The growth of any company these days heavily relies on its digital marketing strategies. However, for an effective digital marketing strategy, certain metrics must be constantly analyzed. Among these metrics, monitoring the CPM of the ads is especially important. But what does CPM mean, and how does it exactly work?
For the answers to your queries, read on as we discuss CPM and its importance for a business.
What Does CPM Mean?
The full form of CPM is Cost per Mille. It is also known as the cost per thousand impressions. It can be defined as the money a business spends for a thousand ad impressions. Impressions are the number of times your ads are viewed by users. The more views you get, the more your brand’s reach and, hence, more chances for sales.
By monitoring the CPM of an ad, a company can evaluate the cost-effectiveness of its marketing campaign. Besides this, the metric also helps you evaluate optimal budgets for running ads on various platforms.
How Can CPM Be Calculated?
CPM can be calculated using the following formula:
CPM = (cost ÷ impressions) × 1000
So, if you’re spending $1000 running an ad that receives 100,000 impressions, the CPM will be:
CPM = (1000 ÷100,000) × 1000 = $10
This means that for every 1000 views of your ad, you are spending $10. Now, you may be wondering what the generally good CPM value is. It primarily depends on the platform you’re running the ad on.
For more clarity, let’s take the example of Facebook ads. The average Facebook CPM for technology-based services was $9.98 in 2023. So, any CPM value significantly higher than that for similar product/service ads would be a red flag.
Ways to Lower the CPM Value of Your Ads
Now that you’ve learned what CPM means and how it can be calculated let’s understand how it can be lowered. You can do this by adjusting the following factors:
Target Audience: The more general your audience, the more you’ll have to pay for your ads. By making your ads more relevant to a specific audience, you can pay less while still getting more engagement.
Timing and Placement: Running ads on multiple platforms is costly and often unnecessary. Only place ads on the best-performing platforms that guarantee significant returns. Also, be strategic with the timing and frequency of the ads by analyzing peak interaction hours.
Appeal: An aesthetically pleasing ad relevant to the target audience will attract more people. This will encourage user engagement and views, lowering the overall CPM.
Bid Strategy: Bid strategies are always a great way to adjust a CPM value. You may have to experiment with a few in the beginning to find the one that works best for you. This may take time, but experimenting is important for all digital marketing strategies.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to run ads for your business online, CPM is a crucial metric to monitor. Now that you know the answer to “What does CPM mean?” you’re all ready to get started,
However, if you still think you need more guidance, contact me today! I’m Alex Smale, and I can help you plan a highly effective digital marketing strategy for your brand. My years of experience as a digital marketer, business consultant, and developer have helped boost the growth of many businesses.
Zapier is an automation tool that has become almost ubiquitous in recent years.
And the reason for that, is that it pretty much connects any popular online tool or software platform.
Not only does it connect them, but it enables you to create actions that happen in-between those connections.
For example, you can connect ClickFunnels to Google Sheets, and then add new lines in the spreadsheet for every new lead that comes in.
But! Before the data is written into the spreadsheet, you can do really cool things like reformat the date, or even have ChatGPT write some copy based on the data.
So in this article, what I wanted to do was to inspire you with three big ideas on how you can use Zapier to beef up your business and make it more profitable.
Lead Management
Many businesses have a plethora of software tools to run their online business; funnel builders, CRM’s, form tools, email marketing software etc. etc. etc. And while many of them have basic API’s (Application Programming Interface) which connect some of them together on a basic level. They often won’t give you any ability to process the data in between.
Zapier can more accurately and more controllably connect and automate these vital data points. From your lead capture to your CRM, you can migrate each field, tidy the information by checking the capitalisation, and carefully put the right info into the right CRM fields.
Then, you can forward that same data straight into your email marketing software, trigger a campaign and start them on a particular sequence of emails based on what information they entered in the first step.
And if they enter more information in subsequent steps, such as through an application. You can update and overwrite that data in the CRM. Take them out of that first email sequence, and then start them off in a new sequence that again, is relevant to the new information they’ve just given.
Sales Process
Of course, one of the most, if not the most important area of your business is your sales process. Because if your sales aren’t dialled in, your business will run out of cash and die.
