Creating Marketing Systems & Meaningful Metrics with Natasha Vorompiova

Jaclyn Mellone

Welcome to Go-To Gal episode number 179. As always, I’m your host, Jaclyn Mellone. And today, we are talking about the science of the market. So marketing is made up of, I think this is a fact. I don’t think this is like a belief of mine, but you know, if you disagree.

I don’t know with me, let’s debate those, but marketing is made up of art and science, right? There’s that creative part that isn’t really measurable. However, when it comes to marketing, there are things that we can measure. And when we do, we take the time to put systems in place and track certain metrics. We can use that data to drive our decision.

Now our guest today is an expert at this. I do believe in all parts of your business, having some system around marketing is going to help you implement and is going to help you execute on your marketing in a much more scalable way. Even if you’re not ready to scale it and hire other people to help you, it’s going to help you do it in a much more sustainable way.

Also, it’s going to help give you that feedback, that insight, that data to drive those decisions. So our guest today, Natasha, is a total pro with this. And we are going to pull back the curtain on those. I don’t know. It’s a very cliche thing to say, but I’m not coming up with anything more creative. We are going to go behind the scenes with this and really break it down.

What does this mean? What are some of these marketing systems? What do you need at different parts of your brain? But where does the customer journey fit into this as a system, how to track Return on investment (ROI)  and where do you even begin looking at the numbers behind your marketing? So you can make those decisions.

We are covering all of it. Let’s just get into it. I don’t have anything else to say to you. Although I do, first, I want to officially introduce you to Natasha and then we’re going to get to it. Natasha Vorompiova is the founder of systems rock and a metrics whisperer who deeply loves analytics and numbers.

She uses her dark magic to help her clients do the impossible. Turn the giant confusing and expensive scramble of marketing funnels into a streamlined ROI-producing machine. As a result of their work together, Natasha’s clients begin seeing how their marketing is driving sales so they can sell more and grow their businesses in an intentional, predictable way.

All right. Let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Natasha.

Natasha. I’m so excited to have you here today. 

Natasha Vorompiova

I’m so delighted to be here, Jaclyn. Thank you very much.   

Jaclyn Mellone

Pleasure is mine. Before we dive into you and everything you have going on now, take us back to when you were growing up. What were you the Go-to Gal for back then?

Natasha Vorompiova

I was the responsible kind. I have a brother and two cousins. When we were little, we would always spend summers at my grandmother’s. I was the one who is always responsible for the boys, so I was organizing portraits for them and activities. I was like their mom away from their moms.

Natasha Vorompiova

But something that I started doing pretty early is kind of creating structures for myself and systems. I think when I was eight, for the first time, I decided to organize my grandfather’s workroom. I did that, and I was so proud of myself, except for when he came. He was horrified because he said “But now I cannot find anything. What did you do?” I was really shocked because I was expecting to be praised for what I did, but that was my first introduction to systems and organization.                

Then I realized that I really have to pay attention to what works for others versus coming and enforcing their systems on me. The reason I’m telling this specific story is because years later I started the business around business systems. That story was always at the back of my mind . Okay, we really have to pay attention to what others need versus what I think is right for their businesses.

Jaclyn Mellone

What a profound takeaway at a young age too, to have that, oh wait. I thought you were going to be so excited that I did this for you. Realizing how we all work and think differently, that maybe not one system is going to work for everyone to customize that. What a great illustration of that. With your brother and cousin, what was the age difference?     

Natasha Vorompiova

Three years apart. I’m three years older than my older cousin and then he’s three years older than my brother. We have another cousin who is three years younger, so we’re over three years apart. I was the oldest one, the only sister. The word “sister” was the reverent thing.

And then they are saying it. They wouldn’t even call me by name. They were like “sister”. I was the one who was enforcing the rules. 

