Simple Strategies To Get More Clients Quickly For Your Marketing Agency
Owning my marketing agency, the hardest part about the whole thing was finding a consistent way to find my ideal clients, start a conversation with them, and eventually close them.
For months, I slaved away at my computer, reaching out through many different channels.
I tried almost everything possible.
At the start, I tried cold calling - my partner and I hated it.
I tried hiring a virtual assistant - we didn't see great results.
Within a month, we set about 10 meetings, which was higher than we had done before, but the issue was that at least half of those didn't even show up to the call.
The others were not interested, or I couldn't reach them.
This showed me two things: either our messaging or value proposition was not clear, or they just weren't interested, to begin with.
Following this, I tried something else.
I was close to giving up on the agency because it's been around 2-3 months and nothing has worked.
Instead, I decided to finally succumb to the one thing I thought I'd never do - buy a course.
My initial thoughts were that courses are useless and don't really help you in any way.
In fact, most 'successful' people out there, are successful course sellers not successful in whatever field they're selling you on.
It's for this reason that I never believed in courses - you see affiliate marketers making '$10mm /day from home' and all of a sudden, the whole world is swarming to them like zombies, mindlessly.
As I thought, the course was absolutely terrible and the biggest waste of $1000.
I was surprised to see how many people actually gave it a good review and went on to still buy it, believing in the creator himself.
Nonetheless, I carried on.
I put together an outreach strategy which I will be sharing in this article today.
This outreach strategy, when executed correctly, can yield great results for your marketing agency.
It's important, however, to mention that in order to be successful, you only need one or two of these channels to work for you.
Diversifying your time and energy into many different channels is not the smart way to do outreach.
So here are the 'Simple Strategies To Get More Clients Quickly For Your Marketing Agency.'
Cold email
Email has been a controversial topic for a while now.
Many people think that email is dead, yet there are hundreds, even thousands of businesses making a killing through email.
In my 'best side hustles to make an extra $1000/month +,' I said how learning to copywrite is one of the best skills ever.
The reason email is so effective is because everyone has an email address.
On top of this, on average, a person spends 5.6 hours per day on emails - split between work and personal emails.
In an 8-hour workday, this is almost 3/4 of the whole workday spent on emails alone!
Email providers have been getting a lot better at filtering out spam and protecting their users.
This is why we're not going to be sending spam, we're going to be sending genuinely helpful stuff to our lists.
The best way to execute a cold email campaign is to first build a list of people you're looking to reach.
Have a number in mind that you want to hit per day.
If you're able to send 50+ emails per day, this is 600 new prospects every month.
Let's say that you get a 10% reply rate. This is 60 people replying to your emails per month.
We can always do better than 10% too.
From here, you have a 5% meeting booked rate, meaning that out of those 60 replies, 3 people are getting on a call with you.
If you're able to close only 1 of these 3 calls, you're adding 1 new client per month to your client base.
So how do you find 50 new leads to reach out to?
You first need to know your niche - in most cases, your niche can be found on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Build a list of people you think are great prospects on LinkedIn. You'll want to do around 100 a day, instead of 50.
From here, you can use something like Hawk Prospecting to enrich all your leads.
Hawk Prospecting is a B2B lead generation and prospecting tool - It's got the largest B2B database out there with over 2.5 Billion+ unique individuals.
Once you have a lead on LinkedIn, simply copy and paste their URL (or work email) into Hawk Prospecting and it'll return a ton of information such as:
- names
- emails (personal and work)
- numbers
- Social accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
- Personal info
- Business info (+ social media)
and more.
From the 100 leads you have, you should have around 50 or more high-quality, data-rich leads you can reach out to.
You'll want to have a spreadsheet with 'names,' 'emails,' 'location,' 'personal line,' and any other field you may need for your emails.
All of this information can be picked out using Hawk Prospecting.
To make a cold email effective, you'll need to keep it short, personal, and relevant to your niche.
Finally, it's time to craft an email sequence.
This is what it should look like:
- First email is personal, calls out a problem they're facing, you can solve it (+ result), CTA
- Second email is a simple bump for the first one
- Third email add some sort of benefit, draw on emotions, CTA
- Fourth email can be anything you want. You can try something like 'seems like [transformation] is not a priority of yours right now. Let me know if that changes...'
This is a simple structure for an email outreach sequence.
You can make it even more personal by adding in videos in there, but you'd have to find a way to record one video that fits everyone on your list.
Finally, send out the campaign, and let the results play out. You can use email automation tools for this.
You'll have to keep track of things like open rate, reply rate, bounce rate, etc, and optimise for them.
To stop emails from bouncing, Hawk also has a built-in email validator that you can use to validate work emails.
