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Okay, so today I'm sitting down with Bas. He is the co-founder of Convert Calculator,
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which is a no-code builder for interactive content like quizzes,
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calculators, lead pages,
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and he has extensive experience in business, design, marketing, product, and strategy.
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In the past, he actually founded an online startup accelerator.
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He's coached multiple innovation teams, and he's led a corporate innovation
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initiative at the largest bank in the Netherlands.
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So, boss, I am super excited to chat with you and dig into your background. Likewise.
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Likewise. Thank you for having me.
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Yeah, absolutely. So could you tell me a little bit about what led you to co-found
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Convert with Calculator?
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Yeah, actually, it's an interesting story because my co-founder,
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Joris, he's the technical co-founder.
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I met him coincidentally. He started this product.
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He usually or before worked as a freelancing developer, but every freelance
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developer wants to start their own startup.
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So he was working on some side projects. One of those side projects was Convert Calculator, actually.
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And I worked with him from a business perspective, because if you're a lone
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wolf, it's sometimes a bit difficult to keep all the plates in the air, so to say.
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So we would sometimes meet up
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and then discuss different topics about the business, about the product.
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So we did that for a couple of years, but the product started growing and growing
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and growing and growing.
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And eventually, he learned that he could really use a co-founder.
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And at the time, I was wrapping up a corporate innovation initiative.
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So yeah, timing-wise, it was very good. And we decided to link up.
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And that's how I became the co-founder of Convert Calculator,
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with mainly the focus on the overall product strategy and the business side of things.
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But obviously, we're a small team. So responsibilities shift.
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In a small startup, you wear a lot of hats. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Cool.
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So since you've been building Convert Calculator, what would you say is the
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main insight that has allowed you to grow the business or promote the business?
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Yeah, so with Convert Calculator, we allow users themselves,
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so it's a no-code tool to create interactive content.
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And a simple, everybody has, maybe not everybody, but a lot of people have built
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landing pages, for instance.
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But that's static content. So you have landing page, landing page builders.
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We have interactive content. So you have a sort of similar content as a landing
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page at different elements that you can bring alive with Excel-like formats.
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So it is, what I want to say, it's a very horizontal product because it can
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be a lot of different things for a lot of different people and a lot of different businesses.
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So it has a lot of use cases within a lot of industries.
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And that's awesome, right? Because it gives you a lot of outs,
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but it's also a real challenge because it requires focus, and focus requires
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saying no to a whole lot of things, which is very difficult.
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But in order to be successful, we need to focus. So we have an industry approach
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where we connect specific use cases to specific industries, and what really
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helps there is funnel thinking.
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So thinking in the funnel from your specific industry use case combination,
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right? because it forces you to think about who is the exact customer.
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You have to have the persona, the profile, the audience.
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And what specific pain points are they trying to solve? How can they solve that with your product?
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So all of that really helps you create the proper messaging.
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So we have, for instance, different industry pages on our landing page as well.
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So we can cater with more direct content to different audiences.
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Instance but it also helps in different templates for
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instance for them to get started to to go
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successfully through the activation activation state so digging down into the
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the funnels and yeah that really helped us with yeah with our industry use case
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approach so i would say that's the main that's the main thing okay that building
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funnels kind of allows you to be to look more
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specifically at that entire customer journey.
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And it helps you kind of like improve over time and kind of have a systematic
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way of improving those conversions, right?
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Yeah, indeed, indeed, indeed. Because it also helps us deliver the right content,
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create the right content,
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create the right templates, create the right support structure with support
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videos, but also working with channel partners, for instance, and,
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So you really need to learn about the industry, about their specific pain points
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and how your product can solve it and then help them solve that successfully.
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Because like I said, we are a do-it-yourself product. We try to make it as easy
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as possible, but there's still work to be done.
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And different industries come with different personas, different people,
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and they all need to be successful in our product.
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So sometimes I'm anxious or not anxious. I'm jealous about businesses that have
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a really specific, that target a really specific niche because they can focus
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their entire company on that niche.
