Give People What They Want Faster

If you are in SaaS, you’ve probably heard of “Time To Value” before.

This metric measures how long your new customers take to get value from your product or service.

Have a look at this SaaS tool we’re testing for one of our clients at K&J.

1. You land on the website - the first click is “Get Started for free”

2. That click takes me to “pricing”

3. I then have to scroll to “get started”, which takes me to this contact form

4. Getting here has required two clicks and one scroll, then it requires me to fill in a form that has six fields before I even know if I get to use the product - I’m over 60 seconds into onboarding without having used the product

Here’s the alternative from Claude.ai:

1. Go to the website and click on “sign up”

2. Using Google to log in - it auto-fills my email and password - I had to click the “next” button twice

3. I land on the product page and can use it after three clicks and < 30 seconds

According to Google, the average person spends 54 seconds on a website.

If you can’t produce value for customers quickly, whether that’s online or in person, the harder it is to keep them around.

If you believe you’ve got the right people coming to your website and you aren’t converting or your sales pitches aren’t closing, ask yourself:

“Am I producing value fast enough for someone to be interested in what I’m selling?” The answer I’ve found for many companies I’ve worked on (mine included) is no.

Being A Good Shit Marketer

Five years ago, eight leads was a good week at Compound. Now we regularly get more than that in a day. Just this Monday we got 22 leads.

A year ago Gravy didn't exist. By July we were getting a couple of website hits a day, now we're getting 50.

This is the result of compounding efforts. Lots of little and big inputs that over-time combine into increasing outputs.

A lot of those inputs are "marketing". But I'm a shite marketer. The only thing I've got going for me is my copywriting.

People like Steve Jobs and Motion Sickness (check out their recent herpes awareness campaign) have an instinct for this type of thing, I do not. Instead I've mostly got Compound and Gravy to where they are by making bets.

Trying stuff, seeing if it works, and making sure that the payoff will exceed the cost if it does.

When I run Facebook ads, I spend 30 minutes setting them up and maximum a couple of dollars day to run them. Then I leave them to see what happens.

When I send out surveys. When I ask for reviews. When I create content. I do the same thing.

I come up with a hypothesis, figure out how to test that hypothesis as quickly and cheaply as I can and see what happens.

I continually look for ideas with asymmetric returns and test them.

It’s not romantic but it works. I don't market, I make bets.