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Chris celebrates episode 100 with 10 lead generation tips for agency owners.
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
Hey everyone, welcome back to agency. Forward. I am Chris Dubois, and this is episode 100 so I'm not gonna spend a ton of time talking about the milestone, but I will just say this, when I started the show, I had a simple like thesis, I guess that most agency owners are way better at doing the work than they are at getting the work. And so 100 episodes later, and I'll look to that again, and it kind of hasn't changed. What has changed is how specific that I can be about why. Because I've now coached dozens of agency owners over the last few years, and the ones who have broke through, right? The ones who went from referral dependent to actually generating leads on purpose. They didn't do it by just doing more stuff, right? They did it by getting really specific and doing some certain things differently. More activity is not going to fix a bad strategy, but better decisions will. So today I am giving you 10 lead gen tips that come directly from working with agency owners who have figured it out, who we've worked together. We have mapped this out. I have then replicated those, some of those same things, with other clients, to to get more validation that these things work. They're not just like hacks, right? These are actually, they're not like the trendy tactic that you're using on LinkedIn. It's like these are actual levers that, if you apply them, and you actually put in the focus, and you can figure out those specific variables for you in order to get this right. Like this is what's going to work across different services, different price points, right? You different audiences, as if you can actively put in the effort to these things there, they will have a dramatic impact on your business. So let's hear from our sponsor, then Cue the music. Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most it's unpredictable, it's slow and it's usually expensive. GF 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, and now episode 110 lead gen tips for agency owners. 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, diving into tip one nail, your positioning and niche. All right, combining those and yes, the positioning guy is going to talk positioning as important one. But I'm starting here because nothing else on this list will work. If your positioning is unclear, when your positioning is fuzzy, right? Marketing becomes this like massive exercise in frustration. You you start writing content that applies to anyone you're you're showing up in conversations where nobody will remember what you actually do. You're you're spending money on ads that attract the wrong people. And then you look at the results and you're like, Oh, I guess marketing doesn't work for agencies, but marketing works fine. It's your positioning, didn't you are testing the wrong positioning. Now on the niche side, right niche selection gives you this filter, and filters can work in both directions. So a good niche is going to tell the right people like this is for you, but it also tells the wrong people this isn't for you. Right? We want that because both of those are doing like something super valuable for our business. Because when someone sees our content and thinks that's not for me, that's still a win, right? That person was never going to buy and so you just saved yourself a discovery call that's probably going to go nowhere. Most people, though, will skip the brand association piece of niching and positioning, right? If you can tie yourself to the people and the companies that your audience already knows and trusts, right, like if you serve e commerce brands, right, and you're seeing alongside those specific tools, right, like Shopify and other experts within this space. And of course, I'm gonna draw blanks as soon as I start trying to pull out this example. But like the communities right those thought leaders, you get to borrow their credibility, and that borrowed credibility is going to work faster than anything you could build from scratch with, like just content alone, you want to be seen in the right circles alongside the right people, because these. Create the signals right, that you that you like belong in this room, and you don't even need to say a word, just seeing you in this room with these people gives you that credibility that is part of positioning. Right positioning lives in the mind of the buyer. And so when you can create those associations so that you put yourself in a box, it is only going to help you, and so you need to be thinking about this right now. Also, positioning isn't just a like a one time decision that you make and move on. I see that happening way too much. It needs to get sharper over time, right? Every conversation, every client, like, everything that you are doing right? These that that pulls stuff in, these are all market signals, and so you need to pay attention to them, because your positioning should get more specific the longer you're in business. It should never get more generic. And I do see that happening with a lot of agencies that I'm following. Okay, so that's tip one, Tip Two is finding the right room. Now, I recently did a podcast episode on this because it I was finally able to, like put into words what this was because of the clients who were just crushing it the most they had figured this part out. It was the market access piece. It's underrated, right? Most agency owners are like, think about lead gen in terms of channels, like, should