This tactic was created for real world events, but it also applies to digital groups.
Remora Tactic
When you’re starting out, you usually don’t have a hefty budget. You may be wondering whether you should get a booth at a trade show, or if you do get one, you’re not sure what to do with it.
You need to see what others are doing.
Just about any event you attend will include a booth for a marketing agency or a marketing-related tech solution, such as CRM or Review Generation Software for Dentists (staying with the dentists example).
Much like a Remora fish clings to a shark, feeding on scraps of the fish it devours, you’ll be the Marketing Remora :-) circling and clinging to that booth, because it is your lead magnet and qualifier.
Plenty of people will visit the booth. Your job is to target those people and try to find a way to strike up a conversion. That can be as simple as saying, “I saw you were at the “CRM” booth. What did you think about their product?”
When you become a shark, someone else will Remora you. You should enjoy the fact that you’ve come full circle.
Magnet Circles
Speakers are a point of influence. Many times, you’ll find them walking in the crowd, engaging in conversation with people circling them.
JOIN THE CIRCLE. Listen, and jump in if appropriate. Do that time and again with as many influencers as you can. You’ll start getting some social proof points just by associating with them, and most people won’t have a clue that you don’t actually know the influencer. Moreover, you might actually hit it off with an influencer, which will really help you, or you might connect with others in the circle.
Let’s bring this tactic into the digital realm
This will also work virtually. Let’s say you’re a user in a group on LinkedIn, Google, or another platform. There will be many discussions in those groups, and you don’t have to be the one that starts them. But when someone does, make sure to comment or reply to them directly along with others who engage with the post. You’ll find many of the engagers are potential clients.
Some of them will be influential. They don’t have to have millions of followers; they can just be active or well thought-of. This is your opportunity to engage with them over something that has nothing to do with your business. It’s like two people meeting at a mutual friend's house, the friend begins talking about how A.I. is affecting businesses, and both of you jump into the conversation and begin talking to each other. This tactic works very well and is a basic tool for social marketing.
This is a lead generation tactic Umbrella has been using in our call center for years to generate many thousands of appointments every month for our members.
This tactic encompasses much of what I mentioned above – leading with value, getting someone’s guard down, getting all the information you need from them, and making a consultative sale based on their needs.
You might find this tactic a bit cumbersome. But it’s actually a shortcut, and once you follow the steps to the letter, you’ll find that you have a winning engine to bring in clients.
Step 1 – Free Value
You contact a business (call or email or direct mail) telling them you’re expanding in their area. Offer to write a free PR article about their business, and promote on Facebook for free, if they are willing to provide a good testimonial in exchange. They agree, and you book a time to interview them.
You can make sure they show up to the interview by:
a) Making sure your booking system (such as Calendly) reminders are both email + SMS and it’s set to send two reminders day before and three reminders day of.
b) Having someone on your team (VA) call the morning of the meeting and an hour before to confirm they’ll be there.
This will reduce your no-shows to almost zero, save you a ton of time and allow you to focus on productive tasks.
Step 2 – The Interview
The interview is in fact a client discovery meeting masquerading as an interview.
We created a script that takes 30-45 minutes to go through. You’ll see it in the Resources & Templates section at the end of the book. The questions are interview questions to write the PR article, but they include marketing questions, highlighting potential marketing issues and allowing you to position yourself as a marketer and give more professional free value.
The script is long on purpose. Your job on this call is to create RAPPORT.
All in all, you’re creating the rapport you seek. They are buying you. But….
**DON’T SELL YET**
At this stage, you don’t sell or talk about your agency or your service, other than perhaps alluding to them when talking about your past experience with your clients (if relevant). You’ll have time for selling later.
Key point: Book a follow-up call. When you end the interview, you acknowledge their great company, how this article is going to be the bomb and set up a second call to:
a) Review the draft together before it’s promoted on Facebook and;
b) Talk about some of the marketing issues that were raised during the interview. Your approach is, “I think you’re leaving money on the table…”
*If you’re not experienced enough to write the article but want to do it yourself, I’ve provided a PR article template in the Resources & Templates section.
Or, an easy and inexpensive solution is to outsource on Fiverr using our template (see in resource section below) for about $30 per article. It’s worth it for those of you who are not quick with the written word.
