If you run a service business I hope to save you a lot of pain and failure by sharing mine.
Here are 5 things that led to a dramatic turnaround despite a worse macro environment.
1. Product/Market fit.
I have been leading boot strapped businesses my whole life. We think like boot strappers and market like boot strappers.
Profit has always been the focus of our service.
This was the wrong message for the last era, I failed to understand that then.
But in THIS moment, it's everything. All of our methodologies and systems have been a preparation for a moment when business objectives would change to a focus on profitability.
Takeaway:
Press hard to understand how your offering UNIQUELY matches the present need of your customers.
2. Tenure of our staff
Our average tenure per employee is at an all time high.
I can't understate how much this matters for a human service business.
During COVID there was so much demand and we grew so fast that at one point half of the employees of CTC has been with the company for less than 12 months.
It is very hard to effectively onboard and train that many people while maintaining the same standard of work.
We are a smaller more experienced team today and the quality of work, and capacity of the staff reflects that reality.
Takeaway:
Grow with intention and keep an eye on this graph it is a proxy for the quality of your work.
CTC has been responsible for delivering tens of thousands of ads a year for over a decade.
Here is the creative strategy process we have built.
You won't be surprised to find that it begins with clarity of the financial objective and flows out from there.
It goes like this...
Step 1 Set the financial goal and media budget
Retention model + Spend/aMER model set both
Growth strategist sets the channel allocation and efficiency expectations based on whatever measurement you want.
Only NOW do we have the necessary constraints to build a creative plan
Step 2 Build the Marketing Calendar
Product releases, promotions, key cultural moments, campaign launches anchor the production planning process and maximize impact by allowing the brand to deploy consistent marketing messaging ACROSS CHANNELS.
1/ You have heard me say you should never turn off a Facebook ad.
But what about an entire ad channel?
Many brands come to us wondering about Pinterest, Snapchat, Tik Tok and other media channels.
So how do you know if an ad platform is worth it?
Let's get nerdy...
2/ While we believe that your aMER should ultimately govern your media budget there is an important question to be answered about the allocation between channels.
Here's where Statistical Hypothesis Testing steps in - an advanced math concept comparing data sets.
3/ Though it’s an advanced mathematical concept, the best way to think about Statistical Testing is as a simple question:
Is one set of data points like another?
Of course, the answer is a little more complicated than a simple side-by-side comparison.