The Ultimate Agency Funnel

This Is The Video Transcript

Seven Figure Agency Has Developed The Ultimate Agency Funnel

Well, hey, this is Josh Nelson with the Seven Figure Agency.

I wanted to shoot a quick video summarizing the concept of the Ultimate Agency Funnel. We hear a lot about funnels and tripwires, and lead magnets. I want to show you what it looks like for an agency to:

• Get prospects to enter at the top of the funnel.
• Pre-position those prospects to buy.
• Smoothly convert them into customers.

I can tell you that we’ve built a multiple seven-figure digital marketing agency on this simple, three-step funnel. Not only that, I’ve also seen a lot of digital agencies start to implement this funnel and get similar results.

The Ultimate Agency Funnel Is Simple

What we’ve got up on the board is the Ultimate Agency Funnel. The one thing I want you to recognize is that this is pretty simple. It’s a three-step funnel. You don’t have to over-think it. You don’t have to overcomplicate it. All you’re aiming to do is to get someone—who is your ideal prospect within your targeted niche—to pass through your funnel and become a client.

For us, we serve plumbing and HVAC contractors. We at Seven Figure Agency recommend you serve a very specific niche. That’s what works best. By focusing on a niche, it’s easier to create information and content that’s relevant to the prospects you want to serve.

Give Them A Reason To Opt-In To Your List

So, what we want to do is, give them some reason to opt-in. We found that cheatsheets, lead magnets, keyword lists, and other simple types of assets work best. Prospects can consume them relatively quickly. When you construct these to demonstrate your wealth of your knowledge, they are a great conversion tool.

Here’s Our Little Secret For Getting More Strategy Sessions

We have learned that we can up our number of appointments by offering prospects a shortcut. Here’s what we do. Right after they opt-in, The page they see right after the opt-in, is the most powerful moment in our relationship with that prospect. They’ve just requested your download. Now you have a special opportunity to connect with them. You have a chance to deepen the relationship, and take them straight to an appointment.

Our Magic Shortcut That Improves Our Results

What we found that worked best is after the opt-in, you get them to a page that says, “Hey, thanks so much for requesting that piece of information. It’s going to be awesome, you’re going to get great value from it. But, if you’re like most people in our niche (name your niche), you like information and understanding what’s going on. BUT, at the end of the day, you’re looking for someone to implement this for you, to get you the result. If that’s you, what I want to suggest is let’s go ahead and schedule a time to meet. This is what you’ll get, this is what we’re going to do once we meet.”

We find that when we added that on the download page, we were able to get three or four times more of our opt-ins straight to the next step we wanted, which is to schedule the appointment. That key insight right there after the opt-in can be a massive game-changer for you.

Get Them To Schedule A Strategy Session

After you get them to opt-in, your primary objective is to get them to schedule a strategy session. You want prospects to schedule an appointment where you take them through a consultative sales process to sell your digital marketing agency services. You need the time and space to demo to them, “Here’s what you’re doing now. Here’s where there’s room for improvement. Here’s how we can help. And here’s how much it costs.”

We want to make it really simple to move them from opt-in to an appointment. That’s the ultimate goal of all the lead magnets and other information you share in cyberspace. Get them to schedule an appointment.

Have A Hot Lead Follow-Up Process In Place

The third piece is what most digital marketing agencies miss—to have a solid hot lead follow up process. The prospect schedules a time, show ups for the call watches your presentation, and says, “Yeah, this sounds great. I’m pretty interested. Send me some additional details. What are our next steps?”

Now, Here’s Where Things Can Go Wrong

Usually, you send a proposal right away. Maybe you schedule the next meeting, but then there’s no action and the deal dies there. Average conversion rates in the digital marketing space from sales call to actual client is only about 12%.

You Need To Engineer A Hot Lead Follow-Up

You need to take a proactive approach and design what I call a hot lead follow-up. This is a process we’ve engineered with a number of touches. Everything is designed to move prospects from just saying, “Yeah, I’m pretty interested, I want to do business.”  to actually signing the contract and becoming a monthly retainer client.

Design A Multi-Touch Followup

Beyond that, you want to follow up via multimedia. Once they opt-in, you’ve got their email address. You can do a bit of research to find them on Facebook, and on Twitter, and on LinkedIn. In some cases, you can even track down a cell phone number. But, what I want to make sure is that after anybody opts into your world, for any kind of content that you offer them, that you’re following up diligently.

You’re sending them emails:

• Here’s the lead magnet.
• Now we send you another piece of content.
• We want to share another idea with you.
• These are some problems that are common in this industry.

All of those emails bring prospects back to the next step in the funnel, which is to schedule that strategy session.

Don’t Just Use Email—Use Social Messenger

Not everybody’s checking their email anymore, there’s just so much email coming into email boxes. If you can connect with prospects on Social Messenger, you can break through the clutter and get a lot of traction.

• Connect with prospects on Facebook and try to send them a personal message.
• Connect with them on LinkedIn and send them a personal message.

