How to Get Accelerated Growth in Your Digital Marketing Agency | Interview with Roofer Marketers

This is the seven figure agency podcast discover the strategies and techniques to grow a highly successful and profitable digital marketing agency with your host, Josh Nelson. All right. Well, welcome. Thank you for joining us on today’s special session of the agency success podcast we are spotlighting Jim and Brian from roofer marketers. I’m so tempted to say roofing marketers, but roofer marketers, these guys have crushed it over the last couple of years. They were our 2019 fastest growing agency of the year, we’ve kind of stacked up all our members are the ones that had the most, you know, new client growth, most recurring revenue growth over a 12 month span. And these guys have just crushed it. So Jim and Brian, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us today.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah. Thanks, Josh.

So let’s just start from a high level, kind of tell us a little bit about your background. You guys tell us a little bit about your agency and where you’re at now. In terms of monthly recurring, so people get a sense of what you guys are up to.

Yeah, so I guess Brian and I met a few years back, I was doing some paper lead, he had it, he had an agency. And, and we have joined a mastermind together. And, and so we spent a lot of money to meet each other. That was, if that’s an easy way to put it. And and we we were kind of noticed, first of all, we noticed that we’re both in the Minneapolis area. And then secondly, we noticed that we were, we were a couple of the only people that were actually implementing the things that were that were going on there. So so we decided to combine forces on a couple of projects that led to, to working together on on a kind of on an agency essentially, but we had a kind of a paper lead model early on, that didn’t last long. And then and then that kind of evolved in developed into roofer marketers. So

and the Yeah.

So so you guys want to roofer marketers on your business partnership kind of formed through through a mastermind. Cut out where are you guys at how many clients how much recurring revenue kind of give us the lay of the land and that front?

We are at

monthly recurring. So we had a couple of people pause during the, during the COVID crisis. So we we, we lost about temper seven 8% there, but right now we are at we’re at about 50 I think about 56 monthly recurring 20. I think it’s like 28 clients 29 clients.

Fantastic. It sounds about right. That’s great. And how long have you guys been at the specific niche focused agency at this point?

It’s it’s kind of like so I think it was all Was it? I think we got our first client in October of 2018. Yep. But we were kind of just like fiddling around at that point trying to figure out what to do. weren’t so sure if we were going the full roofing niche or not, I think it was really when I think when I came down to the seven figure agency intensive, I think it was February. That’s really when we kind of went 100% in. So spend the 15 months probably, I would say about, right, Jim?

Yeah, about that. And then, you know, we were kind of working on it for a couple of months before that. We were funnel hacking Josh and yeah, writing, writing our book to emulate what he did and things like that. So

that’s awesome. Look, I mean, congratulations in a little little bit more than a year, over 50,000 a month in recurring and growing on a pretty consistent basis. You guys have done an excellent job. So you mentioned where we started, just how did we start working together just just so that everyone knows like what was what was The genesis of us working together here at seven figure agency.

We did like I said, we were kind of funnel hacking, right? So we were looking at at who was doing a niche model really well and we came across came across plumber SEO and and from there that, you know, we started kind of looking at the things that you were doing and looking at other other people that were doing niche focused agencies. And then through one of the things that were had purchased or downloaded from you, we got you know, Brian got on your list, right? And then and then he was like, man, I think I’m gonna fly down to Florida for this event. Right now he could kind of tell you the story of what it went like down at the event.

And I think you could come that time it’s still going on. So

yeah, it was really like

I’ll go check it out. Yeah.

Well, long story short, the for the first mastermind we were in didn’t. There’s a lot of stuff that went on with it. That was not great. So we kind of lost trust in the whole mastermind. process so you know flying down to Florida was like yeah we’ll see what it’s about but I wasn’t expecting much but honestly I mean just seeing you know Josh you running a really great agency yourself and just giving it all on a platter everyone was kind of a big eye opener for me so came running back and I was like we got to go all in on this pretty much

nice that’s awesome see you kind of having experience of like not best scenario to kind of getting what you needed. What were the main issues problems ideas you were looking to solve for? When we started working together like when you guys after that first you know intensive anyone? Okay, this sounds great. What were the main main challenges or hurdles you were looking to solve for?

I think what we saw first was the kind of the ability to to execute what we wanted to do faster. And that’s what that’s really what it what what was solve for. Enjoy. Winning the seven figure agency we saw the format of it, the content that was that was provided the, you know, kind of, you know, plug and play everything. Right. So that was the thing that was like, because we had written our book actually for, for example, we wrote our book before joining the seven figure agency. We published our book before joining the seven figure agency. And then we got access and I logged in the first time and there’s the book. Right like so it really you know, beta, you know, kind of focused in on man, we just need to implement and execute the next thing and in between, you know, the coaching sessions with you and Jeff, and the the content that’s, you know, that’s in the in the in the members area, that’s what we’ve been able to do is just execute, execute the next thing.

Nice and I had a legacy agency before and to be honest, I mean, that’s, you know, when you got clients in every different type of niche and get kind of burned out was the niche niching down was definitely the way to go. We both knew that.

Yeah. Hundred percent. So one question a lot of people always have when we’re talking about agencies and agency growth is how did you choose the niche? How did you guys land on on roofing companies?

