Make more money with a strategic client journey

Profitability is more than just bringing in money. It's also getting back your time. The more time you have to do money making activities, spend time with your family, or whatever it is you really want to be able to do, the more profitable your business truly is.

One way to make big shifts in your profitability is to create a simple, strategic client journey that moves the right people to hire and pay you (without you having to be involved at every step). And the initial decision making steps on that journey take place on your website.

In today's episode I'm sharing why your client journey doesn't need to look like all the "boss babes" in the industry and how a simple strategy is more effective than a complicated, multi-step one.

Being truly profitable in your business means more than just making money

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Process to Profitability. This season, we've been talking all about creating a process to be more profitable in your business. And here's a piece I want you to know when you think about profitability. You might be thinking about bringing in more money, right? You want to make money in your business. We all do.

[00:00:27] But what I also want you to think about is: profitability is also getting back your time. So the more time you have to do money making activities, or to spend time with your family or whatever it is you really want to be able to do, the more profitable your business is because you are making your money and you are still being able to be the CEO, make the big decisions. You are not stuck in the weeds of your business, trying to drum up clients every single day, because you have a profitable business overall, not just on when you're looking at the numbers. And that's really important.

[00:01:18] We get into business because we want freedom and flexibility, because we want to be able to spend time with our families or make an impact in the world. And all of those are great things, but if you are spending, you know, 20 hours a day trying to keep up with everything that goes into a business. If you're constantly on social media and you're missing out on your kids' lives, or if you have a really high income, but you feel like you're drowning in client work, then you're really not a profitable business in the way that we want to be as entrepreneurs.

How your client journey impacts your profitability

[00:02:01] As a designer, as a business owner, here's what I've noticed. We feel like we need to be involved on every single step of the client journey. We need to be the one who is bringing them in on social media, talking to them in the DMS. We need to be on the sales call. We need to be delivering the client project.

[00:02:24] And there are pieces that you're never gonna be able to get out of, unless you're building something like an agency. But if you really want to deliver a service or if you wanna deliver a course, you've got to be in it. You are the face of that. That is who people are expecting to work with. So here's what I want you to think about.

[00:02:45] You can automate a lot of this client journey, which gives you a process to make more profit while taking yourself out of the business. And this is what a CEO does in their business. So what does your client journey look like?

Your client journey doesn't need to look like the boss babes of online business

[00:03:05] For most of us, we talked about this in the funnel episode, people are starting on social media, then they're gonna come to your website. They might sign up for your email list. Eventually they're gonna work with you. But I wanna talk about it when you're zooming in to the website itself. And it doesn't have to be as complicated as you think.

[00:03:24] So when people think about this, they are envisioning those websites like Marie Forleo's or Amy Porterfield's with a million different opt-ins and lots and lots of pages and upsells and downsells and affiliates and everything that you could possibly throw into a business.

[00:03:45] For you as a solo entrepreneur, or somebody with a small team, that is not what you need to be doing. That is not going to be profitable for you because you do not have the bandwidth to do that. And there's no need to do that. If you don't have a course, that's bringing in thousands of students every month, you don't need all of that stuff.

Using your website to create a strategic client journey

[00:04:09] What you really need is to create a very strategic journey on your website. So here's what I like to do for my clients. We plan out the strategy of their website by number one thing. What is the goal? What one single action do you want people to take when they land on your website? That's the first thing you need to decide, and that's what everything is going to be based on.

[00:04:47] So that goal might look like getting people to sign up for your email list. It might look like getting people to apply to work with you if you've got a high ticket service.

[00:05:02] It might look like purchasing a product if you have low cost digital products or you sell physical products.

[00:05:12] It could also look like scheduling a sales call. It might look like taking a quiz to get a result. There's lots of things that that goal can be. But when you think about what you want it to be, what you want that one action to be, think about the thing that is going to be the most impactful for people and for your business.

Understanding your client and your product to set a goal for your website

[00:05:40] So in my business, the number one people way people work with me is through website design. It is a high ticket service. So I charge, you know, four figures for a website design. People are not going to just hit the buy now button on my site. They need more information. So the goal on my website is to get them to apply to work with me. ,And from there I can get on a sales call, I can send them all the information we can get their project booked. If I were to just have a buy now button, it would never convert because nobody is going to spend four figures with me having just landed on my website.

