Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

THE CUSTOMER LIFE CYCLE
The next three stages within the kinetic execution model all occur within the
customer life cycle, a transitional process where strangers are turned into
prospects, prospects into customers, and customers into disciples. The life cycle
has seven steps:
AWARENESS: Exposing your product to the target customer. Example: Your
target customer sees your product’s ad in their Facebook newsfeed.
EVALUATION: Providing your customer with enough information to make a
decision—a website visit, a white paper, FAQs, an internet search. Example: Your target
customer visits your website and reviews your offer.
ONBOARDING: Converting strangers into prospects by securing them into
your marketing ecosystem. Example: Your target customer provides an email address or
signs up for a FREE trial.
PURCHASE: Converting from a prospect to a customer. Example: Your
customer converts from a FREE trial to paid premium or buys your product after being
emailed free content.
USE: Management and monitoring how customers use your product.
Example: Most of your target customers renew or reorder your product; others ask for a
variation of it that you do not have.
ENGAGEMENT: Interaction and relationship building with your customer to
foster retention and/or repurchase. Example: You send your customer a periodic email
regarding trends or topics within your industry.
DISCIPLESHIP: Creating loyal customers who become evangelists for your
company, hence fulfilling the productocracy prophecy. Example: Your target customer
shares and recommends your product on social media and in person.
Because customer life cycles vary based on products/industries, it isn’t within
this book’s scope to explore them all. For example, onboarding for a restaurant
(getting a customer into your building) is entirely different from onboarding for
a software service (getting a customer to accept a free trial). Nonetheless, kinetic
execution’s next four steps are relevant for any business.
PUSHING PROOF (HARD)
Once the prototype or beta version is fully functional, seek a verdict. Will the
marketmind pay for it? Your aim is hard proof which is a sale (or pre-order) and

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the receipt of moola. Hard proof is a market oscillation that says, “I like your
stuff; here’s my money.”
Every so often, I’ll get an email from a reader who experiences hard proof,
and let me tell you, it’s like having billionaire parents on Christmas day. Once
the motivation cycle closes its circuit, affirming your offer though a sealed value
loop, it’s game over. Addiction. There’s no going back to time clocks, nine to
fives, and dismal Sundays. But more importantly, hard proof sparks the
endorphinous feedback loop, inspiring passion, self-worth, and an overall feeling
of accomplishment. Above all, hard proof is your first goal worthy of celebration.
Awareness, Evaluation, and Onboarding
Acquiring proof starts with the first three steps of the customer life cycle:
awareness, evaluation, and onboarding. Rarely will all of these things happen at
once (an event) but take weeks (a process). No matter which, everything starts
with awareness and exposing your offer to the target audience. But where and
how?
Well, the good news is you don’t have to spend $5 million on a Super Bowl
ad to reach a large audience. There are many venues to choose from. Amazon,
Reddit, ESPN, Twitter, Craigslist, Instagram, Pinterest, Yahoo, and Bing are just
a few mass-market websites with targeting functions and plenty of eyeballs. Post
or advertise your product, send the customer an offer, and see what happens. If
you have cash to throw at hard proof, my favorite mediums are Amazon, Google
AdWords and Facebook ads, all of which offer enhanced audience targeting. No
cash? Try Reddit, Craigslist, or targeted Facebook groups.
If your budget is drawn from a dishwashing job, social-media venues offer
excellent opportunities for a targeted reach at minimal cost, and sometimes for
FREE. For example, my friend owns a personal grooming business and sells a ton
of stuff on Instagram—he posts high-definition product photos and captions
them. Voila, every post generates sales.
If your product relates to dog lovers, you could create an Instagram page and
build the account to attract dog lovers. You could find large accounts targeted to
dogs and ask them to feature your product. Many users with large followings
allow paid promotions on the cheap; for twenty-five bucks (or using your
product as payment), you can get your product in front of thousands. One forum
user used this exact method to launch his designer sunglasses company.
Another popular means to hard proof is reward/donation-based
crowdfunding services, such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or RocketHub. Here you

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post a concept offer and accept funding donations in lieu of rewards, usually the
finished product or some type of accolade. Because crowdfunding involves a
money exchange, it can be considered hard proof. However, don’t rush into these
services unless you have a solid offer entailing good copy, a professional
explainer video, and an expedited path to market. I recommend them for hard
proof, not soft.
Other “old-school” mediums, such as radio and television, are also
shockingly affordable as well as shockingly overlooked. For example, I used to
advertise on local radio and it only cost me several hundred dollars to do so.
Cable TV networks, such as HGTV, Velocity, and Speed, offer targeted audiences
and are often cheaper to advertise with than you think. If your product or service
lends itself to these mediums, they’re worth investigating.
Once your product is exposed to your desired audience, onboarding or a sale
is the next objective. 
Onboarding is the conversion of a stranger to a prospect,
usually involving the capture of an email address, a registration, or acceptance of a
free trial.
Onboarding is sometimes referred to as a “sales funnel” or “lead channel.”
Onboarding (and sales) results are solely dependent on the effectiveness of your
offer. If your landing page conversion optimized? Does your copy promote
benefits over features? Are the pictures sharp, or fuzzy? Have you demonstrated
social proof?
You wouldn’t believe the shit landing pages I’ve witnessed. If your primary
headline is a Comic Sans “Welcome to XYZ Enterprises!” or “The greatest
product ever!” expect zero sales and zero onboards. While onboarding and
optimizing conversion rates aren’t within the scope of 
UNSCRIPTED
(entire
books have been written about this stuff), they are essential to traction.
Prototype proof and moving through awareness, evaluation, and onboarding
within the customer life cycle depend heavily on the act, assess, adjust modality.
It is NOT act and then give up. It is NOT spend twenty-five dollars on Facebook
ads and quit because you had zero conversions. Execution failures during hard
proof are often premature due to misinterpretation. You see, any time you push
your product out into the marketmind through any medium, your outcome is
guaranteed to be one of three things:
1.
An echo (colored gumballs)
2.
Diffusion (white gumballs)
3.
A conversion (the sale or an onboard—gold, baby!)

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The Echo: The Marketmind’s Voice
Echoes are any feedback or measurable data that isn’t a conversion.
Essentially, it is the voice of the marketmind. An echo could be a question from
your “contact us” form. It could be general feedback, such as “interesting, but I’ll
pass” or “lol” or “pretty cool.” It could be tweets, Facebook comments, or website
usage data. Whatever the echo, it is your job to analyze it. For example, were
potential customers emailing product questions? Was there confusion about
what your website did? Why did someone write “lol”? Did most of your users
leave from the pricing page? Any echo should be assessed and then adjusted
when needed.
Marketmind Silence: Is Nothing Really Nothing?
The second outcome for your awareness push is the most likely: The white
gumball of diffusion. Nothing happens. No sales, just the stiff sound of silence
and a lighter wallet. The “nothing” outcome is another execution fragility where
most entrepreneurs raise the white flag and update the resume. If nothing is your
result, don’t overreact.
If you’ve soft proven your concept, nothing usually means there’s another
deficiency in your campaign and not that your product is a bust. Don’t let a false
flag end execution. Before you “fail fast” and move on to seemingly greener
pastures, 
confirm that nothing really is nothing
. You do this by checklisting your
channel, reach, and message.