Make Sure The Appointment Itself Is As Friction-Free As Possible

You want to make scheduling the appointment as simple and friction-free as possible. There are lots of great platforms for this, like Calendly, AppointmentCore, ScheduleOnce. It doesn’t matter what platform you use. Just make sure that you take them to a page where it’s easy to schedule a time. Let them pick the time on the schedule that works for for them.

Show-Up Rate Is Another Problem

Here’s the key. What I’m hearing from a lot of digital marketing agencies is they’ve got this set up and people are scheduling appointments. But prospects aren’t showing up, or they’re not coming to the appointment ready and excited. What you want to do is make sure that, again, you leverage that page right after they schedule their appointment.

Often times, it’s just like, here’s a link to your calendar, add it. Prospects don’t knowyou yet. They just scheduled an appointment out in cyberspace with somebody. They may not be confident that you’re going to show up. What you want to do is have a video on that page congratulating them for scheduling their appointment, letting them know what to expect next, and to give them a couple of next steps.

Here Are A Couple Of Steps That Have Improved Our Show-Up Rate

A couple of next steps that have worked well for us:

• Add them to a private Facebook group, that works great. Now you’re aggregating your audience.
• Ask them to send you a personal message on Facebook Messenger, that way you guys are connected at a deeper level.

What we’ve found is, if we can get them to engage with us after they’ve scheduled the appointment, they’re three or four times more likely to actually show up.

Use Text Messages

Then, you want to drop content on them, via text message. When you have then set the appointment on the calendar, get a cell phone number so that you can engage via text message. Then you should try to engage via Social Messenger. You can have your VA do this for you. Basically, they opt-in for the appointment, the VA goes and searches them out on social media, connects with them, sends them a message, “Hey, we’re scheduled. I’m really looking forward to our appointment.”

We found that when they reply back to that initial message, either via text message or Social Messenger, (Facebook or LinkedIn), they’re going to show up for the appointment. Not only that, they’re going to show up expecting this to be a great appointment.

If you execute these key key strategies, you’ll schedule more strategy sessions and have a higher show-up rate. That means you’re going to close more deals, and get more clients.

Specifically Engineer A Hot Lead Followup Process

Now, the third piece is where the money is made. Have a specifically engineered process for after the meeting to bring a great meeting to a closed contract. You can’t just rely on your own personal follow through to say, “Okay, I had a good meeting with this guy. I’m going to call him next week, I’m going to keep chasing him down until he buys.” You only have so much time in the day. You get busy, and drop the ball

What you want to do is engineer at least seven touches after that initial call. These touches are via email, via strategic tasks, via Social Message communication. Assuming they just said, “Yeah, I’m interested. Send me the proposal, and we’re excited about getting started.”

• You want to use best practices and ask for the business.
• You want to set the next appointment.
• BUT, you also want to engineer the whole followup process.

Here’s The Exact Process That We Use

Emails

What we found worked best is send some type of emails, “hey, great talking with you today. Here’s what we talked about, here’s what we’re going to do next.” Once you’ve got your services packages laid out clearly, you can automate this process. It’s not a custom quote and can be sent out automatically .

• You want to send some testimonials.
• Outline what the next steps are,.
• Describe current gap, “Hey, we ran this report. Here’s where you’re failing. This is how we can help you.
• Let’s jump on our next call.

Leverage With A Deadline—Don’t Leave It Open-Ended

You need to make sure that you’re leveraging that process with a deadline. Don’t leave those calls open-ended. Instead, say, “hey, listen, can we agree we’ll make a decision sometime in the next two weeks? Yes?” Then, all of your emails after that strategy session lead to that deadline. You can ask for the business, and expect to have a yes-no decision within that time period.

Surprise Them With Direct Mail

Now, the last thing in this process that has really helped us is to leverage direct mail. Think of creating some type of shock and awe package after the strategy session. Again, this is specifically for those folks who said, “Yeah, I’m pretty interested. Send me the information.” Not only are you going to email them, but you’re going to drop a package in the mail.

They had a great business conversation with you and felt excited about the opportunity. A couple of days later, they receive in the mail a package that surprises them. You want to include anything that takes them from, “Yeah, I just had a great conversation.” to “WOW, this company sent me something valuable by mail!” The package includes:

• Testimonials and case studies of client success stories.
• If you have a book, include a copy of your book.
• If you have content on CD or DVD, send that too.

,

and got this great proposal that explained exactly what the next steps were. Then I got this great package in the mail!” .—

Do you think that would improve the probability that more people that have that meeting with you would actually turn into clients and sign up? I guess, the answer is it absolutely does.

This is the ultimate agency funnel, from a very high level. I think you’ve got some very specific ideas and tactics that you can implement all the way through this process.

Post a comment if you think this is useful, beneficial, something you can implement in your agency. If you’d like more information on this whole process, I did an hour-long session at the Traffic Conversion Summit. I’d like to give you access to that, so you can watch it and get all the details for this process. I did a whole session on this. I called it the Ultimate Agency Funnel at the Traffic Conversion Summit. I just wanted to go to the whiteboard here and walk through this process with you.

If you want that, just in the comments, type in Ultimate Agency Funnel, and I’ll get you set up with that right away.

I hope you got value from this. Appreciate your time, I’ll talk to you later.