I be on LinkedIn? Should I try YouTube? What about cold email? But it's a wrong question, right? Though, the what you should be asking is, where does your audience actually congregate? Right? Where are they actually showing up? So I want you to think through like, what is the specific room? A Facebook group, right with 5000 members who are all your ideal client? That would be great. A Slack community where your buyers hang out. It could be a niche conference, right, with like, 200 people that they're the right people, and they show up every year. It could even be right a specific influencers audience that just happens to overlap with yours right adjacent service provider, because when you can find that serve that other person right, say it's an influencer they're posting on LinkedIn, they have people in their comments already. When you jump in and start commenting on those comments, you become known to these people, and very few people are actually doing that, engaging people in the comments. But we, we can't. There's nothing stopping you from just jumping in there, providing some advice. Obviously, don't go in selling everything, because that influencer is probably going to block you. But if you're just jumping in, being helpful, like there's no reason for someone to not want that to happen. It's giving them more engagement in their own posts. And if you're an adjacent service provider, then you're not in competition. They don't have anything to worry about. And you can actually help them the we want to find these rooms too, because finding that room is going to eliminate excuses, right? When you are when you're posting on LinkedIn, and nothing happens like, people will just generally blame the algorithm, and honestly, it's probably the algorithm as well. We can all blame the algorithm, but you can say like, Oh, my reach is down, right? What? But the challenge with that is, like, if you say half your audience or half your connections on LinkedIn are not your ICP, and they're the ones who are served your content first, if they don't engage with it, LinkedIn says, Oh, this post sucks. I'm not going to send it to other people. That's a problem, because you don't even know that your audience, whether your audience is seeing this or not. But when you can find the exact room and you know the people in that room are your ICP, then it's much easier to say, Okay, this post actually does suck. If people don't engage, right? You're not it's not a question of whether the right people are seeing it now, it's just, is this resonating with the people I want to see? All right? What else do I need to tell you about finding the room we want that feedback, right?
Chris DuBois 9:04
Really, the next tip is moving fast, but staying on this one for a second that we when you know the room that you're marketing to and you're in there, it means you can learn way faster, because you're actually seeing how people are engaging with your content. And so the time between like, I think this will work, and I know this works, drops from months to weeks. And so if you can find the room first, you'll be much more successful. Then worry about like the channel and all the optimization, what tactics you need for this channel or that channel, like find the room where they're hanging out. So Okay, moving into Tip three, move fast. Velocity is a competitive advantage. It is one of the last competitive advantages people talk about. I think culture is the ultimate because it's very hard to copy a company's culture, but speed is still there as like one of those, those top advantages, if you can move. Faster than everybody else. I mean, that's huge. The with technology coming out, though, right? This is going to get become less and less so the speed, I think, will come down to who is making the fastest decisions in order to apply things. Picture like two agencies, right? One takes two weeks to put out a piece of content. They are like, running an outreach campaign, right? The other one can do it in a day, like they just try it out. That's potentially, like, 14 more times like that. They can be getting that out in the same amount of time as the the other agency, right? If I can, if it takes you, you know, two weeks to do that blog post, but I'm doing a blog post a day for 14 days. And yeah, these might not be the best blog post, but I'm going to learn a lot of stuff from doing this, right? I've got 14 data points. I should know what works and what doesn't. And obviously there's someone's going to criticize that, that idea, but it's a general concept, right? If you can move faster, you can test things faster. Speed generates faster like feedback loops, and that also helps you gain faster confidence, right? And that confidence matters a lot in sales, which actually we'll come back to that later, but like I see this trap constantly, agency owners will convince themselves that they have this structural problem, like, I just need better SOPs or a system. I need to to automate this first, and so they spend like three weeks building some content system before they have published a single post. They'll design like the workflow within their CRM, but they haven't done like, sent out a single outreach email that is just procrastination, right? And some, some people are perfectionists, and they want this all to be great. So like, I can say this with love, because I've done it too, but you almost never have a structural problem. You have a speed problem. You're overthinking, you're you're over planning, but then you're likely under executing. Okay, done. Beats, perfect every time get