Have a steady stream of leads but trouble finding good clients? If you’re struggling to win RFPs, have clients with unreasonable expectations, or clients who are unwilling to pay you what you’re worth, you might have a lead generation problem.
Let’s dive into four ways to find amazing clients for your agency.
Define Your Best Client
You may whip out buyer personas for your clients – but are you using them for your agency? Make sure you know who you’re chasing so you can bring the right client in the door.
Start by looking at your favorite clients. What do they have in common? Maybe it’s the type of projects you’re working on for them, the client’s size or that they generate the most revenue for your agency. Use these details to flesh out what an ideal client looks like so you can be intentional about finding more clients just like them.
Need a bit of inspiration? Our Buyer Persona Workbook can help you identify your ideal client in a jiffy.
Look Into Your Lead Sources
Now that you know who you want to attract, you can get better at driving quality leads for your agency. Take an audit of all of your digital channels to make sure your marketing efforts sync up with your target client.
Organic Traffic: Are you hitting the topics that resonate with the type of clients you want? Revisit your website and blog and make sure your content is in line with your target client. Maybe you have the bases covered on broad, top-of-funnel topics, but need to bolster your content strategy with content that solves unique problems your target clients are facing.
Online Advertising: The money you put into your digital advertising efforts today won’t be there tomorrow. Once it’s spent on acquiring a lead, it’s spent. So don’t spend on bad leads that won’t convert – or that will be a headache for your agency. If you’re having a hard time finding good clients through paid channels, try adjusting your targeting criteria. Or, even jump to a new channel if your current paid mix isn’t getting the job done.
Social Media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be valuable tools when attracting clients – but not if you’re spending time in all of the wrong places.
Browse through your followers. Are you attracting businesses in your target niche? Or just other like-minded agencies?
Take an inventory of the groups you participate in. If engagement is high, but the types of clients you want to work with just aren’t there, consider adjusting your strategy or even putting your time and energy into a different social group or platform.
Social Ads: Once you’ve optimized your followers and groups for quality leads, you can be even more successful at leveraging the power of social ads to target your ideal client. Targeting rules can target your followers and tap into “look-a-like” audiences that match the same criteria, expanding your reach and driving higher quality leads to your agency.
Share Your Rates
Tired of getting cheap clients that don’t want to pay you what you’re worth? You might want to experiment with sharing your rates on your website. This way, you can weed out leads who aren’t really serious about paying you market price.
You can even test different pricing structures to see what resonates with your ideal client. For instance, maybe you can make your service offering more attractive by packaging services and technology together. Or, perhaps add-on services can increase customer lifetime value for every client you sign.
Set up a Qualification Process
Not every lead is going to be your ideal client. Even as you tighten up your channels to bring in better leads for your agency, you still don’t want to spend a lot of time chasing clients who aren’t going to be a good fit.
Come up with a few qualifying questions to help you determine if a lead will be a good client before you go through the work of meeting with them and designing a proposal.
Marketing automation software can help you set the process into place. From your lead intake form, you can easily set up campaigns and workflows to deliver ideal clients to your desk, while nurturing leads who may not be quite ready for your process, and gently letting down those who just aren’t a good fit.
There’s nothing more frustrating than working with difficult clients who don’t value your agency or who weren’t a match to begin with. So carve out some time to nail down your radical buyer, optimize your lead channels, experiment with pricing and automate lead qualification so you can work with the clients and projects you love most. Your team and your bottom line with thank you later.