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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Most agencies have a marketing problem, but I think ahead of that, they have an offer problem. And when you have an offer problem, whether it's you have one big offer, you get a bunch of just messy services that are lined up in some menu. Like it doesn't matter, you need to have a set of offers that is streamlined, that work with each other, they don't compete with each other. And this episode is about building an offer system, and we are going to revisit the multiple types of offers that you should have within your agency to make sure that you can address people where they are in the buying process, rather than just where you want them to be lead gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most it's unpredictable, it's slow and it's usually expensive. Jia flips that. It's the all in one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Jia automates lead gen follow up and content and it's all from the work you're already doing, you can check it out and get some free bonuses at get gia.ai/dynamic agency. All right, let's talk offers. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. All right, we are going to talk. Let's see 1234, different offers. And I'm going to throw two optional ones into in case you're in the the more advanced realm, and you want to try tackling some of those. But I do believe there's a handful of offers that every agency needs, and the first one I call the snap offer. And now this is not just a lead magnet. I know some people just slap a name on things and and call it good, right? Like this is not a lead magnet, because there is a very specific way to develop a staff offer that then separates it. It's not just in the offer itself, but in how we market this offer with a with most lead magnets right now, right there, people don't trust them. They they might sign up for them because they look good, but then they open it up and they're like, it's gonna be a lot of work. It's gonna take all this effort to get through it, and it's gonna live in someone's email inbox for a while, right? And then die, assuming Google servers ever die. And so we don't want that. We don't want that type of offer. Now, a snap offer is some where we want to pick a single symptom that we solve for within this problem, and we're going to make that one symptom very top of mind. So we should find something that they're already thinking about. It's painful, and we want it to be fast, familiar and fixable, so fast we need to be able to quickly solve this the familiar they should have tried solving for this themselves and then fixable. We actually need to be able to solve for this, which is one of the issues that a lot of lead magnets have. Now, there's a bunch of ways that we can actually go about doing this. I would say that probably the biggest piece for this podcast, I got tons of content that I'll try to link up in the show notes. You can go check that out, but we want to, or, even better, just go to snap offer system.com, and you can just get free access to the actual makeup of this. You can learn how to do a snap offer with my snap offer, and you get to see it live. It's a very meta experience for you. Now. You have active and passive solutions anytime you are trying to solve something, you can do it actively, which requires man hours, right? Like physical effort. Or you have something, you can solve it passively, which requires you building, like an asset, an ebook guide, right? Like a video series. You're doing something where you build it once and it'll just keep working. You have leverage with those. Now, obviously, for any agency offer period, we want to create as many passive solutions as possible, because that's where we're the most profitable. However, passive solutions are often seen as less valuable than active solutions, and so we want to actually provide a strategically like a blend of active versus passive solutions. So if we can provide more active solutions for the symptoms that feel most painful and then for the things that are kind of less top of mind for them, we offer a passive solution. That's how we can create an offer that is profitable and is super valuable for the audience. So to create the snap offer. First we pick what is that one symptom that we want to highlight? Usually it should be their most like profound symptom, the one that they're paying attention to the most, because it's going to be the one most likely for them to get an offer to solve for and solve it either actively or passively. I would recommend actively if you are demand. Constrained if you really need new business right now, do it actively. It's going to be seen as more valuable. It's going to increase the chances that they actually access that offer. Now you put it up on your landing page, the thank you page, there is a specific video, and there's a format in if you go to snap off our system.com, grab grab it. The entire workbook has everything you need, but there's a video that will then show them that, hey, even though you're solving this one symptom, there is actually a much bigger problem that you need to address. And until you've addressed this overarching problem, the symptom might actually come back. It could still be a problem. So book some time on the calendar below, and we can actually help you with that. Now this offer that was a lead magnet, right? Essentially, I still don't like using the term lead magnet, but you get it similar offer, but it's still booking calls. It is sending people to schedule because you're making the actual problem that you solve with your core offer much more front of mind for them. So that is a snap offer. That is what I recommend you. You use to drive new business in with a snap off right? You can be marketing this everywhere. Like this can be