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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
Hey everyone Today, I've got a solo cast coming your way. Most agency owners trying to grow are doing one of two things, cold outreach or waiting for referrals. Both have the same problem. You're starting from zero every time. Now, there's a third option that almost nobody talks about. It's finding the people who already have your future clients attention and getting in front of them. So today I'll walk through a framework I call the builder ecosystem. These are the people, communities, publications, companies that are adjacent to your niche, that share your target audience. They've already built the trust. They've already gathered the crowd. Your job is to show up where they are. In this episode, I cover why cold outreach and referral dependency both leave you starting from zero the four categories of builders how to research and map your builder ecosystem, and I'll throw in a few specific search strategies, tiering your findings by accessibility so you know where to start your first five moves that you can execute this week and more. 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. Gia 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
Chris DuBois 1:33
agency. All right, let's get into the builder ecosystem. 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. So let's talk about the two defaults. One, cold outreach. I was working with an agency owner recently who was proud that he'd made 20 cold calls in a week, right? 20? Yeah. He wanted to talk about his process, his script, his follow up, Cadence, and I asked him how it went. The most common response was, we already have someone. Second most common, we had a bad experience with an agency. And then third was some version of like, Call me back in six months, which, if you have been in the business longer than a week, you know that means please lose my number. So we made 20 calls, started every single conversation at zero trust, right? Interrupted people who are not thinking about him. Did not ask for him. And for being honest, like, didn't want to actually hear from him, and even when someone was polite enough to stay on the line, he was still fighting this uphill battle the entire conversation just to get back to neutral. Right? That's the cold outreach tax you're you're paying it on every single interaction, and you can grind through it, like some people do, but it's, it's a brutal way to do business like especially for an agency without someone dedicated to biz dev. And now I'm not saying you can't do cold outreach. Sometimes it is a good option and people should use it, but that doesn't mean it's always the best way. The second default is referral reliance. We talked about this one a lot, and this one's sneakier, because it actually works until it doesn't. If you ask most agencies where their best clients come from, right, they'll say referrals every time. Ask them where the next referral is coming from, and you get silence. And then you ask them, What happens if referrals dry up for two months and you probably get a longer silence, right? I have watched this happen in real time. You get an agency owner riding high on a great year. They get big clients, good revenue, life's good. So they stop networking, they stop putting themselves out there, because, like, why would they right? The phone's ringing, and then the big client, wraps up, the phone, stops ringing, and suddenly you're staring down a two month runway with nothing behind it. And so you went from this best year ever to are we going to make payroll in about six weeks? Because referrals feel like a strategy when they're flowing, but when they stop, you realize that they're just luck that you have now gotten comfortable with. Okay, there is a missing middle here. And really, here's what no one's actually talking about. It's that between cold Carl strangers and like, I'm hoping that someone mentions your name at a dinner party, right? There's this massive category of opportunities, there are people, communities and companies, that have already built trust with your ideal clients. They've already gathered the audience. They've already done the hard part. You just need to show up where they are. So what am I actually talking about? This is what I call your builder ecosystem. This is a network of people, communities, publications and companies, that are adjacent to your niche, right? They share your target audience. They don't compete with you. That key that's the key word, adjacent. These are people who are already standing next to your ideal clients, and they're talking to them every day about something that has nothing to do with what you sell. And the reason this matters is simple, your your future clients are already paying attention to someone, right? They're in Facebook groups. They're they listen to podcasts. They follow industry voices on LinkedIn. They're using specific software tools going to conferences. They read specific newsletters. If you can identify those gathering points and show up with something genuinely valuable, you skip the trust building phase entirely. You don't start at zero. You start wherever the host credibility has already taken you. Branding is about associations, right? And when people see you with others that they already trust. It builds your brand. So there are four categories of builders, so four places to look and number one is people. These are influencers, consultants, podcast hosts, speakers, anyone with an audience of your ideal clients who doesn't do what you do. Number two communities. You got Facebook groups, Slack channels, associations, conferences, essentially