The best tip I can give you this week is to register for my FREE upcoming Signup Flow training on March 23rd where I’ll show you how to capture up to 30% of all of your website traffic as an email lead – and turn them into sales & subscribers like clockwork. You’ll also see how to get customers on longer and more expensive (and more profitable) subscriptions with ease. [www.subscriptionboxemailsecrets.com/live-webinar-formify]
The best results, lessons and growth are found immediately after a period of difficulty
Here’s a brief history of one of our most painful years in BusterBox and what ultimately came from it – 2019
The Difficulty
We had a trick we used to sign up our first 1000 subscribers. We used to boost a post from our FB page and ask people to comment yes if they were interested in our box. We would then message them 1 by 1 and get them to sign up.
This worked really well because it was like a ‘hack’ in the FB algorithm because when you asked people to comment, a lot of them did, which then signaled to FB that this content is very valuable and so it pushed it out to way more people.
The bang for our buck was much higher than if we were running conversion ads like we do now. The result was we were signing customers up for a CAC of just €6.85 for over a year. This was brilliant for us because we had no marketing skills, no design skills and virtually no way of actually selling our box properly.
In February 2019 we went on to Facebook one day and saw that tactic has been banned. They called it engagement baiting. If you kept doing it you could just be banned and that was it. Our business would be gone and we’re running back crying to a job.
Since it was totally banned now, firstly we kept trying to do it – stupidly risking the ban, but they had also figured out a way to detect when you made posts like that and the reach was a fraction of what it was before. So it simply didn’t work at all.
The Learning
It was at that point we decided there wasn’t a chance in hell we were giving up. It was time to figure out how the hell can we advertise our box and actually get people signed up.
This took us on a journey of taking on debt, raising investor money, learning Facebook ads, buying courses, learning email marketing, graphic design and eventually hiring an agency to take over a design.
The pressure was on. We had taken a lot of debt on by this point, around €90,000 we had personally guaranteed – which means if we fail we are financially ruined for the next 5 years. 3 lads in their early/mid 20’s with no experience in marketing or business whatsoever.
We bought courses, we risked money, we lost money on ads, we slowly got better, we got more knowledge, more skills and more positive results as we started to transition away from 1-1 sales to online marketing.
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The Result
Thankfully, we no longer had to spend hours a day talking to people 1 by 1 (we used to work in 3 shifts of 4 hours each).
We finally figured out how to actually get people signed up, we could grow our business in a more automated and predictable way. We grew our box to over 10,000 subscribers by 2021.
It spawned a coaching business for me, what I’ve learned has helped dozens of other founders when I began to teach them the same things I learned in 2019. That knowledge and the systems I learned was also the genesis of Formify my new SaaS app.
From the depths of our difficulty came growth, success and a pathway for many other founders to follow to success. Those who bought my course can access and replicate what I learned for their own business as many of you have.
So if you are suffering right now, think of the silver lining, what you are learning about your business, about yourself and how you can apply that knowledge to the future to change your own life or even the lives of others.
The reality is we’re all finding it more difficult to grow our business and maintain profitability as a result of the economic situation.
But here are some silver linings:
Ad prices are reducing
We’ve noticed CPM’s have dropped quite significantly recently which means the cost to reach people with our ads has decreased. While conversions have also slowed, the opportunity remains once buying intent picks up again we will be in a good position to generate more customers at a lower cost than before.
Buying intent can increase in the summer months, especially if you come up with some strong seasonal offers which we are planning to do. Our 2022 summer was our best ever so far.
You may be the last one of your competitors left in 2024
If you can ride it out and delay your growth plans for a year or so, the tide will turn eventually. Everyone who has a small business hopes its sooner rather than later, but if you can get some small wins under your belt, stabilise your business and keep the lights on, you could be the best or only solution your customers can turn to in 2024 if your competitors are unable or unwilling to stick it out.
You will be stronger, more resilient and hopefully better educated & prepared when things eventually improve
So as we have seen in our own history, there are silver linings, lessons and knowledge to gain over the nexct few months. Don’t get too down if you can avoid it and keep plugging away in 2023. Good luck!