I get the pay per lead that I was doing was in roofing that we were kind of partnering on and then and Brian had a Brian can tell you he had a legacy client in roofing.

Yeah, we I had a legacy client that we’re doing really well with those knew them really well. And that’s kind of just decided to take them and run with it.

God, if you had you had already kind of gone down that path. You had a little bit of success under your balance, like okay, this seems like a good place to

focus and had a case study too. So that was a good starting point for sure.

Nice. And how did you guys transition from paper lead where you’re just basically getting whatever it is if 50 $75 per lead to it. retainer based model where you’re getting a consistent monthly fee. How did you guys make that that pivot?

Well, we learned that pay per lead was has its own, you know, kind of hassles there. Right? Your a lot of times you don’t you’re not dealing with the right client, you know that you talked about a lot of times in the in the in the seven figure agency about getting to the right clients, you know, ones that are actually doing business gonna grow long term. A lot of the people that buy leads are really small, you know, hit or miss they’re not very there’s a lot of arguing over if it was a quality lead or not, you know, and things like that. So, I mean, it wasn’t a hard transition. And with Brian having his agency on a reef with clients on a retainer model he, you know, he’s very familiar with, you know, with that model also.

Got it. So how did you get the first couple of clients on an actual retainer? Like, what was the approach that worked for you guys? To go from zero to let’s just call it five active retainer based clients in your niche.

So the first clients were done in through through cold email list, and what is what is now known as the hills Burg method. But it was essentially a video audit strategy where we were reaching out to companies in specific areas, asking them if they wanted to, you know, kind of for a video audit if they wanted to be one of our exclusive, you know, kind of companies in that area. And that’s, that’s how we got that. That’s how we got our first four. And then, and then from there, it was it was seven, you know, executing through the seven figure agency, but by then I think by the time we had our first four, we started Brian had the site ranking pretty well. And so we started getting some inbound leads from through SEO also

nice. It is fun to switch from having to chase everything down to having some clients come to you to write to me it’s kind of a beautiful transition. Absolutely. Yeah, so I guess just looking back right from from a start up to over 50,000 a month in recurring revenue, what would you say would be like the top three things that you’ve implemented from the seven figure agency that helped to move you forward and kind of helped you get that kind of momentum?

Big one was webinars. I think once we started doing that, we really started getting Well, Jim would know better than I did with the sales stuff, but just as a clarification, Jim does sales in our agency. I handle everything on the fulfillment side. Yeah, it’s been that’s that’s just for clarification, but yeah, webinars. What else Jim?

Really, we did. We kind of started off

from the process side when we came in, right so hot lead follow up system starting to build out some systems on the fulfillment side, from a prospecting thing, aspect webinars was definitely the first one that That started going for us. We had the cheat sheet running for a while we have, you know, our book funnel prior to even joining the seven figure agency. We and then it was joining the Industry Association creating the dream 100 and really focusing on marketing to that Industry Association to members of the energy industry association. And then from there, it was really building authority through our social media marketing. The podcast was another one that that kind of the next thing that we did that really started giving us some great authority. And the case study, of course, we had the case study running. So we essentially what we did is we just took the next thing, hey, what’s the next thing to do? Let’s execute, implement, implement an execute on it, implement and execute on it. None of them are perfect. I found I found an email from you, Josh. to people who left who abandon our book funnel cart. So you were you were sending people, you know, an abandoned cart email and our book funnel. I don’t know how you did that, but you know it, you know, we forgot to find and replace Josh maybe. So but that’s what we did. And that was the that’s really what what built the momentum that we had so quickly was just the the, okay, we have the you know, we have that the webinar started, okay, what do we do next? You know, Industry Association, what do we do next? Right and that was that that’s kind of how we’ve continued to do things. So

I’m going to share my screen real quick so you guys can kind of show like kind of talk through some this because I think you’d have done an exceptional job implementing

right

all of it right from the from the hills Burg method stuff early on to really choosing the niche, putting the branding in place, positioning yourselves as the go to experts, being personality centric, where you guys are on camera, it’s front center, that you’re the ones in charge. Can you talk about how you made the transition from You know, direct prospecting, which a lot of us do. And some of us like even seven figure agency members that are in the on ramp. It’s like, Okay, I gotta reach out, I gotta send these videos, I got to try and get clients through that mechanism to, to doing webinars and advertising and promoting webinars and kind of positioning yourself as the experts. Can you talk a little bit about how you made that transition?

Yeah, so for me, it wasn’t really a transition, I learned. Probably, in the mid 2000s, I did a lot of public speaking and trainings and things like that or night, I learned very quickly that the person in front of the room is the expert. And that, that, that, that carries over into, you know, into social media into, you know, the way that you put yourself out there through through like, you can see just through the videos that we did on the website and things like that, so and then I have a background in helping, you know, helping clients with video and things like that too. So and it’s never been never shy away from the camera. I actually failed public speaking three times in college, I finally passed it on the fourth one. So it takes a while, right? So it was a hard learned skill. It is it was, you know, it’s one of those things that difficult and yet you’re always critiquing yourself and, you know, my wife tells me, I’ll edit some of our videos with where I’m talking. And she’s like, how do you do that? How do you edit your yourself? Right? And so, but but that’s what it is, it’s being the, the person in front of the room is the expert. Right? And so that’s where, you know, we wanted to make sure that we were on camera speaking to our clients, just like and one of the things that we do is we try to execute everything that we are, you know, advising our clients to do so. We’re telling our clients, they should rank, you know, rank their website through SEO. We’re doing that right. We’re running paid advertising work. doing social media marketing all of the things that we’re telling our clients to do. We want to be executing ourselves and leading from the front so that that’s kind of how that came together Brian can speak to more about how he put the branding in the in the website and things together because he did an amazing job on that. I can’t take any credit there. The guy has a he has a very special skill set.