anywhere that your ideal clients gather and talk to each other. Probably not LinkedIn groups, because who actually uses those anymore? Am I right? Three publications, newsletters, podcasts, trade publications, YouTube channels, anything where your ideal clients would subscribe and then consume that content. And then finally, number four is companies, adjacent service providers and software platforms. These are the tools that your ideal clients are already paying for. Now let's do a concrete example here. So say you're an agency that serves home service contractors, right? Plumbers, HVAC, that world, your builder ecosystem includes the CRM that they're already using, service Titan, house call Pro, right? It includes the industry associations that they belong to, the podcasts that they listen to about running a contract. Contracting business, and even the operations consultants that they've already hired to help them with scheduling and dispatch. None of those people compete with you on marketing, but every single one of them has an ear of your buyer, right? Every single one of them has already built the trust that you need six months of cold outreach to establish that's your builder ecosystem, and most agencies have never spent 30 minutes mapping it out. So let's build that map. I'm going to walk you through each of the four categories with specific search strategies, what to look for and what to do when you find them right? Your target is 30 to 50 entries total across all four of these. So let's start with people. I would go for like eight to 12 of people. Hey, this is probably the easiest place to start, because you're looking for individuals who have a following in your vertical and don't overlap with what you do. So search for like your niche podcast host or your niche consultants, right, your niche LinkedIn to see and just see who's posting consistently, right? If you google this, you can see who's who's showing up at conferences. What you're looking for is complimentary expertise with a shared audience, someone who, who talks to the same people that you want to talk to, but about something different. Your personal example in my space, not MySpace, the old website, but like my personal space, working with agencies, someone like like Marcel petapa is at parakito. He's a perfect example. Marcel talks about agency profitability, right? He has podcasts. He's on LinkedIn. His audience is agency owners, like we complement each other very well. He talks money. I talk like positioning growth, right? That's a builder. He has my audience's attention already. The conversation with Marcel puts me in front of his people in a way that, like it doesn't feel like an interruption, right? So here's what to look for in terms of accessibility. Do they have a podcast, right? Podcast hosts are always looking for guests that's a that's like a standing invitation to a conversation. Do they engage on LinkedIn? Because if they're replying to comments and having conversations and they're reachable, do they have a community like community leaders are often the most generous with introductions, and maybe that's just my ego talking, because I love making intros to people within my community.
Chris DuBois 9:52
But this is important. Small to medium, followings are better than big ones. Someone with. Like 3000 LinkedIn followers and high engagement is more accessible and more responsive than someone with 200,000 followers who hasn't replied to a DM since, I don't know 2022, or something, right? They're bored during covid. But okay, now let's talk communities you should target here, probably like five to eight so we can hit our numbers. So you search for your niche Facebook group, your niche Slack community, all of those, those types of communities that you would want to find leverage those what you're evaluating with these member count, activity level and any rules around self promotion, that last one really matters. Actually, some communities are great about letting members share expertise. Others will ban you from mentioning your company name. So So you need to know the rules before you walked in. The play here is not to like join and immediately start pitching, which I think is what most people do, and why those LinkedIn groups have failed. But the play is to to join and contribute right answer questions, share a take that's actually useful. Be, be the person who shows up with value before they ever mention what they do for a living. There are slack communities with over 1000 members in them, and most of those members have never posted a single message, right? They're lurking. I have a full article. I call them orbiters, but, but they are kind of lurking around, right, which means the bar for standing out for you is like underground, right? If you show up consistently with useful takes, genuinely useful takes, right, not just thinly veiled pitches, then you can become a recognized name in like, a week, maybe two, but you can get there way faster. And that's not an exaggeration. Most people are are so used to communities being either dead or self promotional that someone showing up and being helpful is is like a celebrity entrance, right? Okay, publications, let's hear you want to target, say, five to eight again, and you're just going to search for like, your niche newsletter, your niche trade publications. You could Google like best, your niche podcast, and then just actually look at who's making content that your ideal clients consume. You're evaluating format, right? Is it a newsletter, podcast, blog, YouTube channel? You're evaluating audience size, and really you're evaluating like, how can you contribute? Is it just a