Step 3 – Second Meeting
You start the call by addressing the draft article. You want to reiterate in the prospect’s mind the free value you're providing. You also want the prospect to be aware of your investment, and to acknowledge it has value.
You review it together, get their pointers (if any) and get their kudos by saying things like, “I think you look like a rock star in this article, what do you think?”
Once the article is approved you say it’s time to promote it on Facebook.
You boost the article on Facebook for $20, which will get them around 700-1,500 views and some engagement. Create a report from that (see template in resource section).
**SALES STAGE**
Until now you were the friendly marketing consultant helping with their article. Now it’s time to put your game face on and turn into the pro marketer that is going to double their business.
1. You recap all the issues you found on the initial call
2. You add more issues after doing an Audit Report of their marketing status [See example in Resources & Templates]
3. You confirm that they acknowledge these issues, and explain the aggregated loss they create
4. You ask what their goal is, where they would like to be
5. And you chart them the marketing strategy to get there
*NOTE: Good audit reports are very impressive when brought into the conversation at the right time. People like to work with pros, and good reports show you are taking every element of their business very seriously.
*NOTE 2: By this point in the tactic, you are working with the client for all intent and purposes on a marketing objective. You are already their agency, now you just need to take the value you provide and price you charge to the next level.
We’ve discussed how you prospect directly. But there is another tactic. Instead of trying to connect directly with end clients, you can get people who influence a large pool of potential clients to promote you.
Let’s continue with the dentist example. You can create a podcast called Monetizing My Clinic and interview dental supply companies. These companies work with many dentists, and they’ll be happy to post the episode you recorded with them on their social network profiles, which will reach your potential clients.
In addition, you’ll earn “social proof points” being associated with leading companies in the industry.
Similarly, if you get a chance to speak at a dental event (online or offline), or host one, you’ll be reaching a lot of your potential clients with a single focused effort.
Seth Greene is an experienced and successful marketer. Moreover, he helps other people set up a podcast and write a best seller to create meaningful branding and traction for them with a focused effort. This podcast guru shared his insights on my podcast.
Seth Greene:
You want to interview the influencers who can send you who you want. The estate planning attorney has high-net-worth clients who would be great for a financial advisor. But if I walk in the door, cold, and say, "Hey, can you refer me all your clients? Here's my business card,” I’m going to get thrown out. I had to come up with a way to build a relationship of trust and confidence to the point where that attorney will say, “Yes, I will. I will promote you to my clients. Thank you for all you’re doing for me.” It's the absolute best way I've ever found to start a relationship in such a way that the person does not perceive you as selling something or wanting anything. Our close rate on turning guests into clients is incredibly high because they're so warm and fuzzy toward us because we're interviewing them first and promoting them first.
If you’re an agency owner, you would start by building a wish list. Who are the top micro influencers in your market? Then reach out to them to be on your show. And not only can you interview your ideal influencers and your referral sources, you can also interview your ideal clients.
And the fact that you can interview pseudo celebrities in your niche, that gives you so much more credibility. Even if you're approaching a “regular prospect”. In your case, you’ve interviewed Neil Patel, you've had, Matt Bacek, you've had some of the household name gurus in the marketing space on your show. Even if you didn't already have all the street cred you have and the history in Umbrella and all that, if you were going to an agency owner, you could say, "Look at who I'm associated with," and hold up that list. Nobody else can do that. It blows any other firm out of the water.
There are many prospecting tactics. The same way we have different campaigns we can offer our clients, marketing our own business is no different.
Scaling almost always involves forms of paid media. But for some reason, I’ve seen that many agencies don’t use advertising to attract clients. The reasoning is usually one of the following:
1. As marketers, they know they need to build their authority, get the social proof to convert. But they know their brand is not very impressive and predict that as such conversions would be low, which means investing in paid media won’t work.
2. They think they are far from fully utilizing their direct and referral marketing approaches (which are free).
3. They don’t take the time to invest in themselves (classic case of “the cobbler’s sons go barefoot”).
4. They don’t have a salesperson to support working with a quantity of leads.
The only legitimate reason would be the last one. It’s also a very important lesson for when you do campaigns for clients, and something many people ignore.
After you, as a marketer, generate and qualify a lead, and even craft excellent follow-up emails and text messages to get more results from a funnel, you are still only halfway into the funnel.