Yeah, totally not so much through I mean, looks wonderful. I mean,

I I’m not a big I’m not into like design or branding. It’s more SEO is my background. So I’m not into designer

branding. I don’t do a good job of that at all.

I felt like the bright red color stood out so we use that

But yeah, I mean in the one thing I think we didn’t mention is that you know, over time, and this was I’m put this site together overnight, it took you know, a lot of time, months and months but and I don’t have Jim mentioned this, but you know, all those things we’ve been doing webinars, you know, case studies, Facebook ads, like at a certain point, it’s like a slow ramp up, and then you kind of hit this momentum shift in terms of people seeing you as the expert. And I think we kind of hit that not too long ago. But it definitely took some time. You know, from the beginning standpoint,

that’s a great point, because there was a period of time where it felt like you guys were doing the webinars, and you were doing the podcast episodes, and you’re creating the content. But it was it was all happening underneath the surface, and it wasn’t materializing into sales. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I think it I mean, it just takes time right now, these aren’t. These aren’t short term marketing strategies, right. SEO is not a short term marketing strategy. You know, building authority is not a short term thing. You don’t just show up and become an authority overnight, right. So you have to put the work in behind that. But but that work will always pay off down the road and in through through That authority building. That’s really what happened with us. And we really, I think, as I mentioned, we really started getting kind of fine feeling that the beginning of that after we started marketing directly to the industry association people, I think that’s where that’s where we started. And it was because we were, we were, we were, we were planning our, our efforts at the right audience. And that was a, that was a big thing. So, you know, we essentially we were, we were forcing ourselves to be on the stage in front of the right audience, if you want to think about it that way. So, you know, if, you know, that was one of the things that helped do it, and then it was just it’s the consistency of effort, just non stop continuously doing doing it. And, you know, I see people I saw people in the in the seven figure agency a few times. You know, one of the I guess, more recently, I think it was like, comments about, you know, maybe well, I sent you know, 40 emails through the hills Burg method. No one responded or I did. You know, I, you know, I did. I’ve done you know, I did my first webinar and I only got two people to show up. Right? It’s so it’s like, Yeah, you did. You got two people to show up. That’s how we thought about it right. We got two people to show up. And I mean, we still on our webinars, we, you know, we were only getting about 10 you know, about 10 people live on the webinar about 40 registrations about 10 live for since kind of probably late August. Before that, we might have got, you know, two I think we did we actually did a webinar with no attendees. Remember that one

was a good one.

That was a good one right? webinar with no attendees, and we don’t care, right, because now we get to have that content that goes on our YouTube channel. It’s, you know, we can use it, you know, through you know, through through everything else. And, and then you know, what, when the COVID hit, and we did COVID-19 webinar, that’s when our list really responded. And that was the first time I had I mean, I had like, 53 people live on the webinar for that. And now I was blown away. That was, that was amazing to me. So I don’t, Mike our goal, one of our goals, when we joined the industry association was to was to try to get everyone in that association to know who we are. Mm hmm. It wasn’t to sell to X amount of roofing contractors. I mean, we have our sales goals, of course, but But we, you know, it’s all about that, you know, the, I just wanted him to know who we are. And now that was kind of the what we you know, kind of how we did that. So, sorry, yeah, you can see here some of the some of the content on the on the YouTube channel, on the podcast episodes, the webinars, things like that.

Yeah. So I think you know, if you were to take this in sequence, chosen, he started doing some cold outreach, join the Association, which gave you a good list, not a garbage list, but a good list of prospects. And then you were just really aggressive in your outreach to that list with value added content, get them the book, invite them to the webinars, start planting those seeds. And it started to result in a combination of of opportunity coming at you not from one channel, but from lots of different channels. For sure,

exactly. That’s it. There’s no there’s a there’s if you remember that sales trainer, but he was he’s an older gentleman, Jim Rohn. He passed away now. Remember him?

Yeah,

there’s one kind of quote from him that always sticks in my mind. And that’s to have to have a consistent business. You need five, you need five to seven, five to seven lead sources, right. So if you’re only focusing on Hey, well, I’m doing these webinars and nothing’s working. Well, you only have one lead source there. So you’re Missing Out, right? So you have to get to five to seven lead sources, right ranking your website doing, you know, your case, you know, running Facebook ads to a case study, doing a podcast, you know marketing to an industry to your industry association doing your webinars. So each of these things, and once you have that, that concept to me was as stuck with me. And I always think of that when you know, when executing a business executing a new business,

multiple sources of inbound opportunities. That’s right, I think you guys have executed as well as anybody in the group and becoming omnipresent in the in the industry, right? If you start worrying target all roofing companies, it was let’s find the roofing companies in this association, and let’s create great content for them. Let’s get it in front of their eyeballs. And what’s funny is when you do that, it permeates the rest of the industry. Like I’m sure you’re getting people outside of the association, but because we’re creating it for that specific audience. That’s how the positioning really started to materialize.

