Do you ever feel like your business growth is…
Inconsistent?
Unpredictable?
Stagnant?
Backsliding?
Non-existent?
The fact is that no matter where you are in your business growth, whether your business is pulling down 8-figures or just getting started, whether you are an owner or a marketing director, you are likely facing ““ and fretting ““ some combination of these scenarios.
In this episode, we’ll introduce you to our system (rooted in proven, tried & true principles) that enables you to generate consistent, predictable revenue now ““ and create a platform for sustained growth in the future.
Episode Transcript
Jim Hohl: Welcome to Mastering Growth, Episode 2, the seven step system to attract more leads, and clients, build a successful brand, and impact more people. Hi again, everyone. I’m Jim Hohl.
Lucas Garvin: And I’m Lucas Garvin. And in today’s episode, we’ll be discussing growth optimization. The seven step system to attract more leads and clients, build a successful brand, and impact more people. The frameworks, and information we’ll share in today’s episode, are truly the foundation for building a scalable business that lasts. We’ll talk about why it’s important, give you a brief overview of the system, common pitfalls you may find, when implementing it, and how you can get started.
Jim Hohl: Cool, so I’m gonna start with just asking you a few questions. Have you ever been unsure if what you’re currently doing to grow your business is the best investment of your time and money? Or maybe you’ve had success, but aren’t sure how to sustain it, or scale it to the next level? Or wondered why people aren’t buying a product or service you offer as often as you would like? If so, this is really important, this episode today is really important.
So hope you will continue to pay attention, because we’re gonna talk, today, about a proven framework that companies like McDonald’s, like Starbucks, clients of ours, like Lisa Sasevich, a business coach, and other experts, like Brendon Burchard, Marie Forleo, use every day in their business, to grow and to scale. And, I promise you, you’ll never be confused about what to build next to grow your business, if you follow this system.
You can use it to get super clear about what your greatest opportunities for growth are, and to diagnose and optimize your campaigns, your funnels, your launches, that aren’t performing quite where you’d like them to be.
Lucas Garvin: So let’s talk about what it solves, and what it doesn’t solve. So growth optimization doesn’t fix offers that don’t convert. What I mean by that is, when you have, say, bad product market fit, meaning the product, or offer that you have, the audience that you are sharing it with, doesn’t want, isn’t ready for it, or just simply isn’t buying what you’re selling. All right? You’ll want to listen to our first episode, for more info on that.
Now growth optimization also doesn’t change your brand, our your design aesthetic. Some of the work, or the growth planning, as you’ll learn more about in a bit, that you might do, will potentially inform how your brand is perceived in the marketplace, but, ultimately, it’s not about redesigning your logo, or your emails, even, or anything like that.
What it does help with is improving conversion rates on your existing offers, products, services, et cetera. It helps to create more consistency and predictability in the growth of your business, and it also helps to increase lifetime customer value, and create raving fans by using a value first customer acquisition model.
And, ultimately, it directly impacts the only three ways to grow business, per legendary Jay Abraham. Increasing the number of customers, increasing the average transaction value per customer, and increasing the number of transactions per customer.
Jim Hohl: So by now, you’re probably wondering, so what is the system? We’re gonna get into that, now. We’re gonna give you a quick overview of the system. It’s seven parts, and we definitely don’t have time to go super in depth into each part, but we will have future episodes that will do that. But the important thing to know is that each part builds on the success of the next part. And where you start, though, depends on where you are in your business, so we’re gonna give you some tips on that, later on in the episode. Because it might seem overwhelming at first, but, ultimately, what it’s really designed to do is help you naturally build relationships with prospective customers and clients, without scaring them off by immediately going for a marriage proposal, on the first date.
So slowly building to that. You’re gonna get there, but you can’t start off with that. So what are the seven components? All right, number one is the attention driver. Before you can even have any conversation with anyone, you’re gonna need to get their attention. So the first piece, here, directs people, large numbers of people, ideally, to your business, and develops those audiences, we call them audiences, that will listen to your message.
So it’s really designed like we talk about, so far, you’ve probably heard this term a lot, value first. First touch. So it’s a value first, first touch, or another way to put it is, an introduction to your brand that sets you up to be able to make a call to action for lead generation. Now that’s a mouthful. All right? So basically, bottom line, it gets their attention, and starts seeding the ground for you to eventually make offers with them.
So an example of this, you’ve probably seen many times, probably many times today, is a Facebook video ad.
Lucas Garvin: Yeah, and Facebook video ads are a super, super common example of this, where maybe it’s just two to three minutes long, you’re teaching a solution to a really common problem, or how to help people access a really common desire that they have, and then you’re making a call to action, as Jim said, to a free offer that you have, maybe on your website, or a landing page, or something like that. And that puts us right into the second piece of growth optimization, which is lead generator.