Jaclyn Mellone

I love that. My daughter is the oldest and has a lot of those qualities as well. It’s funny, we call her “sis”. My son calls her “sissy” or “sis”, and it becomes a thing where I think I call her “sis” most of the time, too. I wonder if when we’re out in public, we’re like “Is that your sister? You look really old to be that little girl’s sister.” I don’t know, but that’s funny how it is. And yes. it’s a term of endearment but also that rank, that authority, the responsibility with it being the older sister, for sure. 

Fast forward to today, tell us what do you do and who do you help?             

Natasha Vorompiova

I did start and I started now almost 10 years ago, helping other business owners create systems and their businesses. That was something that I’ve always been great at, except for when I started my own business. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to transition from corporate to working from home, plus I had a baby. Plus we had just moved to a new country, a new language, so there were all these things. 

Basically, when I started working from home,  initially I wanted to be a marketing consultant. And then in two, three months I ended up switching to doing systems for my clients because I went on my own journey, figuring out, how do I organize myself? How do I organize my own day-to-day stuff so that I don’t completely drown in all these tasks that I needed to do? 

I did systems for quite a while, six years or even seven in my business. What I realized, as my business had grown and I started working with larger and larger businesses, was one of the areas that were quite challenging to organize with some marketing, a lot of my clients were overwhelmed with their marketing. Every time I would come in and we would create a system, it would become obsolete because they would switch to doing something else or they weren’t sure how well it was working. They were testing different things.

The system would be always evolving and changing and would not be something that they could rely on. That pushed me to examine this whole area of how we can structure our marketing. How do we find a way to make it less overwhelming? This has opened this whole new world for me, of ways of measuring our marketing. 

That’s what I dove into about three years ago and ended up switching completely, pivoting my entire business just because it became such a revelation to me that this was an area that unbeknownst to me I was struggling with when I had that previous business. Even though I would set a goal for myself, and I would know that for me to hit that goal, I need to sell these many programs or these many one-on-one arrangements. I could never translate it into a clear marketing plan.

It would always feel like a guessing game. I remember giving up on so many amazing ideas because I just couldn’t scale them. The reason I couldn’t scale them now that I understand, was because I could not see how my numbers could guide me, what I actually needed to do. But back then it was just like, okay. It’s not working.

So, let’s just move onto something else. It’s been really incredible to just discover this cool new side of marketing. Because what we are taught in a lot of courses that we take is called the Art of  Marketing, and the Science of Marketing is much more challenging.      

But because I like numbers, this is something that I really enjoy doing. It became my new passion, connecting the numbers, translating the numbers into our customer’s behaviors, so marketing would not be so overwhelming, and this would be just a clear path of what needs to happen next.

Natasha Vorompiova

Right now, I work with businesses that want to get a bit more comfortable with what their marketing numbers are saying and what actions they can take based on what works, based on the behaviors that they’re seeing from their customers. 

Jaclyn Mellone

This is such a fascinating topic to me. I’m excited for us to dive into this from a few different angles because marketing is a combination of art and science.

Being able to tie numbers back to marketing is really powerful but can also feel very restrictive or limiting or just overwhelming too. But before we get into all of that, I want to back it up, too. You said something interesting about, all of these companies were really, there was this pattern you were seeing of companies really struggling with the systems around marketing.

Jaclyn Mellone

Can you give us some examples of what those systems are? What are some marketing systems that every business should have, or that are the most common? Because I have a feeling that a lot of our listeners may not even think of their marketing as being tied to systems. Pull back that curtain for us a little bit, if you can.

Natasha Vorompiova

Absolutely. It’s such a great question because we do approach marketing as something that I need to get the word out about my services or my programs or my products. It can become disjointed from the rest of the activities that we’re doing.      

However, marketing, in essence, it’s this process of educating our customers about what we sell and who we are, what we stand for. Guiding them through the process of learning who we are, what we sell and turning the right prospects into buyers. Marketing is very much a conversation.

