A U D I E N C E
is a keyword in
the marketing world
ળ How to grow your audience?
ળ How to engage your audience?
ળ How to attract your ideal audience?
These are valuable questions, but they will
only generate satisfying answers when we
start to grasp the deeper layers of the
word ‘audience’.
Most of the time, when
marketeers tell us how to
grow or engage our audience..
..they only address our
external audience
and they overlook our
internal audience
Your external audience
is a direct reflection
of your internal
audience
Who is your internal audience?
you ♡
Inner Listening
Your first audience
You are your first audience.
Attracting your ideal audience starts
with being the ideal audience for yourself.
The key to being your ideal audience is
unconditionally listening to yourself.
now, there are two big challenges that
prevent most of us from fully
hearing ourselves:
1
Mental overgrowth
In our society, we are mostly trained
in the area of “mental listening”:
thoughts, ideas, insights,
doubts, questions…
And whatever you
pay attention to grows.
The more you learn to use
your mental listening capabilities,
the stronger your mental voices become.
However, mental listening is only
one of our four listening modalities.
What’s often underdeveloped are our
internal physical, emotional, and
energetic listening capabilities.
I’m talking about listening to our
internal energetic voices here. Most of
you are incredibly well-trained at tuning into
the e x t e r n a l energies around you, but
that’s different from tuning into your
own distinct frequency.
These 3 voices didn’t receive
much “water” (our attention)
We never learned how to
water them, so they withered.
It takes a lot of conscious, active,
and deliberate work to re-activate the
full scope of these beautiful inner voices.
But the fruits are sweet and rich.
Once you learn to reach far &
wide inside with your listening,
you’re building a foundation
for the kind of marketing
that reaches far and
wide outside.
2
Our hidden listening bias
Something else that strongly blocks our
ability to unconditionally listen to ourselves
are our hidden listening biases. They are
connected to the trauma responses
of fawn and fight.
later in the journey,
we’ll properly explore them
For now, let me give you a taster
of them by showing what kinds of
“inner listening biases” they cause:
←→
fawn response bias
you mainly listen to the voices
within you which are of most use
to others, and you are tuned out of
the voices within you that could lead to
abandonment or rejection in any way –
which are often your most powerful voices
→←
fight response bias
you mainly listen to the voices
in you which offer you the most control
and power, and you are tuned out of the
voices within you that could lead to you being
harmed or touched in any vulnerable spot –
which are often the voices that can reach
& touch your audience most powerfully
As humans, we carry both biases
within us – but there may be one
that resonates extra strongly for
you at this time of your life.
⦁
After all this inner focus,
let’s come back to the field
of marketing for a (short) moment.
Being heard in your marketing
Are you heard and
seen in your marketing?
Is there a pain about not
fully being received?
(sit with this for a few seconds)
↓
↓
This pain is often connected
to the pain of not fully
hearing yourself.
Where did this all start?
Let’s go to the beginning…
Where you heard as a child?
Our parents/caretakers
gave us our first model of
“this is how to listen to yourself”
through the way…
1 – they listened to us
2 – they listened to each other
3 – they listened to themselves
⦁
Most of our parents could hear our
physical voices
+ mental voices
But most of our parents could not (really) hear our
emotional voices
+ energetic voices
The painful thing is that for most
(if not all) of you, the latter two
are your strongest voices.
not listening = it’s not important .
We might “absorb” the approach of
our parents and stop listening to
our deepest voices ourselves
ળ
Inner Speaking
our inner voices
Interconnected
We cannot see the inner speaking
fully separated from the inner listening.
Listening is the foundation: it’s the water
that allows our inner voices to grow.
It’s our task to recognize
which of the flowers (voices)
in our garden have been neglected
and need more nurturing care & water,
and which flowers might need some
gentle weeding because they
have taken over our garden.
And just as important:
Are you able to recognize
non-native plants which don’t
belong in your garden?
In other words: can you separate
the voices you have absorbed from
other people from the ones
that belong to you?
What’s the relevance?
Our inner voices are relevant in three big ways:
1
The more you connect to and embrace
all of the different voices that live
within you, the more unique,
powerful & magnetic your
marketing becomes.
2
A lot of our expression gold lies behind
the discomfort of connecting with
our most challenging voices.
3
When we are not fully available for our own
doubt – hurt – anger – anxiety – power – etc.
those voices have to go underground.
ળ The thing is – these voices still
want to be seen and heard.
ળ So most interactions we have – offline
and online – will now be influenced
by this unconscious neediness /
the desire for those voices
to be seen & heard.
How to reconnect
How to bring the beauty of
all your different voices to the table?
By giving these voices the parent
they never had:
Y O U
Curiosity and awareness
are phenomenal keys here.
We are a duality. We can
communicate with ourselves. We
can pick up certain signals and ignore
others. We can encourage our voices, be
curious, compassionate, understanding..
Watch how you are responding to
all the different voices within you:
When I’m emotionally hurt,
do I say “oh it’s nothing”,
or do I soothe myself?
When there’s a bodily pain,
do I run away from it,
or do I create space for it?
When there’s a deep vision,
do I wave it away as frivolous,
or do I take it seriously?
The more seriously you take all
the different voices within you,
the more seriously you will be
taken by your audience.
I hope this has been insightful!
Looking forward to “see” you
in the next code again.
Liefs, Ayla
ળ
……………..
code key (2)
You are your
first audience.
Are you hearing yourself,
and are you applauding yourself?
The more you do so, the more
your external audience
will do the same.
……………..