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Have you ever had someone buy from you and you thought, hey, where did they even come from? Or maybe you've been creating content, sending emails, showing up consistently, but you have no idea which of those efforts are actually leading to sales, if any. You see, most solopreneurs are flying completely blind about their customer journey. They don't know if that person who bought yesterday first found them three days ago or three months ago,
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and the consequence you could be just
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some simple tweaks away from increasing your sales, but you'd never know, because you're not tracking the path that person took from stranger to customer. So we're going to dive into how to do that in today's episode, ready to break free from the solopreneur struggle. Join me as I peel back the layers to a thriving online business without the guru hype or the burnout. I'm going to show you the proven strategies and tools that I use so you can build a sustainable digital business without sacrificing your wellbeing. Welcome back to ease and impact thriving as a solopreneur today, we're taking a look at our entire marketing ecosystem, because your next sale might come from an email you sent six months ago to someone who found you through a blog post you forgot you even wrote. But before we dive in, if you find value in these real conversations about building a sustainable solo business, hit that follow or subscribe button, because your business and your life are in this together, and when one thrives, they both thrive. So what happens when you start tracking your complete customer journey? Well, first you stop
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this scattered approach,
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a bit of social here, an email there, maybe a blog post. When you feel inspired, instead, you start seeing how all these pieces work together. Or don't, you discover that maybe people need to hear from you 17 times before they buy, and that's normal. You realize that that person who you just purchased has been on your email list for eight months, and that's valuable data. You'll see that your throwaway blog post from last year is still your number one source of email subscribers. Most importantly, if you understand that, marketing isn't about individual wins, it's about creating pathways that guide people as naturally as possible toward working with you. So let's shift how you think about tracking, instead of looking at each platform or tactics separately. What if you looked at the journey someone takes from first discovering you to becoming a loyal customer? So forget the fancy marketing funnels for a second. Your customer's real journey probably looks something like this. They stumble across something you created. They forgot about you. They see you again somewhere else. They maybe sign up for your email list. They ignore your emails for three months, then one day, something you say hits different and they're ready. The question is, are you tracking any of this? Is this what's happening for you? If you're not tracking then let's start at the beginning. Where do people first find you? Now? This isn't where they buy from, it's where they first encounter your work. Maybe it's a guest podcast, a blog post, ranking on Google, someone sharing your content, a random social media post. Now, likely you're not tracking this because you don't know how. So let's create a simple system. Every time someone joins your email list. Ask them, not with a complex survey, just one question. I'm curious, where did you first hear about me? You'll be surprised about how many people remember and will tell you now, the best option I've found to gather this data is to get them to click on an option in an email that link goes to a landing page that triggers, perhaps a tag being added to their profile. So you might have options of social media, referral, Google search, blog posts, guest podcasts, all the places you promote yourself, I find it's less scary for someone to click on a link rather than asking them to reply to you, especially at that first meeting. There are obviously more advanced ways to do this, for example, with UTM parameters.
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But let's just start simple.