We are saying something to our customers, our prospects. The way that they react to what we are saying becomes this back and forth. And when we know how they react, it’s easier for us to take that next step. However, when we don’t look at marketing as a conversation, when we all look at it as it’s just me posting things and me exploring all these different social media networks, it becomes this collection of tasks not linked to the ultimate goal. The system that I always start with my clients is understanding the customer journey so if marketing is guiding our potential customer, our audience, through this customer journey. What does it look like? How do we do that? And again, going back to making sure that we do what works for us. It’s like, I brought that sentiment from my system. It shouldn’t be something that, okay, it works on YouTube videos, so it works for this person, so I have to do it as well. If I’m not great on camera, if I don’t like it, if I am great at the written word, why would I do something that doesn’t work for me because it worked for somebody else?  

The second component is always, what’s been working for me? How do I find my people in the easiest way? What brings people to me already?   

Looking at what’s been working, so that it doesn’t become this, we are not looking to force something on ourselves. At the end of the day, the best marketing system is being clear about the customer journey, being clear about two, three ways that we’re bringing people in, and focusing on that. Because again, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of doing a lot and posting on different platforms and testing different marketing activities in hopes that the more that we do, the more people will come to us.        

But again, that’s not really true because the more we spread ourselves,   and the wider net we cast, the more difficult it is for the right people to hear our message and to find us. The way that I look at it is we have to focus on what works, and we can always analyze that even what worked for us in the past. The second thing is focusing on the right people and just going after those people instead of just testing everything and trying everything.

And again, in terms of organizing our activities, I’m not saying that they don’t ever do more than two or three things. But we always start with one or two things. We test them. We make sure that they begin working. We create a system, a repeatable system. This is how this looks.  Say, I’m doing Facebook live every week because this is how my clients find me, and this is the easiest way for them to sign up for my program. And then once that is working, we can introduce something else. Maybe it will be Instagram or maybe it will be a podcast, but it should always be this gradual process instead of just overwhelming ourselves with everything possible to do. 

Jaclyn Mellone

That’s such a great way to break it down. You have me thinking a little bit differently because I think the customer journey is essential and that’s something that I focus on a lot in my business and my clients do, and all of that. I’ve never thought of it as a system before.    

I think of it as more of a strategy and there’s probably, I wouldn’t say the words are interchangeable, but it’s maybe even just changing our relationship with the word “system” and what that means, and I guess how we’re, plugging that into different areas. 

But I’m also seeing on my team, we have systems for content creation on different platforms and things like that. And then we have in terms of programs that I have, we have the plug-in pitch system, which is a repeatable marketing system in terms of getting yourself on podcasts as a guest, but using that as a marketing strategy, the customer journey being a really big overarching system. But are there a few marketing systems that you feel like every business needs to have in place? 

Natasha Vorompiova

If we look at the customer journey, the three main pillars are awareness, engagement, and conversion. In terms of breaking down the system further, What is “you” as a business? We’ll look at it as, what are the ways that I engage my people? And under that engagement can be, I’m doing Facebook live or I’m producing a podcast or I have a YouTube channel. Or it can even be Facebook ads but more quitting with your audience, knowing what you’re doing. That would be a little system of how we engage people or maybe like, I’m blogging. That will be one part. 

The second part, the engagement part will be, once somebody knows about who I am and what I do, what actually happens then? Maybe if we do, some people do challenges. Some people get their audience on the email list and we take them through a very thorough welcome system where it can be with a series of free programs that somebody can take. Maybe it’s a Facebook group. That’s another system or a couple of systems that are under that engagement umbrella. And then the conversion part is when somebody is in my audience, once I engage them in a conversation, how do I make sure that they have an opportunity to buy from me? That can be an elaborate or a simple launch.

