There are a lot of ways to grow a business, but when you get down to it, there are three fundamental drivers of growth that matter the most. Once you see them, you can’t unsee them, and for authors and creators, they change how you think about every sale.

They are:

1.  Get more customers.
2.  Increase the value of each order (sell more per transaction).
3. Get customers to buy more often (increase their lifetime value).

This framework is a cornerstone strategy for the work we do at my agency and in the MBA courses I teach! 

Every growth tactic you’ve ever heard of ladders up to one of these three. 

• Increased conversion rate → More New Customers
• More clicks on your emails → Increased Lifetime Value
• Bundled discount → Higher Revenue Per Transaction 
• Better return on ad spend → More New Customers
• Selling a signed copy → Higher Revenue Per Transaction

And the list goes on. 

And because they multiply together, you only have to double one of them to double your business, plus small gains across all three compound into something much bigger. The more intentional you can be with which lever needs to be pulled and why, the more confident you can be in the work we are doing. 

Customers: The Biggest Impact on Growth

While this sounds simple and straightforward, it is often unseen or misunderstood. 

In my MBA classes and in any speaking engagements, I always take an informal poll to see which of these will have the biggest impact on a business. 

Every single time, the top answer is #1: more new customers.

And while yes, new customers are sexy and exciting. I always joke that focusing on driving greater lifetime value is like the person everyone’s parents wanted them to date in high school. Stable, reliable, and smart, probably destined to be a doctor, engineer, or professor one day. But they are not sexy like acquisition. The problem is that obsessing solely on new customers is a great way to run a vending machine. Not a business.

Here's what I mean. Say in year one, you sell one book to 1,000 readers at $25 each. That's $25,000 in revenue. In year two, you want to double. You have three paths to get there: 

1. More customers — sell 1 book to 2,000 people at $25 = $50,000
2. Higher order value — sell 1 book to 1,000 people at $50 = $50,000
3. More frequent purchases — sell a second book to the same 1,000 people at $25 = $50,000

Same result, three different levers. Options 2 and 3 get missed most often, but they’re also your most profitable, because they don’t come with an acquisition cost attached.

Breaking Them Down

Here’s what each lever means and the ways we help you pull it.

1. New Customers

This one is straightforward: who is your audience, where do they live online, and how do you get discovered by more of them?

In the early days of building a readership, this is where most of your energy should go. You're doing everything yourself, figuring out what resonates, and getting the word out through whatever channels you have: social, in-person, word of mouth.

Ways to move this lever:

• Use the audience and attention you have to drive people somewhere they can take an action.
• Leverage your social channels to send traffic to your products.
• Sell books in person whenever you can.  Talking to your readers in person is a gift; those insights are worth their weight in gold.

Ways Lulu can help:

• The Lulu Bookstore makes selling easy: publish your project, send people there, and they take care of checkout and fulfillment.
• The Direct Buy Button lets you sell wherever you have an audience. It embeds into blogs, is easily linkable, and lets you keep your customer data without even having your own site.
  • Pro tip: Start collecting customer data as soon as possible. You’ll thank yourself when we get to #3.

2. Average Order Value

How much each customer spends per transaction. Most creators leave a lot of money on the table here because they are thinking in terms of single products as opposed to a packaged offer.

The more intentional you are here, the more value you can deliver and capture in each transaction. They have their wallet out; give them something extra to add or curate a package for them.

Ways to move this lever:

• Add a companion workbook or guide to your book.
• Create a box set or series instead of a single volume. Bundling is your friend.
• Offer a signed or premium edition alongside the standard one.
• Create additional resources to sell alongside, such as digital downloads, courses, and the like.
• Incentivize higher-value purchases. Ecommerce brands do this constantly: “Free shipping on orders over $50.” “Free gift on orders over $70.” There is no reason you shouldn’t do the same. Take your current average order value, increase it by 15-20%, and that is your new “something free” milestone. 

Ways Lulu can help:

• Lulu Direct lets you sell directly through your site with full control over the price and how it is presented. And all your customer data is yours!
• Build a bundled product that combines several items into a single package. You can even bundle other store items with your books, perfect for driving gift purchases.
• Create variations of your book: introduce a hardback alongside your paperback, or add a premium edition above that.
• The Lulu API opens the door for full personalization if you want to go deeper. If it is made just for them, they will likely be willing to pay more for it. 

3. Lifetime Value

This is the one I care most about and where my bias will be on full display. I run a retention-focused marketing agency. Email and lifecycle marketing are what we do all day.

But the bias comes from results, not preference. Selling to a reader who already loves your work is fundamentally different from convincing a stranger to take a chance on you. The economics are better. The relationship is warmer. The conversion is easier. When this first clicked for me, it felt like cheating. And after spending time building brands on social, having an owned audience, not one I’m renting from a platform, really felt like cheating. 

The catch: you can only drive lifetime value if you own the customer relationship. If all your sales go through a marketplace, those readers belong to the marketplace. You have no way to reach them again.

This is why I'm adamant about selling direct, not instead of marketplaces, but alongside them. Own the relationship wherever you can.

Platforms are like drug dealers; they will get you hooked, then raise their rates.

Ways to build it:

• Use your customer data to bring past buyers back through owned channels, especially email. Email is the cockroach of marketing channels. It just won't die. And once you've seen what a well-timed retention email does to your revenue, you'll stop thinking of it as a nuisance scurrying around your kitchen and start looking at it fondly like that new air fryer that is two steps away from completely replacing your oven.
• Introduce more than one product over time. With one product, you have a product. With multiple, you have a business.
• Re-market your next release to the people who loved your last one or offer it for pre-order to readers who want a first edition.
• Update and evolve your offerings over time: a new edition of a cookbook, a holiday version, and yearly planners.
• Keep building a relationship beyond the transaction. You may never out-scale the giants in your space, but you can out-human them. In today’s world, that matters more than ever.

Ways Lulu can help:

• Lulu Direct and the Lulu API keep your customer data in your hands, not a marketplace's.
• Publish as many products as you want and build out a real catalog over time. Children's book authors do this beautifully, building series book by book and bringing the same readers back again and again.

It has taken all the self-restraint in me to not go a mile deep on this topic, but if you like it enough, let the Lulu Team know, and I will be happy to dive deeper into it in another post. 

Where Each Lever Fits by Business Stage

Depending on where your business is, you’ll naturally lean on one lever more than the others.

• In the early days, focus on new customers. You’re finding your audience and getting discovered, often doing everything yourself. Lean on the Lulu Bookstore and the Direct Buy Button. And start selling direct as early as you can: you’ll thank yourself later, because you can only drive real lifetime value if you have the customer data to do it.
• As you mature,  think about average order value. With a rhythm for producing and selling in place, get strategic about how much each sale is worth: bundling, special editions, and personalization through the Lulu API.
• Once you’re established, drive lifetime value. The long game is selling to the readers you already have. Use Lulu Direct or the Lulu API to bring readers back for recurring purchases.

You don’t have to pull all three at once. But over time, the most strategic and strongest businesses know how to move all three. Still, getting these to maturity does take time. 

Lean into the stage you’re in, set up direct selling early, and layer in the next lever as you grow.

MKTG Rhythm is a retention-focused marketing agency helping brands build deeper relationships with their customers and turning those relationships into revenue. Specializing in email & retention marketing, lifecycle strategy, customer insights, and marketing technology, MKTG Rhythm works with brands to keep their best customers coming back for more.