114: Increasing MRR by 10x (w/ Asia Orangio, DemandMaven)

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How They Moved The Needle

1. They boosted retention by offering a discount for the next year, and the ability to pause (vs cancel) a plan.

When travel screeched to a halt and churn started to ramp up, the CEO and his team focused on retention. They prevented it in two ways:

If things were going OK for customers, they could upgrade for another year at a discount. If they weren’t, rather than canceling and losing data, they could simply pause their account.

This also showed customers that the company had there back, and would support them.

2. She updated messaging and value props the client led with, based on customer research.

The old messaging focused on value props around reliability and value. Asia did customer research to learn the “job” customers were hiring the product for, and what they valued most. In her research, she found that these value props didn’t resonate with customers like they did before.

The market had changed, and so did the needs and beliefs of the customers. She found customers still wanted reliability, but they really valued things like:

• Innovative features
• Things they hadn’t considered before
• Help tackling other problems their businesses faced

After she completed the customer research, Asia crafted new value props, centered around how the product would:

• Work with customers
• Help them grow
• Be in their corner your corner
• Release innovative features

3. She updated the Client’s Google ads campaigns to better reflect the new messaging and value props.

4. She completely redesigned the Client’s website.

In her research, she found customers weren’t choosing the Client because the “marketing wasn’t as pretty”. One respondent actually said, “you guys didn’t look as cool as the other options.” Other competitors looked newer, more professional looking, or more modern. It was also hard to tell the difference between the Client’s site with all the lookalike competitors, touting the same solution.

Through research, they found they were often the last product people tried. And because users would try 2 or 3 competitors first, they’d often end up signing up with them instead. Asia wanted them to stand out, resonate, and be the first product they tried.

So they overhauled the design, opting for a darker, bolder theme to stand out from the competition (who mostly did light, lookalike designs). This had a huge psychological effect on buyers. The Client stood out, and customers would remember the site and experience better.

4. They updated the website with new messaging that showcased the new value props they discovered.

The old messaging centered around being reliable, easy to use, and convenient to connect everything you needed. The new messaging centered around being a platform that would help you grow, innovate new features to solve ongoing problems, had flexible pricing, and would always be in your corner. This included updating the signup flow, pricing page, and messaging on the homepage.

5. They hired an SEO agency to build organic traffic.

Asia had helped build a foundation for content, so when the SEO agency came in, they started increasing 10% month over month.

6. They overhauled the onboarding emails.

They went through several versions of onboarding emails, with the goal of getting the customer to value realization as fast as possible.

7. They helped the Client improve the signup flow to reduce friction and get users to value realization faster.

Asia identified and changed steps in the signup process that were causing friction, and contributing to a lack of activation.

Results

They increased MRR by 10x in just 2 years, organic traffic by 10-30% month over month, and doubled website conversions (largely due to the overhaul in their design and messaging).