Secrets of an Entrepreneur: Move Fast

Posted on 23. Jun, 2007 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein in Blog

What’s one of the differences between a business owner and an ? An moves FAST.

The universe loves speed. The faster you sort through choices, commit to a decision, and take action, the more opportunities will come to you. No one ever knows if the decision is the right one — it’s always just an experiment, just a test — but each decision, each action, each opportunity will take you closer to the BIG ONE, the one brilliant idea that will take you from five figures to six, or from six figures to a million dollar business.

Let me give you an example. Google came out with a new radio advertising program a little while ago. I thought, hum, that’s an interesting idea, I don’t know if radio would work for my business, but this would be an easy way to try. So I paid $300 to a company (found through the Google radio site) to create a 30-second spot to promote my free Special Report, How to Avoid the Top 10 Money Mistakes. I created a soft squeeze page www.top10moneymistakes.com, for the ad, so I could track the results. Then I spent $200 on the ad running in California for a week.

What happened? There were about 150,000 impressions (pairs of ears) who heard my ad …  6 people came to the webpage, and only 1 person signing up for the Special Report and eZine. That’s a conversion rate of .00006%!! How hilarious!

But now I know that radio did not work, probably because a short radio ad does not work for this type of business, unless I spent a ton of $$ running the ad a zillion times. But I never would have known without testing. (and, I’m thinking I may now run a test on internet radio with the same ad, since people may click more if they are already on their computer …)

Example #2: Last November I heard about a company that created and launched viral movies. They had a special, that if I committed ASAP I could sign on for 2006 rates (their current rates are $1500 more!). I took out my credit card and signed up.

Six months later, on June 21st, my movie was launched. In just the first 12 hours or so, 30,000 people viewed the movie, and 1200 people signed up for my Special Report and eZine. Not only is that a good conversion rate (4%), that was an amazing number of people to sign up in one day! I’m so glad I spent that money, and I plan to do more viral projects in the future.

But if I had waited, then I would not have been able to get the lower rate. And, it would have been months (or years) until my movie would have launched.

So if you see opportunity coming your way … jump on it.  Just make sure you also measure your conversion rates and your return on investment. :)

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