it out, see what happens, iterate the learning can only happen when you start to ship, and so you need to get to that. All right. Tip four on my list is be generous. Show up to help, not to sell. I know some people like will roll their eyes at that. I get it right. You're in business to make money, but that generosity, I promise you, will help you make more generosity, is one of the highest ROI lead gen strategies that I have ever seen. The agencies that do it naturally, are the ones that always seem to have pipeline, right? They answer questions in communities without expecting anything back. They they share an insight that took, took them, like, years, to learn, and then they give it away for free in a LinkedIn post, right? They they help someone troubleshoot a problem even when there is zero chance that they will become a client, and that's generally because someone is could see this, but also they just that's who they are. As people like they want to be helpful. When you do this consistently, people will remember you right when they're ready to buy, or when someone asks them for a recommendation, your name comes up. It this also like, it changes I don't know the energy. I'm not a super energy. Woo, woo guy, but like it does, you show up in conversations curious and helpful, instead of, like, needy and desperate, and people will feel that difference when you can combine this with speed, right? So more helpful content published faster means you have more opportunity to learn what actually resonates with your audience. You're you're being generous and you're collecting market data. At the same time that generosity, it comes from abundance, right? When you operate from abundance, like I have plenty of knowledge to share and there's plenty of business to go around, it shows up in how you talk and how you handle objections. Scarcity, like the opposite will show up too. It's just gonna, it's gonna be in the opposite direction. Prospects. Can feel when someone is desperate for a deal and they can. They can also feel when someone is like insecure and or vice versa. They can when someone is secure enough to just be helpful. So be be generous. Like it, I promise you it works. Now, Tip five you need to right size your offers. Every touch point you have with a prospect has an offer attached to it like it doesn't have to be your core service. The mistake that I see all the time is that someone will discover your agency and like maybe they saw a LinkedIn post, they heard you on a podcast, and then the next step is for them to hop on a call and discuss a 3000 a month retainer, right? It's a massive leap. They just found out you exist, and you're asking for a significant financial commitment. The conversion rate on that is going to be Tech. Variable, right? And then they're going to like, you're going to conclude that lead gen doesn't work. But lead gen worked fine. It was the offer was just at the wrong stage. I am a huge fan of setting up the offer based on where the the prospect is at within the buyer's journey, right? And so when people talk about this portfolio of offers, it shouldn't be to have a different offer for different problems and all these things. It's like no, where are you at in this buying process? So I can get you the right thing. You match the offer to where the prospect actually is. If they just found you give them something like low commitment, high value. That gets them like, to experience how you think, like a free resource, quick assessment, something that gives them a win without, like, asking them to trust you with their budget necessarily, right? And you could still charge this. It doesn't mean don't charge it's just don't, don't have this, like, outsized price point for something that you just need them to get in the door if they have been following you for a while, watching your content, engaging with your posts, right? You can be more direct. You can invite like a real conversation, but even then, the goal of each offer is to advance the relationship, not close the deal. So when you because, when you try to close that deal too early, like you lose people like who could have eventually bought, but you're going to lose them earlier in this process. Each step, it should be, like, a small commitment. Like, each step builds a little more trust, and then it works up so that the next one is continuously just feeling natural, as like, the next level. And with these right, it can be a free offer. It can your CTA. Can just be for them to take action within their own business and report back to you on how something worked, like, Hey, let me give you advice. Go try this out. Tell me what you think. Like, that is an offer, right? Because you are doing something for them for free, they're going to come back like, it's you need to be thinking differently about how you're providing value to everyone. And the agencies that are crushing it that I'm working with and the ones that I am just seeing out in the wild like they're doing things like this, okay, tip six, active versus passive offers, most agencies will default to the wrong type of offer within their lead gen strategies. Now, a passive offer, right? You give the prospect something, and then they do the work. And so it's an eBook, a template, a video series, checklist, right? Something like that, where they get the result, as long as they put in some effort. The problem is that most people don't put in the effort, right? They're going to download that PDF, maybe skim the first page, and then they forget about it, so you've got their email, but you didn't actually build any trust or