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And for us, it always itches because we can do so much more and there's an abundance
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of ideas and opportunities.
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But then, no, getting back to the drawing board and sticking to your plan and
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working from those funnels, it really helps.
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So it kind of helps you stay focused on what is really most important to be
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building or what's the most important thing that you could be working on that's
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going to benefit your customers?
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Indeed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, indeed. So to make progress, you need to take steps,
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many, many small steps, steps ahead.
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And yeah, dialing it down into a level that's concrete enough and a funnel approach
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helps with that. It helps you, allows you to make the progress,
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to define actions and finish actions and continue.
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Yeah, I'm curious, what was it like before you started taking this funnel-based
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approach to systematically learning about customer pain points and improving your product?
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It was chaos, right? Because we could do so much for so many people, right?
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And our name is, for instance, Convert Calculator, because that's how we started.
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It we we created for instance quoting
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calculators yeah but but over time
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the product and the functionality functionality grew and
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we're not a calculator anymore it's way too it's
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way too narrow so yeah it's and then we started thinking about our positioning
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and what are we are we interactive content builder but that's also that's also
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vape right so you need to narrow it down in order to make sense to people coming from a certain angle.
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If you have a cleaning business, you get a lot of quotes, quote requests online.
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Okay, for you, for that cleaning business, we are a way to automate that first
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part of the sales funnel with a quote calculator on your website and start getting
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those quotes automatically instead of you having to answer phone calls or emails all day.
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And for a different kind of industry, we're a different product or it can be a different product.
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But yeah, like I said, the industry approach, it really helps.
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Okay, that makes sense. So let's say that I work in a BB SaaS and I want to
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start being more systematic and intentional using conversion funnels to figure
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out my audience and what to build with my product.
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So like step-by-step, what advice would you give me in order to implement that.
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Yeah, I would say the pirate metrics funnel, going from awareness to acquisition,
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activation, retention, revenue referral.
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Those are the top line funnel steps.
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And then work your way from the top down again and again and again.
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So for instance, on activation, you have this funnel where people sign up for your product.
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What happens after the sign-up? So you start building your level one funnel,
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for instance, but that's still very high level, right?
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And then you pick one step of that funnel and you start dialing it down again
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into different funnel steps.
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And there you will find issues to improve or work to be done,
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different pain points or how your solution can solve for those audiences.
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Audiences so starting starting pretty
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high level and then taking each funnel step
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and dialing down onto into that funnel step
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that i would say is a pretty systematic approach and you will also learn that
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you will do that you don't know a lot but that will give you give you that will
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give you the clues to do some further uh yeah customer exploration for instance okay you said something
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really interesting because I have, I'm aware of these steps,
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awareness, acquisition, activation, retention.
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Referral. But the idea of picking one and then saying, okay,
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we need to fix our awareness piece.
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So now let's look at these six steps again and try to figure out within the
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awareness piece or within this very specific thing that we want to fix,
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what are the pain points and issues of
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customers like for that specific piece of the
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overall marketing funnel yeah and
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indeed so for awareness for awareness you
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need to define who your customer is because if if
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you cannot define who your ideal customer is you cannot
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define the channels to reach them right so and
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then you start thinking about doing all that work the customer
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segmentation building personas whatever strategy
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you like to employ and then
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for instance start building your awareness funnel i
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i don't know it could be a solution that you set up
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with with search engine optimization or with
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different ads leading to the end of the awareness funnel which is the acquisition
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sometimes they they are taken together but i like to separate them to the acquisition
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step where people your audience lands on your landing page and recognizes your
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message and also finds your message desirable, right?
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So they take the next step on within that funnel.
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And for us, it's a sign up to the free trial.
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But a lot of things happen for your audience when they reach your website, right?
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So you can build a funnel for that as well.
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So the highest level step is, okay, I come from an ad, for instance,
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I click on the ad and I land on my landing page.
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That is the high level step. And then you can dial down that high level step.
