One Focus Marketing
How Professional Service Providers Can Generate Consistent Leads Month After Month
It seems every week I talk to an accountant, attorney, financial planner, real estate agent - pretty much anybody who provides a service and they almost always have the same question...
HOW DO I GET MORE CONSISTENT LEADS?
It seems every week I talk to an accountant, attorney, financial planner, real estate agent - pretty much anybody who provides a service and they almost always have the same question...
Makes sense right? I provide a service too and before I found out the easiest way to generate consistent high quality leads it was a struggle.
Basically I used to do whatever it would take. I’d cut my fees, waste time on clients that kept jerking me around, worried about how to make payroll and ultimately getting frustrated with my business.
I was a commodity.
They could pick me off the shelf at Wal-Mart, compare me to the other people providing similar services and then boil it down to price.
That was no way to run a business my friend.
Ultimately this all came to a head. As the old saying goes ‘nothing changes if nothing changes’ and for me that was true.
I got my butt up one morning and committed to running my business not let it run me!
Here Was My Two Step Plan:
Step 1 - I fired a bunch of crappy clients and decided to focus on providing more and better service to my good clients.
Step 2 - I would figure out a way to generate consistent high quality leads so that I could choose who to work with not the other way around.
And guess what… what you focus on is what you get!
I no longer have to worry about people shopping me or wasting my time. I can literally turn on my lead generation machine and turn it off whenever I want.
After a while I noticed this gap for people who provide professional services. A lot of them were in the same boat I was.
That’s what this blog post is all about.
It isn’t going to change your business overnight but rather give you the framework for moving your business out of lead scarcity to lead abundance.
I’m talking about generating high quality leads at the lowest possible cost and leveraging your time so that you can spend less time on marketing and more on serving your clients!
I’m not saying this will cure all your marketing ails but once you figure out the sweet spot and get it dialed in you’ll wonder how you got along without it.
WARNING:
This won’t work if you aren't good at following up.
Now, Let's Get Started
During this post I’ll cover a lot about what options you have to advertise your business and then I’ll give you a couple of strategies that professional service providers use to attract clients from around the world.
Here’s the catch though…
You absolutely must be willing to throw conventional wisdom out the door and realize that if you had a way to generate these high quality leads you probably wouldn’t even be reading this.
NOW, is the time to try something different!
Here are a couple disclaimers -
1. I can’t promise that what I’m going to tell you will work in every single situation every single time.
2. These strategies take time, effort and money. But seriously, do you know of anybody who has a serious business that doesn’t spend money on it?
Before I get right into the meat of it I’d like to give you just a little background on me and my perspective on things.
If you aren’t familiar with my podcast ‘Facebook Ads With a Twang’ you probably don’t know that I have a real thick southern accent but it has gotten me out of trouble more times than I can count.
Anyway, I grew up in rural Kentucky. The kinda place where I was related to most of the people in the town and it was difficult getting a prom date.
The good thing though was that both my parents were entrepreneurs. I got to see first hand what it meant to work for yourself and have that freedom.
But at the same time I saw how difficult it was to find and maintain quality clients.
Even though I was kind of the black sheep in the family I somehow figured out that I wanted to own a business.
What I didn’t want was to struggle finding clients.
This quest ultimately led me to marketing. I had a couple of different businesses and threw myself into the marketing part of them.
Got kind of good at it too.
I loved the psychology behind it.
The strategy.
Putting the puzzle pieces together of a smooth running highly successful campaign.
Now that’s FUN!
One thing I discovered along the way though was that most professional service providers don’t enjoy the marketing part. They really enjoyed working with their clients just not trying to find new ones.
It occurred to me that maybe I could create some easy to follow systems for them so they could focus on the things they enjoy without worrying about how to generate client leads.
This post will explore some of the marketing methods that are available to promote professional services.
So let's jump in...
Master Your Mindset
Remember how I mentioned earlier that you’d have to be willing to throw conventional wisdom out the window and try something new.
Here is your first test.
The very first thing you must do is to master your mindset.
The best marketers know this and have for years.
You might wonder what that has to do with marketing and finding clients.
It is simple. We get back what we put out there. If we’re not clear on who we want to attract and what we’re willing to offer them then the best strategy in the world won’t get you the results you want.
If you’re wondering what I mean and how it works I’m going to give you 3 principles you’ll need.
#1 - In order to start getting high quality leads you have to clear any negative energy you have about money.
