Brief Overview

We’ve recently made some BIG investments for our company and we predict they will give us a massive competitive advantage in the next few years. I tell you what they are in this episode and how they will secure you for long-term success with your business.

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Big Ideas

If You’re Not Doing THIS, You’re Going to Struggle to Succeed in Business [01:47]

Traditional marketing wisdom has always said that to have success when it comes to growing a business, you need two main ingredients. 1.) Traffic and 2.) A great offer. As long as you had those two things, you’d be successful. But today, that’s only half of the truth. Things have evolved. Unfortunately, traffic and a great offer aren’t enough anymore. Those two things are only focused on everything that happens before the sale is made. There’s this other component that is really important. The long tail effect depends on whether or not you and your product/service is helping people get results. Is it doing the thing that you said it would do in your offer? Is it helping people to make forward progress? If it doesn’t, than the long term effect is that you’re going to struggle – especially because word gets out today faster than it ever has in the past.

News Spreads Faster Than Ever – Whether It’s Good or Bad [05:12]

In today’s market, social media has exposed a real weakness in some businesses. Word spreads, and it spreads fast on social media. Whatever you’re selling may sound sexy and you may have a great offer, but if the product/service sucks, that is going to be super damaging to you and your business’s reputation in the long term. But the inverse is also true. What if you had people saying “This product is unbelievable. Every time I use it, I get this incredible result.” Anybody that has a problem that you help solve, becomes a part of this army of raving fans who are spreading the word, faster than ever before.  

The Big Opportunity [06:39]

So, there’s a real opportunity here. In our company, we’ve taken a step back and outlined what we believe. We believe that the future of our company depends on the results we can help our customers get. So, what do we need to do and where do we need to invest, to ensure that happens? There’s two big areas that we’re betting BIG on!

We’re shifting a big part of our attention from the front end (traffic & great offers) to the backend (the customer experience). The backend refers to everything that happens after the sale is made.

Here are the 2 big areas we’re betting big on:

Experience Design: This is all about thinking through the entire buying experience. What happens after a customer enters their credit card info and hits the buy button? What happens at every little touchpoint? How can you make it a memorable experience?

Community Development: There is a massive ripple effect to the results you get for your customers. People come for the content, but they stay for the community. Those who pour attention into nurturing community are going to see massive success. Those who don’t, are going to find it difficult.  

When you start to pour attention into developing a community, that’s when it goes from a transaction to a relationship. And once that happens, you immediately secure yourself for the long term.  

Memorable Quotes

“The future of your business depends largely on your ability to help your customers make forward progress and get a result.” – Stu McLaren   

“If what we’re selling doesn’t help our customers make forward progress, then in the long term, we lose.” – Stu McLaren   

“The delivery of your product, service or experience, is really like the pre-launch to whatever it is that you want to offer next.” – Stu McLaren

Resources

MYB 020 – The Circle of Awesomeness
MYB 070 – The Great Divide

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