Time is of the essence with sales, because people can go cold quickly.
Which means that good automations built throughout your sales process can close gaps quickly, notify team members, and reconnect warm leads.
Any good sales team will have a sales pipeline in place, with various stages setup for different steps on the sales journey. e.g. lead, application, follow up booked, sale etc. etc.
With Zapier, you can connect your pipeline software such as Close.com, Pipedrive or GoHighLevel so that as a prospect moves from one stage of the pipeline to another, the automations are triggered.
Or vice versa, Zapier can move a prospect from one pipeline stage to another based on other factors.
Good ways to use this would be if a prospect fills in a form to download a free lead magnet. Zapier can alert the sales team to give that person a call.
Or, if a sale is made, the t-shirt and book can be ordered and sent to them automatically.
Onboarding New Clients
I talk about onboarding a LOT with my own consulting clients. Because it’s an area that almost every business gets terribly WRONG and it costs them a lot of pain, and a lot of money.
Time is absolutely critical when it comes to onboarding because as soon as someone pays the sales person for the high-ticket product. They are immediately in freak-out mode until the product is delivered to them.
They worry that they’ve been scammed, or that the product won’t live up to their expectations, and so on.
The longer they’re in this state, the higher the chance they’ll get cold feet and ask for their money back.
Many businesses think onboarding a new client the day after the sale is ok, but it’s NOT!!! 12–24 hours to wait for an onboarding to begin is an eternity.
Think more like ten minutes to get them all setup and logged in straight after the sale, and believe me, half of your customer service problems will go away instantly.
If you’re a million miles away from that, don’t worry, Zapier is here to save you.
You can connect it to your Stripe account, so that as soon as that payment is received, you’re instantly sending the new client a welcome email, their login details, their group invite and their goodies are already on the way in the mail.
Giving you an amazing opportunity to surprise and delight them from their very first seconds as a client.
There are many, many more ways you can use automations to streamline and simplify your business. If you’d like to find out how, book in a call with me and I can walk you through how I can help you to get them setup.
How close are we to having a ‘Holodeck’ experience?
The cutting edge technologies of both artificial intelligence and mixed reality have been developing rapidly over the last 10 years or so.
With new technologies such as ChatGPT 4o and Apple’s Vision Pro hitting the market. We’re getting close to these technologies hitting a certain level of maturity and useability in day to day lives.
Open AI recently demonstrated their new voice model for ChatGPT, which allows the user to have realistic and engaging conversations with an AI agent.
Apple’s new headset now delivers a level of visual fidelity to the general public in mixed reality that now makes it a viable replacement for a traditional computer monitor.
But now these two technologies are starting to come together in ways that really does have the potential to change the way we entertain ourselves, educate ourselves and interact with the real world.
In this article, I’ll break down five exciting ways that these technologies are being used together to show where the sharp end of the spear is in consumer technology.
The Evolution of AI and VR
Before we get into the specific use cases of the intersection between artificial intelligence and virtual reality. We should probably have a quick look back at the trajectories of these two technologies to better understand how these paths have collided.
For decades (until what feels like yesterday), AI has been the backbone of science fiction.
There have been plenty of pseudo examples of it being used where many wouldn’t have even noticed.
For example, in my computer game development days, we would say that the NPC’s (non-playable characters) and enemies had AI. When in reality, they were just following a pre-determined path or set of instructions.
There was nothing intelligent about them.
Voice recognition systems such as Siri were the first noticeable experience that many of us had with AI, and our first appreciation of the benefits it could bring.
Starting as an AI initiative project funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 2003. The initial concept was to help military personnel with making decisions in the office, which developed into a system called CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes).
It would arrange meetings for staff, provide documents to attendees, and even cancel and reschedule if someone couldn’t make it.
Clever, but still fairly straightforward.
Along the way over the last few years, one of the biggest use cases for AI that we’ve heard about is autonomous cars. Robbing us of one of our last joys.
That’s not quite with us yet in the mainstream, although Tesla might disagree. But it’s certainly just around the corner, and we’ve been watching it develop over the last 10 years.
