What Is Reach? What Is Resonance? Two Revealing Definitions to Inform Better Work
“What does it take to resonate?”
I can’t stop thinking about that question. It’s with me when I work. It’s with me when I (try to) sleep. It’s with me when I jog. Poorly. For too short a distance. Wondering just how many more pints of ice cream I’ve eaten compared to runs taken throughout the pandemic. (Ice cream is winning by the slim margin of 578 to 4. #BodyByBenAndJerry)
We all want our work to have an impact. We want to make things that matter — to our careers, our companies, and our communities. Yet too often, we can be found running around like chickens with our heads cut off, scrambling to be more visible or more relevant, agonizing over reach — the thing that feels impactful to us in the short-term.
But is it?
The Road to Resonance
Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared an end-to-end framework for what I think it takes to create work that resonates: the flywheel of favoritism. After all, the pinnacle of something that resonates with someone is they declare, “That’s my favorite.”
In the piece, we explored an utterly crucial question: What’s the best Disney film of all-time? (Spoiler alert: it’s A Goofy Movie. I share exactly why that is. No other answers will be accepted, please and thank you).
We danced the line between being “relevant” and being resonant. And we tried — I say again, tried — to make sense of this seemingly elusive idea of crafting more original, more refreshing, more inspiring work. That’s what the flywheel is for, and the stories I’m telling on my podcast Unthinkable and in my newsletter will both pressure test that framework and sharpen our shared understanding of this concept, resonance.
But the journey continues today.
Today, I’d like to take a step back before we go any further to try and define two concepts at the core of our exploration: reach and resonance. Like quality and quantity, they’re often pitted against each other, though I’d argue they exist on two different spectra. Your focus on one may affect your ability to attain the other, sure, but they aren’t natural opposites.
So what is reach? What is resonance? It’s worth aligning around some shared language and definitions before proceeding any further.
Here’s my stab at defining each, though I welcome your take too:
Reach is how many people see you. Resonance is how much they care.
“Reach” is very familiar to most of us in business, whether or not we consider ourselves makers and marketers or not. We want to reach our audiences, our subscribers, our prospects and customers and clients. We want to reach more recruits to the team or even reach our own coworkers, whether we seek buy-in from bosses or alignment from the team.
The metaphorical motion of reach that you hear people say quite often paints a picture of some very overconfident individuals: “get in front of.” We want to "get in front of” our audience.
Okay. Fine. To what end?
In marketing — my original home — we talk about awareness a ton. That’s how we “get in front of” more prospects. A bigger top of funnel. More people know we exist. We favor the net-new individual entering our atmosphere, rather than those who decide, yanno, THAT seems like a great place to land — to say nothing of hopping out of the plane and bear-hugging us because, wow, is it good to see you!
(I suppose that process could be described as going through the middle of funnel, which is a concept as understood by marketers as my toddler understands NFTs.)
(Okay fine: as understood by marketers as I understand NFTs.)
Most organizations agonize over expanding the top of the funnel or converting people at the bottom. The real magic happens when we start with casual observers and learn to turn them into passionate (and vocal) fans.
My point is this: Awareness is a proxy for what we really want. We want affinity. We don’t just want others to be aware of us. We want them to love us — and to inform their choices and actions thanks to that emotional bias in our favor.
Additionally, we often talk about “grabbing” attention, when that’s just a proxy for what we really need. We need to hold it. The best makers and marketers today know how to hold attention. People who don’t understand how to do this ask questions like, “How long should a podcast be?” People who do understand this also understand that people will listen to two-hour episodes if they love the show enough. So they focus on the “love” part instead of the other, more superficial questions. They understand:
Great marketing isn’t about who arrives. It’s about who stays.
But again, this can apply across sectors and job functions. What good is being top-of-mind if their very next reaction is a resounding… “meh”?
Instead of being top-of-mind, what if we spent more time thinking about depth of soul? THAT is the reaction resonant work so often triggers. “OH MY GOD, you’re speaking to my soul!”
* * *
Today, reach has become a much more popular thing to pursue because it feels like both a panacea and a good place to hide.
It’s a panacea because, we think, if only tons and tons of people knew about this project, brand, product, service (or knew about ME), the rest would take care of itself.
Or so we think.
It’s a good place to hide because it lets us off the hook. Just think of the alternative. If the job is to make the things we’re building BETTER — better stories, a better mission, better content, products, experiences — then it’s all on us. If “make it better” is the key to our success, well then, we have only us to blame if we don’t. But if reach is the key? We can hide. We feel safe. We think, “This thing is already great! It’s just that not enough people know about it. We tried. It’s not working. It’s the algorithm. It’s the noise. It’s the marketing budget. It’s the ever-changing channels at our disposal. We did our jobs. THEY didn’t respond. We need to reach more of them.”
If we want results, and the path to those results requires us to be better? And then we still don’t see the results we crave? Our fault. Focusing on “better” or “deeper” or “more original” or “more positive change” puts us squarely on the hook.
The endless desire for greater reach — and the complaint that we lack it — is a good place to hide.
Being on the hook means recognizing just how easy it is to reach SOME people — and just how rarely we resonate with that audience deeply enough to serve them OR our own causes.
After all, if 500 people listen to your podcast once a week, but they neither share out to new listeners nor take one more step in with you to subscribe to your email list (for example) … is the problem reaching more listeners? Or is the problem resonating more deeply with the ones you already have? Are your biggest fans bringing you new fans?
Shouldn’t they be?
If your company can’t hire top talent at market rate but instead needs to throw more money and crazy perks at new recruits to lure them from the competition … is the problem the number of people you’re interviewing, or the quality? Are you a magnet for the best? Are they biased in your favor even before you speak to them?
Shouldn’t they be?
In most cases, resonance is the answer. Not reach. That’s far scarier to admit.
* * *
Look, I understand: there’s nuance here. Reach is part of the equation. But it’s just a part. It might be a starting point, though I’d argue it’s better as the end point. (You resonate with a few, and they go tell more.)
When we obsess over reach first and foremost, it’s often because we have unrealistic goals placed upon us. Why should your newsletter about some niche topic keep growing at breakneck speed — or at all? Sometimes, a thing is as big as it’s meant to be.
But even if we recognize reach isn’t a panacea, and even if we’re willing to be on the hook for our work and our results, all the pressure others put on us (or we put on ourselves) can cause us to cling to our desire for more reach even still. So maybe the problem is actually how we communicate about these ideas. Maybe we historically lacked the language (I’m trying to provide some!) and the mental models, techniques, stories, and tools (coming soon, if this journey succeeds) to advocate for anything better.
Maybe advocating for “better” means bringing your peers, boss, or clients with you, or maybe it’s about convincing yourself. All I know is, each time I talk to someone about resonance, I get the most foundational of questions at this stage in the investigation, often from a place of frustration or fear. “Well, what even IS resonance? I can tell when I reach more people. How do I know when I’m resonating more deeply?”
Great questions. What even is resonance? Hell, what’s reach? I think we can answer somewhat confidently:
Reach is how many people see you. Resonance is how much they care.
As for how we can tell if we’re resonating? We have to shift how we measure, from the things that can be bought to the things that must be earned. But more on that next time.
For now, ask yourself: Is the goal for more people to see the work? Or to care? Those are not the same things, nor is their “caring” a guarantee. We’re often overconfident about that part. But maybe that’s our problem. Instead of marketing more, what if we mattered more?
Growing reach seems to be the thing everyone wants to learn today. I believe resonance is just as learnable. It’s a craft. It’s within our control.
And it might just be more important to learn.