Yeah, it sounds woo woo but the fact is if you see money as a zero sum game or that there is a finite amount of it then you’ll have a tough time getting in front of the right people. You’ll end up attracting clients with the same mindset as you and that’s not what you want because they’ll be living in lack.
#2 - You must be willing to step outside your comfort zone. This might mean doing the complete opposite of what your peers are doing. Which by the way, 80 - 90% of them are struggling and within a month of going right out of business so they might not be a group you want to model.
It definitely means doing things your competitors aren’t willing to do. Even something simple like defining a strategy and following through with it.
#3 - You absolutely must be clear on who your ideal client is and be congruent with your core values.
Marketing today is different in a lot of ways than it used to be. Now we have to make sure we are always being consistent with our message.
This has always been true but since people can research you in about 2 seconds and they can find 10 competitors of yours in about 1 second it means you must have the same message in front of them over and over.
Decide on your ideal client and go after them! It doesn’t mean you can’t take on others that are outside that box but you just don’t want to muddy the waters.
YOU DON'T WANT TO BE A COMMODITY
Your competitors clients choose them.
You choose your clients.
That's the difference!
Hopefully those mindset principles make sense and you are on board.
If not, I’m not sure how you’re gonna make the next parts of this work.
Now let’s shift gears a little bit and talk more specific tangible stuff.
Here are some things you'll need to understand:
1. Know your - Key Performance Indicators - KPI’s - These determine the effectiveness for each part of the process in acquiring a client.
This can be different for everybody so I won’t be able to cover all these for you.
However, a crucial number you need to know is what is the most you are willing to pay in order to acquire a client.
If you don’t know where to start with this take the average amount each client is worth to you… Say $5000 and take ½ that… are you willing to pay $2500 in order to make $5000.
Now this may not work for you… you might need to make $4000 on a $5000 client so you can only pay $1000 to acquire one client but you get the idea.
I’m NOT saying you need to pay that much just that you don’t want to go over this number when evaluating your marketing data.
2. What are you looking for when deciding how to market.
Each marketing method has its ups and downs but some of the things you should consider are:
1. Learning curve
2. Spending curve
3. Niching
4. Tracking, analyzing and adjusting
5. Testing
6. Automating
7. Scaling
Yeah, that’s a lot to think about but don’t sweat it I got you covered as we go through some of the options.
Advertising Platforms
(with Pros and Cons)
1 - Direct mail - Ok, I love direct mail and frankly it is under utilized by professional services or worse what is being done is so cookie cutter that it is hard to breakthrough the clutter of other mail.
The good side is that once they open the mail you have their attention unlike running ads online where they’re distracted by a million different things. The downside is that direct mail fails at least 4 of the 7 criteria I laid out before.
Not the least of which being the spending curve. I do like it for follow up and staying in contact though with existing clients/leads.
Pros - Learning curve, Automating, Scaling
Cons - Expensive, long time to analyze and adjust, hard to test quickly
2 - Cold Calling / Cold Emailing - This definitely works but it is time intensive and hard to leverage for most professionals. Does anybody really enjoy cold calling?
It is inexpensive but still with do not call lists, spam complaints and the general negativity associated with it I believe other options are better.
Pros - Spending Curve, Testing, Tracking
Cons - Learning what works can take a while, scaling and automating
3 - Mass media - t.v. / radio / billboards etc - Well what can I say, they work I suppose but then again how do you measure it? Plus they’re super expensive.
I’ve heard the same advertisers on the radio for years so they must be seeing some kind of return but how much I just don’t know.
The funny thing is people expect to pay a lot for this type of advertising so the price barrier usually isn’t an issue for the companies selling the media.
My question is, I wonder if they put that money into a strategic online ad strategy where they could target their ideal clients and measure the results better if that would really skyrocket their business?
Pros - Learning curve, Automating and Scaling
Cons - Spending, Tracking, Testing quickly and Niching
4 - SEO - Search Engine Optimization - I was talking with a service provider the other day who was thinking about paying $80,000 to get their Google reviews stats up and optimize their website for SEO.
No doubt that when people are searching for what you offer that is the best time to show up and be in front of their face. But what about being married to Google that your business literally lives and dies by their algorithm.
What about having to constantly stay on top of all the changes?
Not to mention you can’t leverage it to an assistant because it is so complicated. So you end up spending $5k a month for somebody to continually optimize your site only to stay on the first page and it is hard to tell if it is even working the way it should. Again, SEO is great but not necessary. Let the big boys battle that one out.
