Step-by-Step Instructions

Click to download FOCUS Spreadsheets.

Problems it Solves

In this exercise, you're going to learn about Scaling your Channels.

The last exercise, Scaling your Solution, started exploring when you should stop automating features of your solution so you can focus on growth. This exercise will finish that discussion.

In this chapter, you will also learn the order in which you should pursue new channels.

Revisiting Offer Design

In the Offer Design, you prioritized a number of different channels that you could use to reach out to customers. You'll leverage that exercise with the new information you have to determine the priority of implementing new features versus executing within new channels.

Channel Scaling Spreadsheet

Open your Features to Scale spreadsheet.

In the last exercise, you converted the features you could possibly automate into an hourly rate of return. Now, you'll do the same thing with your channels and use the return you calculate to prioritize your next steps.

You already have some of this data in your Currency Calculator, which you'll use for this exercise.

Completing Your Channel Prioritization Spreadsheet

This spreadsheet is relatively involved, so you'll likely find it easier to watch this video to see how it to use it:

http://bit.ly/ScalingYourChannels (case sensitive)

As an example, I'll take one of the Channels from my Currency Calculator: Facebook Ads.

My first channel was my Blog Readers. Now I am moving on to the second channel I explored, which is Facebook Ads.

Now, I will calculate the financial costs associated with pursuing this channel. This includes the actual cost of the ads, plus any time a person would put in to designing the ad. Based on data I have from other Facebook Ads, I estimate the cost will be $0.25/click. I multiply that times my Annual Reach (how many customers I'll be able to reach), and multiply that by my click-through-rate, which I estimate to be .05% which determines the cash cost of running ads within the Facebook Channel.

Next, I'll estimate the number of my hours it will take to pursue this channel over the course of the year. I estimate it would take me about 20 hours to set it up a Facebook Ad campaign, plus maybe 5 extra hours a month to maintain it. In total, about 75 hours per year. Now, I can see that my financial costs are $1,250.

My Annual Reach comes straight from my Currency Calculator. For Facebook, I can reach about 100,000 potential customers.

Finally, I'll enter in my Conversion Rate, again from the Currency Calculator - in my case that's .12%. After that, you'll see that the spreadsheet calculates the rest for you:

• Customers Acquired = Annual Reach x Conversion Rate
• Customers Referred = Viral Coefficient x Customers Acquired
• Total Revenue = Total Number of Customers x Total Lifetime Value

My hourly rate of return comes out to $182/hour.

All you do to determine whether to continue automating or pursue another channel is to compare the hourly rates: which number is greater?

In my case, looking at both the features and channels parts of the spreadsheet, I should:

1. Automate Accountability
2. Explore Answering Questions (as this is not yet validated but has a potentially high return)
3. Explore Mastermind Groups (as this is not yet validated but has a potentially high return)
4. Then, pursue the Facebook Channel before automating anything else because this channel has the next highest return

I can go back and forth between different automation and channels to get the highest rate of return for every step I make!

Please see the video for additional examples of using this spreadsheet.

Finally, consider that you can outsource any number of these things. It may be that by converting some of your time cost into financial costs a specific feature or channel generates a higher hourly rate of return.

Leveraging a New Channel

To start executing Offers in your newly prioritize channel, you're simply going to revert back to the Offer Testing exercises.

Since you'll be targeting the same customer segment, just in a different channel, you don't need to repeat your interviews; you simply need to design a new Offer, and create a new Offer experiment!

You'll use your Currency Calculator to set up your Success Metric Stoplight and just like the first time you did Offer Testing, you'll continue to optimize your Offer until you reach your success criteria.

Once you do, you'll continue on to Currency Testing after which, hopefully the solution you've already created will solve your new customers' problems!

From there, you simply repeat the process again with a third, fourth, fifth, etc. channel.

What's Next

Now you know when to make trade-offs between additional feature automation, and pursing additional customer acquisition channels.

You also have a prioritized list of both channels and features, so you know when to do which and in what order. Finally, you know how to acquire customers within those channels.

Next, you will learn how to Scale your Segments so that once you've exhausted all your channels for your primary customer segment, you can move on to your next segment!