In episode #13 Wilco talks about the importance of consistency in your business.
Links
Hey there it's Wilco de Kreij here and while I'm recording this we just got out of a product launch for Connect Explorer. That basically means that right now I desperately, desperately need some sleep, but obviously that's not what we're going to talk about. If you've been following me then you probably saw some emails about it as well, ConnectExplorer, it's one of the new products that we just launched for Connectio, you can check it out at Connectio.io. What we did is we had a big product launch in which we had a special offer for the first couple of days and we then besides just sending it out to our own existing email list and through our own existing customers, we also invited a bunch of affiliates to promote it, so you know they can actually send it out to their audience as well so that we can actually get a lot of people at the same time all checking out this introduction offer and hopefully get access to it.
Now there is actually one thing that helped us a lot that we've been doing over the last couple of years already actually which helped us a lot to get more affiliates on board for this one, to get a higher conversion on the sales page. To get more people to actually purchase, but also for example to get more people to actually take us up on our web sale, because after people got access to ConnectExplore we had an up sale offer so that you can actually get access to that as well.
There is something we did over the last year, two years or so, maybe even longer but at least definitely the last two years that has helped those on all of these things and all together, like I'm not going to share any numbers, I'm not a big fan of that, but the launch went really, really well, above expectations, and I'm just super grateful for my team and all of the customers that actually got access to it, but also for all the affiliates who were kind enough to promote ConnectExplore to their audience. Just super happy, super grateful, and that's why I'm shooting this quick podcast for all of you while we just got out of the trenches. I'm obviously still super busy with the launch and all the work that's involved with it, but I just wanted to touch base with my podcast crew, which you are one if you are listening to this right now to sort of give you the backstory of this.
What I think helped this a lot over the last couple years is one thing and that is consistency. Just consistency, consistently doing something that you believe in. I mean, I'm not sure about you but I'm subscribed to quite a few email lists from all kinds of marketers, and one of the things that I noticed is that a lot of people, they just jump from one thing to the next, right? For example this day they do some kind of product launch for a sort of product, and then I don't know, it's the best thing ever. Right? It's the best ever like, ever, ever, right? Then two months go by and then they promote something else and then that thing is actually the best thing ever, like ever, ever right? And maybe there's even a huge overlap. Then if you then go back to that first product, is it still being updated? Do you still have people working full time on that adding features and what not? No, because now the new thing is the new thing, right?
That just does not make any sense to me. I mean, what ... at what point in time did we actually think that that was a good idea to just start over every single time. Now, granted I'm not going to lie, I've been there, right? I've had various product launches in the past where you know, I just did a launch and then six months later I had another product coming out, and that was sort of like the routine for a while.
At some point, I saw the light, that's not going to work, it's a trap, right? You're always going after the next thing. There is no real world business that works that way, right? It's not like BMW is going to create a car and then after a year they're going to say, "You know what, we're going to get rid of all the cars, now we're just going after motorcycles," and then after a year like ... it doesn't work like that. You want to keep on adding. It's fine to add new products, to launch new products, but you should always ... it should be added on top of your whole whatever you're doing, instead of just replacing the old stuff, right?
What we've been doing over the last two years or so is we've been focusing on two platforms and two platforms alone, which is UpViral and Connectio. Viral is our viral referral platform and Connectio is a suite of various Facebook ad tools. The first tool that we created inside of Connectio was actually Connect Audience. We haven't launched that to the public first, but we actually started building that in February 2015, so almost two years ago. We still ... We're updating it continuously, we have people on top of it. For example at UpViral, we started that even earlier actually. We have three developers working on it full time. Why? It's not that we want to launch something and then just forget about it. We want to keep on adding things on top of it, we want to keep on building.
Now the thing is when you start out doing that, obviously I have a lot of, I don't want to call them competitors but other people in the marketplace who are also creating tools and software, right? Because they usually don't really ... a lot of ... like no offense but a lot of people they build something and they don't really continuously add features, continuously improve it or they don't really have good support or whatever, and because of that they are able to deliver things sometimes for a lower price than we do, right? The things they deliver are actually a great value for what you pay, right? Not going to lie about that, it’s a great offer, but for us in the beginning, it can sometimes be hard to sort of compete with that because someone who is brand new, they're going to see two products and yeah, well this one is price x and this one is price y, why would I pay more for this? From the outside they might even look sort of similar. Right?