Now, the funnel needs a sales rep to talk with all these leads, and if you really want success, you also need a sales development representative (SDR) that calls all the leads, gets them to book, rebooks those who don’t show, and reminds everyone to come to the meeting.
This part also requires developing a sales script on how to stage commitments from clients, how to down-sell, etc.
Without the sales part working well, the entire funnel breaks, and it will not work for any clients or for you once you decide to scale.
Hence, to scale you need the following:
Advertising – Both Google and Facebook work well for marketing leads. Google has higher intent; Facebook will most likely cost less if you manage to come up with a very enticing offer.
As of 2022, starting with $50 a day on any of them would be enough to have a pretty optimized funnel within six weeks.
Lead Gen and Qualification – An ad leading to a form, or with Facebook, Lead Ads that have forms in them, going to a second qualifying form.
To create landing pages, you’ll need a lander system like Unbounce, ClickFunnels, or even a website builder like Wix plus some sort of form solution like Typeform which you will embed in the landers, which will end with a booking app like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling (so leads can book appointments on your calendar).
CRM automation – all the leads (before and after qualification) go into a CRM via Zapier connection. There are three reasons for this:
1. You are able to automate email and text messages follow-ups based on their step in the funnel. (e.g., if they didn’t book an appointment, send messages to entice them to book. If they did book, messages that entice them to show up.)
2. So an SDR can call all the leads.
3. So your Sales Reps will have a way to sell.
*REMINDER: These are the human components needed to scale:
Take into consideration a $20K investment and 2-3 months, including HR and ad budget, plus consulting to get to breakeven and scale beyond to profits.
If you can’t get all that in place, you’re not in scaling mode yet!
You’ve got the client on a call, now you need to sell, right? WRONG. Now you need to ask questions!
We touched on some of these earlier, but they’re worth repeating. Here are the questions you always need to ask:
The answers translate to their ROI (Return on Investment). If they spend $500 to make $1,800 in profits, they 3X on their marketing budget - Fantastic! So why do they need help from you?
Many times, once confronted with this calculation, businesses will realize the data they provided is not accurate. The cost per lead might be higher, the closing rate lower. Sometimes they count just the leads they actually connect with, but not the total number of leads. There are numerous other reasons for the inaccuracy.
It could also be that they have reached attrition with this winning channel (e.g., Organic Search) and they need to find other ways to grow.
And of course, in many cases the above calculation will show they simply have a negative ROI.
It could be that the marketing is solid, but their sales guy is bad. Maybe the owner is responsible for sales but is not getting back to half the leads because he is in the field providing service.
Sometimes the answer to positive ROI is business analysis and advice, not even marketing campaign.
Never go straight into SELLING. Ask smart, logical questions, and get a solid picture you can work with.
It could be that you’ll tell the client you’re not sure anything is lacking in their marketing tactics, but their brand doesn’t have a strong enough proposition to help them break the noise in the market. It could be their sales process, or follow-up process, in which case you’ll need to provide them with business consulting (more on packages and pricing below).
It is important to help clients develop a unique-selling-proposition or brand position, as I recommend you do for yourself.
This is a creative process and as such not easy for everyone. Some people take the highest joy in it, for others dealing with the more tactically aspect of planning and executing campaigns is easier, so it’s important that you know you can be successful as a marketing consultant without being super creative. But if you are, it can only help.
A case in point is an interview I did with Matthew Pollard. Matthew is a growth expert, and has several multi-million dollar companies under this belt (don’t let that deter you, let it inspire you).
In this interview Matthew exemplifies how sometime just being creative with a business USP can completely explode their business.
Matthew Pollard
I worked with a language tutor years ago. She taught kids and adults Mandarin, and she charged $50 to $80 an hour for private consultation, and she did it successfully. The problem was there were people who were willing to charge $30 to $40 an hour to start their own businesses, and there were people in China offering to do it for $12 an hour on Craigslist, and there was free technology out of Silicon Valley, where you could match up with someone and say, "I'll teach you English, you teach me Mandarin. We just won't charge anyone anything."
So, now she's competing in a hugely commoditized industry, with the lowest commodity being free. She asked me if I could teach her some sales techniques to close more deals. I said, “Sure, but if people are seeing you as a commodity up front, you've already lost. What we need to do is learn how to sidestep the battle altogether.”