[00:06:25] But if you've got a $47 course that you want to sell, that leads into something bigger and it really gives your business a great impact. There's no need for an application. They can put their credit card information in and they can buy it.

[00:06:42] Same thing with an email list. If you want people to sign up for your email list, you can have them sign up right on your website. Give them the fields right there for name, email, hit submit.

[00:06:56] The reason that figuring out what that goal is, is so important is because when you are designing your website, you're moving people towards that goal every step of the way. Now, for most of us, this is going to be selling some kind of service or a higher ticket offer, a course or a membership. And that makes sense, because that is where we see our profit in our business.

[00:07:27] But for some of us, we know if we look at the data that we sell from our emails. And so the goal should be to get people on that email list. And that's where we can really do our selling. That's where we can get people interested. That's where we can get people into our program.

[00:07:42] You have to think about what is it right now converting people into clients and as long as that's working, use that for the goal of your website. And then take the time to make a site map, lay out each page of your website. And figure out the journey.

[00:08:04] When I do this for my clients, I lay out the top level pages and then which pages it connects to, and this really helps them to see what we're doing in our project, but it also helps them to understand when somebody comes to the homepage, we are going to be directing them to this link. When somebody comes to the contact page, the whole goal there is to get them to get in touch. And that is really helpful when you design the actual site because you know which calls to action to use on which pages.

Create one call-to-action for each page of your website to keep visitors moving forward

[00:08:38] Every page of your site should have only one call to action, except your homepage. Your homepage is going to have calls to action in the choose your own adventure section. You're gonna have something that is free, low barrier to entry, and then you're gonna have something that might be more medium priced, or it's just gonna require a more of their time investment, like reading a blog or listening to a podcast episode. And then you're gonna have your high ticket service that they can learn more about. The reason that we do that on the homepage is because if that's the first page somebody is landing on, they're not gonna be ready to hire you for a service, but they're going to want to see that it is available.

What a typical client journey looks like

[00:09:26] And then once we get into more of the pages of the website, we are now moving people on a journey. So they land on your homepage. They choose what they want to do next, how they want to learn about, and from there what most people will do is go to your about page. They want to know about you, and they want to know about how you can help them. So your about page is not just the story of your life. It's not how you started your business. It's really about you and your connection to them.

[00:10:07] And if they like what they read there, they're gonna move on to your services page or your sales page. Whichever one you have. That's gonna go into detail about how they can work with you. How do you actually get them this transformation that you have promised? How can they invest in you so that they can see a difference in their own lives or businesses? That is where your big call to action comes in, right? Because that is going to be the most profitable piece of your business.

[00:10:43] And then if they are not ready for that yet, you want to give them the ability to get in touch with you to ask questions, give them a contact page so that they can learn more.

[00:11:00] So that's really what you need for your website journey. You need a homepage to give them the information that gets them invested. You need an about page to tell them about you and how you can help them. Give them a sales page all about the overall transformation that gives them, all the information that they're gonna need to make a decision. And then a way to get in touch with you on the contact.

[00:11:22] I also recommend that you have some kind of blog or podcast for content purposes so that you are showcasing your expertise, but also because you are using those keywords that you want to be found for. So it can drive more people to your website that way.

[00:11:40] As you sit down to map out that site map, keep those pages in mind and walk people through that journey so that they can then take action on working with you.

Continuing the client journey in your CRM

[00:11:54] And then what will happen is they will go into your CRM. I used Dubsado for this, but they will go into that for the next part of their client experience, where they will get onboarded into your service.

Always keep your #1 goal top-of-mind in your business

[00:12:08] It's all a journey. It's all part of this bigger whole. And as you are designing your website, as you're planning what you're going to do, you always need to keep that number one goal in mind, and that is going to help so much to keep things on track where you don't feel like you need to add 47 different pages and upsells and downsells and opt-ins for every single podcast episode you've done.

[00:12:41] If you know what you want people to do when they learn about your business, if you know what they, how you want them to work with you, you can design your website to move them towards that goal and let go of everything else. And that's really going to help your business, but it also helps your clients and the people who come to your website because they know exactly what to expect. They know exactly what you do. They know if you're a good fit and they know where to go to find more information.