Insights
How companies actually grow, and where they lose it.
Practical writing for owners, CEOs, CFOs and marketing leaders on the six areas that decide how a company attracts, converts and keeps its customers. Each piece explains what to look at, what to count, and how to tell which part of the system is holding the rest back.
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The growth system, explained.
Four pieces on what a growth system is, how to tell whether yours is working, and where to begin when results stall.
The growth systemHow do I know if my marketing is working?Most marketing reports answer a narrower question. Five numbers from your own records tell you whether the spend is producing customers the business can afford.The growth systemWhat is a growth system, and why most companies have one nobody designedEvery company has a system that produces its customers. In most, it was assembled over years by different people, and nobody is responsible for the whole of it.The growth systemMarketing audit vs. growth system assessment: what's the difference?A marketing audit reviews how well the marketing is run. A growth system assessment asks which part of the business is limiting growth. They answer different questions.The growth systemWhere to start when growth stalls: find the constraint before adding spendWhen revenue plateaus, the instinct is to add something: a channel, a hire, a new agency. The better first move is to find the one part of the system that is capping everything else.
CalculatorIs each new customer worth what it costs?Enter five figures from your books to see your cost per customer, lifetime value, payback in months, and what the combination means for growth.
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By area
One article for each of the six areas.
The six areas work in sequence, and each one sets a ceiling on the ones that follow. Pick the one closest to the question you are asking.
- 01Attracting customers
- 02Converting inquiries
- 03Retaining clients
- 04Measuring results
- 05Testing and learning
- 06Investment decisions
Attracting customersHow to tell which marketing channel is actually bringing you customersEach platform reports on the customers it touched, and their totals rarely add up to the customers you actually won. The answer is to start from the customer and work backwards.Converting inquiriesWhy your leads aren't turning into customersWhen leads don't convert, the usual suspect is lead quality. More often, the demand was good and the business lost it somewhere between the inquiry and the invoice.Retaining clientsCustomer lifetime value for B2B service firms, from your own booksLifetime value decides how much you can afford to spend winning a customer. Calculated from your own records, it is also one of the clearest signals of whether growth is healthy.Measuring resultsHow to calculate what a new customer actually costs youCost per lead is easy to find and rarely the number that matters. Here is how to calculate what a new customer really costs, with a calculator you can use on your own figures.Testing and learningWhy your marketing tests don't teach you anythingMost companies try new things all the time. Few can say what any of it proved. The problem is rarely the ideas. It is how the tests are set up, judged and remembered.Investment decisionsHow a CFO should evaluate marketing spendMarketing is often the largest discretionary line in the budget and the hardest to evaluate. Six questions, each answered from the company's own records, bring it into the same discipline as any other investment.