guest post? Can you be interviewed? Can you sponsor an issue? There's so many different ways that you can leverage this. The play here is to pitch yourself as a guest or a contributor. But actually, I can't stress this part enough, as someone who gets tons of pitches for my podcast, bring a specific topic I'd love to be on your show is essentially the podcast equivalent of, let's grab coffee sometime like it means nothing. It creates no urgency. And I promise you, hosts have heard this like hundreds of times every month. Instead, like, use something like here I scripted one. I have a framework for identifying 50 referral partners in under an hour. Your audience of home service contractors would find this useful, because most of them are relying on Angie and home advisor for leads and getting killed on cost per lead. I can walk through the framework in 20 minutes, and your listeners can implement it this week. Right if someone came to me specifically with something like that, I would be way more apt to consider them as a podcast guest than what I normally get. Okay, now let's talk companies. Here. We want to target probably eight to 10, and you're going to search for like your niche software tools, for your ICP, you can even you can even Google, like your niche partner program you're looking for, like software platforms, other things like that, where your ideal clients already are on them. They're already using them, ideally, they have some sort of partner program or CO marketing opportunities, or, I guess, like a community that you could participate in, okay, the project management tool that your clients use probably has that partner directory, and if you're listed there, you get inbound leads from people who already trust the platform. They search for a partner. They found you, they reached out. You did not cold call them, right? You didn't send them a LinkedIn DM that starts with Hey, first name. I noticed that we're both in industry space, right? You just You existed in the right place, and the lead came to you. Referral partnerships with adjacent service providers work generally the same way. Right? Find the bookkeeper who works with your ICP. Find the operations consultant. Right? Find the. Recruiter who staffs their industry like these people talk to your ideal clients every week about problems that have nothing to do with marketing, but when a marketing question comes up, you want to be the name that they mention. Co hosted webinars with software companies are another move. Right? The software company gets content for their users. You get access to their audience. Everyone wins. These are shockingly easy to set up, and most agencies have never even tried. Okay, so, okay, those are the four. Now you've got your 30 to 50 entries, the instinct is going to be to go after the biggest names first, but you need to resist that. We want to tier by accessibility. Okay, so tier one are going to be the quick wins this week, right? We're looking for very fast moves. We can make open communities that you could join today podcast hosts who are actively looking for guests, right? Check their social usually says so people with small to medium followings who engage publicly. You look at publications with open submission processes, right? These are your first moves. They're low effort, they're high accessibility. Honestly, they convert faster than the big names, because the people behind them are hungrier for good content and partnership. Like a podcast with 500 downloads per episode that's laser focused on your niche is worth way more than a guest spot on a show with 50,000 downloads and like a general business audience, right? Tier Two, you look at warm outreach, these take some effort, but they're still reachable, right? They have larger followings paid communities that are actually worth the investment companies with partner applications that take a few days to process. And then tier three, we're now looking at the long game, right? These are the high profile voices, like major conferences, big publications with like editorial gatekeepers who need to be convinced that you're worth their audience's time. Most agency owners skip tier one entirely. They want to be on the biggest podcast. They want to speak at the biggest conferences, right? They want partnerships with the biggest software companies, and they they spend months chasing those while ignoring the podcast hosts with 800 listeners who would have said yes to a DM yesterday. Hey, start with tier one, build momentum, and let tier three come to you later, after you built up a reputation in tiers one and two. So, okay, you've gotten the map, you've tiered it right. And now let's just pick five actions from tier one and execute them this week. Okay, not next week, not when things slow down. So that's the feast and famine cycle is real. I get it, but you're going to start convincing yourself that because you're working on supply and you have so many clients you got to deliver for that you can't do any marketing, and then that's going to come to bite you. So let's not do that this week. Okay, one, join one community and introduce yourself with a genuine question, not a pitch, not hey, I run an agency, and we help companies with that, like ask a question, something you're actually curious about, something that invites conversation, right? You can, you can mention what you do later. Really, people will ask you what you do at some point, but for now, just be the person in a room full of people. Okay, two. I want you to pitch one podcast with a specific topic and a one paragraph reason you're the right guest not I'd love to share my journey like nobody cares about your journey. I'm