Maybe it’s just an email sequence that invites them to buy something. Maybe you announce something in the Facebook group then people buy. It can be that big elaborate launch from a three-part series or when it starts with a challenge and then it leads into this whole sales sequence, or there is a webinar that invites people into buying your program. But basically, I like looking at it, just big 30,000 feet few. Then he’ll look a little bit closer to let’s say 10,000 feet few. And then you look specifically at each individual part and look at, okay, how do we structure this part?

As long as you put them into the right buckets and see how these buckets connect, just join the list of tasks that we do or put under this marketing umbrella becomes almost like this tapestry, a puzzle that you knew it where each puzzle piece needs to fall in order for it to be a really beautiful picture.

In other words, a full roster of clients or launch that works well, and thinks you meet your goal.   

Does that answer your question? 

Jaclyn Mellone

It does. How do you recommend, maybe you can pull out just one piece of this, but how do you recommend we document, I guess all the layers of this? What I’ve found is that working with a team, especially these last few years, it’s been so much more important to be able to get everyone on the same page to work towards this.     

And in some areas of my business, we haven’t really dialed in and we’re very organized. In other areas, we’re still figuring it out and putting those puzzle pieces together if you will.    

In terms of, because this can be really multi-faceted, what are things that you think we should be capturing just to document this system for awareness?

We have the podcast. There’s a lot that goes into producing the podcast. That seems like a more tangible one in my head. But I guess, what type of categories of things should we look at documenting to capture what the system is?  

Natasha Vorompiova

Yes. What is always helpful is mapping out that customer journey page by page, step by step.

And for that, just like I was doing with clients in terms of their systems, I suggest this for my clients as well. They just have to take a bunch of post-it notes with a flat surface and map it out. First, they land on this page. If you make people aware by producing a podcast and then you blog it and then you are on Facebook.    

You can just put these individual pieces. The post-it notes and sees that this is where somebody starts. From there, how do I guide them to the next step of what actually happens? Do they need to get to the email list? What is the new landing page for that? Once they got to a landing page, where is the “Thank you.” page?

Natasha Vorompiova

Page by page, step by step of the customer journey, you map everything out and it will be very much like the cone. There’ll be a lot of activities on the top. And then, as we go through the process, it will be more and more narrow. 

That will be the map that you can afterward look at and say, these are different activities that I do in each phase.

And like, these are individual processes that I have for each one over the marketing activities that I do. If you have a podcast process, probably you have a process for posting on creating with what pieces and protest on what you do, whether it’s posting on the Facebook page or doing Facebook live.

Those will be individual processes, but they will have their place in this overall ecosystem that you have, your ecosystem of marketing. Once you have those three processes on the top, then you get them on the email list, and there you can see once they get them on the email list, what is the email sequence? It is also very helpful to track those conversion rates. When somebody gets to the opt-in page and afterward is signed up, what is my opt-in page? Because the numbers are always the indicators of how well something is working or not.

In addition to structuring all these processes for each individual marketing activity, you can also look at how it works by looking at the numbers. Before you add something in, it’s always helpful to see, are there any ways for me to optimize what I already have in place and what is already working before I move on to something else?

Natasha Vorompiova

Because again, if we do a lot of things and if we lose our customers, we can place this work where we’re already investing so much time and resources. It’s just like we’re losing money and it’s not helpful for our business. But once something is dialed in, then we can move on to something else and they say, maybe I will do that YouTube channel because I know that this piece is working well and they know that I guide my people through this customer journey in the most efficient way. 

Jaclyn Mellone

That makes a lot of sense. One of the things that you’ve brought up a couple of times now is this idea that the numbers are really those indicators that can drive a lot of the decisions that we’re making.

What numbers should we be tracking in terms of looking at the ROI of marketing, what numbers do you recommend people are taking a look at? Clearly, there’s going to be different. The systems or strategies people are using in all of these, as you keep mentioning. But are there common numbers that apply to most of these?