Yeah, that’s exactly how it came together.

Very cool. So if you were to look at, you know, all of the different marketing that you do, is there one or two strategies that seem to be generating the lion’s share of the opportunity for you at this point? Or is it still kind of diffused across the base?

diffuse across the base recently? I would say that we do get, I would say that the largest volume comes through through search. So our website being ranked.

That’s powerful. Yeah,

of inbound inbound inquiries, that secondly, secondly, probably right now through the case study, and then everyone kind of come once they’re in, that’s when they’re going, that’s when we’re presenting them with the webinars and the podcast episodes and all of those types of things. But I’ve had opportunities come directly from the podcast, I’ve had opportunities come directly from Instagram opportunities come directly from LinkedIn. You know, so through our social media, Marketing what is another place that we’ve we’ve definitely found some good traction.

And once you once you opt into anything or come to our site, you’re never gonna get rid of us you’ll

ever get rid of your pixel, you’re on the list, right? nurture nurture nurture everyone until that

visit visit our website. I dare you.

I’m sure they will. Yeah, and they’ll see your they’ll see your retargeting ads and all of the other amazing stuff you guys are you guys are putting out. So I think that’s an important insight. I want to hear from you guys in chat here. What’s standing out to you in terms of what you’re hearing? I think an important insight is if you if you if you’re looking for a single bullet that’s going to just drive your business forward. It doesn’t exist Like if all they did was run a case study funnel Hey, look at one roofer they got this result and that was all they did to a like a random landing page. You know, they would they would absolutely not be where they are today. Right It was that they took a multi channel approach to They’re marketing and really dominating this local space. Would you agree? Like, would you agree with that assessment? Jim and Brian? Yeah, for sure. Hundred percent. Okay, so let’s pivot a little bit. Let’s talk a little bit about the the service offering. What exactly is it that you do for the clients that you serve? What is your What is your program? What is your packaging look like?

So that’s actually a perfect time to pivot to the service offering because that’s exactly how we tell our what we tell our clients that they need to be doing, right? You can’t just do SEO, you can’t just try to rank your Google My Business listing, you can’t just do pay per click advertising, you can’t just do social media marketing. So it’s a combined a combined package there. So So our package includes essentially the way that I describe it on a daily basis is it is what we do is it is what what the way that Google Display search results for the roofing industry roofing search terms with commercial intent right so that’s the core of what we do that’s our get found package as a as we’ve talked about before, and that is you know, a fully optimized website not only optimized for SEO but for conversions we and then ongoing SEO for the website ranked helping an optimization of their Google My Business listing and you know all the SEO that goes into ranking that their their reputation management reputation management system to help them build the reviews in their trust in that go Google My Business listing the management of all of their pay per click advertising retarget retargeting and remarketing ads and then social media marketing beyond that nice and and kind of high level how you charge for this type of thing you up Alec cart monthly fee, monthly fee 2450 for everything 1950 if if we’re not doing the social media advertising for social media marketing,

got it very, very Very, very cool. Had you guys ever been all a cart based? Or have you always been you know retainer base as you were doing pay per lead at one point. So that’s kind of based

that’s all a cart But no, we haven’t we thought it was all or nothing. Always recurring. Yeah,

yeah, it

was all or nothing recurring. Yeah,

that’s a game changer, right? Do you feel like if you were doing, you know, random websites for roofing companies or random you know, piecemeal type stuff that would have stalled out your growth a little bit

100%

Yeah. So having a comprehensive solution where you can come and say look, this is what you need to do to generate the maximum results. And this is how much it is either take it or don’t take it has been a big part of what’s like driven your agency forward. And and behind

that is it and behind that is if wood building them a website, you know, what would that do for their business? Well, they’ll do something very small, right? But if they’re not getting traffic to that website, then what’s the website for right? What What good is that website that you build them? So each of the everything goes, you know, everything. You know, we we are the experts in what we do. And this is what we would do if we owned a roofing company, right? What we wouldn’t just do one thing or another. So that’s that that’s, you know, that’s the service offering that we put together is, you know, what should you really be doing? Not not just, well, hey, we’ll do what you want us to do? No, no, no, we’re the authority. We’re the experts in this. This is what you what you need to be doing as a as a company to generate the best efforts through your digital marketing.

That’s awesome. And you guys are obviously getting great results for the clients. So let’s talk a little bit about how you get the work done. So you guys have grown to your 20 plus clients across the country. What is the what is the operation look like? Is it just the two of you have you started to add team members at this point?

We’ve built a team. It’s definitely been a learning process. But most of our team that does the fulfillment is in the Philippines. They do great work. I’ve trained a lot of them. We have a US based account manager, project manager to handle that sort of stuff. But our teams is about 10 people now 11 people.

So that definitely helps to get it to get it all done on Scott’s asking, as it relates to the package in the website, do you include the website in the in the monthly fee? Or do they pay a separate fee for the website and then the monthly fee.

The website is included. We have an initial 12 month agreement. And so really, it’s not a 12 month agreement. It’s it’s 12, the kind of for for we went through some things for our agreement, getting a new agreement put together. So it’s really it’s really a it’s our fee for the year. Right, and then we break that down into 12 installments.

