Adam Wathan says to build distribution (not necessarily an audience)

Lots of people in the comments seem to be completely misunderstanding what I am saying, so here's my attempt at a clarification.

There is a lot of advice online to "build an audience, build an audience, build an audience", and it's good advice. What's important to understand though is why it's valuable to have an audience, and that's because for your product to succeed people need to be able to find out about it.

So building an audience is never done for the sake of building an audience, it's done as a means of building a distribution channel. Having thousands of people pay attention to what you say is a great way to make sure thousands of people know your product exists and can find it.

When you understand that that is the real reason you need an audience, it's interesting to ask the question "is that the only way people can find out about my product, or are there other channels?"

My tweet is me just talking about how our most effective distribution channel is shifting from being my personal audience of people who are fans of what I do and what I have to say, to people who visit the Tailwind CSS documentation and click the "components" link and discover our products. A huge amount of Tailwind users have no idea who the fuck I am and don't care. The Tailwind CSS website is 60% of our traffic, with the rest of it being primarily from Google.

Owning the Tailwind CSS website which sees millions of visits per month is now our biggest advantage, not me having 75k followers on Twitter or 80k people on a mailing list. I would rather own this website and have zero Twitter followers than the reverse, because the distribution afforded to us through the website is more effective than the distribution afforded to us through my direct personal audience.

A personal audience is an awesome distribution channel, but it's not the only one, and it's important to not lose sight of the reason that an audience is valuable so you don't mistakenly invest time and effort into it that would be better poured into a better distribution channel should you be so lucky to find one like we have.

This is crazy. He's taking 2 vague terms, "distribution" and "audience" and comparing them. Show this message to 100 different people and they'll understand it in 100 different ways, because their definition of "distribution" and "audience" is different.

I've been doing research/analysis on this extensively (for Zero to Users) and the way I understand "distribution" is = getting on the radar of an EXTERNAL audience (eg. people on a Reddit sub/FB group not familiar with your product)

By "audience", he probably means an internal audience (people ALREADY familiar with you).

So the question then becomes: Should you focus on:

a) Distributing your product to an "external" audience?
b) Marketing it to an "internal" audience?

If you look at it from this perspective, then it makes sense to focus more on distribution (say 70%) and then on an audience (say 30%).

The problem with Adam's tweet which is causing much confusion here, is that there is a 3rd term missing here which is "marketing channel." And I think Adam is conflating marketing and distribution, which is very common. I even did so myself in my response to @8bit earlier.

A distribution channel is a mechanism by which you get your product into the hands of customers. Retail stores, selling on Amazon, Gumroad checkout, your website checkout with Stripe, your Shopify site, the iOS/Android app stores... these are distribution channels.

A marketing channel (or strategy) is a mechanism by which you get your product in front of customers, both in terms of building awareness and also getting customers to the point of distribution (purchase). SEO, PPC/paid advertising, ASO, email marketing, social media, affiliate marketing, word-of-mouth... these are marketing channels (or strategies).

Conflating marketing and distribution is common because sometimes platforms do both. If you sell on Amazon, you're marketing on Amazon (generally through keyword search rank optimization, but maybe also Amazon ads), and also distributing on Amazon through their checkout.

By these definitions, audience-building is a form of marketing, not distribution. Adam's audience on Twitter spreads awareness of Tailwind. His distribution channel is purchasing on his website.

So when Adam says that marketing+distribution is a greater lever than having an audience, that's obviously true since audience-building is a subset of marketing.

But what he really means by this is less obvious, and it's something that Rob Walling has talked a lot about in his podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. In Rob's experience (of which he has a lot), the limitation of audience building is that your audience is finite. It will provide a one-time boost of revenue, but then be exhausted and you will have to find recurring and ongoing sources of customers outside your audience to keep growing... in other words, you will have to find other sustainable marketing and distribution channels.

Perspective from @robwalling:

I hope this podcast I did with @adamwathan where we discuss this helps to clear a few things up!

here is a podcast about this topic https://twitter.com/justinvincent/status/1339113949074079745

Here's a great thread on distribution from a SaaS owner I really respect:
https://mobile.twitter.com/earthlingworks/status/1338243389490270209

What's the difference between audience-building and distribution?

Feel similar. I think the difference is one has conversion baked in. You can't always add "conversion" later.

Simple example:

1. You write a blog post focused on getting a lot of email sign ups, so you might tell a really interesting personal story and use a catchy title. People sign up to hear more from you because they like you. <- audience-building.
2. You identify bottom of the funnel keywords and write several high-quality blog posts that generate trial sign ups. They're evergreen and target new leads who are in need of a solution you have. <- distribution

Both blog posts. Both marketing. Only one is deliberate distribution.

distribution is a function of audience... without audience, who'd you distribute it to exactly? in manufacturing, they are inextricably-tied, for profit (margins) of course.

on the web... this relationship is harder to devise and discern, as, you can shout into the void and no one may hear it.

community > everything... it's more important than both audience and distribution.

i'd also argue that @adamwathan's tweet above conflates corporate distro and personal distro... the same function applies regardless of how you separate or bifurcate those two... does it matter if it was "personal" or "corp" if the (biz) outcome is the same?

just asking questions in order to understand.