get them to want to take action to the next step. With an active offer, right? You do the work for them. This is like an audit of their current setup, a done for you analysis. Maybe you're doing a live workshop where you solve their actual problem in real time. Active offers will almost always convert better because the perceived value is real and it's what it's immediate. Like the prospect doesn't have to do homework, right? They just essentially get value from you, and because they see you putting in the effort, it is perceived as even more valuable when you put in the effort, like on behalf of the prospect, right? It's going to signal two things. One, that you are confident enough in your skills that you you'll you're happy to put them on display, right? And then two, you actually care about helping, not just collecting leads, right? So go back to the generosity piece. Active offers will also like self select for seriousness. Someone who is willing to sit through a live audit or accept custom analysis is usually further along in their like, buying process, and someone just downloading a free PDF while they're bored on a Tuesday,
Chris DuBois 18:54
you just it's it really comes down to, though, how you market it. You can't just say, Hey, I'm doing free audits. Who wants one? Because you're going to get a lot of people who will only look for stuff. For stuff for free. We don't want those. So when you make an active offer, you want it to be done in a way where you control who is accepting it. And so that could be, hey, you can apply for this free asset, where we will go in and do this, but then you get to kind of sift out the ones that shouldn't be there. Okay? Passive offers, the like, they do have their place. I know I feel like everything I just said makes it sound like passive offers suck, but like passive offers are can be awesome, right? Because you have leverage with them. You've built it once, and now you get to keep putting it out there in the world. These things do solve the problem the same way that an active solution would, but because they're the ones putting in the effort, it doesn't feel as valuable. But you could get the same result right if someone doesn't know what to publish in their content calendar, I can either give you a guide, give you like, an AI tool, where, like, you answer some questions and it'll fill this in, or I can look at your business, study it and go build a. Calendar for you, right? So passive versus active, but they both solve the same situation. As an agency, we want more of the passive so that our profit margins are better on everything. But if you're struggling to get leads in the door, focusing on an active offer is the best solution to be able to quickly make that happen. Okay? Tip seven, have a snap offer. A snap offer. For those unfamiliar with me talking about this, because I do talk about it quite a bit. This is a low barrier, like, fast to say, yes, offer that gets a transaction started. It's not your flagship service, right? We're not talking a $5,000 retainer. Like, this is a thing that creates that first exchange of value. It's something small enough that saying yes is easy, but valuable enough that the prospect gets like real results from it. This, I call it a snap offer, because it's not just a lead magnet, right? Like I just want to separate because there is a system behind this for how we install it in your business. That sets up the next logical step as like working with you. The hardest part of like with any business relationship is that first Yes, because before that first transaction, like you're a stranger. And yes, someone can listen podcasts. They can, like, follow you, they can learn some stuff, but like, they haven't worked with you, the psychology behind the snap offer is what shifts that completely think about your own buying behavior with this right, once you have bought from a company, even like something small, you are way more likely to buy again. You've already, like, made the decision that this company is worth your money. And so even if the product was like, Maybe you were hoping it was a 10, but it was a nine or an eight. Like, it's still easier to say, well, at least I trust what they're able to do. Like, I know something about them. Rather than going to try someone else that's brand new, they will likely continue with you, because they know what to expect. Now with a snap offer, the idea is that we're not solving like a big problem your core offer should solve like the massive core problem that they have. But within that problem, there are a series of symptoms that show up in their business. These people, the prospects who are coming to you are should know and see these symptoms every day, right? These are things that they have to deal with that are super annoying and frustrating, if you can pick one of those symptoms and alleviate that pain from them, that that is the the symptom that your snap offer should solve this way, when you go into the thank you page video that couples with your snap offer you get someone to basically watch this video after they access the offer and you say, Hey, check it out. We have, like, there's a whole script in the download. Go to snap offer system.com, you can get this for free. It's a full workbook to, like, get you through this piece. But the idea on the thank you page is, like, you congratulate them for getting this offer, build some credibility, tell them why they should actually trust you for this. Then guide them through what they just got, right? Hey, we're going to solve for this. This is everything you're getting in this