ChatGPT was released on the 30th of November, 2022.
Can you believe it’s only been that long?
Since then, AI has evolved at a meteoric rate. With multiple updates, improvements and clones, and we’re already worried it’s going to take all of our jobs.
The capabilities have blown our mind, and given us a real taste of what the future holds.
For me, one of the scariest examples was when the Alignment Research Centre was given access to an early version of ChatGPT-4 to test for ‘risky behaviours’. And then immediately found one, when they challenged the AI to overcome the Captcha test and it did so by hiring a human from TaskRabbit to do it.
Nope.
Virtual Reality Has Had A Slower Rise In Popularity
With virtual and mixed reality, the evolution has been a lot longer and steadier.
Starting way back in 1838 with the invention of the stereoscope by Sir Charles Wheatstone. We’ve long been fascinated by the concept of a more immersive visual experience using 3D.
The first ‘VR machine’ was created by cinematographer, Morton Heilig in 1956, and it was called ‘Sensorama’. It was more akin to Cineworld’s 4DX, with full color 3D video, sound, vibration and even smell-o-vision.
In more recent memory, a lot of us recall our first VR experience with Virtuality in the early 90’s. Featuring those enormous headsets and dalek-like seats.
With the exception of the Virtual Boy from Nintendo. Things were fairly quiet on the VR front until 2012, when Palmer Lucky knocked it out of the park with his Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift.
Two years later, things got serious when Oculus was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. For context, that’s a similar figure to what George Lucas was paid by Disney for the Star Wars brand.
Since then, VR has been a passion project for Mark Zuckerberg. And he sees VR/XR as the ‘new platform’. And by ‘platform’, the one before was the internet.
Now that Apple has launched a headset of its own, we all know that’s an indicator this new technology is here to stay, and it’s about to become a mainstream part of all of our lives.
Despite what the nay-sayers might think.
Three Interesting Intersections Of AI And XR
AI controlled NPC’s in VR games.
For a long time, non-playable characters in computer games have been dumb and annoying. Their appearance didn’t justify the same resources as the main character. So they looked basic and pixelated. And their vocabulary was usually restricted to a few choice phrases along the lines of “Excuse me. Sorry. I’m too busy to talk to you.”
But now? Now, thanks to technologies such as Unreal Engine 5, and ChatGPT’s voice model. In the virtual realm, NPC’s look incredible, with life-like features and animations. AND you can have a full blown conversation with them about anything you like.
No-longer will the background characters be little more than window dressing. Going forward, they will an integral part of the vast immersion on offer.
AI Assisted Shopping Using Mixed Reality
E-commerce is about to get a lot more interesting, and in the same breath, could this actually be the end of the high-street?
If you have no shame, you can now walk around a department store with your Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro on looking at products.
The AI can recognise objects in front of you and go and search for them in online stores. Or it can go and find products that are very similar, based on it’s shape that it can recognise thanks to machine learning.
And then the real killer, you can order that product there and then and have it delivered to without having to carry it home.
Rather than buying it from the shop you actually saw it in.
AI Teaching Our Children In VR
Anyone with an 8 year old (or older) will attest that the children of today are almost cybernetic in their aptitude with technology.
With low pay, high stress, and long hours marking homework, it’s little surprise that we are already facing a significant shortage of qualified teachers across educational institutions.
Classroom sizes are growing year on year, and with it, the level of quality education is at risk.
Combine that with the population collapse crisis we’re now facing and a general lack of able workers post-Brexit. And it’s not hard to see how this use case could become a vital part of our future lives.
Rather than it being seen as a poor replacement for a real teacher. VR learning experiences powered by an AI teacher working one to one with every child would likely become a far better solution for tailored education than any real teacher trying to coach a class of 30+.
Not to mention how much more fun and interesting the learning experience could be in VR. With fun interaction, beautiful locations and constantly tailored challenges based on the child’s progress.
Over the next few years, one thing is for sure. As these technologies become an integral part of our daily lives, these use cases will explode in ways we can’t yet imagine.
They certainly have the potential to alleviate some of the shortages of people we’re already starting to see. And will enrich our lives with entertaining and engaging experiences.
But what of the downsides? Will people fall in love with virtual girlfriends instead of finding someone real? Will the personnel shortage flip the other way leaving many without a job?
Who knows. But as Arthur C. Clarke once said, the only thing we can be sure of about the future, is that it will be absolutely fantastic.
Alex Smale
About The Author:
Alex Smale is a digital business and technology expert. He is a virtual reality software developer, having developed an award-winning VR application to help people living with dementia.
Are you a leisure or visitor attraction owner? Are you busy on the peak days. But wish you could get more visitors on the quiet days? Then you might want to read this article.
Because this is how leisure attractions can get more control of their visitor numbers.
You see most visitor attractions don’t promote themselves as effectively as they could do.
Most rely on repeat business, people searching on Google, or word of mouth to get the visitors to come in.
What we end up with, is a mad situation where parents and couples are struggling for ideas on what to do. Even though they’re surrounded by great attractions all around them.
And that’s because the visitor attractions out there aren’t marketing themselves in modern, targeted and consistent ways.
Meaning their visitor numbers are up and down. They don’t make anything when the weather is bad. And they’re too busy when the weather is good.
They can’t control the flow of visitors as they need to, and they aren’t making as much from their venue as the should be.
What’s more, those tactics only get you a small portion of the people out there actually looking for something to do like your attraction.
When there are actually many more people you could inspire to come and visit if you put yourself in front of them.
My name is Alex Smale and I’ve been a zoo manager and a digital marketer for many years. I know what it feels like to run and grow a successful visitor attraction.
As well as how to help visitor attractions to market themselves the right way.
I’ve operated at the highest levels of marketing in the leisure world, having been the chairman for the national zoo organisation marketing committee. And I’ve helped many visitor attractions to get control of their visitor numbers, increase their secondary spend, and improve their online reviews.
These days I help visitor attractions to develop cost effective marketing strategies that really work in the 2020’s. How to increase the revenue from the visitors you get. And how to get consistent, glowing online reviews.
Now if you would like to have more control over the highs and lows of your visitor numbers, I’ve put together a free downloadable ebook and training with the top 10 ways to promote your visitor attraction in the 2020’s.
And if you’re interested, there’s also a chance to book in a free, no-strings-attached mini-audit with either myself or the team to take a look at your current marketing and promotions to see where you could improve.
Stop waiting for the sun to shine. And start going out and getting the visitors to come to your venue.
Click here to grab a free, no-strings consultation with me.
It doesn’t matter what time of year it is. Now is always the right time to start getting more visitors to your attraction.
Now a lot of people say that one of the biggest ways you lose profit is by not charging enough for your service.
And for sure, there’s a lot of truth in that. Especially if your price is really low.
But what a lot of people don’t talk about is how much you lose if your price is too high.
Nobody’s really teaching you how to know if your price is too high either.
They’re just saying ‘increase your prices, increase your prices’ not really appreciating the damage that can do, and how much money it can cost you in the long run.
Now there are actually two ways to know if your price is too high.
And I’m going to teach you both right now.
So the first of the two ways to know if your price is too high is to look at two very key metrics.
Your offer percentage, and your offers close percentage.
The offer percentage is the percentage of calls that show up who are a good fit and you offer your product to. i.e. it suits what they need, and they can afford it
Now this should be between 60% and 80%. So you make an offer to between 60% of your calls that show up and 80%.
If it’s lower than 60%, then your marketing could be off, your sales team could be playing it too safe to make their close rate look better, or your program just isn’t in alignment with what most people need.
If it’s higher than 80%, then you’re probably making offers to people who aren’t a good fit.
Or you’re filtering out too many applications and you’re losing some good potential clients there.
Your offers close percentage is the number of the people you’ve made an offer to close.
So it’s different to your overall close rate. Which is the percentage of all calls that close.
Your offers close rate is much more useful, as it’s measuring your ability to close people who are a good fit and who can afford what you do.
Your offers close rate should ideally be between 25% and 40%.
Depending on the volume of calls you have, this number can vary a lot. But if you’re taking a lot of calls, then this number should be fairly steady.
Now there’s a couple of factors here. Not just cost. But obviously closing ability.
So this is assuming your closing ability is pretty good. And pretty consistent.
If someone’s a terrible closer, then their close rate is always going to be low regardless of price.
If you’ve got that problem by the way, give me a call. I can help you with that.
But assuming your closing ability is good. If your offers close rate is consistently below 25%, then your product is probably too expensive.
And if it’s consistently above 40%, that’s great! BUT, the chances are, you can probably increase your price incrementally as the likelihood is, your price is too cheap.
The second way:
Ok, so here’s how to get your pricing absolutely spot on without losing clients or losing money.
This is by far the most accurate method and is very well tried and tested.
Now my business partner Alex learned this method from his time in the visitor attraction industry.
And it’s how many visitor attractions optimize their ticket pricing.
And this process works well for anything, no matter how low-ticket or high-ticket it might be.
The process is called banding.
Now if you were to go up to someone on the street and ask someone how much they would pay for something, most people would low-ball it.
Because they don’t want to get tricked into paying more.
So straight up asking people what the price should be doesn’t work.
However, asking people who’ve already bought the product and used it what the highest price they would pay for it, and the lowest price they think it’s worth, gives you a much more useful set of numbers.
Especially when you ask a lot of people.
So what you need to do, is to ask as many of your clients as possible, what the highest price they would pay for your product would have been. And the lowest they think it’s worth.
And you want to map on a graph those two numbers for everyone.
What you end up with are what we call two clusters of data.
The upper cluster and the lower cluster.
And if you draw a line in the average middle between those two clusters of data, you will get a very accurate number for what your price should be.
Now, bear in mind, it’s not going to be a nice round number. It’s going to be something like $5381 dollars or something.
Which might not work well for you with your marketing and sales.
So by all means round it up a little bit to a prettier number.
But the closer your price is to that number, the less profits you’ll be losing due to pricing.
I hope you found that useful. Check back soon for more useful content.
Why your business is always so damn difficult to run
Where all the money you thought you should have is disappearing to
How to start generating more profits in your business without having to build yet another new funnel or offer
What you can do to start getting back control of your profits and your lifestyle
Now just a heads up before we dive in, this might sting a bit.
My client Jordan said to me recently “Can’t knock that devil on my shoulder thinking about all my lost revenue this year” after I showed him all of the places he’d lost money in only the last 12 months. Let alone before.
So make sure you pay attention to each of these 10 ways and take action on each of them.
This is going to be helpful for you if you’re an online coach, consultant, course creator, digital agency owner, affiliate marketer or online service provider.
And if you can implement this stuff, you’ll have more clarity, keep more profits, feel like your business is more simple to run, more enjoyable day to day, and you’ll be able to build your business to suit your lifestyle.
Who is Alex Smale and why should you listen to him?
My name is Alex Smale and I am a veteran, multi-award winning digital marketer and online business expert.
I have been in the online space for well over 20 years, having run multiple 7-figure businesses including a digital marketing agency in the leisure industry, an affiliate marketing business, and an online coaching business.
I am also a world-class award winning software developer, having developed a virtual reality system for people living with dementia that won the international award in VR for healthcare, called Immersicare.
I have had more than my fair share of successes and failures. And I know consult with some of the biggest names in the online industry to help them to become more profitable and successful, through better data awareness and better marketing.
Let’s dive in to the 10 biggest profit losers in your business:
So let’s dive in and show you how to become more aware of, in my experience, the ten biggest holes in your business profits.
How you can identify them. And more importantly, what you can do to start to fix them.
Starting with…
Profit Loser Number 10 – Your Pencil Needs Sharpening
In other words, your marketing knowledge is probably out of date.
And by ‘out of date’ – I mean, anything older than a month.
Digital marketing moves fast. VERY FAST. – Because of the constant changes in the ad platforms, societal behavioural changes, politics, fads – it’s a constantly moving landscape.
What was working 6 months ago, doesn’t work as well anymore.
What’s working today, probably won’t last longer than a few months before it starts to drop off.
Good marketers know it’s not about a particular funnel or message.
Good marketing is like an endless experiment in a laboratory.
The best marketers are always testing and experimenting with new ideas to create the best possible ‘marketing potion’ that converts well at that particular time.
At The Sharp End Of The Business Stick… Every Course Or Program Is Out Of Date
Because courses or funnels are just frameworks. It’s what works for your business with your audience that matters.
And that’s something that’s changing, every single day.
Things changed a lot after the big Facebook outage in April of this year.
So if you really want to get the most out of your marketing. – Not only do you need to be testing and experimenting all the time.
You need to be connected to others who are doing the same at your level. – Sharing things that are working with each other.
So just like with any scientific white paper – you are collaborating to get the best possible result.
Profit Loser Number 9 – Your ‘Money Window’ Is Massive
In other words, you’re looking at your numbers on a monthly basis, instead of in real time.
You probably think you have your finger on the pulse by checking all your numbers every month. Right?
But actually a lot can happen in a month in this game.
And if you’re only looking at your business through that tiny snapshot, it can be hard to see the trends.
Worse still, it can really reduce the time you have to react if things are going wrong. And even longer, to see if things are going better after you’ve fixed them.
You need to be able to see your numbers in real time.
Connected to a dashboard like the Data Nexus (image above) where all your up-to-date, realtime numbers can be seen in a glance.
Which will give you the business intelligence you need to make intelligent and accurate decisions.
To drastically reduce the mistakes you make.
Without second guessing or worrying about those decisions and actions.
Profit Loser Number 8 – Tempting But Terrible
Your thirst for constantly wanting to build new things…
When things don’t work as well as we want them to. – The natural temptation is to build something else instead.
This funnel isn’t converting – ok, I’ll build another funnel – and another, and another.
It’s like a merry-go-round you can’t get off of.
And what’s worse is. – Everytime you build something new – it’s like a tidal wave in your business.
Causing chaos and unseen complexity that everyone on the team has to adjust to and try and get right.
When in reality – you’ve already built everything you need – you don’t need to build something new
You just need to improve what you already have and get it working
But nobody will tell you that, because it’s not sexy – everyone else in this industry is trying to sell you a new system – when what you really need is NOTHING new!
Profit Loser Number 7 – You’re Blind In The Middle
You’re only looking at the book-ends of your numbers. – The front end, or the bottom line.
And when you do that – you end up with massive holes in your business that you can’t see.
But it’s in the MIDDLE where all the action is – this is where the leads are at a critical stage in becoming a client.
And if you aren’t on top of those metrics – or perhaps you aren’t even aware of what those metrics are – then you’re definitely going to be losing a huge amount of profits.
Profit Loser Number 6 – The First Five Minutes
In my experience, both in working with thousands of clients – or with doing many different courses and programs – it’s incredibly rare that a business gets this right.
So I imagine this is probably true for you too – your onboarding process is probably broken.
Now what most businesses in the online space massively underappreciate – because they’ve forgotten what it felt like – is just how scary it is to hand over thousands of dollars to a stranger on the internet.
The minute they hang up the phone after just making the payment – they start to worry.
Did I make the right decision? – Have I been scammed? – Am I working with a good company? – And the longer it takes for the onboarding process to start, the more these thoughts fester.
And while everyone else is bending over backwards to keep their clients happy and to help them achieve results.
They don’t realise that the key to unlocking abundant client success is won or lost in the first five minutes after the sale.
And by having the right onboarding process to make sure your product is 10 out of 10 from the get-go.
Profit Loser Number 5 – You’re Trying To Race A Tractor
The engine of your business doesn’t match your ambition for success.
You see, everyone thinks that good marketing is the answer to fixing a broken business.
But the problem with that, is that marketing is like gasoline. – It’s expensive, it burns quickly, and it’s completely useless without an efficient engine to pour it into.
If you haven’t got the engine of your business built the right way. – You might as well be pouring gas on the floor and setting it on fire.
You’re not going to move forward.
Just like a complicated road network – you need to have the right systems in place in your business for everything to flow smoothly.