Natasha Vorompiova

Yes. You’re absolutely right. From business to business, this can look different. I usually do n’t pay as much attention to the vanity metrics, like the number of followers that we have on our social media accounts, or people sharing our posts. They’re a good indicator of what reasoning is best for our audience. Those metrics can guide our decisions about what content works better and what I can be exploring more.

But overall, when we look at the customer journey in that sense, it’s the same as a funnel. When we look at the funnel, what we’re looking at are those steps and what actually happens from one step to the next. It’s basically what you will be looking at are those numbers for each specific step. 

For example,  if I say you do Facebook lives, the important thing will be, how many people attend Facebook live? How many people actually follow that call to action and say, go and sign up for something that you invited them to do, or maybe book a call with you over those people. You are taking people from aware to engaged and from that stage, how does the conversion happen?

Do they get on your email list? And then you invite them to look at the sales page and then sign up for something. Then it would be the number of people who got to the sales page versus the number of people who actually signed up or maybe you’re inviting them to book a call with you. It will be the number of people who got to the booking page versus the number of people who actually booked versus the number of people who actually bought once you met with them.

It’s always very, very helpful to go back to the customer journey. Look at, what are the steps? Because those are usually the numbers. Plus you also look at the conversion rates, just in case those numbers of people to this sales page or the number of people to the booking page fluctuates.

Conversion rates are always easier to compare when we look at things from month to month. If anything, start with your customer journey, you will not fail. The systems will be defined by your customer journey and the numbers are divided by your customer journey. This is the best place to optimize how things work. Because in the beginning, when you start tracking your numbers, you might go and ask for, what are some industry standards for this type of funnel? But once you’ve gone through that two, three months of yourself, then you can look at your own benchmarks and that’s even more helpful because then you can see that these are the typical numbers that I’m seeing. And now, you can try it like Facebook live versus podcasts or Facebook live versus YouTube video, and see how people from different marketing channels go through that journey.

And that’s a really great way of understanding,  what is your best audience? What works best for them? You can test channels like that. You can text messaging like that, and it becomes very fun.  I know that numbers are not fun for everybody, but it stops being just the tracking numbers for numbers’ sake and becomes this guiding light, almost. I really love relying on my intuition when it comes to coming up with ideas of what I can track. But then numbers become that indicator of like, is this working? Is this not working? I get to test different ideas using numbers. To me, this is the best combination of the two, intuition and numbers. 

Jaclyn Mellone

I can see that. And I’m glad you brought up that piece of it, too.  I wonder if it’s a difference in styles with systems and strategies, or if there’s a place for this in there, but how do you fit in or not fit in things that may be not as easily trackable?

Thinking of maybe more brand-building activities that could certainly help everything else in the customer journey work better but are not as easy to see. Maybe in terms of step-by-step or relationship building, I’m trying to think like, what are some of those things that are not as easily trackable? But this could be something like, it could be a podcast for instance.

A lot of times people are listening to the podcast, but they’re not taking action directly from the podcast. But that’s the chance to really build relationships. I’ve also had people go from just being podcasts listeners to becoming a one-on-one client or becoming VIP clients in a group coaching program, and literally go from not even being on my email list to, here’s $8,000, $10,000 for investment.

Clearly, you can track that. But at a certain point, you can write until you get to that point, maybe. And other things, people should be sharing parts of their day on Instagram stories and that’s not going to be that post that converts, but it could be the post that makes someone really relate to that person, to make them pay attention to the posts that do convert.

How do we fit that into this, or do we not? Because sometimes it does feel like I can see how many people are viewing or engaging with my Instagram story, or I can see how many downloads my podcast has. There certainly are numbers we could be tracking, but they’re not always just because people are listening to the podcast doesn’t mean that podcast converts. How do we fit in these kinds of, not as easily trackable?

Natasha Vorompiova

Yes. And that’s such a great point, Jaclyn. Because it’s not everything can be tracked or not everything can be easily tracked. And it also very much depends on the scale at which you are doing things and the type of business model that you have because somebody who has an online program and is already at the level where they have a very clearly defined funnel.

