Send it! The Simplicity of Outreach
The Client
Cameron, the owner of a website-building agency, came to us with a problem snagging new clients. His websites are stellar and built custom from the ground up relatively inexpensively and he can churn them out on a short timeline. But, with a sea of different strategies for marketing and client-acquisition plastered all over social media, he felt like he needed to do everything, everywhere, all at once with a team of sales people, partnerships, social media management, and more. Getting started with a formal customer acquisition process as a service business can feel daunting, and it can be easy for your mind to sink amidst the many different platforms and strategies available.
The Problem
Cameron's problem was relatively simple. He was biting off more strategies than he could chew and causing himself undue stress to get started with his client acquisition process.
The Answer
Whenever you're critically overwhelmed, the answer is to simplify. One-channel, one offer, one type of customer. For service businesses, that's almost always through outreach at first. It can be in your network if you have one that is vast, or it can be through a simple system that you use to find, validate, and communicate your offer to people who need your services.
Basic Acquisition Process | |
|---|---|
Define a Customer Segment | Identify a specific group of customers with unique needs. |
Define an Offer | Create a compelling service for the customer type. |
Generate a Batch of Leads | Compile leads from your network or scrape a list of leads. |
Validate the Leads | Assess the quality, suitability, and needs of each lead. |
Reach out to the Leads | Design a message and engage with validated leads to convert them into customers. |
Our Solution
Cameron and I sat down to set up a lead scraper and simple CRM with just a few fields to indicate whether he could visually tell that companies of a single type would gain ROI from his services based on his ability to assess the effectiveness of a homepage. Then, all he had to do was send the mostly templated email that we helped him write. He reported back to us with a 100% open rate after a week.
Author's Note
Marketing doesn't have to be as difficult as many of us make it out to be. Often times we get caught up in the flashy strategies and urgency on social media and try to jump past step one. But many times, its best to slow down and tackle strategies methodically, one-by-one.
Matthew A. Wren
Chief Consultant