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Okay, when a visitor lands on the landing page, he starts reading the hero,
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the header, and he maybe looks at a video, he starts scrolling,
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he clicks through a couple of pages.
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Those are also different steps you can think about and analyze in a way.
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And everything is a funnel is conversion, right?
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Because for us, it's very important that every visitor we attract,
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as many visitors as we attract, we want to convert them into customers.
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But customers is way down the funnel.
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A lot of things need to happen before people eventually become a customer.
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And the same thing applies to a visitor, a new visitor on your website,
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from visitor to sign-up.
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Everything is conversion and conversion rates.
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Conversion rates are usually pretty low, which can be a bit depressing.
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But for us, improving conversion rates with % already has massive effect.
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Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Cause I assume you guys are getting a lot of traffic, so.
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It's, it's, it's work in progress, but the more traffic you get there,
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if you can just improve conversion rates minimally in each of those different
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steps, it has huge effects.
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So approximately when you're, when you're doing this, approximately how long
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is it taking for you to see results in terms of like a higher conversion rate at each of these stages?
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Yeah, so I can share a recent example where my co-founder, Joris,
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has focused a little bit more on on-site SEO.
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So improving the webpage, creating new pages with all the different keywords,
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research etc but also fixing some fundamental
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fundamental issues on our
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website and we saw instant results
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we we saw maybe a percent increase in in traffic obviously you need a little
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bit of time to see if it's significant and and if it's not from a singular yeah
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from an outlier, of course.
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So some things can go pretty quickly. And also with each action you take.
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Each experiment, so to say, you have the experiment, but also how you will measure it, right?
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And when you will feel that you are successful or not.
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So, for instance, an activation experiment could be that in our onboarding funnel,
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we ask some qualifying questions to our new users.
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And based on their answers, we provide specific template options for them.
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Because then we can match the customer and the specific template better.
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And the idea is, the hypothesis, if you would like, is that you help them become
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successful easier in a way.
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And you can measure that. You can measure how many people fill in that segmentation.
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You can measure how many people actually start with that template,
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start working with that template, publish that template, have that template
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on their website, and start gaining visits on that.
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So all of the things, if you dial it down to a deep enough level,
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you can build, measure, learn in a way, which is obviously the lean startup approach.
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But lean startup is sometimes a little bit vague. But if you dial it down to
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a detailed level, detailed enough, then yeah, you can really make progress.
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That said, it's a lot of work, right? We are a small team and we have way more
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ideas than we can put to action.
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Because a lot of times I hear podcasts with people who say, yeah,
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you work with a marketing team and a product team and a customer service team and a sales team.
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To us, it's only a couple of persons in a way.
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So we wear a lot of hats. that does make us pretty efficient as well because
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we punch way above our weight with product, with marketing, basically with everything.
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But still, it's still a lot of work.
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And that has me a little bit curious about,
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maybe what are some of the pitfalls that people might encounter counter as they
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try to implement, you know, this conversion funnel and conversion rate optimization
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at different stages of the funnels?
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Yeah. So in a lot of teams, it's separated functions, right?
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So being a smaller business allows us to have insight into all the different steps, right?
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So we can really connect all the dots. And if you work with bigger teams who
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have separated responsibilities, that overall holistic overview might not always be there, right?
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So it really requires a lot of communications between the different functions as well.
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And to me, that can be a pitfall, right?
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Because then you spend a lot of time on communicating instead of producing,
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instead of really making actual progress.
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So yeah, there's always a balance there. So how do you handle that balance, if that makes any sense?
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How much of your time as a founder within your team is spent on improving conversion rates?
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And how do you balance that against everything else that needs to get done?
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Yeah, it's difficult. It requires a lot of discipline.
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We only have a success rate of %, for instance.
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Instance, where our goals or our internal goals are just not met because you
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are observed by just the daily business and all the other things you need to do.
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So yeah, there's no magic pill. It's just discipline and discipline is hard
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and it's also hard for us.
