How to ignore vanity metrics and build for your high expectation customers part 1

Founders are often told that they need to increase their daily active users, their monthly active users… I mean these are metrics that everybody says needs to make sense. You need to be able to drive up to the level of retention, you need to reduce your bounce rate. To be honest, these things are fantastic metrics and we see a lot of people start businesses and the focus on these metrics but that's wrong! You're focusing on the wrong thing. Focusing on metrics such as these are superficial and would lead your product to have a sketchy roadmap. What you want to do instead is to identify your high expectation customers and focus on improving the benefits for this subset of users and create the greatest product that they would love. I would like for you to remember that Hala is a place where we share things that smart people have already said. The insights that were sharing today are gleaned from a leading industry expert Julie Supan. She was responsible for the original and super fast growth of YouTube back then and helped the company position themselves better which of course, as you know today, YouTube is a household name and when she left the company in 2009, Supan became one of the most sought after branding expert in Silicon Valley and she went ahead to help companies like dropbox, Airbnb and Thumbtack craft better market positioning before launching. She did this by helping them identify their high expectation customers and today what we're going to do is to use the same line of  thoughts and questioning to identify your high expedition customers as a startup still in the idea stage and yet to lunch. So there are five questions Supan walks founders through and this helps them position their products better. 

1. Who is the customer that needs or wants your service or product the most . 

2. Why does your product or service matter to them 

3. How do they feel about your product or service 

4. What is the true benefits to them 

5. Will your product exceeds their expectations.

Now let's see how she did this for dropbox.

Now when you look at a product like dropbox, you think of them like a sharing company. That’s true because they make it easy for you to share your files and sync them across various devices, access them on the go because they’re saved in the cloud. However when Julian came in, what she did was to redefine who the high expectation customer for dropbox actually was and what she found out was that the high expectation customer is actually a person who literally just wants to simplify his or her life! Now I understand that there are still millions of users who use Dropbox primarily as a file sharing service and the way you can identify that Is that they are mostly all on the free plan! The paying users are their high expectation customers and they just want to simplify their life! High expectation customers benefit the most from the products greatest attributes and they are responsible for spreading the word. In other words, they become the company ambassadors and that's how you know your high expectation customers; they talk about your product to everybody literally. 

For Airbnb, when everybody looks at a service like that they imagine Airbnb to be like a hotel and people use it as such. However, walking Airbnb through the process of identifying their high expectation customers, what Julie discovered was that they were global citizens, nomads and they didn’t just want to visit new places but they want to belong to those places; they want to blend into the culture of those places and experience it in a different way and that was what the high expectation customers were. Airbnb feels them with energy, cultural diversity and experiences, a cool feeling of staying in unique spaces and that warmth of being welcomed by the host. 

So why should you optimize for your high expectation customers?

Simply, they are your high paying users. They are not usually the first to register but once they come around, they’ll stick with you forever and another benefit is that they become your ambassadors. They’ll be responsible for bringing in so much business for you and can drive up your profit. 

So how do you find your high expectation customers?

Start from researching. 

One thing you have to keep in mind is that there's a lot of research that needs to be done so you can understand what inspires people, afar people love, what get them angry, what's their greatest beliefs and their greatest challenges. You need to start by researching so you can sketch out your ideal customer profile. 

Now you can find these by performing research in several ways including through your customer service channel, App Store reviews, products intercept reviews, surveys that you run on social media, speaking directly with your customers and things in that category so you could just put all of all this together and you would arrive at your ideal customer profile; now you know exactly what makes them go and what makes them stop.

Now, it could take several weeks to months trying to make sense of the data and insights that you have gathered. One thing you want to pick out is - what direction are the results pointing you in? And you also want to understand how the current expectations and the unexpected aligns with your current strategy, your current roadmap and possibility of the team you currently have building in the direction the data is pointing you towards. 

With this data in hand, it is time to start sketching out the profile of your high expectation customer. If you ran open ended surveys, one thing you will discover is people would be able to talk to you in words that they are comfortable with. For instance if you ask someone – how would he/she benefit the most from this product? The answer you’ll get will would usually be how they would describe themselves. This is going to give you a wealth of knowledge and insights which you can leverage on to scale your business later. So now you know their ideal expectations when they are using your product, when you start running adverts or publicity campaigns you know how well to word your campaign and you know the segments of people that are most likely to become your customers when they come across your product.

We’ll stop here today, but there’s an action point you can start working on right away- start running surveys with open ended questions. If you don’t have an audience, that’s the first thing you should do. Please refer to our series on building a minimum viable audience. 

We’ll conclude on this topic tomorrow. Thank you for joining us today!

THE END

At Hala, we believe that consistency is greater than intensity. Thats why we are building  our community around the principles of improving with just 1% daily; which  compounds overtime into something remarkable. Hala is going to be a fine blend of creatives, experienced doers, starters and dreamers. We are founded on the strong belief that ultimately, we hold a duty of care to others in need. We want to balance access to opportunities regardless of colour, background, faith or income level. We value Integrity and highly regard dignity of labour within the Hala community. As a community, our success is measured by how many dreams are achieved, those broad fulfilling smiles when help arrives and how well we are able to impact humanity. These principles are consistent with Bible teachings where we draw our faith and inspiration from. You are welcome to join Hala, you’ll discover practical tips you can start implementing today to stay ahead in business.

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