sorry, like it's the way it is. I hate explaining my journey because I know nobody actually cares. Give them a topic that their audience needs, like a reason that that you're credible on it, and then make it easy for them to say, yes, okay, we could probably go follow Dustin recommend, if you want to go deeper on how to do that part. But then, three, oh, actually, pitch Dustin rigman did a podcast agency forward. You can search his name, find that. Listen to that episode. It'll give some great insights. All right, three DM, one person on LinkedIn who shares your audience, right? Reference something specific that they posted, and not like, hey, great post. It's like nobody cares. I know I'm about to get pitched. That's like the the LinkedIn equivalent of a participation trophy. Like, good word, you did a post given something specific, like, your point about x made me rethink how I approach this with clients. Like, we'd love to compare notes sometime. Okay, even that could feel like a pitch if you do it wrong, but if they see that you actually read their content and you're actually thinking through like what they're talking about, you will get some sort of response from that. Okay, that is a win, because it potentially opens up more conversations
Chris DuBois 19:54
four so apply to a partnership program for a tool that your clients already use, and. But that you also like, okay, just because your clients use it, if you hate this tool and you think it, they should not be using it. They should use something better. It's just like, the winner in the industry, don't try partnering with them. It's gonna be very hard to promote a partner when you don't actually like them. And that partnership, right? The word partner like it goes both ways. They could potentially send you business, but you should also be sending them business to make this work, most partner programs take, like, 10 minutes to fill out, like the stuff, and then some will put you in a directory, and you can start generating some leads, like while you sleep. Probably won't be that fast, but you can do it. It's another place for people to find you, and we already know that they're your ideal audience, like the the ROI on 10 minutes of form filling here is really hard to beat. Okay, number five, subscribe to one publication that your ideal clients like read and engage with. Like their content ideally, like weekly the you want to also read, read this content, maybe a couple issues, so you have a good idea of what's coming right comments on these articles, share like newsletter issues show the editor that you're a real human who actually reads this stuff before you ask for something. This is another pet peeve of podcasting. We'll just talk about here the number of times I get pitched for someone to be on the show. And they open with, Hey, I just listened to your episode on whatever my most recent episode is, and I loved your insight on this. And they pull something that, like, it's just part of either the show notes or it's Hey, we're talking operation, so obviously we're going to talk about this. And then they go right into their pitch and like, it's just so fake. But with every publication, if you can show them, you actually listen, it just goes way further. Okay, so here's why this matter, right? Each one of those five I just gave you. So just a quick recap, join a community, pitch a podcast, DM someone on like LinkedIn or whatever social channel you're on, apply to a partnership program and then subscribe to at least one publication in five moves, these are going to compound over time in a way that cold calls never will, right? Cold Calls are like linear you make 20, you get, you could get 20 conversations. But the builder ecosystem, these are really exponential, right? If you show up once that appearance keeps generating visibility for months, I was on a podcast last last year. Might have been the year before, but like, I'm still getting people booking calls with me who reference that podcast, and it's just crazy. How many people from doing a one hour interview with someone and then promoting the episode afterwards, how much that has actually helped my business, and so you need to find the moves like this. Okay, so let me bring it back. Your future clients are already paying attention to someone, right? They're already in rooms that you haven't walked into yet. They already trust voices that you haven't connected with yet. They're using tools that have partner directories where you're not listed. Your job is to figure out who those people are, where those rooms are, and how to show up with enough value that the door just opens on its own. So the framework that we covered today, you need to map the people, communities, publications, companies, tier them by accessibility, pick your first five moves and then execute this week. So here is my ask. Take 30 minutes, right? That's it. 30 minutes. Just map out like the people category, search for podcast hosts, consultants, voices in your niche, and I guarantee you will find at least five names that you should already be talking to. That's five people who have your future clients attention right now, five conversations you could start this week that would put you miles ahead of another 20 cold calls. So if you do this, send me a message. I would love to see what you found. Ideally, you do all five of those steps, but like, if you have super limited time, just just take 30 minutes. Like, you can find 30 minutes to potentially get yourself some leads this week. Okay, that's it for this episode. I will see you next week. 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
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