And, and so the website is included in that.

Yeah. And I find that to work best for you, when you forget to charge a separate fee for the website and then a separate monthly, it just creates inconsistency of the cash flow. So I always recommend having one monthly fee that includes includes the website and the whole the whole nine yards. Yeah, yep. Good question, Scott. And if you guys have other questions, post them in comments. That way we can answer your questions and keep this as interactive as possible. I’m looking back kind of looking back over, you know, the growth of the company and kind of what you guys have accomplished. What would be like three key lessons or three key takeaways that you could share with with the group?

Well, I could say I mean, you got to start somewhere. It was the was the quote Something about imperfection. You just kind of just gotta go for it. I mean, if you start just thinking about everything, and just you’re not gonna get anything accomplished. So, you know, make a list do one thing at a time, you know, as I said, you know, everything that’s on the site and all of our different inbound sources we’ve built slowly over time. We started with the web and started with the site. We, we did the webinars, we did the book. I mean, that was all progression. So don’t overthink it, just do it.

Now, that’s what I would say. Great, Jim. Sure. Yeah.

And that was

in the beginning, we were we were hesitant in hiring. I think that I think that we, if Looking back, I think we would we could have hired faster. And that would have helped accelerate the growth. It’s the unknown of what your recurring will be in the next, you know, in the next six months or something, right. So having to hire you know, before you have, you know, a you know, good amount recurring in there. I think we could have done that a little bit a little bit sooner. And, and then just, yeah, executing as fast as possible. I would have probably executed things even. I would have done things even faster.

So no, no, no brakes at all. Just Oh, brakes, no hesitation, like, let’s go

right. Both of us, Jim. Jim and I both like to overthink things. For sure.

So that’s helped us a lot or in Yeah, it is because there is what’s really funny Josh and I have told you this in person is that every time I think of an idea, like at the next intensive or at the next thing, there’s a there’s like a full fully built out module on exactly how to execute it. I’m like, that’s awesome. I was thinking about doing a podcast. Okay, here’s everything you need, right, like it’s the it definitely just doing the next thing, just pulling the next module out of the Under the members area and put in place,

so that’s awesome. Um, let’s see Jeremy’s asking when you when you look at the spend versus the management fee, are you including that in your 2400 monthly fee? Or do you take that on top?

All ad spend is on top of the 2450. Yeah.

So keep that separate guys run run Google AdWords is to directly to their card that way they see how much went to Google AdWords and you keep your management, very hard to manage profitability if you like you’re taking their spend and billing that directly and then spending it on your own account to manage the app works. So good question. We

did that in the beginning we saw we had four clients in the beginning that we signed on a package that included adspend and so it was $3,000 a month 1500 dollar dollars of that was was our agency fee and 1500 dollars a month went towards a went towards their ad spend through Google ads and and there was you can’t you can’t scale that it’s too difficult to scale that and to have that you know, that many that much ad spend coming out of your you know, out of your pocket on a monthly basis you know, they don’t pay their next month’s agency fee and all of a sudden you you know, their card about you know, gets declined and all of a sudden you you’re you know, you’re down you know 500 $1,000 in ad spend on top of that so

great point yeah, there’s a risk to it. There’s the concern for them not knowing transparency wise how much money you spent on ads versus just pocketed for your own profitability. So I always recommend keeping the the budget separate from the the management fees. Um, during was asking if you guys just do SEO and pay per click advertising on Google ads. Do you get involved in Facebook advertising it all Facebook ads, also,

Facebook and Instagram ads?

That’s the ad Additional package though,

that’s the 2450 includes fake ad running ads on Facebook and Instagram.

So it’s a very comprehensive look, this is what you need to do in order to maximize your lead flow in order to you know, just capitalize on the internet its website SEO Pay Per Click social media paid advertising tracking for a monthly fee, that’s going to be you know, easily monetized. Yeah, yep. I love it. Steve is asking, Can you give me an idea how many strategy sessions you guys are taking on a monthly basis to get that that kind of growth?

It was it really. It depended on the month we’ve had a lot of fluctuation in that we have it hasn’t it hasn’t been like a we do 10 strategy sessions a month right? It’s that but between six and 10 is probably what we averaged in the kind of Once, once we kind of got a little bit of momentum, we’re at about six to 10. The goal now is 20. But we’re, you know, we’re pushing it to get to 20. That would be, you know, that would be cranking pretty well. So that’s the goal every month. But so yeah, I would say, you know, to get to that, you know, you got to you got to be focused on at least 10. Trying to hit 10. That was my goal every month was to hit 10.

Got it? So Shoot, shoot for 10. And then to close ratio somewhere in 3030s 3030s. Yeah, well, if you can get to 20 strategy sessions, you’d have like five to six new clients, and you’re going to get three to four new clients. No. Yeah, I think it’s a great point. And Stevens shows that you’re thinking right, you can do all the best activity, right. You can have a great website, you can have case studies, you can be doing podcasts, but if you’re not getting 10 to 15, or more strategy sessions month in and month out, the new client volumes not going to be there and the growth isn’t going to be So like really being clear on what you’re shooting for, and how many strategy sessions you need for sales appointments, whatever you want to call it is, is smart thinking. Do you guys track that activity? Is that something you guys pay close attention to to make sure you’re hitting that 10? Or how do you track that stuff?