For me, distribution is more related to acquisition, a way that users can find what you do. For example Content Marketing, SEO, referrals, platform(Mobile, Web, etc)... things that show your company to new users that didn't know you before.

Audience is more related to engagement, people that deliberately follow you because they like what you do(social media, newsletter, etc), and thus are more likely to convert. Ideally, you should use your distribution channels to grow your audience.

But it really depends on the product, some products don’t need an audience at all; for example, imagine a SaaS that solves a specific problem and has clear value prepositions. Clients can see how the product can solve their pain without needing any content from the company.

Other products, though, are harder to convert users without an audience, things like courses, books… generally things that rely a lot on social proof.

That’s my thoughts, what do you think?

I feel like an audience is a group of people who believe in your product and will do something (like evangelize for you, or sign up). As opposed to a (marketing) distribution channel, which is a bit more passive. But a distribution channel is definitely important for building an audience.

To me, there are different levels of a business and the approach changes as you traverse through those levels.

At his level now, to his point, people don't care about him so much as they care about the solution.

But in the beginning, it's about him creating a solution. That's the story. His fight to build a better mouse trap. Putting it out into the world. It becoming successful. That's the narrative.

@rosiesherry just look at the title of this post, you added his name, not his product. Why?

If you came to know about tailwind just today, and if you were not an indiehacker, then you may not know nor care who the person is behind it. It's a popular solution (now) that people recommend. You're looking to solve a problem and this looks like the fix.

I wish the differences between both were better defined. My understanding of a distribution channel is a platform where you can find and grow an audience (email, social media, Indie Hackers for example). And while one can infinitely scale distribution channels, it's not best practice to create multiple channels without a plan for building an audience.

I would actually recommend limiting distribution channels, focusing on a small few, and strategizing to grow one's audience on those channels.

The term "audience" is so often reduced to mean "following," as Adam uses it here. In that case, he's absolutely right. A group of people paying attention isn't enough to build meaningful business relationships.

For that, you need two things: they need to have an ongoing problem for you to solve, and you need to find a way for them to find it.

Both can happen after and while you are "building (for) your audience."

Insight into the problems of a group of people is easiest when you're right in the middle. Becoming a part of their communities and communication portals will allow you to listen to your audience. You'll find key pain points and problems that you can set out to solve.

Without an audience, you will have a hard time exploring those fundamental requirements for a successful business.

Being able to reach prospective customers — that's what I assume is meant by "distribution" — is much easier when you have their attention. Selling into the void isn't fun or profitable. Having an email list or a podcast audience makes this much more convenient.

It also is important to consider that a personal audience is something that is best leveraged for small businesses who operate in niche industries. The more tribal your industry, the more effective it will be to become part of their communities.

Love this.

To people who are mixing up the two terms, I think it becomes clear when you clearly define what "distribution" and "audience" is.

Here's how I define them.

Distribution is basically any pathway to your target customer, i.e. someone who is likely to use your product/offering.

Audience is a group of people who know about you/your product and actively engage with your content. They may or may not be your target customer.

Hope this helps clear someone's confusion!

I've been pondering about similar thing recently, wherever I look, people say "developer community", but I feel bothered about that because I don't feel like it's about the community. You can sell your product to people who don't participate in the community. The parallel to this post, is that offline customers are your distribution, whereas audience, is online communities. What happens most of the time, is that people assume that Software Sales is about getting out there on Reddit and HN and talking to people there, as if their community is what is known as "developer community" and without them the industry doesn't exist. And that's not a light assumption, this POV is taken by many unexperienced people who literally use the words "developer community" as if the community is the whole grail. That pushes my gits because there are many-many professional Software Engineers with families and commitments to culture, that are just not on the internet. Those online communities cannot be compared to the realness of the outside world. You can sell to the world with traditional methods, like marketing, advertisement, sell to enterprise and make millions, all without a twitter account. And it's much more real that putting your content on reddit for people who basically come to procrastinate. Distribution is king.

Great post! I see an audience as folks interested or potentially interested in your product or service offering, and you reach them via distribution. Distribution is key to growth, and is as important as the product (if not more) during the 0 to 1 phase, and especially during the growth phase of a startup. Validating a need against an audience is key to finding a market for the product.

Distribution can take many forms, from top of funnel awareness and acquisition in different paid and organic channels, through how you leverage partners, to how you might work with influencers, to how you may build growth loops and funnels via your product led growth efforts.

The product provides value to an audience which is found via distribution. That's how I'd view this.