I went through the hundreds of clients she'd worked with over the years, and I noticed there were two that she helped with more than just language. These were executives being relocated to China.
She also helped them with the difference in rapport in China versus the Western world. In the Western world, if I'm trying to sell you something, at the end of our meeting you’ll probably say “Let me think about it.” Then if I reach out to you a week later and you still say that, I know my chances of getting that sale are almost gone. Well in China, they're going to want to talk to you maybe five or six times before they even discuss business. They may want to see you drunk over karaoke once or twice. It's the kind of people they are. But they're talking about 25, 50, 100-year deals, not transactional relationships like here. She helped them understand that.
She also helped them understand the difference between eCommerce in China and the Western world, and the importance of respect, where learning the language isn't enough. You have to reduce your accent, how to handle a business card. I said, “Wendy, stop. You're doing so much more for these people than just language.” She said she was just trying to help. I said, “Is it fair to assume as a result of the assistance you're giving these people, they're going to be more successful when they get to China?" She said, “Yes, that's the point."
I said, "Great, let's call you the China Success Coach then. Forget about Mandarin education for a second. Let's focus on creating what we call the China Success Intensive." Which worked out to be a five-week program for the executive, the spouse and any children being relocated to China. She loved the idea of this, but wanted to know who she would sell it to. I asked her who she thought she should sell it to, and she said, “Well obviously executives." Basically everybody. Then she said, "Well obviously the companies would pay." In other words, every company that can afford it. Still not very niche. It’s like when people say, “I've niched down. I'm only working with small business." I told her, “That’s still broad. It's not going to help you. And while they probably have millions of dollars riding on the executive being successful, I still don't feel it's your right fit." She's frustrated now, and asks me, "Well, who then?" I said, "Well, I personally think your ideal client is the immigration attorney." She looked at me like I'm speaking a different language myself.
I said, "Think about it. These people make $5,000 to $7,000 for doing all the paperwork for the visa. I would go to networking events where immigration attorneys hang out. Offer them $3,000 for a simple introduction. They’ll love the idea. Double their profit for a simple introduction? When they ask you what they have to say, tell them they just have to say, 'Congratulations, you've now got your visa. I just want to double check. You're ready to go to China?'" The executive would always say something like, "I think we're good. We have our place, we're learning the language, our kids are getting pretty good at it too. We've got our visa. Thank you. I think we're set." The lawyers would just respond with, "There's a lot more to it than that. I think you need to speak to the China Success Coach."
So, Wendy now networks with people that are ecstatic to make more money, and then when she gets on the phone with the executive that's being relocated, or their organization, she has the easiest sell in the world. She charges $30,000 for this five-week program. Minus the $3,000 referral, she makes $27,000 for the easiest sale in the world. That's rapid growth. And that's the power of what I call having a differentiated and unified message. You've got to get beyond your functional skill. You've got to say, "What are the things I do outside the scope of my functional skill? Either completely unique or unique because of my own experiences, my own background, my own past customers." Everyone has a unique formula that perfectly qualifies them to help a demographic of people.
And then how do I message that? What's the higher-level benefit? Wendy became the China Success Coach. For me, I'm a branding expert, I'm a marketing specialist, I'm a social media strategist. In truth, I'm too many things and nobody cares. But when I say, "I'm the rapid growth guy, and I work exclusively with introverted service providers to obtain rapid growth," the simplicity of that message breaks through that crowded market. It breaks beyond the noise, and creates a rapid growth business. Attach that to even the basic sales process, you get success.
More questions and internal checks:
Ultimately, all these questions are associated with Traffic and Conversions solutions.
How are they getting in front of potential clients, and in what ways are they converting them to sales?
*FUNNEL REMINDER: Simplifying
Remind yourself that no matter what type of business they have or what questions you ask them, their marketing challenges consist of either Traffic or Conversion or both.
And their marketing, like that of any business on the planet, is a funnel that is built of several conversion units. Let’s review an example again for a business that depends on generating sales via a phone or in-person conversation:
*FULFILLMENT REMINDER:
Another important reminder is that fulfillment for the above can be done for you, from traffic-related campaigns to landing page setups and even automation.
It is up to you, as the Trusted Advisor, to understand what in the T&C funnel is not working. This will become second nature after doing several client discoveries calls.