The KPI board on the wall right here.

Nice. Love it. So KPIs right? How many strategy sessions how many new clients how much recurring revenue growth, love that you guys are really tracking and measuring the activity you want to get more of? All right, so Matt, Matt coffee, had his hand raised, not sure. What he wrote in here, though, was what are the top three things you guys are doing right now to get strategy sessions during the pandemic? Like what’s worked well during the pandemic to get strategy sessions.

The strategy sessions definitely slowed down.

Well, in the pandemic, pandemic hit, but you know, I went really I went really aggressively with with the webinar and the podcast episodes, and really focused on what what Roofing Contractors would need help with at this time. So I did a series of podcast episodes on on those very specific things. And so and that has led to some other opportunities from doing that but but through the pandemic, it really what we’ve seen is in the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen the call volume increase of our inbound and it’s mainly that it just seems like people are starting to get back into into into buying mode or into you know, all right, this is gonna end so what are we going to do?

I so smart, you kind of went into let’s create great content that’s going to position us Yes, this in the in the immediate term. And as this thing starts to come back to normal, you’ve got all of the content that you can drip out over time.

Yeah, and really just to position on it helped, you know, build our authority even more Right, we were just that was the whole, the whole goal is just to build our authority even more become more omnipresent to them. And, and that’ll I don’t think about what how many, you know, I wasn’t focused on how many strategy sessions Can I get during, you know, during the COVID crisis, it was just, hey, let’s just just do do good things and good things will come. Right.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Todd, what’s up? Glad to have you with us, Todd’s asking? Do you find you have to have multiple meetings with a prospect to get the sale? Or do you guys usually get a one call sale? How does that work in your world? We do a two

part. It’s a two part sale system. It’s the discovery call. And then the strategy session. I find that I may. Probably out of our 28 clients 26 clients, I’ve may have had one sign on the strategy session. I don’t ask for the credit card, maybe I should. But I have a proposal system that I use that that sends them to the agreement and the system overview and process overview and kind of a lot some information around that. That, you know, that’s integrated, that they can just sign a sign and move on. But I don’t find that it’s a it is, I find that it is something that people want to think about or compare you to another company that the client that we just signed last week. We did our strategy session. Great, everything went well. We’re going to think about it sounds good. We’ll make a decision. We’re going to make a decision in the next week. During that time when they came back and called me to say hey, we’re going to go with you guys. They said that they had done they had they had they had six other sales presentations in that time period. Wow. So they were actively looking to buy right And but they wanted to make sure that they were making the right decision. And I, I’d be happy I’m happy to let someone shop me go and do a strategy session or a sales presentation with another company in our space. You won’t. You’ll you’ll see the difference. So,

yeah, it’s a great point. And I think we’re similar in that front, right? We don’t we will ask for the business. But we don’t usually get it right on one sale close. Right. This is there’s an evaluation process that goes into place. There’s a follow up system in place. I would say probably 80% of our deals come, you know, in the follow up week, two weeks after that initial sales presentation is made. Yeah. Sounds like that’s how it’s working for you guys as well. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, listen, when it does happen, and they do give you the credit card of the phone, that’s great. But if that was your only play, and that’s how you thought it would always need to go, you’d wind up probably frustrating some of your prospects because you can Be at you know, hey, listen, if you signed today I’m going to knock you know X amount off the deal, and that it just doesn’t feel congruent. It doesn’t feel professional. So um, good question though. Todd.

There’s a few in the q&a if you saw that, too. I don’t know. I didn’t see it. glad you brought it up. Let’s see.

q&a. Where is it?

Ah,

let’s see if we haven’t already answered some of these. Joel says not sure exactly how you services offered this problem you have do with projects creep. That sounds like some dope creep.

Right? Yeah. We had a conversation with Josh about this the other day and it’s, you know, it’s part of it. We don’t i don’t know that we’ve dealt with it exceptionally well. Or, or exceptionally poorly, right. We just kind of, we take it case by case. So but we try to set the expectations up front. This is not a customer. website that you’re getting, you know, it is it is a framework that we put forth that that works best for what you’re trying to accomplish. And that’s, you know, leads generating, you know, qualified leads to your roofing business. So

and when you’re getting 2500 bucks a month, you can afford that, you know, hey, look, we’ll we’ll do a little bit of extra than maybe we thought right now. Yeah, I know what you’re experiencing. Yeah. So Jeremy’s got to do questions when you’re running your ads for the agency. How are you able to target Roofing Companies specifically? And not just anybody?