Over the years we've shown to our customers and to our affiliates and to partners and people around us that this is what we do, and we're sticking to it. It's not like, "Oh yeah, we're going to do this for a long time," and then six months later we're focusing on something else. No, we said this is what we're going to focus on, and six months later, a year later, we're still doing it, we're still, you know we're not changing, this is what we do and what our long term vision is. Just by doing that consistently it just gives so much trust to the people around you to the partners and to customers as well or potential customers. I mean we even saw, I was talking to various affiliates, they literally told me that the reason why they promote it is because they believe in what I do. So someone said actually that he has been following me for a while but initially he didn't want to promote my products to his audience because he wasn't sure whether we were going to be around.
We have the long form sales pages, right? We have very long sales pages, so for some people that seems a bit off, it's like all the marketers are doing that, so it must be something that you know ... you must be like all the other marketers who are just going to continue and run off and do something else, right? It took them a while to realize that. Just by doing the same thing consistently it's going to help you so much. I think that goes for a lot of my customers as well, right? I see a lot of people, they just do one thing and if it doesn't work out, then they go to the next thing. They're going to try something else, but what I realized and it took quite a few years to realize it actually is that usually there is somewhere along the line there is a tipping point, at which point initially it's really hard to get something off the ground, right? There is a tipping point where everything suddenly becomes so much easier, but you're not going to get to the tipping point unless you stick to the same thing. You just got to grind, you just got to do the same thing over and over and make sure that you do it consistently. Only then you'll be able to get that tipping point and that's when everything becomes a lot easier.
Just giving another example and it's actually one of the reasons why I'm so tired right now, because the truth is a launch like this, a lot of work goes into the preparations, right? All the sales pitch are done before hand, all the affiliates know what to do, all the videos are ready before hand, we have all the videos created for ... in the members area. Everything is all done beforehand, but the thing that kept me up the most is customer support because I'm a bit of a freak when it comes to customer support and normally I'm not in the customer support desk a lot, we have a team taking care of that, we trained them well, but always when we launch a new product, I sort of become this control freak who just wants to see what's happening inside of our support desk. The reason for that is actually because I want to see if there's any issues and I'll want to see how people are using the tools because that helps me to understand them better, understand our customers better and to makes sure we can create updates for it that are actually going to make sense.
We actually already have quite a few updates listed just from the initial couple days because people are sending over some great results, if I wouldn't have been inside of the support desk myself, I might not have seen that. I mean my support staff might have summarized it for me, but there's always something that gets lost in translation, so over the last seven or eight days or so, I've actually replied to over 1600 emails, which is insane.
That's just from the support desk by the way, that doesn't include my own inbox, my Facebook inbox, and doesn't include any of the chats I've had with affiliates and all of that. 1600 just from the support desk, back to our customers, that I personally did, not even the rest of my team. But that's just the reason why I want to make that clear, once again one of the things I think we've done consistently is we care about our customers, not just me but our whole team. I mean the whole team is always striving to the best kind of rates of our support, as we automatically keep track of how happy you are. If you send in a reply, and we send a reply back you can automatically vote how happy you are with the reply. We're always striving to basically get the highest score possible. We want to make sure we make our people happy.
That's also something, if you just do that for a week or a couple weeks then people aren't really going to know this, right? If after a couple years people have been sending multiple messages in and every single time they're happy with the result or at least most of the times because obviously you can't always make everyone happy, right? Over time it's going to become clear, "All right, these guys, they actually have good support, right?" If you just do that for a week, or a couple weeks or a couple months, it's not going to have an immediate effect but once you do that long enough, once you do that consistently over a long period of time, at some point there is a tipping point where people are going to talk about it and say, "Wow these guys, they're actually really good. They have good support, go there." That just makes everything so much easier, right?
That's really just the thing that I wanted to share with all of you, so whatever you're doing in your business, don't try to switch from one thing to another, but be consistent in what you do. Do something that you actually believe in and be consistent with it. Keep on doing it, don't give up after a couple months, but just keep on doing it because only after a while are you going to get that tipping point where everything else becomes easier and also it takes a while to sort of get a certain image into your customers or into your prospect's mind. If they're going to see that for a long period of time, over and over that you're actually sticky to what you do, then they know that it's true, you're not just saying that it's true, but they know that it's actually true.
That's it for today, I hope this helps and I hope you all have an awesome day. Bye, bye, cheers!
"You just got to grind, you just got to do the same thing over and over and make sure that you do it consistently."
"One of the things, I think we've done consistently is we care about our customers, not just me but our whole team."
"Whatever you're doing in your business, don't try to switch from one thing to another, but be consistent in what you do."
"Do something that you actually believe in and be consistent with it."
.png)