Especially if you’re focusing on ONE NICHE, where the clients’ offer, funnels and goals are pretty much the same.
Any plan you build will use a myriad of traffic and conversion units. As a reminder and a shortcut, I’m listing a few archetypes of marketing plans:
Mainly Home services/Contractors and Professional Services - e.g., HVAC, Garage Door Companies, Roofers, Loan services, Attorneys, Accounting, Dentists, Physicians, etc.
This includes businesses that do direct online selling. It might be an e-tailer such as a clothing store, but may also include online courses, software (SaaS mainly), online food orders, ticket and events sales, etc.
If a business wants help growing on Amazon, or any of the main online marketplaces, they will need a specialist. However, if they are a product owner and want to build or expand an independent online store that they want to brand and drive traffic to, you can definitely help. As you’ll see, this includes the three listed above, plus one addition.
This includes any business that relies on foot traffic, including offline retailers and restaurants.
Here we need to differentiate between businesses that are more high-end and focus on their brand, and businesses that have commoditized offers and therefore need to focus on limited time promotions.
Being a real-world establishment means you are LOCAL, which means these types of business will usually cater to their hyper-local surroundings.
If they are high-end, like a destination restaurant, patrons will be willing to drive longer and further than if the business is a pizza place (commoditized).
*PRO TIP: It is advised, as much as possible, to work with more high-end businesses. They have more money, they value branding, and it’s more interesting to work with them.
Perry Marshall has a great book called 80/20 Sales and Marketing. It’s a take-off on the pareto rule that governs that a small percentage of your clients or products will represent most of your revenue.
In his book Perry is taking the 80/20 into everything and anything in sales, marketing and beyond, but I want to mention this approach specifically when choosing clients or prospecting for clients. Knowing your ideal person is knowing your 80/20. Knowing who is your ideal client, will produce very high returns, and hence is worth even a long prospecting cycle.
Perry Marshall:
I don't know anything in business that is more useful than 80/20, and I'm not kidding. I do not know anything in business that is more useful, universally applicable, adaptable to any situation, any context than 80/20. It is the most fundamental law of cause and effect.
80/20 isn't just a little rule of thumb that you write on a post-it note, like 80% of the business is going to come from 20% of the customers. It's not something that you notice in your rearview mirror. It's something that you can predict in advance is going to be true of almost everything you ever do, because it's not this handy dandy formula. It's a law of nature, it's a law of physics, it's a law of cause and effect. The reason is because the world is full of self-reinforcing things like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Think of it like this. You never want to eat at a restaurant with an empty parking lot. You always want to eat at a restaurant with a full parking lot. Why? Because the full parking lot indicates this must be a good place to eat. People know that, and a crowd attracts a crowd. A stream turns into a creek, which turns into a river because it's self-reinforcing. If the water is flowing down the side of the mountain and it finds this one place to go, it's going to dig deeper wherever it goes. And then all the water is going to go there.
This is how everything in business and in life works. Human beings are basically trained. In school, you want to be a straight-A student because straight A’s mean you're equally good at everything. So, you do all your homework and you finish everything on time. Well, in business, if you try to do all your homework, you'll never finish anything. Everything is undone. Everything is incomplete. Everything has dangling participles. In a business, you only have to get an A-plus in one class, and you can flunk all the other ones. But if you pick the right class to get that A, you go supernova.
So, in business you have to figure out what to hyper-focus on and what to ignore. Perfectionism or a straight-A mentality will usually just screw with your head and make you really unproductive. Every Google campaign, every Facebook campaign, every YouTube campaign, every SEO, almost everything inside those things is 80/20 or 90/10 or 95/5. 5% of the keywords get 95% of the traffic. 10% of the ads get 90% of the traffic. 10% of the advertisers get 90% of the visitors. And 10% of the competitors in an industry make 90% of the profit. It is inevitably true, so the easiest way to explain why almost anything works or doesn't work is from an 80/20 perspective.
They also need a strong online presence. Suggest that at least some of their leading products be sold online, or at least purchased with a curbside pickup. They also need high-ranking reviews because anyone going to their establishment will check their reviews beforehand.
Local promotions – Discounts on special products, for holidays, for new product releases (Buy one get one, 50% off, bring a friend, join a raffle, etc.).