Most of it is happening along with this journey, naturally, it’s much easier to do it.  Somebody who has a service-based business and a lot of activities is something like relationship building or building trust and connectedness on social media. The metrics will be different and you’re right.

A lot of it will be just tracking more like, this post actually generated a lot of interest, and it’s a mental note that maybe I can talk about it from a different angle. It’s very, very helpful to just post something not business-related because that’s what makes us human, and that’s what builds trust in us as a partner on the business journey as well.  But at the end of the day, when numbers come in is when you actually get somebody on your side to the page. 

I’m not suggesting at all that we need to be tracking every single thing. Numbers are not always necessary for us to make those decisions, especially when it comes to looking at, what actually produces the revenue? When we look at it, we get people to a certain point, somewhere like online because all of us have online businesses. At some point, somebody will be sent to a page where that would be to take a specific action.

That’s something that we can measure and we’ll pay really close attention to. What we will also pay close attention to is where people come to that page. That’s where tracking those numbers will come helpful. Is it people from podcasts versus people on Instagram versus people on Facebook?

And a lot of times it’s possible to track using tools like Google analytics. But a lot of times, if it’s a service-based small business, maybe it’s simply formed that you have your people out on the site and ask them, how did you find me? Tracking this can be done at different scales.

And some of it, you will automate. For some of it, you will just rely on these numbers that you are getting occasionally. But again, at the end of the day, it’s what you want to see at the end of that customer journey and maybe it will look like you are just working backward and seeing, okay. Look. If I won these many clients, what page do they need to book, that is of service to me?     

And before that, what are those different places where people are coming from and how can I find this out? Is it using Google Analytics or is it me just asking them? Or is it me just tracking that, this is the person I had the conversation with on Instagram, and now three months later, they send out my package.  It’s for every business, it might look different, but it’s up to us to pay attention to this and see, given the trends that I’m seeing, what makes more sense for me to put my time and resources into?

Jaclyn Mellone

Thank you for breaking that down like that. Something else you mentioned was, I guess, looking at the numbers and seeing maybe a positive impact of like, okay, this is working. What happens when the numbers are not telling that story?

I guess there are two parts to that, right? We’re trying something new or we’re just starting to track numbers like this more realizing, okay. This doesn’t seem like it’s working. At what point do we make a change and try to optimize? I think that the other part of it is that we can go into what optimizing looks like?

But first, I would just love to know, how long do we ride those numbers out? Because I think sometimes people make a change or look at what they’re doing and to impulsively say, it’s not working. But other times we can be doing something for a very long time and it’s not working, but maybe we don’t realize it. How do we find that balance of getting to the optimization or maybe just stopping something?   

Natasha Vorompiova

I’m so happy that you asked this question Jaclyn because  I find that in this specific case, numbers are so useful. A lot of times, they help us not to get into the emotional drama, and actually being that very hard on ourselves and blaming ourselves for something like not working or let’s say we don’t have the results of our launch what we hoped for, and the goal for let’s say, we wanted to get 15 people and we got only five.

It’s so easy to get into this place like, nobody wants what I sell. I don’t know what I’m doing.  I’ve been doing this for such a long time. Why has it been so long? Why can’t they figure this out by now? Numbers a lot of times are very helpful to just keep us, not fall into that trap.

Because numbers can show us what is actually happening, and it’s rarely us. It’s just that there is something that is not working. And by looking at numbers, it’s so much easier to not be so emotional just be a bit more observant versus us being in it, and being so hard on ourselves.

In terms of what to look for, the thing is that I find that out of time is underestimated. How many people do we need in order to convert them into clients? And I think there is this brainwashing and conditioning that’s happening or all these success stories that we hear or we think that’s okay. I know that, but I will be different. People will come to me and this will happen by miracle.