And, ultimately, the success or failure of your business hinges upon your ability to generate new leads, predictably, and at scale, over the long term. It’s really that serious. So this is something that most businesses spend sometimes several years to really figure out, and nail. But we’re gonna give you some great tips to nail this much faster.
So a lead generator consists of three primary components, and the first is your lead magnet. This is a valuable free offer, or sometimes people call it a freebie, that someone would opt in for, meaning they put in their name and email address. So something like this could be a free PDF guide, a video training, a case study, a quiz, maybe a coupon, those are especially effective for E-commerce, and brick-and-mortar businesses. Or many other things where you’re simply, as Jim said, delivering value first. Value before they’ve given you something, or some value of their own.
And then, so the second piece that you’ll need, for a lead generator, is a landing page, or some sort of opt-in mechanism. That’s a bit of a mouthful, as well. But, ultimately, it’s a way for someone to submit their information, i.e. their name and email, like I said, so that they can automatically receive the lead magnet. And this is important because, when you’re trying to generate leads at scale, you need to be able to automatically deliver that first touch, that piece of value that we talked about.
And then, finally, the third piece is a traffic source. This is how people find out about your lead magnet. It could be, maybe a Facebook ad that you re-target to the people who watched your video Facebook ad. That’s just an example of something that we do all the time over here, at Visify. It could be maybe a Google search, they happened to find your opt-in page, or your website through a search. It could be organic social media, where you’re posting on your Facebook page, or your Twitter channel, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe a podcast, lots of other places where they could potentially find you, but ultimately, some sort of traffic source that’s driving people to your lead magnet, I.E. the opt-in page where they can get it.
Jim Hohl: Right. And so, now that they’ve given you their information, you don’t necessarily want to talk to every single lead that comes through. There’s gonna be students that are looking for information, there’s gonna be competitors that are trying to see what you’re up to, right? Not every lead is a good lead. So it’s really important to properly qualify those leads, because, when they’re properly qualified, they’re exponentially more likely to buy, right? So that’s where we get into the third component of our system, which is called the sales qualifier.
So the key here, at the sales qualifier step, is to generate commitment from that lead. So you want to generate that commitment in terms of money, which could be a low ticket offer, sometimes called a tripwire. Maybe it’s a seven dollar ebook, maybe it depends if you’re a higher ticket, in higher ticket sales. You might be looking at a smaller offering that you have, maybe a smaller course, 97 dollar course, something like that, or it could be a commitment of their time. They might invest their time in a webinar with you. They may invest their time in a consultation with you, over the phone. Or it’s their energy.
So that could look like a longer form type of assessment, or they might actually come to an event that you have. Maybe you have a half hour, or two hour evening event. Something like that, where they come to, where you have a speaking gig. Somehow, they’re putting their energy into moving that relationship forward. So it changes the nature of the relationship from a lead to a qualified lead, a sales qualified lead. So that’s someone who has expressed more interest, and is more likely to move ahead in the process.
Lucas Garvin: Yeah, and just if I can jump in on that, I mean this is really, really big, guys. So many people are doing this wrong. I’ve seen a couple major marketing experts out there, recently, say tripwires are a scam, and I’m not gonna comment on that particular piece, but I’ll just say that it really is critical that you qualify your leads before you start to sell to them. If they’re not ready for marriage, don’t make a marriage proposal, all right?
Jim Hohl: Right, absolutely. And so the marriage here, now, we’re at the next step, which is your core offer. This is something that you sell on a regular basis, your primary product, or service. So, for a lot of coaches, what that looks like is one of their main cornerstone courses. It could look like their mastermind, or a group program, depending on where their business is in their growth path, but it’s the thing that you sell, the primary product, or service that you sell, and specifically what this particular process is built around.
So another way to think about the core offer is it’s the thing that you’re most excited to sell, and that you’re most confident that people will buy. That people most often buy from you. So that’s what you’re gonna offer to the people that are sales qualified. And then, beyond that, so a lot of people forget that there’s more to be made from a single client, from a single sale. So it’s not just selling your core offer. The next step, here, is step number five, component number five, the profit maximizer.
So this is, sometimes framed as an upsell to your core offer, but it’s something that’s of great value to your client, and it could be an extension, or an add on, or somehow otherwise complementary product, or service, to your core offer. And it’s important that your profit maximizer really be a logical, or natural next step from the core offer, not just something completely random that you throw in front of them, but that really continues to further the relationship, and tell the story of your business, and that person’s experience of your business. Something like, “Would you like fries with that?” Is a very common real world example of a profit maximizer.
Lucas Garvin: Like we said, McDonald’s uses this, right? This is the same sort of methodology that massive, massive companies are using to grow, and to scale, and they’re looking at each of these pieces in their business, and going, “How can we optimize every single one of these steps of the buyer’s journey?” Right? They’re really, really focusing on optimizing that, and that’s why this is so critical to understand, because once you have it down, you can go back to it, time and time again, to grow and scale your business.
