Any successful new business strategy starts with knowing who your target audience is. As an agency you’ve likely already homed in on your unique value proposition and are ready to start engaging with prospective clients.
A critical piece many agency new business professionals miss out on is making sure they have a broad enough target audience to sell and market to. We find that [twittee tweet=”Fuel your #marketing and #sales efforts with a targeted AND substantial audience.  via @AgencySquared” content=”the key to fueling your marketing and sales efforts is an effective, targeted AND substantial audience.” ]  

When working with our clients, we’re often asked, “How many prospect records do I need?” To get the most from your outreach, we recommend a minimum of 3,000 with the goal of having 5,000 that you can continuously engage with.
Those numbers might seem like a lot but keep in mind there are tools to help you build out your prospecting database. In fact, many of your agency peers are likely using one. According to the 2016 Mirren/RSW Mirren New Business Tools Report, 9% more agency executives are investing in list building tools (compared to 2014) to help grow their new business. Our clients typically use Winmo, however there are other resources like Hoovers, Data.com and LinkedIn to help you create hyper-targeted data sets.

The importance of audience segmentation.

As you continue to grow your prospecting audience, segmenting the data into relevant batches is very important. We often segment prospects into these three groups to help us prioritize outreach and customize content:

1) Right to Win
Right to Win clients are those that are a perfect fit for our solutions. We set parameters for what a perfect client is for our agency: what issues they have, where they are and what they specialize in. If they fit those criteria, then they HAVE to be working with us.

2) Great Fit
This will be your biggest group of prospects. They have a problem we can solve, but may fall outside our parameters on a few criteria here or there. Maybe they are a bit outside of our typical region, or they’re an industry we do not normally operate within. They still have a problem we can solve however, and that means we want to talk to them.

3) Stretch
This is may be the smallest group, as they are more of ‘passion projects’ from the team – or the ‘great white whales’ that would be incredible to land. They are probably not worth committing the majority of your new business time to chasing, but landing one could make a huge difference in morale or revenue
Keep in mind this is just one way to segment your data. Every agency has a different strategy, and how you go about slicing your sales intelligence might be very different. Some find that the easiest way to group prospects is simply by industry vertical, while others choose to base their groupings off of job titles. Taking the time to think through who you want to be working with, and more importantly, what your prospects care about, will help you determine just how your agency should be dividing your prospect target list.

Yes – broadening your audience might seem like a lot of extra work, but the payoff is well worth it. By getting your message in front of more prospects that have a need for your services, you’re more likely entice qualified conversations with the brands you want to do business with.
Go ahead, the odds are in your favor.

The most effective new business processes turn prospects into leads by educating those prospects about how your products and services can solve their specific problems.

But when creating a proactive new business program, many teams struggle to know where to begin. We always point to these three areas to start your plan of attack: Audience, Content and Execution.

Audience

The first and most important step you should take when deciding how to begin your proactive outreach to prospects is to determine who your audience is. You need to know who your target audience is so you ask the right questions – who, why and what – to help narrow who you are marketing to.  You must clearly define who your “right to win” clients are. If your team is perfectly positioned to provide the best service possible to a prospect in your niche, that’s a right to win client, and they should be working with you.

After you create your right to win list, you can begin including additional targets you see as great fits, which are a slight reach from your perfect right to win group. Agencies will often limit themselves by “fishing in too small of a pond,” or creating lists of prospects that exclude too many winnable clients. Create a realistic and appropriately sized group of contacts to attack with your approach. A great way to start thinking about Audience is to ask the following questions:

• In what areas is the agency most profitable?
• Who are you talking to now?
• What kind of business do you walk away from?
• What brands should be clients?
• What areas are most interesting to the team? What is the team passionate about?

By asking these questions, you’ll be able to determine who your audience is in a very specific, lead-driven way.

Content

Content drives just about every aspect of what we do in our lives—professionally and personally. In new business, you need to provide content that your new, specifically targeted audience wants to consume and share online. When getting started with your content strategy, start slow and don’t overextend yourself.

We’ve found that when teams commit to too much, too soon, one of two things happens: a) they burn out quickly on the process and it becomes a chore creating unique, branded content or; b) they begin building too much around a single whitepaper/eBook. Long-form content can be beneficial to your content strategy, but be careful not to let it consume hours of labor or hinder your ability to pivot across multiple audience groups.  

When deciding what content should live on your editorial calendar, ask yourself questions like:

• Why does your agency exist? (less about what and how)
• What’s the one thing you do better than anyone else?
• What are the benefits of working with your agency?
• What type of work is outside of your scope? (this will help you drive more qualified conversations)
• What business problems do you solve for the identified prospect categories?

Content plays a key role in advancing your new business strategy, and increasing your prospects both within your targeted audience and outside of it. 

