Week 0-3 (The Spyglass Phase)
Understanding your existing assets
Whenever we start working with a new client, we want to know where exactly we stand at the beginning of our business growth mapping journey. In the last few years, it happened over and over again, that we would talk to our clients’ marketing teams or CEO for an hour or two, only to realize how much value and data they already had to offer.
That’s why the first few days of working with us are all about asking questions, talking to your team(s), trying your product (or service) and… asking even more questions.
We don’t want to push you over the edge—the goal is for us to understand your product (or service), your values, where you want to be in X months from now, what you’ve tried to get there, what worked and what didn’t. Ideally, we’d like to know about your business as much as you (before we find out more).
Analytics and SEO audits
Apart from the intense conversations, we’ll need to understand:
- Where your customers are coming from—this involves hours of digging through your analytics and social media accounts (if you have any), your ads (either current or historical), and other traffic sources. Why? Before we tell you who your prospects are, we need to know where to find them and which conversion routes are the most successful.
- How your product (or service) has developed over the last months and years. What makes you… you. What’s the vibe that attracts your customers or subscribers. We’d like to take a look at any alternative website designs you’ve tried—and those that you’re currently planning. The best part—we’ll challenge you to explain some of these changes. Are they based on your internal research? (Good.) Are they based on your “gut feeling”? (Well… we’ll talk about that.)
Ready to sail...
We’re not even in the second phase yet, and it’s already getting overwhelming? Growing your business isn’t a walk in the park, but you’ll have your favourite business growth pirates to guide you.
Week 4-7 (The Sailing Phase)
Digging for your Hidden Treasure
We’d like to think of ourselves as a compass rather than a key to a chest full of gold. The wealth and value of our Business Cartography MethodologyTM is not based on Map My Growth being the source of ancient knowledge about how to grow and understand every single business there is.
We know tens of different tools and methods to gather feedback from everyone who ever enters or has entered your funnel, with even a slight intention to buy, register, or convert (in general). When we say: “no stone will be left unturned”, we truly mean it.
First, we’ll work on a list of questions you’d like to ask your website visitors or customers if you could talk to them face to face. Then, we’ll add more to that list. After that, we’ll pick the best tools (keeping in mind your budget) to gather that data.
Understanding why your traffic doesn't convert
The key is to understand the following aspects of your website (and your business in general):
- Why do you site visitors not convert?
- Where do you lose the biggest portion of your traffic—and why?
- What are the differences between the experience of a customer and a non-converting visitor—and how to learn from them?
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How do the objections to buying or registering on your site evolve, including 3 key stages:
- Before people even visit you site (general product- or service-related objections).
- Right after they land on your site (the first-impression buzz killers).
- Right before they convert (passing the “sanity check” that’s happening in your prospects’ minds).
User and customer feedback can hurt
While the Spyglass Phase was all about knowing your business from your perspective, the Sailing Phase is like jumping into the shoes of your target audience. And this can be a painful process. You’ll hear and read a lot of critical comments and responses. The results we’ll provide might not be easy to swallow and digest, but, again, growing a business is challenging—both practically and emotionally. We’ll help you heal. We’ll help you Face your Kraken...
Week 8-9, 10, 11... (Facing the Kraken)
Kraken = Your biggest problem
Let’s begin by explaining the whole concept of a “Kraken”.
Kraken is scary. It’s big. It’s a sea monster that stands between your sailing ship (business) and the ultimate treasure (more conversions, better user experience). Every company has a different Kraken. It can be:
- Poor copy on the key pages.
- User-(un)friendly funnel.
- Poor use of existing assets (visitors never get to see them).
- Poorly explained or presented free trial or first-time buyer offers.
- Unoptimized landing pages.
- Completely ignoring the needs of the target audience and focusing on designing a pretty page that offers no real value and will eventually make prospects go to competitors’ sites (yes, that’s the worst Kraken to have).
Data-driven approach to increasing your online sales
Without any data and detailed analysis, it’s hard to say what your Kraken is—or if you have multiple Krakens, and if so, which one is the biggest? But that was one of the goals of the Sailing Phase. At this point, we will have discovered your Kraken(s) and we’ll be getting our swords sharpened to take that beast down. How? There are many ways:
- Generating tons of actions you should take, either on your website or elsewhere (social media pages, sales call process, etc.).
- Helping you plan and execute some of these actions (including wireframes, mockups, email campaigns, ads, altered sales funnels—depending on the Kraken we’ll be facing).
- Planning AB-testing on your site (if you have significant traffic to run this type of tests) or offering other, more qualitative ways to evaluate the changes we’ll propose.
From data to your actionable strategy
Ideally, you’d have a developer or a dev team to help code the Kraken-addressing changes on your website, but don’t worry if you don’t. We can help you work on the front end. It’s very unlikely that you’ll have to redesign the entire site and start from scratch. If you’re one of our clients, you already have an established business, so it can’t be that bad!
Bottom line: It’s knowing your target audience and creating a user experience that encourages conversions
Our motto is: “Would you ever travel to a new place without a map?”.
Of course, some people do. They hope to get to their dream destination, and some of them will, but it takes them much more time and they risk getting stranded and losing… well, everything.
We’ll create that map for you. A map based on data, charts, trends, real-user feedback. Tangible results, specific to your business and product. Whenever you want to make changes to your business, website, or sales processes, you should first look for that change pinned somewhere on our map. If it isn’t there, then it most certainly isn’t what your target audience wants.
To sum up, these are the pillars of our 3-step Business CartographyTM methodology:
- To take a look through the Spyglass and discover what’s already there.
- To Sail in the direction of the Hidden Treasure, backed by feedback from your customers, users, and team members.
- To identify and defeat your Kraken(s)—all the barriers between where your business is today, and where it should be a few weeks from now.
If you made it this far, we hope you’re not feeling sea-sick! Ready to grow your business? Then hop on board with Map My Growth by booking your Free Cartography Session. See you soon, sailor!