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Now let's talk a little bit about your email
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list, which is a goldmine of data that you're probably ignoring. So here's what I think actually matters, how long someone's been on your list before they buy. This tells you your actual sales cycle, which emails they've opened before purchasing, which links they click, whether they reply to your emails, even if just to say thanks. Now most email platforms track this automatically, but here's the thing you need to look at once a month, look at your last five customers, or if it's just one customer, look at that one cost customer. How long were they on your list? What emails did they open in the week before buying? What subject lines worked? People think their sales emails make sales, but often it's the vulnerable story you shared two weeks ago that built the trust and the sales email just gave them permission to buy. Next. Let's look at the journey of you. Next, let's look at the checkout journey. So track your checkout abandonment like your business depends on it, because it kind of does. How many people click learn more by now, but how many actually complete the purchase. So if 10 people click through but only one buys, you might not have a traffic problem. You might have a conversion problem. Maybe your sales page doesn't match the promise of your email, maybe your price point isn't clear, maybe your checkout process is too complicated, but if you're not tracking this, you're probably trying to get more people to your offers when you should be converting the ones already interested. Now let's talk lifetime value versus first purchase. Now you may have heard from other people that it's always harder to get new leads, rather than getting people who bought from you before to buy again. So here is where it gets. A bit interesting. A person who bought your low ticket offer, say $27 track, what happens next? Do they buy again? Do they upgrade? Do they refer others? Because if your average customer buys three times over 18 months, suddenly that small initial purchase becomes significant. And more importantly, you can afford to play a bit of a longer game to get your customers. When you're small or starting out, you can get really deep into individuals, because you don't have a list of 20,000 people. So start with a simple spreadsheet. Customer Name, First purchase, date for first purchase, Amount total purchases to date and update it monthly. You might start seeing some patterns. You know, maybe everyone who buys Product A eventually buys product B, and that's valuable information. But before someone buys they usually take several small actions. They might download your free guide, or open three emails in a row, click through to your about page, watch you on someone else's podcast, reply to an email with a question, visit your sales page twice. You know these micro commitments, they matter. When you see someone taking multiple small actions, they're raising their hand, you know they're showing interest, but if you're not tracking these signals, then you're missing out on these warm leads. So here's a quick tip for you. Is wherever someone is able to fill in a form, or you can send them an email with a link tag the actions they take. Then how long do people stay on your list? If they don't buy when do they typically unsubscribe? When do they stop opening emails altogether? This tells you how long you have someone's attention for and when you might need to re engage them. So maybe after six months of no opens, you send a different type of email. Maybe after a year on your list with no purchase, you make a special offer. The other side is maybe someone stays on your list for two years, opening everything before they buy. That's not a failure. That person just needed some time. So track it so you don't give up too soon. Most solopreneurs have no idea how many people are considering buying from them right now. They think it's zero because no one's bought today. But as you can see, there's almost an invisible pipeline happening with all these micro actions people are taking. But if you don't track indicators like sales page visits and downloads of your free content, people mentioning you to others. Here's when these numbers increase, sales usually follow, just not immediately. It's like watching storm clouds gather. You know the rain's coming. You know it is. You just don't know exactly when. Now in terms of social media, we're going to go beyond the vanity metrics. So instead of tracking things like views and likes. Track which content leads to email sign ups by tracking your link in bio clicks if you're on Instagram, which content did they save or share? Which content do buyers mention they remember when you speak to them, which particular post gets people to reply or to reach out, even which old content still drives traffic. One of my highest converting blog posts from my digital media agency was written over five years ago, and it's not the best writing, but there's something about it resonates with my right people, and it still tops the traffic from my site. I only know this because I've tracked it now, not everyone on your list should buy from you, and that's okay. Track how people sort of self select in or out. So who unsubscribes when you talk about price, who engages more when you share client results, who responds when you talk about specific problems? Your job isn't about convincing everyone, it's about attracting the right people and respectfully repelling the wrong ones. When someone unsubscribes after you share your prices, that's successful marketing. Really. You just save both of you time move on to the next person you can help. So let's set up a simple monthly review framework for you once a month answer these questions, where did this month's buyers first find me? How long were they in my world before buying? What content or emails did they engage with before purchasing? And what patterns do I see, if any, across all customers? Now this takes maybe 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how many sales you've had, but it's an hour that could be. To transform your business, because once you see patterns, you can optimize that path. So this might sound like a low tracking, but we're boiling it down to one step. Just pick one customer, your most favorite or your recent customer, and trace their journey backwards. That one customer's journey will teach you more about your marketing than any course or Guru could, because it's your customer's actual journey, not some theoretical framework. If you have questions about setting up simple tracking systems, then feel free to drop it in the comments. Thank you so much for showing up, for caring about serving your people well, and for being willing to look at the data even when it's uncomfortable. Until next time, keep creating impact with ease.