part of your newsletter. It can be part of your like, anytime you do a post on LinkedIn, you can have this as a, PS, in the content. It doesn't have to be related to the actual post. It can just be, hey, by the way, we offer this. You any if you have a blog, if you have, like, a sub stack, do a little graphical CTA, like, make an image that you can put in pictures that people can click, and it'll send them to the the landing page. Like, you can push tons of people to this offer. Okay. Number two, let's talk your core offer. So I believe your core offer should be all around recurring revenue. When your recurring revenue outpaces recurring expenses, you win. It's a that is simple. Business right? More money coming in means you're doing the right things, and that's simple. Obviously you could screw something up, and everything just explodes or implodes, depending on what you're doing, but for the most part, listen, simple math. You got it, okay, the with your core offer, in order to get recurring income, you need to find a recurring problem. There has to be a reason for you to continue helping these people, and so you're not necessarily going to solve this problem in a one and done. All out, right? Type thing, okay? This could be like content. It could be a CRO for websites, right? It could be ads management, right? These are all things that, like people constantly need help with them. You don't just solve for it. I so we want to, we want to identify what those problems are so that we can start building, building around it. The the more persistent the problem and more painful, obviously, the more you can charge. I would, I would look at the prism model. I have another article I'll link up to find, like, is this a problem that's actually deserving of building a business solution around? So simply, the model for prism is, Is it painful? Recurring, impactful, solvable, marketable. And so when we look at these, are all on a spectrum. So it's not, Is it painful? It's how painful is it? And so it could be very painful. But then when we get to recurring, if it only happens once a year, it's like, maybe it's not not enough to build the business on. Maybe it is. Taxes only happen for most people once a year, and they're very painful. If you screw it up, right? They're super impactful if you do screw it up, because it's going to impact a lot of your life. Could you market this problem? Yes, there are people looking for solutions, and is it solvable? Yes, within reason, because the US tax code can only be like, you're not going to change it, but you can work within certain limits to make things happen. Compare that problem to something that is not very painful, but it happens every single day, right? You could still build a business on that, because it's still, it's always top of mind. It's just this nagging problem for people. So run your problem through that, and that'll give you an idea of whether you can build your core offer on this. Now you're to have that core offer. You need to have a core problem, right? We want solutions. We don't just want to offer services. You want to offer a solution. So you can actually design, create your method, create some IP around how you solve for this, and so
Chris DuBois 9:27
we build that out. Now, there are going to be some people that come to you who are not ready for a long term engagement. Could be a variety of reasons. They need more evidence that you actually have the solution. Maybe they've been burned by agencies before and they're not sure working with an agency is the right choice with within that core offer, part of your process, there is a piece that you can pull out and sell on its own. I call this your bridge offer. The idea of a bridge offer, it is a finite slice of your core offer that that simply sits as a project, right? So if you were offering a. As your core offer. Hey, we're going to redesign your entire website, and then we're going to offer CRO services to make sure that we're continuously optimizing this for conversions. The website could be sold as a project on its own. You could just sell a website to someone the this gives you a chance to show off your expertise and and also highlight why they need this work on the back end, like, take the website example. Most people will build a website, wait a couple years, build another website. Wait a couple years, build another website. But what if you could build a website, and then over time, we were continuously optimizing this website so you never had to do a complete rebuild, like we're looking if you're, if you want to imagine this on like a visual, think of, you know, massive steps going up a staircase, versus a bunch of little steps to get there, right? Those bigger steps take a lot more effort. They're going to cost you a lot more money, versus just continuously doing this. And we're going to start seeing the gains way faster. And so you can show them how this works. But in the process, you're working with them and showing them your systems, letting them like this is where your positioning really comes through. And you can show them how you operate, what you do, what you don't do, what you stand for, what you're willing to accept. And when you can do that, that's where you start to win people over, right? So this, if you do this, right? This naturally kind of sets up that long term engagement. Okay, so let's say you do have someone in they bought your core offer. They've been successful. What happens next? Right? That's what I call your next offer. It's a very creative name, I know. Thank you. The the idea behind the next offer is that once you have solved the problem, so even though a core offer, right, you're looking for something recurring, there is a point where, like, maybe they don't need your help as much anymore, because they're you've built up a system that got them very confident in