Common Pitfalls To Avoid On The Way To Business Success

I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to share an article I read about leadership. Here are a few highlights:

If only there was a map that detailed every pitfall, deadend and landmine to avoid on the path to success. There’s a lot to learn from those who have been there, done that and navigated the route already.

I might not be able to conjure a magic map complete with compass points of where the hazards lie. But, in working with dozens of early-stage companies and some big household names in tech, I can identify the top five landmines to watch out for.

These areas are where I see companies struggle, waste time and stall growth. Heed these warnings, and you can improve your chances of growing smarter and faster.

Experimentation

One of the biggest levers is building a robust growth experimentation program. With that in place, you can ruthlessly prioritise experiments to squeeze every bit of performance out of your traffic. This can lead to a series of experiments running across the funnel, within an app and on the website. So how do you do this?

First, create the necessary infrastructure (data tracking, dashboards, and reporting), start rigorously testing the different experiments and then get clear on what needs to be prioritised. One way to do that is to create a simple spreadsheet that has columns for the experiment name, a description and a RICE score. RICE is an acronym for the four factors that determine the priority score: reach, impact, confidence and effort. You get to assess what the customers or transactions might be per month or quarter (reach), followed by how effective that might be in conversion terms (impact). A strong conviction/likelihood around all the above would establish a strong or weak level of confidence, and then you get to weigh what kind of time and resources would be needed (effort). This helps to create a prioritised list of experiments; the more you prioritise, the quicker you can drive growth.

Channel Strategy

Create a "growth flywheel," an essential tool that pinpoints what values and content best drive traffic and growth. Think of it as a self-sustaining loop where you identify what inputs generate the most outputs that can then be reinvested in the inputs.

By identifying what content/feature has led to a significant number of new customers or sign-ups, you learn to reuse/reactivate that same appeal to further entice other customers/users. Consequently, acquisition and product are not viewed separately. Everything feeds into that same loop, relying on proven results.

The one thing great companies do is properly invest in all growth channels. And they relentlessly test these channels to identify what doesn’t work and what does—and then they double and triple down.

Brand Building

Large companies spend millions of dollars on brand agencies (hundreds of thousands if at a startup) to buy a powerful brand. But brand is only good to a point, because it’s merely a manifestation of your product. Brand is an empty vessel until you fill it with meaning. And that meaning often comes from a great product with a great customer experience.

To invest in brand is to acknowledge that you want to raise brand awareness—and that often necessitates spending serious money. Before making that investment, it therefore pays to figure out the one thing that’s going to make your brand renowned. The best brands I've worked with always understood their “one thing.” At Google, it is search. At Headspace, it is meditation. So, get crystal clear: What’s your one thing?

Knowing that unique value is knowing your brand and audience. And when you have a brand and logo that are known and loved, all you need to do is amplify that love and build on it. Put simply, your brand is what your customers think of you. As Larry and Sergey would say at Google, “Focus on the user, and all else will follow.”

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspectives. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected]; or call me on 0467 749 378.

Thanks,

Robert