*This system is called HiLo and has been perfected by supermarkets such as Publix, where usually the price is “high” but there is always a set of products that are “low-priced” to attract customers. Unlike EDLP (Every Day Low Prices), perfected by Walmart.
Strong online presence (food is sold in a visual way), plus having a direct takeout solution and a direct book-a-table solution, as well as working with takeout sites.
High ranking reviews with TONS of dish images and atmosphere images.
Restaurants work very well with Micro Influencers that can enjoy a free dinner for their work (making a pic with a shoutout from the restaurant).
Local listing is a must, include them on Google My Business, Yelp and Facebook as well as other leading directories.
If it’s a touristy location, make sure they crush reviews on TripAdvisor.
If they cater mainly to nearby workers during lunch and early dinner, make sure they have strong business-lunch menu, as well aggressively priced happy hour.
Assuming the food is solid, the rest is atmosphere, so try to learn the restaurant culture (Young and hip? More conservative? Who are the patrons?) and manifest that on their website, content and even on location promotions.
Whatever prospecting and sales tactic you’ll be using will end up with a proposal. The right proposal for most small businesses will be $3,000-$5,000 per month for a three-month pilot campaign.
Mind you, I’m not referring to the plan itself, nor the solutions you’ll be using that we already reviewed, but rather the scope of the proposal, amount and time, which will make the transaction an easier decision for the client.
A. The price will not be perceived as high.
B. It’s time-limited, meaning the client will feel more comfortable knowing the commitment is limited.
C. Milestones need to be reached during that time. For example, a website revamped, Facebook and LinkedIn pages set up, reviews ranking increased, or an SEO campaign started.
Once the three months are up and the client is happy, you’ll be able to add more services and increase budget. But whatever your plan is, try to keep the initial proposal around the above boundaries.
There are two types of sales positions you can lead with:
With both options you’ll need a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This will be something that breaks the noise and creates a differentiation between you and your competition.
Changing Your Offer to Make It Special
Many agencies sell SEO (search engine optimization) services. As we’ve discussed, those are services that will help a site rank on Google.
Everyone says their SEO is the best. “Look at what we’ve done, look at the experience we have.”.
In many ways, SEO is indeed a commodity when it comes to small-budget businesses, because it’s very hard to develop an immersive content experience on a tight budget.
So how do you make it special?
Most SEO services require a monthly retainer with at least a six-month commitment.
You can decide to do “Pay for Performance” SEO and tell your prospective client, “We’ll get you on the first page of Google or you don’t pay a dime!”
Don’t say you’re the best SEO company, take the niche angle. For example, “We’re the leading HVAC SEO company.” You could be even more focused: “We’re the best SEO Agency for small HVAC companies in Texas.”
Or even better – “We specialize in getting small HVAC companies in Texas on the top position in Google, beating all competition! We can only work with one HVAC company in a service area. Are you looking for more customers? Hire us before your competition does.”
Talking about a story that happened, but maybe not to you.
Mark Hunter is an expert on that, and he shared this story on my podcast:
Mark Hunter:
Building your story isn’t easy. Especially if you’re a startup, or a small business that doesn’t really have any track record, what’s the story? Today I was having a conversation with a small company and I shared with them two stories. Not from my own situation, but from other situations I’ve seen, other retailers and an airline, and it resonated with the person. They said, “Wow, that’s interesting,” and I said, “Well, this is what we do.”
All you’re trying to do with storytelling is engage the other person by hooking them with something they can connect to emotionally. If you can do that, then you can begin to get them seeing, "Ah, this is what's possible." Now, if I have a story about me, that's great. But if you’re selling to small businesses, do they really care about you? No, they care about them, so you have to be careful of how you frame the story that it doesn't become egotistical, it doesn’t become, "I am Superman, I am super human, I can do all things."
Itamar Shafir:
Do you have some tips about how to structure that story? Let’s say for example I’m a small agency and I’m going after divorce attorneys. How can I tell that story so it’s engaging to that attorney?
Mark Hunter:
Hopefully, you're not sharing your own personal story how you had to hire a divorce attorney. But you can share examples of others. You can talk about the different situations depending on which spouse hires the attorney. “We’ve seen time and time again that when the female hires the attorney, they have a different level of expectation, especially if there are kids involved. I would imagine, you've had situations as a family divorce attorney involving kids, and that can change very much depending on the ages. I'm curious to know, what are some of the differences that you've seen?”