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We have, like I said, half of the time we are not disciplined enough,
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but a hundred percent discipline is difficult.
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Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, but indeed, we are growing the team.
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And when you're growing a team, it becomes more difficult, right?
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So then probably new structures need to be in place.
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However, you still want to stay productive.
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We prioritize productivity over the rest.
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Okay. So is this like an ongoing initiative? Like, do you just,
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you just set some metrics like that you guys want to hit and it's just part
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of like your quarterly goals or, or whatever.
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And you say, okay, well, we want to focus on like the acquisition,
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activation and retention part of like this, this, this, and this,
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and this, these are our percentage goals. How do you manage it?
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Yeah, I can give an example because you can, you can work backwards,
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right? So we have a certain revenue goal, just to call it an arbitrary number.
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But say we want to hit a million in revenue per year. We know what we do right now.
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And we know the funnel steps. So we know how many customers we need in order
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to reach that one million.
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We know our conversion rates. So we know, for instance, how many visitors we
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need to attract all the way down in the funnel.
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And there's little dials that we can turn because within that funnel,
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for instance, in the activation step, if we are able to activate a little bit more users,
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then we have to attract less new customers or less new visitors because our
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funnel is becoming more efficient.
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And if you dial it down to these steps and apply specific actions within each
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step, right? So, for instance, for attracting new visitors, you need content, you need pages.
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So, yeah, we need to create new content every week, for instance.
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That's a process that you put in place.
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After a while, how you measure it, you measure if that content ranks already.
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You measure if visitors start appearing from that page.
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You can measure what they do after they land on the page. Do they sign up?
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If they sign up, do they become active?
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If they become active, are they becoming a customer?
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So everywhere, there's different dials you can turn, but it all needs to be in balance, right?
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So if I attract visitors a month on my website and almost nobody signs
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up, I do really well on the awareness step, but I do horrible on the acquisition step, for instance.
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So in your entire funnel, there can be things that can be optimized, basically.
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Okay, that makes sense. So it's like you're setting these overarching goals
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for something like the amount of customers that you want to get.
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And then you say, OK, well, let's focus on a piece of the funnel or let's try
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to set let's try to set metrics for each piece of the funnel.
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Like we need X amount of visitors and we need X amount of people going to the
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landing pages. And then you try to optimize each of those.
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And then once you optimize it, like, let's say you make more landing pages or
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you improve your landing pages, then the conversion rate goes up.
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So then you dial down the amount of traffic that you projected that you would need.
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Indeed. Indeed. And if everything works in your favor, you go way past your goal in a way.
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But it's not a perfect world. I would say we are a bootstrap company.
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So we are an actual business. We make more money than we spend.
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And that also requires you to be disciplined in a way.
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It's not so difficult to grow something if you lose a lot of money in the process.
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Process sometimes i would say it's it's it's it could also be beneficial to
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have a little bit more free cash flow where things can fail in a way and because
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you it all has to it all has to do with the,
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correct balance between being opportunistic and and being too being too rigid in in a way.
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So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.
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Well, I really appreciate this, Bas.
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And as we're wrapping up, I'd just like to ask if there's any projects you're
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working on, anything that you'd like people to know, and anywhere you'd like
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people to get in touch with you?
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Yeah, we're always working on cool projects. So indeed, if you are a marketeer,
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then interactive content, that could be the next new wave that will help you
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improve your conversion rates in your process.
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So really do check out the product, ConvertCalculator.com.
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Play around with it. It's a super
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versatile, flexible product and have a little bit of a learning curve.
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But we are working on that to alleviate, lessen the curve. But if you want to
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create cool things, you sometimes need to put in the effort.
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So yeah, I would say check out our website, play around with the examples.
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And if you're inspired, yeah, go play around with it a little bit yourself and we are there to help.
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If you have a specific use case, we are there to help you through the process as well.
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All right. Makes sense. Sounds good. Well, thank you so much,
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Bas, for sharing your story and all the insights. Yeah, you too.