5 - Online Ads - this has a lot of facets to it so I’m going to break it down by some popular ad platforms.
- Google adwords / YouTube Ads - Hands down these are great platforms.
You can get in front of those who directly search for terms that your ideal client would type in but much like SEO the cost to play is steadily rising. YouTube is not too expensive, yet.
You can niche and scale which is great. There is a pretty steep learning curve though and that can get expensive quick!
- Twitter ads / LinkedIn ads - I lumped these together on purpose because there are similar ups and downs. Both have a fairly steep learning curve.
The cost to advertise on each is relatively high.
You can get in front of the right people in certain circumstances. Especially on LinkedIn if you’re trying to target a specific job title or owner of a company but right now the costs just don’t cut it.
I get your ideal client might be there but if you can get to those clients using a less expensive platform with more abilities to test, tweak and niche doesn’t that make more sense?
- And then there’s Facebook - now this deserves its own special section.
How Professional Service Providers Can Use Facebook Ads to Generate Ideal Clients Month After Month
I’m sure you've either been running Facebook ads or have thought about it. But you might be asking yourself if you missed the boat on Facebook ads given all the recent changes.
Well, recently I did a podcast on why now is the best time to start a Facebook Ad campaign. You can listen to it by CLICKING HERE.
The gist of it is that right now all the people who got into Facebook ads and didn’t really know how to use the platform to market are now losing their shirts because they aren’t using marketing strategy they’re just throwing out anything to see what sticks.
The best best part though is that Facebook ads are bar none still the best way to get in front your ideal clients for the lowest cost.
They meet all the criteria I outlined before and you can literally dive right in.
But DO NOT USE FACEBOOK ADS without a strategy!
Now you might be thinking… my clients aren’t on Facebook. Or mine are too savvy for Facebook or they won’t respond I’ve tried it. Or nobody ever responds to my posts.
Remember earlier where I was talking about mindset. Well now is the time to start practice mastering it.
First, in case you haven’t noticed, there are over 2 billion people on Facebook. That’s 2,000,000,000! Your clients are on Facebook. Thinking that they’re not is a self-limiting belief not reality.
They’re too smart, savvy or whatever to respond to Facebook ads?
Something I read a long time ago by arguably one of the best copywriters ever, he built a multiple 8 figure business, said “Even CEO’s use coupons at Burger King”
Marketing is effective for every group out there.
You just have to make sure you have the right message for them, give them the right path to follow and be consistent.
A client of mine sells financial services only to seven figure earners using Facebook. He does some other things as well but Facebook is his primary way to drive traffic.
Let’s look at the criteria I outlined before in relation to Facebook ads:
1. Learning curve - while Facebook ads do change they have a relatively easy interface. You’re able to get a basic understanding quickly and there are TONS of videos and support out there.
You can learn everything you or better yet your assistant needs to know about inputting an ad in just a couple of hours.
2. Spending curve - The barrier to entry is pretty low in terms of advertising.
The best part is you can test quickly and figure out what is working, what isn’t, tweak and change.
You do have to spend money. Don’t think you won’t but if you’re going to spend it you’ll want to be as strategic as possible. Facebook ads allows you be just that.
3. Niching - Facebook has recently taken away some of the ways you can target audiences but it is still extremely powerful.
You can narrow down your audience then let Facebook’s tracking system figure out who’s likely to respond.
4. Track, analyze and adjust - Many people stop here because of the perceived complexity.
The thing is if you can operate your smartphone you can easily do this.
Facebook actually does the tracking. You just look at the numbers.
Depending on the strategy you implement you just have to modify the part(s) that aren’t working. Easy peasy.
5. Testing - You can test so many different things so fast that it’ll make your head spin and leave your competition in the dust. Ad copy, images, video, headlines, audiences and on and on.
6. Automating - Once you get everything in place you now can automate your ads and turn them on and off as needed. How cool is that!
7. Scaling - So you’ve figured out what is working and now you want to really grow this thing.
With Facebook ads you can expand your ads vertically (increasing your budget) or horizontally (add additional audiences, groups, countries, markets, etc)
The options you have with Facebook is light years above other platforms.
Now let me dispel some myths:
- You need a lot of people to like your business page - really you barely even need a business page at all. While having people like your page is nice it is not necessary.
- You need to post content all the time - the amount of content you post can have an affect BUT posting content is not required and most of the time is unnecessary.
- Facebook ads don’t work for professional services - Almost all the professional service providers I see who run Facebook ads aren’t using a strategy. They’re trying to ‘get by’ without a clear plan which is ironic because they probably know better.
Many just throw an ad together because it’s cheap and easy to do and see if they can get it to work.
- Your clients aren’t on Facebook - Out of 2 billion people who are on Facebook I’m sure some of your clients are there.
I’m not gonna pretend like Facebook ads are the end all be all to paid advertising but they are pretty darn close until something new comes along.
What keeps most businesses from succeeding with Facebook ads has to do with their lack of a clear strategy and defining their ideal client.
So let’s talk turkey!
I’m gonna give you a couple of strategies that often work and you can test both of them.
The strategies I’m going to give you can work using all the ad options I listed not just Facebook.has a lot of facets to it so I’m going to break it down by some popular ad platforms.
#1 - ATC - Ad to a Call - In this scenario you simply run an add send them to a ‘landing page’ which explains what you do. On the landing page you give them a chance to enter their contact information but you also have your phone number displayed -
http://tennesseelaundry.com/
Here’s why a landing page is effective versus sending them to your website:
A - It is clean. The only purpose of the page is to get somebody to take action immediately. We don’t want them to browse your nice website and get lost in all the things that don’t really matter. These pages are hyper focused.
B - You’re giving them a clear call to action. They can enter their info, call or go away. In most cases you can actually make the number clickable.
#2 - Opt-In - Sometimes you might want to build the ‘know, like and trust’ factors as well as qualify the potential prospects first.
The way you can do this is offer a ‘free lead magnet’. This is usually something of high perceived value pertaining to the services you offer.
Such as a video, pdf, checklist, audio series, workbook, cheatsheet or something else your clients would want to know about.
Essentially you run an ad and when they click on it they come to a ‘landing page’ that gives them the opportunity to opt-in by entering their email address.
Once they’ve done this you direct them to a ‘thank you page’ which either invites them to schedule some time with you or tell them to check their email for the opt-in.
Either way at this point once they are on your email list you can nurture them by sending follow up email series.
Guess What...EMAIL STILL WORKS!
Don’t buy the hype that email doesn’t work. It absolutely does. But it only works if it is something your potential client is interested in or soon will be.
The other nice thing with Facebook is that once somebody clicks on the ad, even if they don’t opt-in you can actually show them another ad - Facebook can track who clicks for you.
Marketing takes a lot of touch points to build up trust. The more you’re in front of the potential client the better the chance you have to turn them into paying clients.
That process of showing them another ad is called re-targeting but that will be another lesson.
Ok, so I know there was a lot to this and that you’re probably wondering what to do next.
There’s a lot of ways you can go.
However, if you feel like Facebook ads are something you want to try then I have a suggestion.
What you need to know before you dive in to using Facebook ads
The first thing you need to do is learn how to run a Facebook ad campaign the right way.
There are tons of YouTube videos out there, Facebook has its own training and then there are paid courses.
The challenge with all three of those are that they aren’t usually updated. There is some really good stuff but much of it is old and no longer applicable.
The training from Facebook is fine but really doesn’t address strategy and is more of a one size fits all training and as we all know one size does not fit all when it comes to marketing.
The people who created the training haven’t actually used their own money to promote a business they own.
It is a different world when its your own money on the line, right?
I get emails from listeners of my Facebook Ads With a Twang podcast and they’ll ask if I have a course for beginners.
But before I created one I wanted to make sure it didn’t leave anyone hanging, wondering what to do or why I suggested certain ways of doing things.
Finally I came up with a full course with everything you need to know.
This course is not for advanced user, I have different stuff for that but this is for those that provide professional services and want to learn how to use Facebook ads to grow their business.
I’m not going to try and sell you on it right here but I just wanted you to know it is available and at a massive discount (by using the code ‘TWANG’ at checkout).
The cool thing this course is that I’m doing regular updates. So when Facebook makes a change you’ll know which ones matter, which ones don’t and what you need to do if anything.
The other thing is my course can be given to an assistant or somebody else on your staff to implement. It is crucial to leverage your time and if you can let somebody else handle this then you’ll definitely want to.
Making marketing as automated as possible is part of the beauty of Facebook ads. My course is a good start.
Here is the link if you want to check it out
and in the meantime if you have any questions about this article please feel free to email me:
fletch@onefocusmarketing.com
I really despise email so if I don’t get back to you right away then message me on Facebook.
Rooting for you,
Ben Blackmon
Chief Results Getter
