On my mind:
“Marginal gains is not about making small changes and hoping they fly. Rather, it is about breaking down a big problem into small parts in order to rigorously establish what works and what doesn’t”.
– Matthew Syed
This Saturday, I put a video out on my Youtube channel.
As of right now, it’s generated 51.8% more views than the average video on the day of release. Granted, we’re talking 59 views over the usual 30 – yet I couldn’t be happier about it. It reminds me of a conversation I had roughly 15 years ago. It was about identifying the 7 “levers” that drive your business, then improving each by only 7%. For an ecommerce store it might be:
- Pricing
- Shipping
- Returns
- Customer service
- Order volume
- Order value
- Packaging
By making 7% improvements in these areas – increasing pricing, reducing shipping costs, lowering return rates, etc – the effects compound, resulting in higher profit margins and customer retention. But it’s not all revenue-based. When working with a content team, it might be:
- Getting content published 7% faster
- Reducing the amount of time it takes to write by 7%
- Having 7% more research than the average
- Increasing/decreasing word count by 7%
And so on.
As I’m increasing my own content output with videos, client work, going on podcasts, and now (apparently) a newsletter, I’m thinking about about the ways I can make these small improvements to smooth the process even further.
Maybe we can trade tips?
An interesting tweet:
For only having so many characters to work within a tweet, Sahil drops some amazing insight and great resources on how to learn pretty much anything.
I started putting some of these suggestions into action a little while ago, and it really has helped with those marginal gains.
📡 What’s on my radar?
- Only 9% of companies think their content strategy is “excellent” while about 4/10 consider theirs “average.”
- Alex Birkett’s perspective on growth models will get your head right and get your numbers to stop flat-lining.
- Office workers lose nearly 69 working days doing repetitive tasks.
- The average marketer spends to 8-20 hours a week on manual, operational tasks.
- Rand Fishkin asks, “Who will amplify this and why?“
Track who is sharing your competitor’s content.
Decided to try something new with this video.
This is a walkthrough of setting up an automation that keeps track of who is sharing your competitor’s content, and see everything else that’s grabbing their attention.
Use what you learn for:
- Guest post opportunities
- Webinars
- Partnerships
Because when you know where people are spending their attention, it’s much easier to get in front of them.