Execution

We all dream big about winning new business, but you can’t approach that dream in an ad hoc manner. You need to have a plan set in place that is consistently repeatable, with very defined goals, measurements and activities. Your plan should involve everyone in the new business process—from Sales and Marketing to Management. At Agency Squared, our goal is to always set a process in place that can be seamlessly transferred when changes to the team take place. During the execution phase, these are important questions you should ask:

• Who from the in-house team will be fulfilling each role in the sales/marketing process?
• What technologies do we currently have in place?
• How do we want to approach new prospects?
• How have we approached prospects in the past? What has worked best?
• Who has typically been the most receptive to our messaging?

A critical part of execution is how you leverage the content you’ve created, and the process your sales and marketing team uses that content to drive 1-1 sales conversations. By using your content to engage more often with prospects, you’ll see more opportunities to win clients.

Need help identifying a strategic plan of attack for winning new business? Contact us to learn more about how A2 implements successful new business processes for agencies across North America.

Keeping your business top-of-mind to current and prospective clients is a very repetitive job, but with marketing automation, much of the repetitive nature of the business can be replaced by software.

While it is true that marketing automation is extremely helpful and makes the job easier, it isn’t going to replace the need for human outreach, nor will it miraculously take the place of marketing specialists.  People will still need to generate leads and maintain prospecting lists.  Purchasing lists of contacts might seem like a great idea at the time, but simply purchasing cold lists and sending them one-size-fits-all mailings or emails, is likely not going to produce much revenue, let alone long-term revenue.  Automation will not and cannot take the place of cultivating relationships with potential clients.

Becoming too dependent on marketing automation can actually kill your business in the long run, so the key to being successful with marketing automation is to understand its purpose fully and utilize its tools in an intelligent, efficient way.  

Marketing automation was designed to streamline lead generation, lead scoring and lead nurturing across a customer’s lifecycle. It is a huge part of being able to create a repeatable process that keeps business development efforts running regardless of what’s going on within the agency.

So, how does this automation ensure that activity is constant within your business development process? Here’s a look at what you can expect from a successful marketing automation program:

• Capturing relevant data completed from online forms while compiling them into its own list
• Creating a variety of lists based upon your specified demographics and prospective profiles
• Nurturing your leads that have been to your website and have shown interest in your services or products
• Extending customer relationships and engagement throughout the cycle

Marketing automation can be highly successful if you use it properly.  Whether you are already generating quality leads and have a solid procedure in place to follow up with them, or your pipeline is currently dry, marketing automation could be helpful for you.  

It is essential to remember that automation marketing, just like any other tool you’d use for your business, is not a cure-all solution.  Additionally, you can’t implement it and forget it.  In order for the automation to be effective it needs to be maintained, monitored, and evaluated periodically to determine it’s effectiveness and if your business is getting an acceptable return on the investment.

Ready to start driving more qualified leads for your business? Contact us for a free demonstration or call us at 404-564-2429.

 

Hunting for scalable email marketing solutions for your agency can be a daunting task, especially when you have limited time and resources to work with. Fortunately, there are a number of budget-friendly and free tools that can effectively solve your agency’s business development problems right now. 

If you have been struggling to find the right tool for your team, here are our recommendations on the best free and low cost email marketing tools for growing agencies.

Cyfe

In the interest of efficiency, check out Cyfe to track data and analytics from various sources. The Forever Free Plan can solve many of your issues. 

Cyte is a convenient all-in-one business dashboard solution that gives you the ability to bring your website and/or blog analytics, SEO metrics, and social media analytics, into one shared and easy-to-read dashboard. It can help you analyze data covering year-to-date revenue from Salesforce, Google Analytics website visitor locations, keyword rankings and funnel paths, Twitter tweets, and email marketing analytics from MailChimp. We know you are interested in email marketing, but you get all the other information as well. Pretty cool!

MailChimp

If you have less than 2,000 email contacts, you should explore MailChimp’s Forever Free Plan. The plan doesn’t expire, and you can send up to 12,000 emails a month using the majority of their tools.

VerticalResponse 

VerticalResponse is a great tool because it enables you to send up to 4,000 emails a month, create unlimited sign up forms, a connection to one Facebook and one Twitter account, and test out their auto-responder tool for free.  

Thunderbird From Mozilla

Thunderbird is a dynamic free application developed by Mozilla, and it may be just what you need. This email application is easy to set up, easy to customize, and it’s loaded with fantastic features.  

It combines privacy, speed, and the very latest technology. Thunderbird also includes many innovative extra features including mail redirect.

99design

There is a new email design category from 99design. It’s a perfect source whether you’re running a SMB or a larger firm. Remember several years ago when the buzz was that email was going to disappear? Well, not happening. 

With 99design, the demand for services and free templates is growing. They also offer free design consultation.