What Does Your Business Need To Actually Grow?
Hey Reader,
Growing your business is rarely just about marketing and what you sell...
A client initially hired me to handle their marketing, so I ran their ads, social media, and internal campaigns.
About a year later, the owner sold the multimillion-dollar business to investors. The new owner knew the business could be making more money and asked me to find where revenue was leaking. He suspected the marketing.It took me two days to gather the data and find the problem.One office was sending inbound calls to an answering service during the day.
It had cost the business $2 million in sales in one year.The investors spent the next three months analyzing the same data before confirming what I’d found.The marketing wasn’t struggling to create demand. The business couldn’t keep up with the demand it already had.
Had we done more marketing, they would have lost even more revenue.
Then there was the e-commerce store with amazing products that wasn’t making enough sales.
People were buying because the prices were low, but they weren’t sticking around or becoming loyal customers.
The owners came to me thinking they needed more marketing.
When I dug deeper, I found a messaging problem and a missing backend revenue engine. They were stuck in 3% conversion hell when they could be closer to 30%.
People visited the website but couldn’t see themselves in the products or feel what would change after buying them.
I thought back to what I’d learned growing my own product business to more than $5 million in sales:
Facts tell. Stories sell.
Their brand was missing stories. Stories behind the products. Stories about why the brand existed. Stories customers could see themselves in and become part of.
Stories that made people care.
Once we shifted from describing products to telling those stories, revenue took off. The ads started working, and customers began coming back because they felt seen.
We also built the backend revenue system so the owners could step away and have the business continue working without them.
Revenue increased 30% in one week. When they activated more of the campaigns I’d built, they reached 60% growth.
Now they can focus on bringing more people to the brand because the marketing has something stronger to work with.
The Challenge Is Jumping To The Solution Too Fast
When business owners want to grow, we tend to jump straight to the solution.
We need more revenue, so we need more customers. To get more customers, we need more marketing. So we start looking at ads, social media, SEO, email, a new website, or whatever seems like the next logical move.
And sometimes that is exactly what the business needs.
But look at the businesses I just told you about.
- The first company already had plenty of demand. More marketing would have sent even more opportunities into a system that couldn’t handle what was already coming in.
- The second company had people finding the products, but too many of them were leaving without buying or coming back. Once we changed the messaging and built the backend revenue system, the marketing started producing a very different result.
I’ve seen the same thing throughout my career.
- I helped one company double its revenue and reach its first million by improving conversion because demand was already there.
- Another business owner increased revenue by 60% in 90 days after we created higher-priced virtual offers using the reputation and relationships she had spent years building.
- I helped another client generate $500,000 in three months for a group coaching program. The demand was there, but delivering the program exhausted her. She eventually put the business on hold and went to Italy. We had created growth without first creating enough capacity to support it.
That’s why I don’t want to start with the marketing tactic.
I want to know where the business is going, what is already happening inside it, and what needs to be true for that next level of growth to work.
Because more marketing is incredibly valuable when the business is ready for more demand.When it isn’t, marketing can simply send more people into whatever is already holding the business back.
How To Make This Shift In Your Business
Instead of starting with what you think you should do next, start with where you want the business to go and work backward.
The goal is to understand where the business is today, what needs to change to reach that goal, and which moves deserve your attention first.
Why It Helps: It’s easy to spend time and money on things that sound like good ideas without knowing whether they’ll actually move the business forward.
Working backward from the goal gives you a way to evaluate those ideas against what your business needs right now. It also helps you spot opportunities you may already have and issues that could get in the way of growth.
How To Do It: Get specific about where you’re going. Give your goal a number, an outcome, and a timeframe.
- Take inventory of where you are today. Look at your customers, offers, revenue, audience, relationships, conversion, marketing, and capacity.
- Follow the path to revenue. Trace what happens from the moment someone discovers your business through the sale and what happens afterward. Look for where people drop off and where you could create more revenue.