So let me start the next section by asking a question. Have you ever made a pitch, or launched a product, or made an offer of some kind, and not everyone that you made the offer to said yes? I think the answer is probably yes. Right? In a typical product launch, a minimum good lead to sale conversion rate might be one percent. A better conversion rate might be two percent, in the average product launch. So there’s 99 to 98 or so, on average, percent of your audience that you then need to nurture, after that launch, in order to get them to turn into a customer later, right? And so how do we do that?
Well, in growth optimization, we call that a nurture path. And nurture paths are really the key to keeping your list, and your customers engaged with you, and your brand. They keep you top of mind, and further develop the relationship so that when they need what you offer, you’re who they think of, instead of your competition. Something like this might be a blog, a newsletter, maybe your social media pages, like a Facebook page, or a YouTube channel. Maybe a podcast, like this one. Or webinars, or meetups, or events, and many, many other things, but it’s typically something that you release often. It’s something of value that you can use to further develop that relationship, and actually it’s even further qualifying the leads that you’ve generated for that sale.
So maybe, at the time that you first generated a lead, they consumed your sales qualifier process, or whatever it was that you created for that part of growth optimization, and they still weren’t quite ready. Well, the nurture path helps bring them back, bring you back into focus with them, helps further develop the relationship, further qualify that lead for a sale, and when you go to make a pitch again, maybe you launch your product the next year, or you make an invitation to your list, to get on the phone with you about a high ticket offer that you want to make, they might be more ready for that, at that point, after they’ve been through a couple months experiencing some of your nurture paths.
And so the seventh and final piece of growth optimization are your authority builders. And authority builders are very much like they sound, designed to build authority. They are essential to building trust, and expanding your reach to new customers. They can be things like testimonials, books, reviews, awards, podcasts, again, media mentions, industry certifications, and press. So think about, maybe, some things that you’ve done, in the last couple of years, that might be worth mentioning, and it’s interesting, because, when I ask this question to some people, maybe they ask me at an event, or at a speaking opportunity, “How can I develop my authority with my audience? How can I have more credibility with people that I’m speaking to?”
And so often, I ask them the question, I just give them examples like, “Were you featured anywhere recently? Do you have any industry certifications? Or do you put out a podcast? Have you ever written a book? Anything like that.” And, so often, the answer to those things are yes. But they aren’t using them. So think, for just a minute, is there anything in your life, and in your business that you could legitimately use, something like the things that I’ve mentioned, to help build your credibility, and your authority with your audience?
We’ve put together a quick start guide for you, summarizing all of these steps, and the key actions to take in implementing them. We’ll tell you how to download this, at the end of the episode, and you can also find the link in the show notes.
Jim Hohl: All right, now we’re gonna cover some of the pitfalls. Some of the most commonly missed steps, when people are going about implementing this in their business. So first, a lot of people just have only a lead generator, and a core offer. In fact, most people just have this. We’ve found that this is usually just not enough to create consistent, predictable, and scalable growth. You’re going to want to have the attention driver, and you’re going to want to definitely have what comes after lead generator, which is sales qualifier.
So many companies, though, skip that sales qualifier, and it really hurts their conversion, on the core offer. They’ll try so hard, having conversation after conversation, and it just really makes selling so much harder. When they insert something like a webinar, or a free video, or a low cost product, or trial, as their sales qualifier, it builds the relationship and it establishes that know, like, and trust. And it primes them for your core offer. Trust me, having that sales qualifier step will transform your business.
Finally, a profit maximizer is really just one of the easiest ways to make more money without doing any additional lead generation, or marketing. So you definitely don’t want to skip this step. All you need to do, here, is create an offer or exist-
All you need to do here is to create, or offer an existing product or service to your customers that complements, or enhances what they’ve already bought from you.
Lucas Garvin: So this may all seem overwhelming, and like a lot, but don’t worry, we have some guides that will make this process really easy for you. But first, where should you start? Well, you’ll want to begin with growth planning. You need to do a deep dive into your business, and identify where are your greatest opportunities for growth? This will help you identify where you have content, and funnels that are working, and where you have gaps that you will need to fill. Maybe it’s your first funnel, or marketing campaign. Either way, this will help.
And maybe you’ll discover that your lead magnet isn’t converting, or people aren’t buying your profit maximizer. Either way, this process is designed to figure it out. You can kickstart it by downloading our growth optimization quick start guide. To download it, just go to Visify dot com slash quick. You can also find that link in the show notes.
Be sure to subscribe to Mastering Growth, because we’ll continue to share tips, tricks, and strategies rooted in this proven system, growth optimization.
Jim Hohl: All right, that’s all we’ve got for you for this episode, join us on the next episode, episode three, which is available now, and it’s all about how to position yourself as an expert. That authority builder component of growth optimization that we talked about. Until next time, keep growing.
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