For our agency? Yeah. Brian connects to

the custom custom audiences. So now Josh Wheeler has talked about a lot about that, but joining the associations getting a list and that’s, that’s the best way to do it. I think upload the list to Facebook and

run those ads and create great content that gets people to get onto your page to get pixels for that now you’re creating that audience. You’re very laser targeted. Jim, I’d love it. If you could unpack your arm on the presence on steroids. And I know like a year and a half ago, I was talking a lot about joining the association put out content show up everywhere they look. And you kind of took that concept of omnipresence. And you said it’s the only present strategy on steroids. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, for sure. So So, you know, that really hit me the omnipresence the just the word, right. And the concept behind it really, really, really resonated with me. And, and so, so what we did the omnipresence approach, you know, with what Josh is talking about is, you know, you’re joining the Industry Association, you are marketing to that Association, and whether it’s through direct mail, it’s through, you know, all of these different you know, aspects, the webinars, the you know, custom content or creating content, valuable content. And so what I did is, is I thought, how do we, you know, how do we do this in you know, How do we increase this exponentially? And how do we really I mean, it comes it came from three sources, the kind of the way that I put this together came from three sources. One is is Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s the king of repurposing content and creating a lot of content from a from what he does, just creating a ton of content that that guys, I can’t believe how much content that guy puts out 60 days. The other one was Frank Kern, Frank Kern had a little course on on kind of that kind of was, had had this essence. And another someone else a pink pen June had another course that kind of had this essence. And so what essentially the strategy of it is, is to take take your take a large piece of content and break it up into multiple pieces of content and distribute that content in in as many places as possible. And so if you go to I don’t know if you could go to instagram.com slash freedom marketers that’s the best kind of the bet or Yeah, you click on the instagram instagram logo there and you’ll be able to see here kind of what we do on a daily basis These are what we what we’ve termed video grams. So we take you know, I like that does the searchers intent matter so I created a series of educational videos that we repurpose and put out on a new on an ongoing basis. But then you can see we’re also we’re also pulling little clips from all of the podcast episodes that we do. That’s been our that’s our biggest that’s the biggest the largest number of pieces of content that we have that that gets circulated through this and and the the goal is impression share. So go to the top there Josh in the search bar and type in hashtag roofer world I think roofers world. roofers world roofer world, something like that. Not that one. So try it with singular real world do roofers have Instagram their roofers have Instagram 59,000 posts, right? So this is another thing. I just took it from Danny right now. So scroll down this, this feed of posts. And I guarantee that we will be there. Yeah, over and over and just continue to scroll down and we will be there over and over again. So I tried to essentially I try to take over hashtags or not take over hashtags but put insert ourselves into the conversation through hashtags on Instagram. We also do the same posting on on on our Facebook, on Facebook, on our on LinkedIn, my personal LinkedIn on the business, LinkedIn on you know, so everywhere you go work, we will always have a post in our feed I was telling. I mentioned this on Dr. Joe Troyer, his podcasts that I just did with him is that we actually have had a One of our employees unsubscribed. She’s like, I can’t take it anymore. Every time I open Facebook up, you’re in my feet. And that’s the concept behind the omnipresence on steroids is to always be in front of them every time they open their Facebook every time they open their Instagram every time they open their LinkedIn. I’m there. And so so it’s just an impression share, right? On a basic level. It’s just how much impression share can we achieve with it?

And kind of that the shortcode of the hack is it’s not like you’re creating hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content, you create 123, maybe Matt, like long form pieces of content, a webinar and interview, a podcast that gets then split up into micro components that are named differently, titled differently. And that’s how you’ve got this constant flow of new content getting dripped out.

Exactly. And Jim, you’re able to kind of flip the script on that when you’re selling to those people, because they’re, they’re so used to seeing you’re like, well, that’s So we’re gonna do for you.

Exactly.

Yep. And the fact is everybody wants to deal with the the expert in their type of business, and they want to deal with the best of the best. And like it or not the person that’s most present, the person that is putting up the content, the person at the front of the stage, the person that’s running, the webinar is perceived as the expert. And so that’s why these guys are coming to you, and they’re willing to pay a premium to have you implement these ideas for them.

You know, we just we raised our prices during COVID. Micro first our prices went up to 1950 and 2450, from 1752 and 20 to 50. So, you know, the, the more authority that we that we build, the better that we execute for our clients, the you know, we, we didn’t we didn’t go we didn’t go backwards during COVID is, you know, the easy way to put it, so

that’s awesome. Give a thumbs up bro, that was awesome to this gym. That was useful to kind of hear how he’s thinking through this omnipresent strategy and how he’s developing this, this authority positioning. Simple call, couple questions in here and then we’ll start to wrap up bears asking do they get charged a, an additional setup fee in the first month? Or is it just a flat monthly from from the inception?

We’re just doing a flat monthly from inception.

Okay. And he’s asking what happens if they sign in the middle of the month? Do you guys just do anniversary based billing or is it based on the first 30 day billing? Yeah, same here very so like, if if a client signs up on the 17th of the month, they just get billed every 17th until they cancel, so there’s no need to prorate there’s no need to try and figure out how do we get it to set on the first of every month. So good question. Stephens asking if you remove clients from your marketing list once they become a client, so they’re not going to see

Yeah, we do so we move them over into a partner. We call it a roofer Mark as partners, that’s how they’re tagged in our, in our system or you know, in our list in the roofer, marketers partner lists. So any, so they may make it different type of content, right. But they won’t get invited to every they won’t get as much. For sure.

Yeah, good, good question. And I think, easy to remove them from an email list a little bit less easy to remove them from retargeting list or from a social promotion list. But that’s not a problem, right? That you want your clients to see you and see all the great stuff you’re putting out because then they’re just like, Oh, I must be with the right. the right company. Right? These guys are continuing to innovate, continuing to roll out great information and content. Great, great stuff. Right. I think some amazing insights here on how you guys chose the nice position yourself as the experts, land clients. You get the work done, continue to grow, continue to scale. Um, I guess, for those maybe that are listening that aren’t members of seven figures. agency what would you say as someone that’s thinking I’m trying to get involved with this? Should I not what would you guys’s feedback be to that person or persons?

