Imagine for a minute that it’s five years from now and you have a successful business. What does it look like? How did you get here?
Has your business been a string of one-hit promotions that you put together one after another, or has it been a process of building up a successful system that brings you a steady flow of new customers and then nurtures them until they become devoted followers?
I reviewed the clients I’ve served over the past few years and examined the ones we’ve led to the greatest success. Our most successful campaigns were those that had one of two different characteristics.
The first type of successful campaign was for clients who had great products and offers. They put together killer proposals, we got the targeting right, and together we sold many products.
The other successful group was made up of clients who had good proposals, but who had to work a little harder. These clients didn’t stop with the first offer. They developed plans to reach those people who had bought even a single item from them, nurtured the relationships, and sold more products to them. They grew businesses out of those initial sales.
Today, I’m going to talk about what it takes to create a one-hit wonder. In my next post, I’ll talk about building a business.
First, I need to explain what I mean by one-hit wonders. In the music business, this term refers to an artist who has a single huge hit and then never has one again. Many times, their one hit comes early in their career, and they don’t repeat it. These are songs like Johnny Lee’s “Lookin’ for Love,” or Devo’s “Whip It” from the 1980s. They were both huge songs, but the acts didn’t repeat with other hits after these.
In terms of physical products, one-hit wonders are items like pet rocks, Cabbage Patch Kids, and the Rubik’s Cube. They take off, sell millions, and then disappear.
One-hit wonders are great. They generate cash—sometimes a great deal of it. You find an item you can sell, and then you find people who you think will like it and offer it and it takes off. This generates a great cash flow, and many times businesses are founded upon such products. If you’re just getting started, you need to have a success right away to keep your business going. You don’t have time to develop it any further, at least not at first. You’re busy just keeping up with the orders going out the door.
All you have to set up is a page that explains your product and a checkout page to collect money and gather where to send the orders. Then your products are out the door and gone!
You set up a Facebook ad and bring people to your page. They buy and voilà! You have an online business. It’s good times.
And by the way, when I get to create ads for a “hot” product, it is fun. I get to look at how much can we sell and the cost per sale. The numbers are fun to look at. It’s exhilarating!
If you don’t develop a way to follow up on this hit or discover how to sell another product or service, this is it. When you run out of steam and the fad passes by, there is nothing left to sell. You didn’t build anything to help you grow bigger. The challenge is to move on to something else.
I’ve found that with a little thought, effort, and work while you are in the middle of the chaos of your first success, you can put in place systems that help you create a lasting business.
In the next article, I’ll discuss the kind of system it takes to grow your business so you have something to work from once the excitement of the first big product winds down.
Have a great week!