This year, we got almost 700 responses from entrepreneurs around the world and across the spectrum, from beginners to veterans, young and old, high-tech and luddites.
Some things, we notice, never change. For example, as a lot, entrepreneurs are always an extremely confident bunch: when asked if they expected their businesses to grow in 2016: 96% voted yes. While we’d love to take credit for this, and proclaim from the mountaintops that ‘ALL ONTRAPORT USERS SUCCEED!’ we think it’s somewhat more likely that radical optimism is simply part of our DNA as business-builders, and thank goodness for it.
Some stats are most interesting as they relate to the changing demographic of Ontraport clients, rather than entrepreneurship as a whole. For example, in 2014 we had respondents from 12 countries around the world. This year, it was 36!
What’s most interesting, though, about the data we get each year is what changes. Here are the main take-aways this time around:
- Membership sites are getting more popular. More clients than ever have a membership site on their to-do list. See how to build one using Ontraport.
- Entrepreneurs are getting savvier.
While it could be argued that our data only proves that Ontraport clients (think they) are getting better and marketing and technology, I believe it’s an industry trend for two reasons.
First, this is just how it goes with technology: it comes out and it’s hard and complex at first, but if it’s worthwhile, people learn it. A couple years ago, few people had heard of landing pages or funnels; now these concepts are common and part of the entrepreneurial lexicon.
Additionally, because of the launch of our product, Ontraport Pages, our user-base has moved towards the beginning end of the spectrum, not the other way around. Still, in 2015 significantly more people self-report feeling confident with both marketing strategy and technology. The industry is growing up!
- Dramatically more clients are selling BOTH products and services. Service providers have added products, and product folks are adding services.
This aligns, I think, with the data that shows entrepreneurs are getting savvier. Competing in modern business demands good strategy, and having offers that compel a variety of prospect-types makes a huge difference.
Finally, we like to ask what our users feel is most important to learn in 2016. ‘Marketing’, as always, is the dramatic winner with ‘automation’ not far behind (driven no doubt by our unique base.) But for the first time this year, words like ‘systems’ and ‘funnels’ are showing up regularly. Once again, this is another demonstration that our industry is advancing. Exciting times indeed!
As promised, we’ve randomly selected two winners: Linda Croyle, congrats! You’ve won a ticket to Ontrapalooza 2016 and a two-night stay in beautiful Santa Barbara. Congratulations also to Armel Laminsi, you’ve won two free months of Ontraport Pro!
Thank you to all our respondents!
