One of my hats at King of Pops is to managing our marketing department. It consists of me and 2.5 other amazing people.
IMHO we put out more good work than many companies with exponentially more resources. Despite our success - one of our recurring struggles is to identify if a campaign or promotion is a success.
Some of our campaigns impact thousands, while others touch less than 20.
It stings when we work & work, and it feels like things are falling on deaf ears. At these moments, I try my best to remember what my main man Seth Godin teaches us about Minimum Viable Audience: (read two amazing posts on topic here & here)
When you seek to engage with everyone, you rarely delight anyone. And if you’re not the irreplaceable, essential, one-of-a-kind changemaker, you never get a chance to engage with the market.
With this in mind we built a product specifically for those that LOVE King of Pops. We hoped it would be all of these things, and reach our minimum viable audience.
Our Pops Royalty Program is for super fans. We aspire to build a community around these folks. With opportunities to come and try new flavors (and new products ... soft serve ice cream is coming next month), get chances to see behind the scenes, and save some $$$ when they are out buying pops.
Six months in - the struggle is real. We have 67 Pop Royalty members, which is far less than we forecasted / hoped for. We have invested a lot of energy into creating something worthwhile, but as a leader I keep finding myself questioning if the juice is worth the squeeze.
It is so difficult to stay motivated when you feel like you're failing.
I don't know what Seth Godin would say about the number 67 specifically. Is that big enough to be a minimum viable audience? Short of him seeing this and responding ... my best guess is that he would say "YES."
Although we are constantly seeking external validation, oftentimes the most important work we are doing is seen by very few.
Keep pushing on the things that matter. Don't get caught up with scale, but instead remember you can change the world by impacting very few people.
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