You can see what I’m doing. I’m crafting a story, and I'm now bringing you into it, by asking you for your opinion.
Now you have to do your homework before going in. But the internet allows us to learn anything and everything. For example, I worked with a small company that taught yoga to corporate employees. I’m not into yoga. But I did some research online, and I talked to some friends who are into yoga, and I was able to set up the story. That’s what you do, set up the story and begin to paint. You're holding up a canvas and you have a palette of colors, and you're giving them the brush. You’re guiding them to paint the picture. And as they begin to paint, both of you begin to see it. Both of you begin to make changes, and tweak it. Then, when the picture's done, that's the outcome that that potential client is looking for. Boom! Now, I can help them solve their issue.
You’ve seen this many times. It works in every industry. Instead of lowering the price, you add more services/solutions to the offer.
For example, to increase your client’s sales, you’ll include Facebook advertising and Website optimization and Local Listing and 24/7 AI Sales Bot and monthly reports, along with crafting a campaign, doing the creative (white glove service), and building the automation – all for just $5,000 a month for a three-month pilot. BUT if you close by Friday, it’s just $3,997 a month. You save $3K over three months just for closing now!
Many of your consultations and strategy plans, especially with very small clients, will get minimized into a series of one-solution purchases.
As an example, you might recommend someone revamp their website to include a better call for action, and to make that pay off for them, you would want to take their reviews ranking up, add an AI Chatbot that would generate leads to the site, make the site accessible to the disabled, run a Google PPC campaign and do content marketing and SEO.
While this is a probably the right strategy, the client might have budget concerns or might want to walk with you before you run together. At that point the plan might be minimized or turned into a series of steps.
First you redo the website. After you do a good job for them, they’ll agree to do the review generation. After that works, you do the advertising, etc. This translates to a timeline of review points by the client and opportunities for you to upsell. Which is what I call the Sales Matrix and the Bliss Points.
When starting a relationship, in the initial months of delivering the service, you will have very limited credit with the client, and need to reach their BLISS POINT.
BLISS POINT = Meeting their expectations.
The easiest way to do that is starting with solutions that I call “Always Happy” solutions (or almost always).
An Example of an Always Happy Solution is a Website
Creating a website is 100% under your control. You can revise the site until the client is happy with the design and content. This means that you can always make the client happy.
Example of a Not Always Happy Solution
In contrast, a Facebook advertising campaign is a result-oriented solution, meaning the client is expecting to increase sales as a result of the campaign.
Alignment of expectations before a campaign is critical, but still, due to elements beyond your control, such as the client offering and sales team, the result may not make the client HAPPY.
|
Always Happy |
Almost Always |
Not Always Happy |
|
Not Result Oriented |
Somewhat Result Oriented |
Result Oriented |
|
Websites/Landers/Ecom store |
Review Generation |
All forms of advertising - Facebook /Google / Display ads, etc. |
|
GMB / LinkedIn / Facebook setups |
Email blasts |
Regular SEO |
|
Local Listings |
Pay Per Result SEO |
Podcasts creation |
|
All graphics - mailers, brochures, logos, etc. |
Automation services |
SDR services |
|
PR – news item or guest blog on major websites |
Informative webinars |
Sales Webinars |
|
AI / Automated Chatbots |
|
Influencer marketing |
|
Analysis and consulting |
|
|
That may be completely NOT YOUR FAULT, but it doesn’t matter. They’re not happy.
In fact, only a third of advertising campaigns are considered successful by clients.
Taking that into consideration, when starting a relationship, which services would you choose to start with? A website or a Facebook campaign? The answer is clear.
You don’t always have a choice, but if you do, be aware of it and utilize it. Even if your marketing plan includes both types of solutions, try to start with the HAPPY ones. Get some credit from the client, before potentially not meeting expectations.
*REMINDER: at the end of the day you would want your marketing to be an encompassing 360-degree plan that helps the client on Branding (the trust side), Traffic and Conversions to leads, and may even go beyond helping with events, training and more.
This means that every client you start with (if you pick your clients well), can mature into $20K revenue per year on the low end, $50K-$100K on the mid-range and go even higher with bigger clients.
This means building a long-lasting relationship is not a cliché, but a true representation of how you should view your clients for your benefit and theirs.