How AutoGrow Made $31,000+ in the First Month of this Year
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.”
That’s a lesson-learning quote that Steve Jobs said about his Apple empire. And now it has more validation than ever for us at AutoGrow.
Offering people exactly what they need and want is one of the biggest takeaways for us from this past month.
And that’s exactly what made us generate $31,806 in revenue in January.
New hires managing the team…
19 client accounts…
And a simple—yet innovative app that has reinvented the way we work for our clients...
...were some of the other key factors of 2.6% growth.
In this month’s growth report, I’ll tell you more about how we generated almost $32,000, how the business has been running in 2020, and how we’ve faced some minor setbacks as a team.
And I’ll tell you some interesting lessons learned and big wins that I’m sure you’ll relate to.
Like every month, join me in this growth report for January.
Record Breaking Month: $31,000+ and Counting
So we began 2020 with the right mindset. By the end of 2019 we said we wanted to keep growing and we did. We met the goal we set up for January: crossing the $31,000 mark! That means a 2.6% growth compared to December.
The beginning of this year has already brought some great things to the company. Not only money in case you’re wondering.
A major achievement came along with this month: a new and time-saving feature for our AutoGrow app (I’ll tell you more about this later).
As I mentioned in December’s growth report, after months of hard work and fixing some bugs, the team’s already using the app on a daily basis. And our clients have also been using it too and finding it very helpful.
Clients can just log in to the app and request the team to complete a task.
Want a landing page? Click a button.
Want to create a lead magnet? Click a button.
Email copy? Click a button.
Ad campaign? Click a button.
Need to record a demo video? Click a button.
And they can also see the progress of the tasks in real-time.
I think one of the best things about this app is that it gives clients peace of mind. Because they not only see the progress of the work but they get to see the deadlines too.
We’re working on adding new features to the app: live chat and notifications. These will give clients the opportunity to communicate directly with the team for any inquiries or questions, and keep the team posted on new task assignments.
So far, we keep all client communications through Skype, but having everything related to AutoGrow (task assigning, project tracking, analytics, and communication) on one easy-to-use platform will make it much more convenient for clients.
In case you haven’t realized, the AutoGrow app is awesome. Matt and our developer coded the perfect software to keep clients up to date and easily request any task they want our team to get done for them.
And this is one comment one of our clients said about our app...
“The app seems to provide very good visibility into where we are. What’s being done now. ... That google docs visibility you currently have is pretty good but I’ve voiced some frustrations with it. Not always clear what’s done and what’s not done. The app seems like a simpler/cleaner approach. "
Brian Maiolo, Founder of Hardnut Advertising
Receiving compliments and testimonials from clients is always gratifying. And that’s one of the things that keeps us always motivated and growing.
But for February it's going to be a challenge to keep that growth going.
I’ve told you in past growth reports how we’ve been thinking of AutoGrow like a 3-legged stool. And the 3 legs are: 1) developing and finalizing the app, 2) polishing our hiring funnel and recruiting the right people, and 3) improving our sales funnel to figure out how to 10X our revenue.
Our progress on these 3 foundations has given Matt, founder and CEO of AutoGrow, some time to focus on finishing coding the AutoGrow app and help retain clients.
And one of the most important accomplishments that Matt and our developer made with our app is the “auto-assign” feature.
You’d be surprised to find out how much time a small feature in our app can help someone save so much time.
For example, the auto-assign feature has actually saved our Project Manager five hours of work per week. She used to manually assign one task to each team member at a time but now our app does that for her.
Because in the end, the more time we have, the more we can focus on our clients.
And the number of client accounts for our service is growing. We ended January with 2 new accounts and 19 total.
We’ve been able to manage that number but as it keeps growing, we’ll need to hire more people.
I’ve already mentioned in the past how hiring has been a big bottleneck for us. But we’ve kept working on improving our hiring funnel and motivating the team to recommend any qualified candidates too.
In fact, we’re posting a sales funnel and hiring funnel reports every morning after our team sync-ups on Skype. This motivates the team to look at the numbers and think about ideas or ways on how to bring those numbers up.
The report looks like this:
This is a way to keep the team updated on how the numbers for our traffic, unique visitors, new applicants, and info products sales are running every day.
