Professionals versus Entrepreneurs
Owning or leading a startup takes much work. It is rare for entrepreneurs to start with a fully functional team of experts within a startup environment.
Some professionals have a view that entrepreneurs focus on the wrong things.
Typical Professional Key Performance Indicators
Foundation
- Has the business differentiated and positioned the business for faster growth?
- Is this likely a viable business?
- Has the business focussed and succeeded in lifting its trustability, credibility and purpose compared to its competitors?
- Is there clarity on why – their ideal buyers should only buy from their business rather than their competitors?
- Has their WHY been turned into a powerful pitch and narrative?
- Is there clarity on their omnichannel marketing and quantity of channels, the ROI and the performance of each?
Test your business’s foundation – are your revenue operations – marketing, and sales performing at best practice levels?
Take this free ten-minute quiz – test your business against the best.
https://professionalquiz.accelerateyourbusiness.today/david-ftefb3ol
Operational – managing the day-to-day,
- Average Order Values,
- Conversion rates,
- Cost Per Acquisition,
- Margins on products and services,
- Omnichannel selling – which channels perform best,
- New buyer acquisition – how to achieve more growth with fewer costs,
Entrepreneurs – some focus on the opposite
- What does the – about us – page say?
- The importance of the pictures,
- What is the purpose of the business – other than to make a profit?
- Is the font right?
- How on-brand is the video from the recent shoot?
- Is there an over-reliance on organic traffic,
All of the above is important, regardless of whether you are a professional or an entrepreneur. It’s prioritising the proper steps first that is crucial.
A checklist for your review,
1. Web Site Optimisation
Web Site Optimisation – drives more traffic to a website, increases your number of conversions, and ultimately, increases revenue.
First – make the website speed faster.
2. Put the Technology to Work – e-commerce.
If you are a startup e-commerce business, it’s tough to beat Shopify – the ecosystem is robust, and entry costs are low.
Whichever technology you choose, check the following,
- Set up and collect product and business reviews using best practices – email and SMS,
- Syndicate your reviews, especially with Google, to show up and build trust with future buyers on organic and paid searches,
- Use technology to track every click on your website that triggers pop-ups based on a user’s activity,
- Within your subscription app, set up an unsubscribe flow to ensure you collect data and have the correct message setup,
3. Creative Testing
Rapid creative, daily, organic social media testing in real-time to find the perfect mix of
- formats,
- headlines,
- offers,
- Drive increasing attention and intent to purchase
- Test videos – UGC, influencers, animations, slideshows,
- Test multiple offers with each video, checking view time, engagement, shares, and comments at the engagement of each video – for performance and conversions,
- Find the most common customer service questions – answer them in video format,
4. Fear of testing
Entrepreneurs sometimes fear someone might see test advertising get upset and never want to buy. It is not an issue.
Continuous improvement testing benefits include driving down costs, including
- the Cost Per Acquistion,
- higher conversions,
- improving margins,
- bundling products – which bundles will perform best,
- test top of the funnel traffic with quizzes – collecting emails,
- testing multiple versions of lead generation,
- testing multiple landing pages to improve performance
6. Campaigns are core retail skills,
Events, including
- limited-time offers,
- new product launches,
- end-of-life products,
- Black Friday,
- Boxing Day,
- Easter,
- Gift with purchase,
- Win your competitor’s customers in real-time,
Build and execute a highly professional retail campaign calendar; the aim is to always
- be seen more,
- be heard more,
- sell more,
7. Learn to love big data,
Valuable data is everywhere. That is the problem — it is often not where you want it – on your dashboard. Ensure your critical insights are loading onto your main dashboard.
Testing, learning, understanding, iterating and scaling – data leads the way – make your it is collected first.
8. Fractional Chief Marketing Officers,
Few startups can afford CMOS – but many can afford a part-time – person. Or outsource the work.
Revenue operations – sales and marketing – are getting more complex each day. If you don’t have time for a Master’s in Marketing – get help – they will save you money and help you make more.