this guide. Maybe it's like we're actively going to do this for you or passively here. And then the next step is you have to show them how this one symptom is a very small part of the bigger problem that they still have to deal with. And so you show them that problem, and if you can express this and explain it in a way that they say, Oh yeah, I do have that problem, you now have built up more trust. And then the last part of this video is you invite them to book a call. This has booked a lot of calls for my clients when you can find the right snap offer and you get it right because you have nailed down the problem that you know they have, it is very easy for this process to work. Okay, so go get that again. Snap offer system.com, and get access to that. Okay. Tip eight. Now this one's kind of moving into like the sales process, because I do think this is a critical piece that a lot of agencies miss. So tip eight is to track objections and then categorize them. Almost nobody does this consistently, but it's one of the simplest things that you can do to improve your close rate. It also very much helps your marketing. Every question that a prospect asks in a sales call is an objection. It might not sound like one. It might sound polite like how long does this usually take? Do you work with companies our size? What happens if we don't see results like all of these are objections, right? Every every one of those questions is a friction point that is slowing the buying decision, you need to stop treating these like one offs and start treating them as data. Get a simple system going right. Just a spreadsheet works. You can do a Slack channel, like in notes, whatever. But after every sales call, write down every single question that the prospect has asked and every concern. Return that they raised, and then you start bucketing them, pricing objections, timing objections, confidence concerns, right? Anything? Fear concerns, even if they're worried about fit, like, capture those in those buckets, but get their exact words over time, you will be able to see patterns. Use AI to like analyze this. They can go through the recordings of your sales calls, which, that's another way, if you're not recording your sales calls, please start doing that, especially with the fact that you can do this for essentially free. Now grab, grab those transcripts, feed them to AI, have it build like all of these, these objections into the buckets for you, if, like, if 70% of your prospects are raising like, pricing concerns, right, then you need to. You can get ahead of this problem by being more clear in the pricing like on your website. Maybe it's because you don't have pricing on your website, and that's all it takes. Maybe, if they don't see the value, right? It's rarely an actual pricing concerns. If someone shows up with a problem that they're they really want solved, and you can prove that you have the exact solution they need, right, and they know the value of that solution, then they will buy it. But there's always some like, there's risk in there, there's like, confidence issues, all these different things. But if you can get in front of that right, figure out the underlying reason why they're even asking for that, then you can start prepping people in the conversation. You can you can ask questions that lead them to already knowing what they should be asking and talking about, and you can now speed up your sales cycle by skipping some of these points entirely. Okay, but it's this objection data that's going to tell you where to look. Without it, you're, you're just guessing, and so I would not recommend that now, tip nine build an objection driven content system. Okay, so I guess I got ahead of myself in the last one, but you're okay, you're still with me. This is, this is like, where tip eight starts to pay off, right? We those objection buckets are your content calendar, right? Every, every question is another piece of content. One of the things that I've had a client do that worked well for, I mean, they got positive feedback from this, from prospects, was creating an FAQ that goes in the invite for a like a discovery call, right? And so someone books a call with you, and in there is a link that's like, hey, here are some questions that we are frequently asked on this call, and we just want to give you our answer now. And so then they do. They have had some people who say, Hey, thank you for sending that. This is not a fit for me, right? And so we at least save time on that call, but it also gives us a chance to frame up the answers to these questions in the exact way that we want them to hear the answer. And so I'd strongly recommend you consider that if, if you're getting a lot of objections on on calls with this right as you're learning these things again, like, update your your pricing page, put put FAQs in various spots. One of my concerns about putting FAQs on actual websites is like, if, if people are having this question, just put the answer in the page. Like, we don't need to have an FAQ section to do it. If people are asking that question frequently, it's because it's not presented elsewhere. And so let's just make it more obvious and everything. But you can also do blog posts, right? And so now say someone brings up a or even LinkedIn post, but someone brings up an objection, you can give them, send them a blog post later that says, hey, we actually just wrote this, and this might actually help with some of the questions you were asking. Here is something that could give you the insights that you need, and you can provide all of that to them.