And then related to that, I’m saying that is because I thought that for the moment again back with my systems, the business I was not paying as close attention to my numbers.

And I would fall in those like, oh my God, me watching them work, I need to do something different. Now that I’m looking at my numbers closer, I know that’s okay. For me, to get this number of people to sign up for my program or to work with me, this is a number of people that I need to have sales conversations with. This is a number of people that I need to introduce to what I’m doing. These are the types of people that I’m actually looking for. They are not that any people, they are the right people. When something doesn’t work, the very first step is to actually step back and realistically look at what numbers do I need to be working with for them to actually work?

And if I didn’t know what that looks like, ask somebody who has a similar business model. Look for examples online.  Sometimes it’s easier to get those numbers, something you can just simply Google, like Webinar Funnel. It’s pretty good, you will be able to find those numbers pretty quickly. But if you have a type of business that is not so common,  try to find somebody similar or try to maybe it’s not even in the same industry, but it’s something to look at to compare where you are at. That will allow you to have some indicators of, “Where am I compared to this ?” It would be helpful to work with exactly for the same month, two or three to see, ” When I do this, what’s changed? When I change from this audience, that audience, does it actually make a difference? “And another thing is that what’s very important is not to change everything at once. Because that’s something that we love doing because like, it did not work, so I’ll make this completely new thing and I will try this. That’s very difficult to compare at the end of the day. If something doesn’t work, the first step would be, what are some numbers can I get to compare where I’m at?

And the second thing is when you optimize it when you change something like change the one or two things so that you are able to see what they did. Did that actually make a difference? That will be the best way to see whether it’s worth it sticking with this long-term or not. Because if you are doing this and it’s not working, if you are just making these really, really tiny improvements and it’s something that’s potentially not something you are seeing results, of course, stop doing that. 

But if you see incremental improvements and you see how things change from time to time, it’s definitely worth sticking with. Because a lot of times, even the tiniest of improvements can give us very, very big results, but it’s just finding that you know, that big once you push it, the rest falls into places.

Jaclyn Mellone

It’s so smart and scientific, with the changing of one thing at a time. I find in practice that it’s so hard to do that, especially when you’re not evergreen.  Because as you close up one launch and you’re planning for the next one, then if you’re not launching every month or something, if you’re only launching a few times a year, it can feel like, okay. I want to make all of these changes at the same time because we want that biggest result for the next launch. Is that such a big no-no? Or are there some times where you’re just, okay, go for it if you feel like you’re making improvements?

Natasha Vorompiova

What I always recommend is looking at what works for you. Because again, something that the trap that I fell into so many times is I would hear this proven system that works for somebody and I would just say, I will do that. If it works for them, it will work for me. Unless I step back and look at it. But is this something that I enjoy doing?  Is this something that I’m good at? Is this something that I have seen works for my audience?

It’s so important to look at what’s been working for us before, and that can be anecdotal. That doesn’t have to be numbers, but we really, really have to look at what works when making these changes.

Yes, one launch can look very different from another. But you have to look at “Is this something that I can implement without spreading myself too thin, without spreading my team too thin? Because all I’m doing are these new things, and everything is unknown. I’m doing this only because it worked for somebody else.

There has to be this adjustment that you make for yourself, for your business, for your audience, so that you can see yourself being propelled through this launch doing something to some degree will work because you are enjoying it. Your audience will benefit from it versus just pushing through it because it worked for somebody else.

Jaclyn Mellone

Okay. That’s a really great point. Is there a minimum number of a data set of we’ve had this many people go through it? Or if someone’s like, we have 20 people go through this and nobody moves to the next step.” Do they wait till they get to fifty or a hundred or a thousand?

Is there a magic number of “Don’t start optimizing until you have at least this much data if you will?”

Natasha Vorompiova

It depends on the type of business again. If you are looking at online numbers, and if you are just looking at the Qlik numbers of people who came to this page versus that page, here are the conversion rates. The higher numbers you have, the better actually.