- Look across the business. Consider the other pieces that affect the goal, including sales, pricing, customer experience, operations, and your ability to handle more growth.
- Put the moves in order. Decide what needs to happen first, what comes next, and what can wait.
Inside the Studio
I just wrapped up Scale Clarity with a coach who had been in business for a year without getting buyers. He told me he needed to figure it out or he’d have to get a job.
He had tried ads, networking, and referrals, but nothing was working.When we first met, he told me, “Just so we’re clear, I DO NOT want to talk about transformations in my marketing.”
As a marketer, that immediately stood out to me because every business sells some transformation. People need to understand what will be different after they buy.As we dug into his business, the bottleneck became clear: people didn’t understand what he was selling or why they needed it.
So I rebuilt the messaging and then created the system around it: his website copy, offers, pricing, lead-generation and ad strategy, along with the assets he needs to start getting buyers.
He came to me thinking he needed a better marketing strategy because “nothing worked.
”What he needed was the right message and a system built around it.
What my clients are saying!
I continue to serve the Leadership Consulting Firm, where I build business development strategies for their coaches and run their marketing. The CEO told me he was excited to have me help every new coach that joins his organization and see it as a huge bonus to everyone; then he said:“You are the first person I have ever worked with or seen that has run Facebook ads and then turned them into leads and buyers.” - Eric L.
I also continue to work with a crisis communication coach. After doing Scale Clarity, she told me, “Your work is impressive! You captured the essence of my business, and your plan feels completely aligned to my needs and very doable. Thank you for your excellent work! I think you see me and what I have created in a way no one has before. This is my passion, my decades of expertise, my sacred work, and my livelihood! I’m excited about nurturing and growing it.” - Terri A.
I am now implementing everything for Terri, and we got off to a strong start by putting together a proposal for her largest client yet; she was extremely pleased with everything and won the engagement.
I continue to help a local restaurant here in Texas scale. We've worked together for some time and increased their revenue dramatically. This week, I created a new marketing plan to help them scale as they launch a second location. They brought in a worker bee from Toast POS, which I work with quite a bit, and Toast said they thought they would replace me. The owner said:
“You are not going anywhere; we don’t want some large organization taking us over. You already have gotten us results.” Harvey
I have several others I continue to work with and a few that started this month. I look forward to sharing more results with you.
Special Episode of Thrive Radio
I usually use the podcast to share conversations with entrepreneurs about what they're building and learning along the way. But this week, I wanted to sit down with you myself.
I recorded a special episode about the question at the heart of this newsletter: What does your business actually need to grow?
I go deeper into how I think about growth, why two businesses with the exact same goal may need completely different strategies, and five questions you can use to start figuring out what your business needs next.
Ep 280 DISCOVER WHAT'S REALLY STOPPING YOUR BUSINESS FROM GROWING
Think you need more marketing to grow your business? The real problem may be somewhere else entirely. In this episode, I explain how to identify the bottleneck that’s actually limiting your growth, uncover hidden revenue opportunities, and focus on the actions most likely to move your business forward.
In this podcast you will learn:
- Why more marketing isn’t always the answer to increasing revenue
- How to distinguish the symptom of a business problem from its actual cause
- Why you need to define exactly what “growth” means before choosing a strategy
- How to use your business data to uncover revenue leaks and overlooked opportunities
- How to follow the customer journey and identify where potential buyers are dropping off
- Why more traffic won’t solve a conversion, messaging, offer, or sales-process problem
- How the right positioning and messaging can generate sales without a massive audience
- Why your strategy should fit your business model, goals, strengths, and preferences
- How focusing on too many ideas can prevent otherwise strong businesses from gaining traction
- How to prioritize the two or three actions that matter most instead of constantly adding more tactics
- Why building a sustainable customer and revenue system is better than continually chasing new buyers
- How to identify the shortest, strongest path between where your business is today and where you want it to go
You can also listen on Amazon Music, or Google Play
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To Your Success,
Aimee