I recently got an e-mail from someone with a plaintive question. He just got a new job as the Internet marketing person at his firm. The boss waltzed in and demanded that he raise revenue 25% in six months. His question to me, “How?” How, indeed. It’s rare that I try to give blanket advice to anyone in a situation that I don’t understand, but after thinking about it a few minutes, I believed that I knew what to tell him. It might be good advice if you are in that situation with your boss, too.
Image by mattlemmon via Flickr
Any of dozens of ideas might be the right ones. It’s not easy to say without spending a lot of time understanding your situation. If you can afford a consulting engagement that looks at your situation, I’d recommend that, but honestly, expecting a 25% increase in six months seems a bit difficult when you just got there. It will probably take a couple of months to even know what to do.
And a lot depends on what kind of resources you have. If you already have a lot of traffic coming to the site, without knowing anything else, I’d see if I could do some multivariate testing on the landing pages and the conversion path to see if I could increase the conversions of the people already coming. That might results in the gains you need and you can use Google Website Optimizer for free, so it fits into any budget if you know how to use it. (If you don’t, you might need to hire a consultant who does.) If you don’t have any metrics numbers for your site, you’d need to implement Google Analytics first, but that is easy and it is also free. So, “site unseen,” that is what I’d recommend.
But I’d recommend something else, too. Your boss seems a bit demanding and you might not be looking down the road far enough. I know that you are spooked about delivering on the 25% in six months, but you need to think about what happens if you succeed. You’re just asking for the boss to drop another demand on your desk for the next six months—or maybe the next three months. If you plan on keeping your job, you need to have a second act.
First, I’d let the boss know that a 25% increase is quite difficult to pull off. If you do succeed, he should not expect to see that happen again, because as your company improves, it’s harder and harder to find big things to work on. Second, I’d let him know that you need to take steps now so that your multivariate testing is not a one-shot wonder. Continued testing will continue to find improvements, but the results will level off.
You should start focusing on longer-term ways of bringing traffic to the site at low cost, such as organic search marketing and social media marketing. No matter how big the crisis seems for the short term, failing to take long-term steps at the same time only serves to bring a new crisis down the road. And with that kind of demanding boss, you can bet he is only too happy to cause a new crisis for you at any point.