However, we’re all starting with small numbers, and we are starting with small numbers in the very beginning.  It is very important to get feedback from actual life people. It’s relatively easy to do when we are working or having conversations, like sales conversations with people one-on-one, and even those who said ‘no’ to us, asking “What didn’t work for you? What was the reason why you said ‘no’ basically?” It’s uncomfortable for sure. But those answers will give you very important information for you to make tweaks in the area that will be most valuable.   

For one-on-one service, they start with let’s say, ten people. If ten people said ‘no’ to you, and if you got their feedback and you know what needs to be tweaked from there, tweak it. But again, one thing at a time and move forward. When you’re on a page, it’s much easier in a way because you can always translate those digital footprints into behaviors. If somebody doesn’t go from one page to the next, there is just a finite number of reasons why that may be happening. Messaging might be off, or you’re sending the wrong people to this page, or something is so unclear about that page that people are not getting it.

Again, step back and look at it just like if I was a customer “What could be the reason why I would not move from this stage to the next?” Again, in terms of numbers, I’m hesitating to give you the number, because it does depend on the type of business that has been done before. But in the beginning, getting feedback and not scaling it is always the best thing.

And then another thing is, don’t jump into Facebook ads before you find a way to sell yourself, like in one-on-one settings or in small groups. Because starting to use Facebook ads to bring more people before you nail your messaging, it will be a waste of money. A lot of us, I’ve made that mistake too. Once you skip this phase of testing and fine-tuning, and understanding our customers, and understanding what works for them in hopes that like “Here’s this ATM called Facebook ads. I’ll just go put money in, and it will spit money out.” But it never will until we know that messaging and those numbers that we need to be working with, and what our customers are responding best to. 

In the beginning, that phase includes tests, and feels, and this pain. Okay. I need to make my next week, but in the end, it pays off so handsomely. It’s moving our business from these early stages or even not early stages, but we’ve been doing this for a while and it’s still not working. It’s so hard to pace ourselves and look at data. And by data, just the behavior of our customers, what you are looking for is a business that works, the business that you don’t need to be constantly attending to. You’ve got to find this patience in you, and figure out what works so that you could scale it, and it will work like a clock, really. 

Jaclyn Mellone

Yes, that’s right there. I think that’s probably like, okay. We need to just underline that. Because that’s the ‘why’. That’s our motivation to get through this, and you can do a lot. You don’t need systems to make money. You need those systems to scale.

Absolutely. You can just go wild to just create money. But to get to that point where you are able to scale it, that’s where this is essential. And coming back to that ‘entrusting the process’ and the patience that goes with that, I think is the underlying message there. 

Okay. Anything else you want to share before we wrap up?  

Natasha Vorompiova

I think we’ve covered so many topics. I think we are finishing on the very right note. Look at what is your goal for your business. If it is a passion project if you are just creating something and selling it and you don’t really want to grow it further, it works as it is, don’t pay attention to data. Don’t pay attention to systems. If it works, and whatever systems you have in place that you can rely on, great! Just stick with that.  

If you have different goals for your business, if you are convicious to build the business with a team and business that doesn’t take a lot of time running, even if it’s a small business, then putting systems in place and tracking what works and understanding what works so that you could make do more of that, that would actually be essential. 

Yes. I think at the end of the day, that’s the biggest thing. Look at what you’re trying to build, because your strategy for that will be different.

Jaclyn Mellone

Absolutely. Okay, Natasha, this has been amazing today. How can we stay in touch with you?   

Natasha Vorompiova

The best place to find me is my website, systemsrock.com. I’m also on Instagram, Natashia.Vorompiova. I’m still trying to get to my ad systems, but you can always find me by name, and it’s a new place for me to hang out. I’m looking forward to connecting with you there, as well.

Jaclyn Mellone

Amazing. All right. Thank you so so much. 

Natasha Vorompiova

Thank you.