If If you are looking to build a niche agency do it

there’s nothing better Yep.

I’ve done Ryan in both Brian and I and I’m sure everyone here on the call are watching you know, in the future has spent money on a lot of courses and, and things like that. And there’s this was this was by far

well and be beyond anything we’ve ever I’ve ever had in any kind, of course.

So that’s awesome. I appreciate that. So So going from going from where you were to 50,000 and beyond and monthly returning and growing. I have no doubt you guys will be seven figures by the end of the year. I think that’s the target right? How How has that impacted your your business life in your personal life, like what’s the impact of that for you guys?

Well, I mean, we’re still pretty busy.

For for a little busy. We’re busy. You know, things are a little busy around here.

It’s been nice to take a paycheck now that that’s been nice, huh? That that was the biggest thing that was that was

that’s been, you know, growing, it just gives you give you some room to work with. And I think that in the beginning, you know, I know a lot of people can relate, you’re tight with funds, you’re, you know, you’re like Jim said, we’re unsure if we want to hire someone because they’re, you know, you’re just kind of juggling a can we afford this to whatnot. But it’s nice to have that kind of a little comfortable for him right now.

That that’s the biggest thing in business for sure. That’s and and we were we’ve definitely past the point of where we know what’s gonna happen, right? There’s no, there’s just no doubt anymore where you know where we’ll be able to take the agency

So it’s just kind of that confidence that you’re on the right track. The momentum is there. It’s not like it’s going away and knowing that there’s a bright future without question out in front of you guys. Yeah, for sure. Very cool. So as we wrap up any additional nuggets of wisdom that you would offer to that agency owner, that’s, you know, just trying to get to the next level, trying to, you know, get things to that next place, what nuggets of wisdoms would you share for them?

What would you share on the fulfillment side, Brian?

I would say, you know, this isn’t for everyone, but to have an understanding of what you’re hiring out to people before you do it. Because, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that do great work, but there’s a lot of people that don’t do great work. And I think you’d rather know kind of ahead of time what you’re getting yourself into, before just subbing everything out and hoping for the best for your clients because it’s not that not a not a trial, really, period when you have clients. They’re there waiting numbers.

No doubt it’s my two cents. I love it.

From a from a sales perspective, I would say that, that you have to make sure you have the right mindset. You know, one of the books that I’ve read, and I know, you know, a lot of people probably read in this group is Grant cardones 10 X, you know, 10 x rule. And you know, I’ve heard Danny talk about a lot of times, and that might, the core concept that I got from that book was, everything is going to take 10 times more effort than you think it’s going to take. It’s may take 10 times longer than you think it’s going to take. So if you think you need, you know, 10 inbound 10 strategy sessions to get to, you know, your first you know, three, five clients, try and do 100, right 10 X that and in that 10 x thing of your effort is where you’re going to really, really just build momentum quickly.

I’d also say maybe fall find someone and this obviously doesn’t apply to everyone. I give props to like Dan, maybe Who kind of had the agency himself? Start but Jim, I mean, his great sales guy. And, you know, he complements my skill set because, you know, he doesn’t do the fulfillment stuff. I like to oversee the operation side and everything. So, us to working together works out really well. You know, we both are good at sales and weren’t good at the other stuff. It really makes sense. But in this case, it does. Partner with or hire

me, for sure.

I’m sorry, Jim. I’ve talked over you there.

Oh, no partner with your partner with your partner with our partner or hire your weaknesses. Quickly, because that’s what you procrastinate on.

I love it.

Excuse me. Well, thank you guys so much for sharing. Um, congratulations on your growth and success. I mean, tremendous, tremendous momentum. And again, I have no doubt you guys are heading to multiple seven figures and beyond over the next 12 to 24 months. So thanks for sharing thanks for all the all the amazing insights it for those of you watching this after the fact Be sure to tag Brian and Jim thank them for sharing thank them for, for their for their insights. Thanks. That was awesome. I hope you get great value from that session. If you’d like to get more ideas, strategies and techniques on how to most effectively grow and scale your digital marketing agency like to invite you to go to seven figure agency.com got a number of resources that you’re going to get tremendous value from, go to seven figure agency.com if you scroll down, you can grab a free copy of my my book, the seven figure agency roadmap that really spells out big picture, how to position yourself as the expert how to grow your agency and how to scale to seven figures and beyond. The other resource I want you to check out on our website is the podcast right? If you’re listening to this and you’d like more, I’ve got dozens of interviews with highly successful digital marketing agencies. seeds on how they grow and have scaled their agency. So if you get a seven figure agency.com and hit the podcast button there, you can subscribe on the channel that’s of most benefit to you. And the last thing I’m gonna suggest is make sure that you go to seven figure agency comm slash group or search on Facebook for the local agency success group on Facebook. I’m in there, the guests that we’ve had on the show are in there and thousands of other successful digital marketing agencies. It’s a great place to plug in share best practices, and network with other highly successful digital marketing agencies. So thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening. Again, I hope you got great value and I look forward to seeing you in the Facebook group. I’ll talk to you soon.