How to Protect Your Business’s Most Important Asset

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

We talk a lot about your self-hosted website as a cornerstone business asset. You own it, you control it, and over time, if you take care of it, it becomes more and more valuable.

Your permission-based email list is an asset as well. You don’t control it to quite the same degree as your website, but it’s still something you build over time that keeps getting more and more valuable.

But there’s something more important than your site or your list. In fact, it’s what gives them value. It’s the reason you’re in business in the first place.

It isn’t your great content. (That’s the path, not the destination). It isn’t your wonderful product or your valuable service.

Your greatest business asset is your audience … the people you hope to serve with your business.

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They list 7 points:

1. The audience comes first … always

2. Use content to provide value that scales

3. Know who you’re speaking to

4. Think carefully about what you want to be known for

5. Tell the truth

6. Listen more than you talk

7. Remember you’re in business

One of the things that I think marketers need to know is that you have 3 types of people in your audience.

The first type of person in your audience is of course, your current customer. These are the people that have bought from you, and are more likely to buy from you again. These are the people you need to protect like a mother protects her children!

The second type of person is the person you want to serve. These are the people that are in your audience that have expressed interest in what you have, but may not have purchased from you just yet. You protect these people because of the potential they offer for your business.

The third type of person in your audience is your cheerleader. These are the people that will probably never buy from you for whatever reason – they’re your family, they can’t afford it, etc. However, these people help spread your message. They share your content. They comment on your blog. They forward your emails. This is like the person in your entourage that is just hanging out the outskirts helping you look big and themselves look important, because they are connected to you.

How do you keep your audience engaged?

Keep marching forward,

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