Oh boy, what a week in the immigration world.
For those who don’t work in the Canadian immigration industry, the government workers went on strike last week. This basically means that the staff that are responsible for processing millions of immigration applications in Canada each year… didn’t go into work due to a strike.
And as you can imagine, this is not a good thing for people who are submitting these applications – the aspiring immigrants and the immigration professionals they work with.
Suffice to say, not a happy day.
Now for all I know there is probably a decent reason to be striking (I know they’re negotiating higher pay, etc.), but I hope it doesn’t last a long time.
I woke up yesterday and decided to go live on LinkedIn to talk about it.
Why?
Because if all we’re getting is a bunch of bad news, might as well talk about it in public and hopefully drum up some good chatter.
Here’s how it played out:
- woke up and realized the strike was happening
- texted a colleague of mine around 830am to ask if he wanted to go live with me on LinkedIn to discuss it
- scheduled a LinkedIn Live for 1pm
- posted the event on LinkedIn to promote it at 11am
- had 60+ people sign up to the event on LinkedIn ahead of time
- went live at 1pm and had an average of 45 viewers for the entire 1 hour session
The post and subsequent video generated a ton of buzz, and I think plays into something we should all be doing as solopreneurs – positioning ourselves as industry experts and at the forefront of important industry conversations.
And as a result, it’s generated 73 comments, 6 shares and over 650 views – in less than 12 hours! And I’m sure it will get more views and comments over the next few days as well. I’ll keep you posted.
It’s also in line with something I discussed with a friend about onboarding last week.
Because another thing I’ve learned in the last few months is how important this part of the process is in tech (stay with me for a minute here, I’m bringing it all together I swear…).
When you sell a product, it’s pretty simple – they pay you, you give product. When you sell a service, it’s pretty simple too – they may pay you upfront, may not, then you provide the service.
When you sell tech, there’s typically some form of onboarding at the very least. Especially if you offer free trials.
They sign up, they hopefully use the tech, you keep reminding them to try the tech, they hopefully like the tech, they upgrade to becoming a paid subscriber.
If things go well.
But there’s a whole bunch of nuanced stuff that goes on in there.
- What are the terms of the free trial?
- When and how do you sign them up?
- Can they sign up on their own or do they need an invite?
- When do you follow up to see if they are using/liking the tech?
- How can they upgrade?
- What do you do if they sign up and don’t try it?
You get the picture. Lots going on. So we were strategizing ways to improve the Visto onboarding experience, so we can get as many users to try – and upgrade – to our paid plan.
The interesting thing about launching new tech products is there’s no perfect way to do it. You have to test and adjust.
For example, should you offer a free trial? Well, probably… depending on your product.
All you can do is test a free trial, see how it goes and adjust based on how things are going. Same with onboarding, pricing, etc.
One strategy may have worked for Hubspot in 2014, but that doesn’t mean it will work for Visto in 2023. As an example. Similarly, going live on LinkedIn may be great this year, but not the next.
As I’ve learned to start saying nowadays – ABT. Always Be Testing!
Have a great day, don’t miss my daily business tips here and keep grinding.
