Visibility creates the opportunity, but it’s strategy that turns it into the income. I really hope you find this episode useful.
Like I said, if you haven’t already subscribed, please do so. It means the world to me to know that you are out there listening and learning from this, and if you want to find out more about the Grow Launch Sell program, then either check the show notes that go along with this, or if you’re watching this on YouTube, scan this QR code here and it will take you to the page.