what they're doing the your next offer is all about, like, solving that next problem, whatever the next challenge for them, it does not mean you just want to do more of what you're doing. Now, sometimes that could work, right? Maybe, if you're running like Ad Management for an account, and they start expanding their account that way, like you can do that, that's fully reasonable, and it makes sense. But oftentimes, if you solve one problem, they're going to have another problem. Have another problem that pops up. And if you can solve that, awesome. If you can't, don't try to find someone else who can and hand them off. Right? You can kind of expect every, every client will churn at some point. Ideally, we want to keep them expand accounts as long as we can. But like, if you can hand that off in a positive way, get some referrals, get some, you know, something positive from that, that still works. So extend, if you can extend the relationship, do it, but we don't want to, like, bloat the scope, right? Oh, that's good. I just came up with that on the spot. I'm going to reuse that one later. Okay, but those so those are the four I want to talk to, kind of optional ones that I think if you're, if you're just looking for a little challenge, you want to try something out. These are some things you can do. The first this is the self liquidating offer. The idea is, if you do have a small paid offer that's doing really well, right? Let's say you have a snap offer that's killing it. You could start charging like a small, we're talking like $47 right? $100 for this snap offer. So I'm going to get access, maybe buff it up a little bit, all of the revenue that comes in for that offer you put back into ad spend, and so the money's coming in, but you're not seeing it, because it's just feeding this engine of now, like, where it's going to pay for itself. This does require some math. You got to be able to figure out your cost to acquire a new customer, like all those things, and then use that to kind of figure out how much you have to charge for this to make it work, but if all of that money goes right back into ad spend, you potentially have endless leads coming in. Eventually you will saturate the market for that offer. But then you just stack things onto the offer to keep making it better, right? Keep create another offer that you're running as your snap offer while this is simultaneously going and then eventually bundle those together, right? And so if you can do this right, your marketing engine just runs on its own. And there's a lot of things you got to get really good at to make this work, which is why it's a more advanced play. But if you can make it work like, you don't have to spend as much time doing outreach and doing like, going to networking events and doing all those things that some agency owners don't like doing. You can just run ads and push people into your account. The last one is a switch offer. So let's assume you have a like, we want some sort of continuity program, right? And that's your, ideally, your core offer. But like, we need some. Thing that gets people paying us monthly, ideally, and so whether you have a community, you have like, some sort of asset that people can still buy into right different things like that. It could even be a portion of your core offer. If you can give some present someone an offer where your your core offer, or like, that piece of your core offer that creates the continuity is a bonus, right? So, man, I should have come up with more examples before just hit and record. Let's assume you like, Okay, I have a dynamic agency community. If I wanted to run a switch offer for the community, I could say, hey, sign up for this offer where we're going to give you these templates, right this this guide, an hour call with me, and as a bonus, we're going to give you six months free in the dynamic agency community. And now the goal is that whatever they're getting for value from these templates. It requires them having that community access so they can get the most out of it, and then when they start using that community, they see how valuable it is, and then they want to continue that engagement. We're not trying to trick people. We're not trying to like hope that they don't notice that we're taking money out of their accounts every month or whatever. Right? We want to be truthful, honest people in this. But it makes it so that the focus of the offer is around the other assets that you're giving them, not that core offer and the con, like the continuity piece of this. All right, starting to stumble over my words. I think you get it. Okay, so those are, those are the offers, right? We got the snap offer, core offer, bridge offer, next offer, and then the two optionals of a self liquidating and a switch offer, the when you start thinking in systems and how these all feed into each other, then it's all about where they're at in the buyer's journey, right? Someone who, who's just showing up, learning about you for the first time, they need the snap offer. They're probably not going right to your core offer. There are some people who maybe they're just hesitant, they're just not ready to make a full time commitment. So they actually need the bridge offer, not the core offer. And when we start looking at the buyer's journey and where people are in the buying process, and rather than saying, Are they ready to buy, we're saying, what are they ready to buy? Like, how much buying intent do they have? Now, you can find a better place to actually get these people in. So there you go, solo cast. If you have other topics that you would love me to dive into, I am always happy to have a go at them. Just yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn, and we'll see you next time you next time
Chris DuBois 17:46
that's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai