Econsultancy just released this article about What are the most effective business development methods or ways of getting new clients?
Econsultancy.com
Does this means that agency business is dying? I tell you how to find new clients with those channels:
This article is interesting but not for the reasons stated in the title.
They say that they’ve projected year-on-year growth. Companies are projecting that they’re going about stay the same or grow by maybe 10% to 20% but they are quite optimistic about that growth in general, which is cool.
But the chart that I really wanted to draw your attention to is this one:
How are agencies getting new clients? Recommendations or referrals
One of the most effective methods for getting new clients are recommendations.
And this is right in line with what we are seeing on our sales calls at X27 Marketing.
Thus, recommendations are the highest producing channels for agencies in order to get new clients. I’ve seen agencies even grow to 8 to 10 million dollars in revenue just from recommendations and referrals alone.
However, look at all those other ones and they say they’re the most effective but they are also the most used by agencies and I can tell you that from experience.
- Offline networking
- Speaking at events
- Email marketing
- SEO
- Online networking
- Your own agency events
- Content marketing / white papers
What I would do is draw a line right there, and your homework for quarter one and quarter two of next year is use these:
This is where the actual opportunity is, everybody’s doing the ones on top.
Don’t cut recommendations and referrals but cut everything else. SEO is only worth investing if you have 8 to 12 months a budget to do it.
Otherwise, cut all that other stuff out and go to a trade show where your target customer’s at.
Basically, if you’re selling the med-tech, go to a med-tech show, there’s a bunch in Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
Don’t go to Social Media Week or something where a lot of agencies are going to go, but tradeshows- good.
Online PR
More promotion, less writing on your own blog.
Paid Search
Specifically what I’ve seen work the best is remarketing here. Targeting the other 97% of the people that go to your agency website and never convert, that’s where the gold is.
Telemarketing
That’s cold calling and cold emailing. For instance, I just hired 2 sales people exclusively for cold calling and cold emailing all day, they’ve already booked meetings and it’s been five days. This is a very effective channel, I don’t know why most agencies aren’t using it.
Cold emailing
It is one of the cheapest and least understood marketing channels, on our FREE Sales Course for Mobile and Web Developers we will show you how to use cold emails to your advantage!
Offline PR
For example, getting on newspapers, getting on the radio. If you are like the typical agency, what you are doing is meeting most of your new clients in your city anyway, let’s say you’re in Chicago, go on the Chicago radio stations, local TV, everyone in Chicago is going to listen/see you there.
Editorial and third-party websites are basically guest blogging. Event sponsorship, that’s another one that’s fairly cheap to do.
You should read: How to Directly Get New Clients Using Blog Posts
Business directories like Clutch, this is at 3% even though the people that I know at the top of the first page of Clutch are getting hundreds and hundreds of leads a month.
Print advertising
Nobody’s doing print advertising for mobile app development, why not you?
Online display advertising
It is also similar to PPC for new clients. I found that you need to put a very big budget in to get this to work, like $10,000 to $20,000 a month, but if you have it, go for it.
IP lookup tools
Using digital tools, why not? IP lookup tools will basically show you who’s visiting your website and I found that these actually work if you get your salespeople to cold email! This has to be in conjunction with a telemarketing program or else it’s not going to work at all.
In conclusion, If you’re doing any of these, congrats!
Which other ones can you spin up and test?
If you’re doing the top ones and they’re not working, seems about time to cut one of them, so take those resources and put them towards the rest.
They say they’re the ‘least effective’ but are actually the less utilized channels.
Further information:
- The 7 Best Social Media Channels for Business Marketing
- 4 Tips for Selling to American Clients As A Foreign Company
- How we Send Cold Emails to Get Clients: Step y Step Tutorial with Templates
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