The best action you can take to grow your business
You know a presentation is great when you already know the contents, but it still changes you. I recently experienced this when I saw a presentation by noah kagan, where instead of giving a motivational talk he pushed the audience to take action in their business immediately. Many in attendance (myself included) found ways to save or make $2,000+ within the hour.
The fascinating thing about these actions: they weren’t complicated, and the audience was full of smart motivated entrepreneurs, yet this little push was needed by all to take the action.
Marketing and entrepreneurship suffer from this same friction: we know what to do, in fact we know too many things to do, so we usually do the wrong things or nothing at all.
But what if we could identify the right actions, the clear actions that move our business forward?
After working with B2B clients from $0 to $700M revenue, and experimenting with my own marketing, I’ve found a simple set of actions that nearly every company, large or small, can take to grow their business. Yes, even your business.
Here they are:
- Identify your true fans
- Understand your true fans
- Ask your fans for advice
Identify your true fans
In his seminal essay, Kevin Kelly defines a true fan:
“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”
Modern software companies often struggle with monetization, more so than artists.
Modern software companies also struggle to identify their true fans, because $20/mo SaaS products don’t stir motion quite like the emotions of a pop ballad.
All the more reason: you need to identify your true fans.
Your true fans are likely paying customers, but more than that they love your product. They pay you with money and attention.
These fans should be unaffiliated: no relatives, no former coworkers, no one who only buys from you as a personal favor.
If you don’t have a lot of these fans, that is great feedback about where you are with your product: you might be too early, or you might have a product that no one actually wants.
Because what matters isn’t the profit on an account; what matters is the attention you can get from someone with acute problems, problems you already solve or could solve. I’d prefer a true fan who doesn’t pay me anything yet over a large account that covers my overhead but doesn’t understand the benefit of working with me: the first one has potential I can build on, while the second one is a fragile relationship likely leading to an untimely cancellation.
If your company is over $100M revenue, likely the company founders once could identify their true fans, but now they are lost in the noise of accidental customers. You can waste a quarter targeting a shiny new channel, or you can do the simple (not easy) work, returning to the fundamentals.
Find your true fans.
Understand your true fans
Now that you know who your true fans are, sit down with these fans and learn more about them.
What are their hopes and dreams? What occupies their mind right now? What will it take to get them promoted?
Why are they true fans — how did it happen? What about them makes for predictable fandom?
Write internal case studies — not to leverage your fans, but to understand them better. Write case studies about where they were before your product and where they are now. Write case studies about where they want to be in 6–12 months and how they might get there.
Find the stories where you helped them slay the dragon. Discover the new dragons they still have to slay.
If you find these fans have common problems you can’t solve, find a way to solve them. Maybe this means some research or content; maybe this means making a timely introduction. For example, I stopped offering PPC services years ago, but I won’t hesitate to refer a true fan to another provider whom I know and trust.
Ask your fans for advice
Most marketers ignore all of these steps.
Smart-ish marketers skip to this step: they push hard on their customer base to get more referrals, more tweets, more engagement. They think fracking is a sustainable approach to growth.
But you can’t skip any of these steps: the magic is in doing them in order.
If you push all of your customers to engage and refer, without identifying your true fans first, you irritate everyone and influence no one.
If you ask your true fans to help you, but you don’t understand what makes them a true fan, they’ll bring you prospects and customers who aren’t a good fit. Your marketing team will be thrilled, of course, but you’ll create more noise for your sales team.
When you can identify your true fans, and you know what makes them true fans, and you understand their evolving problems, then you can ask for advice.
- Ask them to explain your product in their own words
- Ask them for recommendations of other companies they value
- Ask them about the last time they referred a company to a peer
You don’t need to explicitly ask for referrals: a true fan already wants to refer you. Instead learn how they describe your product, where else do they spend their fandom, and what it looks like when they make a referral.
The words your fans use? They’ll be the best copy you ever have on your website.
Those other companies? They’ll be companies you can refer your fans to, and vice versa.
In having this dialogue, you’ll help them better understand what makes someone become a true fan for you, and when they see someone like this they’ll make that referral.
Because a true fan doesn’t benefit by simply referring you to others; they benefit by converting someone they know into another true fan.
These actions are simple, but not easy.
Finding your fans can be hard: maybe you don’t have a large group to work with, or you have a lot of different products and audiences.
Sitting down with your fans feels hard: you’re asking them for their time, when they already pay you money! Maybe they’ll regret the contract and immediately cancel it. Maybe you should separate fans from whales.
Perhaps listening to your fans is hardest of all: you know your product better than they do, you know your copy better than they do, why would you accept their misconceptions and word choices when your expert writer had a different opinion?
So most companies won’t do this. Most companies will keep their existing V-shaped funnel, throwing money at a leaky lead gen engine and hope it makes it to the IPO.
Smarter companies will flip the funnel, but keep the same mechanical mindset: if we just maintain these percentage yields with X input we’ll get Y revenue.
It is true: you can manufacture demand.
Perhaps the incremental growth from your funnel is enough; perhaps you’re just one A/B test away from your goals.
But if you want if you want sustainable revenue buoyed by fans; if you want a company you can be proud of; if you want a shot at exponential growth that can outrun the law of shitty clickthroughs: grow through your true fans.