This Week's Perspective:
Q1 is definitely an interesting time for a lot of companies out there, and one of my favorite.
There is a lot of speculation , planning, and decision making involved.
Ideas are flowing and actionable steps are being created.
Most of the time people overcomplicate these steps, they think there is some sort of “magic” involved in marketing. However it comes down to some basic principles:
Be direct
Tell the audience what it is
Tell them why they need it
It all boils down to those three.
No matter how much you spend on production, on planning, on execution.
Had an unusual amount of discovery calls this week and by the end of the week I found myself having the same discussion.
It went a little something like this:
“ Okay so what is your current position and what are you struggling with “
“ I don’t have enough leads “
“ Ok, and why is that “
“ I am doing the same thing and trying to scale it but it isn’t working “
And as unpleasant it is to hear, the answer is write in front of most of you.
You have an issue , which most of the time is proper reach, and you have a solution which is diversify your reach.
So diversify your reach.
Look into your company and if you can honestly tell me you are hitting 100% of potential clients , then you are lying straight to my face.
“ Okay Parth, thats cool and all but i’m in a very niche industry”
Okay then, lets go over each one.
E-commerce
Physical products are a game of stair-stepping.
You grow fast until you hit a breaking point, usually a cash constraint or a supply chain snap.
You make profit on paper, but that money immediately goes back into buying more inventory for the next level.
It’s a capital-intensive beast, but it’s incredibly sellable because it doesn't rely on you as a "key man".
My take: Most e-com brands are actually just media arbitrage businesses disguised as brands.
If you aren't building actual community and loyalty, you're just waiting to get undercut by someone with a cheaper widget and a higher risk tolerance.
Service Based
This is where the majority of businesses live.
It’s slow and steady because it’s people-heavy.
You’re trading time and skill for money, which means you're supply constrained by default. It’s the least risky model because you can cut headcount to stay profitable, but scaling means you have to become a teacher.
You have to productize your own knowledge so you aren't the one solving every complex problem.
My take: The "grind" happens because you're selling your time.
To scale, you have to move from being a "doer" to a "designer" of systems.
If your agency or service business can't run without you for a month, you don't have a business; you have a high-paying job with a lot of stress.
Info Products / Consulting
Info products and consulting can get you out of poverty overnight with zero startup costs.
It scales faster than anything else, but it has almost zero retention.
Once your student "graduates," they leave and often, they become your competition.
My take: Most info-preneurs are on a constant treadmill of finding new customers because their back-end is non-existent.
You have to find a way to make an unsticky model "sticky" through community or ongoing consumables, or you'll burn out chasing the next launch.
SaaS
Software starts the slowest.
You burn cash for years before you ever see a profit.
But once you hit product-market fit, it’s like being chased by a boulder down a hill. It’s the most scalable model in existence because once the code is written, your gross margins are massive.
My take: The biggest mistake marketers make in SaaS is trying to sell it like a one-time product.
Software only works if people keep using it.
Revenue retention and reducing friction in the user experience are the only things that actually matter for 8-figure growth.
The Bottom Line:
If you’re ready to stop fighting the "features" of your business and want to build a real acquisition machine that works with your model...
Let’s look at your data, identify your shape, and build the infrastructure to scale it.
Till next time,
Parth Arora
CEO / Founder, Arora Media