When you're reaching out to 50 leads per day, it'll instantly become difficult to keep track of them.
This is why Hawk Prospecting also has a built-in CRM to easily and seamlessly track and move your leads through the sales process.
Cold messaging
Like cold emails, cold messaging is not much different.
When I put together my outreach strategy, I made sure that I was reaching out to prospects in as many ways as I could.
Although this wasn't good for me, it's good for you because I can now tell you which platforms worked best.
Firstly, the three messaging platforms I used were Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Instagram was the platform that I got the most replies.
However, although I was sending a completely different message to every person on Instagram, I was still getting temporary bans every few days.
On top of this, Instagram is more of a social network, not a business network.
Therefore, people who replied were being social, not engaging in business activity.
So once I started to qualify them, I stopped getting responses.
I'd recommend giving Instagram a shot, but there's a high chance it won't work out.
Facebook, in my experience, was a difficult one to use.
However, for many people, Facebook is a goldmine.
With Facebook (and LinkedIn), you need good content on your page.
When people see you, they check you out, and your profile should talk volume about you and what you do.
I was bad at content, so I just reached out to people aimlessly.
However, the best thing to do on Facebook is to join a ton of groups related to your niche, then posting helpful content that addresses their problems and desires.
The things I saw working best were asking questions like 'who wants a template for getting [transformation]?'
You can even post videos in there talking about and walking through results you've got.
Posting video testimonials is the best thing you can do, however.
People will comment or message you and that's when you engage in a conversation.
Secondly, Facebook groups will have tons of semi-qualified leads. You can reach out to them through the 'members' area.
LinkedIn has an amazing search feature.
You're able to narrow down your search using filters such as job title, location, seniority, industry, and more.
This way, you're able to reach people who are most qualified for your services.
The more qualified a lead is, the better the chance of closing them is.
This is where I partly went wrong - I just reached out to any and everyone in my niche.
The reason my software, Hawk Prospecting, is so useful, is because it can better help you decide if a lead is qualified or not.
It's the best way to turn real data into real profit.
Your messaging, again, must be short, personal, and relevant.
You can just adapt your email scripts to your messaging scripts and send them out.
Hawk Prospecting should be used here again to get as much information on prospects as possible to make your outreach as powerful as possible.
Upwork
Freelance sites are great for finding clients because all the people on there are pre-qualifying themselves and telling you that they're looking for your services.
This is amazing because you won't have to send anything cold.
This is a hot lead looking for the best talent.
Upwork is the best platform for this.
Make sure that you have a great-looking profile, clearly detailing what you do, with CTAs.
Have results and an introductory video that talks directly to your audience.
Clients will want to know who they're trusting their business with.
When you send out proposals, make sure they're also similar to what we've spoken about before.
The proposal needs to be quick, relevant, and personal according to what the job role description entails.
I've posted many jobs on Upwork before - the proposals that catch my eye are the ones that are relevant to my problems, and that address my name.
A lot of people will have their name at the bottom of the description - make sure you mention it.
When I post a job, I also do this thing where I include a sentence that says 'use the phrase [X] in your proposal.'
Anyone without the phrase is usually immediately eliminated from the selection - so be careful when submitting your proposals.
Finally, you can set up an RSS feed.
It's essentially a way to get Updates on a recurring basis through email every time a job you're interested in comes out on Upwork.
This allows you to apply for it first and have the best chance of getting it.
Paid ads
Reaching a point where you can utilise paid advertising is where all marketing agency owners want to be.
In fact it's where most business owners want to be - aside from word of mouth, viral growth.
When you're able to generate new business on autopilot, you're essentially able to tell your clients, "listen, the way you found us is how your new customers will find you. Are you in or out?"
When you're posting adverts that your audience will reply to, you're essentially no longer doing outbound marketing.
You're getting inbound business, on autopilot.
This is amazing because the likelihood of closing these inbound leads is a lot higher than the leads you go out and find.
In order to effectively use paid ads, you first need a few clients, along with some great testimonials.
Only then will you be able to get clients for a low CPA (cost per acquisition).
This is because paid advertising for such a high-ticket offer is very expensive.
You may be spending 100s of dollars for every meeting, resulting in a CPA in the high 100s.
To bring this down, you need to be able to improve your cost per meeting set.
To do this, your adverts must speak straight to the emotions of your prospects, and tell them that you're the person who will help them with [transformation].
And that's it!
These are the four best, simple strategies to get more clients quickly for your marketing agency.
If you'd like to give Hawk Prospecting a try, there's a free plan available.
Did you learn or gain anything from this article?
Let me know in the comments below!
Till next time,
Mohamad
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