In a world that sells easy, push-button digital marketing ‘secrets’, the truth few want to talk about is that building a business online is hard. There are seemingly limitless options for business models, strategies, tools, tactics, and platforms — yet, instead of making everything easier, we’re often left wondering what, exactly, we’re supposed to DO…
Worse, we’re busy all the time with no consistent progress to show for it.
My goal is to cut through the clutter and give you actionable, transformative insights that you can implement immediately. However, I can’t do the push ups for you. There is no easy button, so get your cup of coffee (or tea), put your phone on mute, roll up your sleeves, and let’s dive in.
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Britain’s Men’s Eight rowing team did something no British team had done since 1912 — they won gold. How they did it holds a critical insight for all of us seeking to accomplish anything meaningful.
After a disappointing finish in Cologne in 1998, the British team began to ask one question for every decision they made — will it make the boat go faster? (Ben Hunt-Davis’s book tells the story.)
“Will it make the boat go faster?” — modified slightly for our purposes — may be the most powerful question you can ask to radically transform your business (and your life).
Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to unpack a couple of related questions. What is the ‘boat’ that we’re working on, and how do we clearly define ‘faster’? If we don’t take the time to answer both questions with razor-sharp clarity we’re doomed from the start.
We could define the ‘boat’ as an offer, a funnel, a particular traffic campaign. Narrowing our focus like that is appealing, but I think it would be a mistake.
Instead, I recommend that we define our particular ‘boat’ as our business / craft / profession. This perspective forces us to hold up every decision to a simple question — will this make my business go faster?
Next, we need a very clear definition for ‘faster’. The goal of any business is to produce happy customers, so ‘faster’ is our measurement for how we’re doing relative to that goal.
Here are two simple examples.
If I have a customer acquisition funnel that produces ten customers per day with a 20% refund rate within 30 days, I’m producing eight happy customers per day (10 / day – 20% within 30 days = 8 happy customers per day). Reducing my refund rate from 20% to 10% would make my ‘boat’ go faster because I would be creating nine happy customers per day vs. eight.
A simpler example — if that same customer acquisition funnel produces nine happy customers per day and I scale that campaign to twenty-five happy customers per day, my ‘boat’ would be going faster.
This clarity and precision is critical — the moment we let our primary goal become muddy and vague we’ve lost the profound power of Ben Hunt-Davis’s question.
Your first assignment is to get something to write with and something to write on and clearly define the boundaries of your business. (I often say that if you can’t draw your business on a napkin with a crayon you don’t understand it clearly enough.)
Here are some questions to help you get started.
What are you paid for / what do you sell? (This could be a product or a service, physical or digital. What we’re looking for is clarity about the exchange of monetary value from your customers to you. What is the thing that customers buy from you? Don’t get wound up about front end vs. back end – get it all down so it’s visible.)
Where / how do your customers find you? (Organic traffic, paid traffic, word of mouth, referrals, affiliates, guest blogs, other online content, etc.)
What measurable steps happen between awareness and purchase? (What do your prospects see, hear, and do that makes them aware that you / your business exists? How do they begin to engage? Continue to engage? How do they eventually buy?)
Take the time to answer these questions thoroughly and precisely.
NEXT: Three Types of Traffic — The First Traffic Pyramid