Chris DuBois 28:51
Yeah, your sales process, and this is one of the reasons why, like with tech and SaaS companies, right, it's so important to get sales and marketing alignment, but with agencies, we often don't even consider this because the founder is one who's generally running sales. At least with the agencies that I'm working with, they're running sales and then they're also doing some of the marketing, but they're not connecting the dots on what they need to be talking about more. So start tracking it, and then use that to build up your content pipeline. Okay, tip 10. This one sounds, sounds obvious and probably doesn't make sense for lead gen, but I promise it works. You need to have more sales conversations, period. This one connects everything, right? You're you have 50% of sales. Comes down to like, the transference of confidence and enthusiasm. But confidence doesn't come from preparation. It comes from reps. It comes from perspiration, right? The Oh, that's a good one. Let's, let's use that line. Confidence doesn't come from preparation, it comes from perspiration. The the more sales conversations you have, the stronger. Your conviction gets in your offer, in your positioning, in your price, right? And conviction is a thing that prospects are actually buying. They they want to work with someone who knows exactly what they do, who they do it for, and what results they're going to be able to deliver. Right? Any agency owner who lacks confidence in sales, they generally tend to say yes to everything, because they worry that the prospect is they're going to lose them because they don't have that confidence. If a prospect asks for like a discount, deliver extra deliverables within this right? The ones agency owners who are less confident are the ones who are going to say yes. First, that flexibility feels generous, but you're actually making like the sale heart. Because when you when you bend the offer in every conversation, you're diluting what you're selling, right? The prospect will pick up on this inconsistency, even if they they can't, like, articulate that, they're going to leave the call confused about what they're actually getting. And even if they feel like you're throwing some extra stuff in like it does not leave them with like the best feeling real confidence. Like creates natural boundaries, right? That's not what we do, but here is what we do and why it works. And when you can say that clearly and calmly, right, like you're not flinching when they when they when you say it, prospects will start trusting you because you look like someone who has done this before. Sales, confidence compounds. Every conversation should be teaching you something, right? All those objections are are going into your content system, but they're also making you sharper, because every no is going to give you, like, some data, and you can come back, you can tweak things. Every yes is going to like, reinforce that, that you're like, your your offer, your pricing, your positioning, are actually working the like volume of conversations isn't a isn't just like a lead gen metric. It is the training regimen that you need. Okay, all right, so that was, that was 10, do quick recap here, all right. One, nail your positioning and your niche to find the room where your audience actually hangs out. Three, move fast. Four, be generous. Five, right size. Your offers to match the buyer. Stage six, lean towards active offers over passive ones, especially if you need business quickly. Seven, have a snap offer ready. Eight, track and categorize your objections. Nine, build your content system around those objections, and then 10, have more sales conversations. All right? These aren't like 10 separate tactics that you can cherry pick, right? They all reinforce each other. Your speed builds confidence. Confidence improves how you present offers. Your better offers are going to generate more conversations, and then that those conversations generate more objection data. Your objection data is going to feed your content right, and then content pre handles everything and brings in warmer leads, right? It just keeps compounding 100 episodes of the show. If there's one thing that building dynamic agency OS has taught me, it's that the the agencies that grow are the ones that commit to process, not the ones who find like that one magic trick, but the ones who do these things consistently build the reps you stay in the room. If this episode was useful, please share it with agency owners who are stuck in lead gen, right? I think a lot of you have seen the ones who like referral reliance is a huge thing, right? Give this to them. Just help them out. Leave a review if you haven't, and tell me, like, which of these 10 Are you going to implement first? Right? Find me on LinkedIn. Hit me up, shoot me an email, right? This is agency forward. I'm looking forward to the next 100 episodes, and I will talk to you guys next week.
Chris DuBois 34:02
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 substack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You
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