You need the right Standard Operating Procedures to make sure time isn’t being wasted, and profits aren’t being lost.
So that everyone on the team, both old and new, know exactly what they need to do in every situation.
Then your business will run like a well-oiled machine.
Profit Loser Number 4 – You’re Herding Cats
Carrying on from the last point, you need to make sure the roles and responsibilities in your business are clearly defined.
And that includes your own. In fact, especially your own.
Without clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Everyone on the team will just be wandering around, doing their own thing, without a care in the world.
This is somewhere we see businesses often losing the most amount of profits.
Because it’s a double-edge sword – expensive team resources are being wasted – and also opportunities are being missed.
Which leaves business owners going to bed feeling out of control and overwhelmed.
They don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing themselves.
Let alone what the team are supposed to be taking care of.
But when everyone’s roles and responsibilities are clearly defined the team becomes focussed on aligned goals for the business.
Profit Loser Number 3 – You’re Working Like It’s 1989
Your automations just aren’t sophisticated enough.
In this day and age of A.I. and automation – you really shouldn’t be doing the manual tasks anymore.
Because every manual and repetitive task that you or your team are doing – is costing you profits.
And the irony is – a lot of business owners don’t learn how to do this because they don’t have the time.
So make sure you’re getting your head around having the machines do the heavy lifting for you.
Profit Loser Number 2 – The Dumpster Fire
You’ve already got a pile of money but you’re setting it on fire!
The biggest enemy of profit is cost – and the amount of profits you make are directly proportional to the costs you incur.
Yet so many business owners don’t have a tight enough grip on their expenses.
For example – as a quick challenge for you – do you know exactly how much money you spend each month on software? – could you even ballpark it? – and that’s just one category of expenses.
James, one of our clients, was burning through an insane amount of expenses each month – built up over a long period of working online.
It was a combination of software, contractors, excess team members, service charges etc. etc. etc.
We helped him to reduce his outgoings by 75% which saved $60,000 from being burned each and every month!
Do you know how much you could save?
Have you got a system in place for both reducing and then managing your expenses to keep them efficient?
Profit Loser Number 1 – No Thanks To Money
Your janky sales process is leaving it all on the table.
Now this is where, by far, business owners lose the most profits – and I think a lot of that can actually be put down to ego.
Because most business owners think they have sales really nailed.
Now you might think your sales process is good because you don’t do slimy sales tactics – or hard closes.
That your sales team help the prospects first, rather than trying to hard sell them.
And maybe you think that your close rates are ok – Because they’re about 25% and in line with what people say is average in the industry.
But what if I told you that what you thought was good, was only a quarter of what you could have.
That you were losing tens of thousands of dollars every month because you weren’t able to see the small differences each week.
That add up to a massive difference each month? – That you could quadruple your revenue for the same cost by being more aware of – The unseen factors in your sales numbers.
Such as the lead quality, lead warmth, lead journey, timing, financing, returns per call and many more?
Now THIS Is The Mind-Blowing Part
Now – what’s REALLY mindblowing about everything I’ve taught you so far – is that all of these 10 factors compound.
So let’s say you get up to speed with marketing and you double the number of leads you get for the same budget – and then with realtime figures you optimize twice as fast – so you have twice the leads in half the time.
And then you improve your middle funnel numbers to increase your conversions by 30% there – and you halve your expenses – and you double your speed with automations – and your team are twice as efficient as before
Each thing multiplies the last, which multiplies by the one after and so on – meaning you cannot just increase your profits by a little bit – but you can increase your profits by many multiples!
For example – do you want to know why Jordan was so gutted about all the money he’d lost at the beginning of this post?
It’s because with a couple of straightforward changes – he was able to double his application to booked call rate – and then half his no-show rate Just those two things alone – compounded – quadrupled the number of sales calls his team had – leading to his best month ever in his first month of working with us.
What Next Alex?
If you’ve enjoyed this post and learnt something about where your business might be losing profits, and you’d like to know what you can do to stop it from happening.
Head over to our site at Operation Profits and perhaps book in a call with us to have a relaxed chat about where you’re at right now, and where you’d like to get to.
