Introduction

By now you have learned a lot about building your agency, and the next steps are how to get clients to sign the contract, so you can start the business and make money. During this lecture, we will learn lots of strategies that will help you accomplish this task.

The main 4 steps to get clients for your agency

In this chapter, we have 4 main steps that you can follow to sign a new client for your agency. Some of these steps are also applicable to both online and local clients.

• Step 1: Pre-contact
• Step 2: Contact potential client
• Step 3: Present them
• Step 4: Sign deal

By now you must have a list of companies that can become your client, and now it is time to follow the instructions and contact them.

What important steps you have to take before contacting a potential client

So before you present them you must be ready to be able to convince them to sign the deal with you. There are some general tips that will help you when you want to present which are:

• You must look like a company, create PDFs about your agency
• Prepare offers sheet with what they include and for what type of businesses they are

Now, this step is very important, you need to prepare something to get your foot in the door. You must create an audit for their business and a free gift (something they normally have to pay)

Audit:

Create an audit about their business, find their weaknesses and how they can make more money if it is fixed. As we go along you will get better at digital marketing and by looking at any business for several hours you can find a lot of weak spots they have.

• Analyze their website
  • Look through it and find weak spots
  • Use tools like seoptimer.com
• Analyze their Facebook
  • Use likealyzer
• Analyze other platforms
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • Pinterest
  • Snapchat

Check the list below for a business for their audit:

Facebook

• Do they have a good cover photo? (not too busy, nice design, well-branded)
• Do they have a complete About Section with the website listed?
• Are they posting 1x per day at minimum?
• Are they posting helpful content?
  • Ninja tip – add some funny content
• Do they have Spam or unanswered posts?
• Variety of content – images, links, videos, promotional content
• Are they advertising on Facebook?
• Are people engaged with them?
• Are they responding and on top of their FB reviews?

Google for Business

• Have they claimed their Google for Business listing?
• Is the cover art branded and sized correctly?
• Is Google Maps Set up correctly?
• Are they listed correctly? (open hours, description, keywords, )
• Are they on top of their reviews?

Instagram

• Do they have a branded profile picture?
• Is their website listed in their profile?
• Are they using keywords and local hashtags?
• Are they posting entertaining or interesting content?
• Are they using local Hashtags in their posts?
• Are they talking to others? Are people engaged with them?

Twitter

• Is their website listed in their profile?
• Are they tweeting 5x per day minimum? (including retweeting and tweeting others)
• Are they tweeting relevant content?
• Are they using Hashtags
• Are they talking to others?
• Do they have Twitter Lists?
• Are people engaged with them (retweeting or replying)?

Pinterest

• Do they have a Business account with a verified website?
• Do they have at least 5 boards with 5 Pins?
• Are they using good keywords in Board titles?
• Are they regularly pinning?
• Are they using Hashtags?

Linkedin

• Do they have a good Professional LinkedIn business page?
• Do they have a robust Summary section with keywords and media?
• Are they posting 1x/week or more?
  • you’ll have to ask
• How many followers do they have?
• Are their services updated?
• Do they any interaction with their update’s and posts?

YouTube

• Do they have a nice cover photo?
• Is their website listed?
• Do they have a Video trailer?
• Are they posting regularly?
• Are they using Keywords in their profile and their videos?
• Do they have Playlists?
• Have they connected their other social accounts in their bio?

How your audit should look like:

SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT

Business Name: ____________________ Date: ______________
Prepared by: _____________________

FACEBOOK

Observations:

• Cover art is distorted, doesn’t properly position the restaurant. It’s confusing what
  the objective is, who’s the target market and is this imagery doing a good job of
  targeting them?
• Profile photo/icon isn’t clear in feeds or on mobile devices.
• Posting infrequently – I’ve noticed only 2 posts a week.
• Looks like you are boosting some posts to get more likes and awareness – this is
  good, but limits how effective you can be with your targeted advertising campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Post minimum of 1 time per day. Ideally at least 5 times a week. Don’t forget
  weekends, the most engagement happens on the weekends, particularly
  Saturdays.
• Don’t just boost posts – make sure to use FB ad manager to manage your ads,
  and we recommend advanced targeting campaigns so you don’t waste your
  advertising dollars.

Free gift:

The gift can be anything useful for that business which they normally has to pay for it. For example you can create a video logo for them and it is very easy. There are many platforms which do this. There is a platform that from time to time I use it and it is:

videohive.net

Set the kickoff meeting

During the Close: Once you close a client, they’ve said yes and you’re ready to go, here are the steps to get them started:

• Have them sign your agreement and give you their credit card information to have on file
• Explain to them how the billing will work
  • For services
  • For advertising expenses
• Set a time for a 60-minute kickoff meeting on each of your calendars.
• Let them know you’ll email them a client profile kickoff form so they can begin filling it out prior to you meeting with them, and that this document will be what you’ll review in the meeting.

Between the close and the kickoff meeting:

• Email them the client kickoff form link so they can fill it out online.
  • Create this form on Google Forms.
  • https://docs.google.com/forms/
  • See example at https://goo.gl/forms/kGvwRXoZ96zPvrpr2

During the kickoff meeting:

• Review the form questions, make sure you have everything you need
  • 1- an understanding of their business
  • 2- logins and access to everything you need access to.
• Discuss how you’ll collaborate online.
  • Set up online collaboration using a collaboration tool such as Basecamp, Asana, Trello or simply use Google Drive.
• Communication: Decide on how often you’ll meet in person or on the phone.

Manage Client Expectations

• Discuss what “success” looks like.
• Reporting (1-2 times per month recommended)
  • FB insights
  • Hootsuite
  • Instagram: http://simplymeasured.com/freebies/instagram-analytics

Social Media Management tools:

• Hootsuite
• Sprout Social
• Buffer

How to Acquire big clients

You should know that a big company has its own marketing department. Below you see some specific instructions to follow.

• Be very specific with the problem they have and what you will do for them
  • why they need you:
    • They need something done fast
    • They need a skilled marketer for a specific topic, like Snapchat

• Listen to what they exactly need and repeat it
  • Company: We have a product launch and we need someone for Snapshot
  • Your proposal: I am an expert in Snapchat and I deliver this in 15 days

• How to find them
  • Contact marketing VP or community management VP on LinkedIn

• How to contact them
  • Never say: Hi I have a question
  • You are an expert, you will help them in this goal, offer some tips that will help them for free
  • I also have another idea for your business
  • Can we talk for 10 min over the phone?