Knowing Your Audience
In Episode 19 of the 'Build Your Own Digital Community' Podcast, Kristina brings her mentor and friend, RT Custer, as a guest to discuss the topic of knowing one’s audience. RT is the CEO of Vortik Watch Company and the Chief Vision Officer at Fast Foundations. The company is focused on manufacturing wristwatches, RT mentions how he was able to build his company with the help of masterminds. This is the main reason why RT loves everything about Fast Foundations, because he loves the concept of community and how they’re one and the same.
RT explains how you build a community, connect and learn from each other and grow together, and that creates a mastermind. He talks about how his community purchases his products and enjoys watching the process of manufacturing these wristwatches. RT mentions how he wants to build a brand where you inherently get super fans or people that love what you do, and build a community around that.
The Importance of a Personal Brand
RT got his personal brand from a few conversations. As he helped his customers with finding their products, people started to associate him with his company as the brand. At one point, RT’s business partner, Tyler Wolf, asks him how they would grow as a company. Tyler gave the idea of reaching out to thousands of people at the same time, through their email list, and that’s how RT was able to approach many people at the same time and increase their open rates. He mentions how he wanted to build his company into a brand and focus on marketing rather than advertising because they didn’t want to hire salespeople. Their salesperson was their website. This experience gave a new vision to RT and how he can work more effectively with others.
Building Your Community
RT mentions a concept that comes from a book called 'Super Fans' by Pat Flynn. It talks about a marketing pyramid, where the top of the pyramid is your super fans, and then as you go down, you have your fans and then your customers. He mentions how the author talks about how in order to achieve certain levels, you have to connect with your fans, and then connect with your customers and turn them into fans. That’s how you slowly start to build your community. RT mentions how he didn’t know about any of this, and how he accidentally built his community through talking with his clients.
Kristina then asks what RT would say to someone who is in their early stages of business and how would he encourage them to build their own community? RT gives his response by saying that when it comes to building a community, it’s most important to understand who those people are and then crafting a message to the audience. He gives suggestions such as using Shopify, where it collects data from your customers, such as gender, age, and more. Other ways can include taking surveys and talking to your customers. You can gift your customers with a gift card if they take your survey. You can try whatever method you’re comfortable with, as long as you get the data you need to know more about your customers.
Through his wristwatch company, RT was able to meet Chris Harder. He sent a watch to a friend named Lewis, and Chris saw the watch. They were introduced to each other, and RT took the opportunity to join Fast Foundations. Through Fast Foundations, RT was able to grow his connections and community, and he managed to grow his company to be more successful because of Fast Foundations. RT is very thankful to Chris because he was able to help RT find new ways to grow his connections and his company, as well as use new business tactics to strengthen his relationship with his clients. RT was able to make greater goals and was able to achieve those goals with the help of Chris and Fast Foundations.