Growth Report #1 - Let's do this. Launch Day. Figuring Stuff Out...
A
ll right, let's do this.
This is my first weekly report which I will be writing until we hit our short term goal of 30 paying customers for our Wordpress support packages.
Below I'm giving a broad overview of where we I am on this journey. I hope you learn something good from this process and that you'll comment, give feedback and follow along.
Overview of key growth stats
- Traffic = 2,525 visits last week to the website
- Email subcribers = +20 per day
- Leads = 25 collected this week
- MRR (monthly run rate) = $497 / month (only for this new service... not for our whole business! Felt I should be clear about that)
- Monthly Expenses = $317 (we're kind of starting this new service within our current business so I will be adding in expenses as new people on our team and tools get "flipped" over and used with this new business)
- Gross Profit = $180 / month
Monday - 6:42 PM
Putting myself in your shoes, think it will be more interesting to people following along to read a short synopsis day by day rather than some big, weekly conclusion. You'll be able to see my thought process and how we're executing on this new business model.
My goal for this week is to cause our first two sales for our Wordpress Support and Maintenance service.
On most week days I'm churning our 1000+ words per day for our blog and for guest blog articles. That's on my list for today as well, but since it's already late here, I'm going to focus on the higher priority task of editing and improving the copy on our homepage.
It's a "mess" right now--surprisingly people are still converting on it. We've already received several leads for people interested in receiving pricing info when it's ready. That's encouraging.
Today I turned an opportunity at a large contract for our sales funnel consulting services. It would have been at least 5 figures. Focus is paramount right now, I don't believe I will execute as well with out it. Still, it's a risk. So I'm hoping to see evidence quickly that this new offer works and that entrepreneurs and business owners have a need for it.
Time to get to work. Will report back tomorrow...
Tuesday - 9:26 PM
Late night. Wrapping up now.
Launched the new homepage, pricing page, and checkout form. Took a while to get it right and it's still far from "perfect," but it communicates and functions how it needs to.
It's clean, clear, and gets the message across.
Even before I finished, we already received 12 leads for the ugly, messed up version of this page. That's a positive sign.
Let's see how quickly we we receive the first order... Tomorrow I'll send an email announcement to our subscribers to let them know we're coming out with this.
Considering giving a discount for early sign-ups hm. Think I'll give something but how much?
Thursday - 7:50AM
Yesterday I sent out our launch announcement for our new productized Wordpress support service. My expectations were low, though I had hoped to cause 1-2 sales.
No sales yet, but we received 20+ leads (most of those coming since last Friday when the homepage was still far from complete).
Yesterday I took down the requirement to put in an email via a Leadbox pop-up, but now I think I'll put that back in place...
One common piece of feedback I received in two cases was that the timing wasn't right for the person considering signing up. In other words, it seems like they want to feel an immediate need for the service (i.e. I know I want this service because I have an idea for something that needs to be updated or changed right now).
In addition, responsiveness is key. One woman I emailed with who had a question about pricing and extent of the service pointed out how impressed she was with the timely response.
I'm hunting for more qualitative feedback to understand if this is just something people decide on, if not immediately then within what time frame...
9:52PM
Busy day with the holiday coming up as a couple of our client projects are ramping up before the launch date.
Got some more feedback this morning. One person excluded herself from our target market, she said, because she was a "solopreneur" and she had someone already fulfilling the need at a cheaper rate. She said slightly bigger businesses would be our target market.
Sounds about right. I want to avoid competing on price. And having someone cheaper at the rate she was talking about is just unsustainable and unreliable long term (trust me, I know from experience).
So here's what I got done towards the new service the rest of today:
- Added the Leadpages Leadbox feature back into the homepage to "wall off" access to the pricing page. It's "nice" having more people see the pricing page, but I feel like I'm flying blind right now with out it. At least this way I can follow-up with people and get their feedback. I also find it mentally encouraging that we're getting closer to sales the more leads we bring in who request pricing info. We're doing about 3-5 leads per day I'd say. Maybe more. It's only been a few days since the new homepage has been up.
- Added an automated survey tool, called Survicate.com. It asks people what's holding them back from buying our service before they leave the page. This will help me understand if customers have any concerns or questions that I can better address in the website's copy.
- We sent a newsletter announcing the change (but different from yesterday's announcement) and the motivation behind it (i.e. we want to focus and be really, really good at doing one thing that we know can scale efficiently)
- Last, I adjusted the copy on the homepage and the pricing page to better emphasize the key benefit that people seem to value very highly which is availability. Plus, part of my evolving hypothesis on why customers will buy this service is because they need help RIGHT NOW. It's not connected to some idea they may want down the road. It's a subscription service, and if they don't start seeing benefit from it right away, why bother signing up? So here's an example of how I emphasized that in the main headline:
- In addition, it's also worth pointing out the I emphasized more about what other people compare us to (other developers, or a web agency who doesn't want this kind of work and will charge too much anyway)
So, no new sales yet, but it seems like a matter of time.
Several people are talking to me on Facebook and via email that say want to sign-up or say they will have an interest in the near future.
Going to stay proactive though. Tomorrow I'll start laying out our new email autoresponder to follow-up with new leads coming in from the homepage.
I think I also need to show something personal about the AutoGrow team on the homepage so people know real people who know what they are doing are behind the site.
Stay tuned for another update next week...