The other purpose of the report though is to help us focus on what we consider needs a little more work in the business. For example, focusing on traffic one week and on getting more email subscribers the next week. Repeating that process over and over and consistently lets us create lots of small changes that can add up to big wins over time.
AutoGrow’s Transition
So in January, we started a transition. Nope, we’re not migrating away from our Done-For-You type of business. We’re repositioning AutoGrow.
We've been A/B testing 2 homepages with different copy.
A: “Hire a Digital Marketing Team in 3 clicks”
Vs…
B: “Your Done-For-You Sales Funnel Marketing Team”
We’ve been branding AutoGrow as a Done-For-You sales funnel service that saves our clients an ocean of time and money. But then we decided to reposition ourselves as a marketing team that gets your tasks done.
This A/B test actually shows that the first headline had a 19% conversion rate while the second was just about 15%.
And we decided to reposition ourselves and move towards this branding because some clients come to us with the wrong expectations. They expect to see leads and money come in as soon as we start working on their funnel.
But we’ve always said it: building a sales funnel takes time and expertise. And to see results, you need to be patient. Some clients think “if you don’t get me leads within 30 days, then the funnel is useless”. But that’s the wrong mindset. All funnel elements are valuable assets and key parts of your marketing journey.
And that’s exactly what we’re experts in here at AutoGrow—crafting and optimizing the perfect sales funnel for your business.
And that has led us to actually consider going niche in the business coach industry. But we’ll see if that happens.
For now, we’ve made over $31,000 in one month by getting deliverables done for our clients in different industries. And based on our mission “to accelerate creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit”, we won’t go niche in the short term.
Bottlenecks & Milestones
One big bottleneck for us this past month has been our design process. Having one landing page design ready has taken more days than we’ve expected. And that has slowed down the workflow a little. But with the auto assign feature in the app, hopefully the workflow will be smoother.
Despite hiring still being a bottleneck, it has brought great hires to the team.
This past month we hired a dedicated project manager. This has helped us move forward with the app and client accounts. She’s been doing a really solid job so far. It’s always nice to welcome to the team fast-learners and that’s why you have to hire the right team members.
Our priority for hiring is an apps manager now, but as we grow, we’ll hire for all team roles.
And as we keep improving our hiring funnel to not let it be a bottleneck anymore, we’re continuing with our LIVE Demo Webinars.
As you know, Matt has been hosting every Wednesday at 11am EST a LIVE Demo Webinar of our service.
During the webinar, Matt shares everything about our On-Demand, Done-For-You Funnel Marketing Team. Attendees get to see how a well-constructed sales funnel for their business will give them more free time by automating their lead generation, case studies from businesses similar to theirs, and ask any questions they have regarding our services.
If you attend any of AutoGrow’s weekly LIVE Demo Webinars, you’ll...
- Understand how a sales funnel can automatically create leads for your business without you having to do the work.
- See what AutoGrow does differently from the competition to make building your funnel a snap.
- And find out who’s a good fit for our Done-For-You Service or on-demand packages.
These Live Demo Webinars have also led us to completely migrate to not having any consultation calls. But at the same time, it has also become a bottleneck because only 3 sales came in January through the webinars.
And to wrap up, in terms of traffic, for January we saw 31,612 unique users on the website. And that shows a 7.5% growth compared to December. And even though our record was in October with 44,000 visits, this month’s traffic hasn’t been that bad. And we're pushing to get back to that place.
Conclusion
We need to keep putting some extra effort towards our systems, sales, and software and keep fixing the bugs in our app.
This will help us speed up the workflow and deliver tasks to the clients more efficiently.
And as our client list grows, we’ll hire new team members to fulfill all job positions.
We’ll keep working hard until we get to our 2020 goal: to 10X the business. And of course, we’ll keep bringing in more and more clients to our service.
And if you’re still on the fence, AutoGrow’s Done-For-You service’s pricing is very affordable compared to agency options. It’s a much better valuable option for your business.
We work hard, we care, and we do the work for you right and on time.
And if you’re curious to see what our full-stack marketing team can do to complete your digital marketing tasks, reach out to us.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you got from this growth report that was most beneficial.
Keep funnelin’, stay focused.
Mariana Lessmann
