There’s a saying “if you’re not ashamed of who you were last year, you’re obviously not growing enough”. This adage is something I remember whenever cringing at the stupid, costly mistakes we’ve made over the past two years. Some of those costing us a LOT of time, money, and sanity.
Thankfully (and luckily), we pulled through. You may not.
Read on, and you won’t have to.
1. Talking to various Target Personas with different problems.
This one’s easy to overlook. In fact, it happens in most marketing. Basically, you blindly copy-paste what others are doing, and forget about who keeps you in business – your Target Client.
So decide which problem you’re solving for that Target Client, and keep talking about it in your content, over & over again. Be laser-focused. This is what brings in qualified inbound leads on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis.
Not sure if you’ve fallen into this trap?
Here’s how to recognise your content’s too wide & not targeted:
1. You don’t get inbound leads.
2. You get inbound leads for services you don’t offer.
3. You attract leads who actually need the services you offer, but are not your Ideal Clients. (e.g. they can’t afford you)
4. Lots of people message you with: “I love your content & I’d like to hire you, but I’m not sure how you can help me.”
If you notice any of these, it’s time to reset.
Get CLARITY on your Big-3 (the problem you solve, for whom, and how). And start from there. Otherwise, you’ll quickly drown in the sea of lost opportunities, money, and time.
2. Upselling from low-ticket products to a HIGH-ticket service.
Oooff. This one’s painful. Here’s the genius thing we did: we tried to upsell our $3,000 service from a $50 ebook. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? There’s a tiny chance that someone who spent a couple of dozen dollars with you is ready to invest a couple of thousand.
Our conversion rate, naturally, was a big fat ZERO.
Here’s the upsells that would make more sense;
- a $147 digital course
- a $197 workshop
- or anything in this price range
Next time you’re crafting your upsell strategy, keep this in mind.
3. Not following our guts when it comes to DITCHING clients.
Thought the last one was painful? This one makes me want to crawl into the fetal position, and cry for 30 minutes straight. We noticed all the red flags screaming “don’t work with this asshole”, but for some stupid reason we ignored them all. The worst part? We’ve not only done it once, but multiple times.
Dina says we would’ve made more by flipping burgers at McDonald’s, and had less stress. I’m with her on that.
If you’re not sure when it’s time to run, we’ve got your back amigo.
You’ll find these red flaggy flags handy:
- The client believes they know everything.
- There’s already a problem with the client before the first payment.
- The client plays power games, and acts like you’re dirt on their shoe.
- The client doesn’t deliver their input on time, and/or breaks the initial deal they had with you.
- The client comes as a referral from someone you dislike.
- You don’t like the client, and have a bad feeling about them.
- You have different communication styles. (e.g. direct vs. politically correct)
Biggest lesson here?
Intuition is an exact science. Follow it.
4. Writing out our entire Sales Funnel without TESTING our service first.
This was not a smart move. Why? Because writing out an entire sales funnel takes A LOT of time. Months, to be precise.
Allow me to explain.
Let’s say you’re launching a Workshop. If you’ve already gathered an audience interested in what you have to say, you can launch it quite simply by:
- promoting it on social media
- promoting it via your email list
- creating a simple checkout page
And selling.
Here’s what we did instead:
- crafted a 30-page Sales Page
- all the Checkout, Confirmation, and other pages that go with it
- wrote both upsell & downsell email sequences…
…All WITHOUT testing the offer. Read months and months of HARD work before we even knew whether our audience wanted the offer, whether we’ll enjoy delivering it, whether it’ll make sense long-term, and so on.
The lesson?
Test first.
Once you find what works, double down & create proper marketing materials that’ll increase your conversion rates. Then you’ll be 100% sure your efforts will pay off.
5. Launching new offers without having a BIG picture in mind.
Last but not least. Launching a product here, a service there, and a productised service once in a while. Without thoroughly thinking through:
- How it fit into our overall business goals.
- The costs & benefits.
- The impact on other parts of the business.
- Whether it’s quick cash, or a long-term revenue stream.
- How it fit into our current stage of business.
The result:
It prevented parts of our business from making money. And therefore, we potentially lost thousands of dollars in sales.
The lesson to take home:
Don’t launch a new offer until you’re absolutely CLEAR on the five points above.
A short-term gain is NEVER worth a long-term loss.
We estimate these had cost us over $100,000.
I wish I’d learned this before we started our business. I wish we had someone to show us the ropes. Prevent costly mistakes. Save us time, money, and nerves. Paint a bigger picture for us.
I can confidently say that having this guidance is INVALUABLE.
We made a big mistake not finding that guidance when starting out. Don’t do the same.
It’s now less than 3 weeks before both Dina and I disappear for summer, but we’ve still got a couple of spots left for Consulting Calls.
Those calls are designed to pull you out of your own head, get you unstuck, and give you actionable advice that can IMMEDIATELY move the needle.
If you wanna grab your spot while we’re still around, reply to this email with “guidance”, and we’ll take it from there.
Cheers,
Stevan
P.S. Ryan says you should wait “only if you hate winning”.
