The most common mistake when starting to work with Growth

More and more companies are starting to put effort and resources into growth. When you try something new, it is natural to make mistakes, and hopefully you learn from those mistakes. But it is also nice to avoid mistakes when possible in order to save time, energy and money. Therefore, we will in this article provide you with some guidance for how to get on the right track before you start working more structured with growth.

One common mistake many companies make when starting to work with growth is that they do not do their customer insight job properly. Starting to experiment before understanding the customer you want to reach will lead to no good.

Here are 5 questions to ask to make sure you understand your customers:

1. Do you know what they search for? With regards to the problem you are trying to solve?

What are visitors searching for when they find your website?

Use Google Search console to see search terms visitors have used to find your site.

Research your target audience, look in forums, quora, facebook groups, youtube, etc.

Ask your existing customers what they searched for.

And also what searches are made while on your site?

Add all phrases to a keyword research tool like Ahrefs to get new search suggestions and the search volumes.

2. Do you know what questions they have in their head when they are on your page?

Think of what kind of information visitors might be looking for when they visit your website. What do they want to know before they are ready to make a decision?

Again, the search function on your page is gold, and if your search doesn’t allow to export everything that people search for, then replace it with something better 🙂

Check how they navigate on your site. Of course google analytics can get you some good insights, but you can learn much more if you combine it with session recordings to better understand what the visitors were looking for.

3. Do you know why your existing visitors aren’t converting?

You finally have a nicely designed website and a place to show your offer to the world. You even get clicks and visitors. But they are not converting. Why?

Start by asking them! Use something like hotjar to set up a simple exit intent question and start gathering what people say why they left the page.

4. Do you know where they hang out, online or offline? Are there niche Facebook groups or influencers that they follow?

Figure out where your target audience spends their time looking for news, information, inspiration, products, and so on. Do they use chat forums, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn? Do they rely mostly on recommendations from friends or also from influencers and experts?

If you have a good understanding of your segments, then other things might be of value to know how and where they spend their days. Are they in a car listening to radio a lot? Do they go to the gym? Where do they shop food and other products regularly?

5. Do you know if there are existing products or companies that already have a large portion of your target audience?

Hopefully this is not the first time you ask yourself this question as identifying competitors should be done at a very early stage. But it is not just competitors we are looking at here.

It could be much more valuable to find other companies that happen to have an overlap with your target audience. If a person is buying stuff from Lekmer you know that they most likely is a parent, then you can ask them to include a gift card or coupon to your product in every package they send.

When you have answered these questions and gotten to know your target audience better, you will be able to come up with much better growth experiments and consequently start optimizing your website for conversions and growth.