The Agency Growth Podcast

We're joined by Kevin Miller from the Marketing Agency Owners group on Facebook to talk about something we don't do ourselves to acquire clients -- cold messaging and outreach.

Kevin owns All Approach and regularly gives tips as well as coaches agency owners on how to book appointments and acquire clients using LinkedIn messaging.

As you know, we (Jake and Cody) don't do any outreach. All of the clients we receive are inbound and since we sell SEO and PPC services, we have a belief in drinking our own Kool-Aid to acquire clients. However, as we established in episode 40, some niches may not be as easy to acquire clients through inbound methods.

We talk with Kevin to understand:

• Which niches LinkedIn outreach may be best suited for
• How to approach new prospects
• Tips and tricks to get prospects to respond to your messages
• How you can establish credibility when you don't have any

If you liked this episode or any other Everbros episode, leave our podcast a review! It helps us get discovered and gives us motivation to continue providing all of this free information!

You can also reach out to us on our website at everbrospodcast.com and even comment on specific episodes.

As mentioned at the end of the episode, you can find Kevin at allapproach.com or join the free Facebook group.

In episode 004 of the podcast, we talked about how to price your agency services. However, the episode was geared more toward pricing once your agency is more established. It covered understanding your labor hour allocation and market rates.

When you're just starting out, you won't know this information. Additionally, you likely don't have much, if any, experience or case studies to show to prospective clients meaning they're going to have to take a chance on you.

With that in mind, you cannot charge what an established rate would be. You may have to discount or give your services away for free.

In this episode, we go over just how much you might consider discounting your services, the constraints and expectations you set with your clients regarding those rates as well as what can happen if you charge too much right away.

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

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As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

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Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

The main reason why Jake believes so many new agency owners and people who sell SMMA courses gravitate to social media is that you don't have to really learn how to track anything. All of the important tracking features are built into the Facebook interface. All you have to do is copy and paste a pixel into a landing page and boom, you're done.

It's why there don't seem to be as many Google Ads or SEO experts out there as there used to be. People who teach themselves Google Ads fail to teach themselves the tracking and analytics portion of it that will track more than just phone calls from call extensions.

In this episode, we talk about how understanding the key components of tracking digital marketing efforts will set you lightyears apart from other agencies out there.

We talk about how and what we track for all of our clients regardless of the medium we're promoting on using Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics and how we track phone calls, emails, and form fills without having to pay for any call tracking software.

Furthermore, if you can't track all of the conversion actions on your client's site, your ads can't optimize to deliver to people likely to complete that conversion action. This is why it's so critical to make sure you understand tracking and analytics setup.

Want to learn Google Tag Manager and Analytics setup? Here are a couple of free trainings from Google on each of them:

• Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
• Google Analytics 4 Google Training

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

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As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

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Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

In this week's episode, we go over arguably the single most important thing that separates our agency from the rest of the agencies out there.

Tracking.

The number one thing clients hire you for is results. If you can't provide results, they'll fire you. So it's your job to make sure the results you're providing are trackable. As much as we like to think, things like clicks, traffic, impressions, and rank are not results business owners care about.

They typically care about leads and sales. But it's important to make sure you find common ground with the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you want to deliver and the KPIs your client sees as valuable.

If there is a mismatch, either you need to adjust your value proposition or the client may not be a good fit for you.

The first step in tracking your KPIs is figuring out what KPIs you should be tracking.

Also in this episode:

• Jake talks about a guy who tried to call him out for being a "fake guru"
• Jake and Cody debate buying used houseware

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

----------------------------------

Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

Are you a serial planner or do you take action for the sake of taking action?

In this episode, we share differing beliefs on whether you should take time and plan out the right moves for your agency or just get started and figure it out.

There are pros and cons to each method.

Taking Time to Plan

Pro: The actions you take will be meaningful and although will have slower short-term returns, the long-term results can be exponential.

Con: Analysis paralysis is a real thing and taking too much time to plan can cause you to never take action -- making you your own worst enemy.

Just Taking Action

Pro: You don't let analysis paralysis stop you from taking action toward your goals and you're already further ahead than the people who are planning everything.

Con: It's easy to take the wrong steps without planning. The wrong steps can stifle your long-term growth.

We differ slightly on each of these but ultimately, there is some middle ground. Jake provides his insight on why he plans everything out before starting. Cody talks about why it's better to just take action.

Either way, Jake takes time to plan things out and executes quickly while Cody just takes action but is a perfectionist in the execution -- ultimately causing both of us to reach our goal around the same time.

Useful links:

At the end of this episode, Jake talks about a Marketing Agency Owners group on Facebook where a lot of the topics for the episodes come from. You can find that group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/maopublic

At the beginning of this episode, Cody and Jake talk about the best marketing newsletter to subscribe to and even cover a topic that was discussed in it. Here is a link to subscribe to it: https://www.stackedmarketer.com/friend-recommended/?utm_source=sparkloop&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=sm_daily&rh_ref=9731be28

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

----------------------------------

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

----------------------------------

Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

We sit down with Schieler Mew of Service Lifter and owner / admin of the Google SEO Mastermind group on Facebook (120k members) and dive deep into his business model where his average ticket is only a little more than $600 per client per month, yet he's hitting the $2.1m mark. We've seen it over and over again in SEO and agency groups that you need to charge thousands of dollars per month in order to hit not only the 6-figure, $10k/mo mark, but the 7-figure mark. Although Schieler focuses on the carpet cleaning niche while we focus on the landscaping niche, our business models are nearly identical in both pricing and deliverables. We talk about things like: How it's better to have 100 $500 clients vs 10 $5,000 clients Appropriately pricing your services Scaling with smaller clients How Service Lifter acquired clients vs how Evergrow acquired clients How ridiculous the marketing agency industry is And much more. Check out Schieler's company at servicelifter.com and if you're in the SEO space, check out the Google SEO Mastermind group! As always, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review on Apple podcasts or a rating on the Spotify app!

We've been seeing a lot of people in Facebook groups talking about how they're building funds by white labeling their services for other agencies or getting involved with setting and closing to "get money to start their agency".

But that begs the question, "how much money do you need to start an agency?"

If you're familiar with our earlier episodes, you know about how much you need -- but in this episode, we go into other objections we've been seeing like "I don't have time to start an agency on the side, I need to quit my job and I have to have money for that."

Additionally, we spend a good amount of time talking about how the idea of passive income is mostly bulls**t and expose some telltale signs of fake online gurus, specifically in the crypto and real estate spaces.

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

----------------------------------

Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

We stress the importance of niching down when it comes to creating your own marketing or consulting agency, especially in such a crowded industry, but we've never gone into how to pick your niche.

Granted, niching down isn't for everyone -- but if it is for you, then you'll want to hear what we have to say regarding picking your niche.

Too often we see people default to the same few niches (real-estate, roofing, dentists/medical, other agencies), but you need to be more creative than that. There are also other factors you should consider when picking your niche that you might not be thinking of:

• Are you familiar with the niche? If not, you have a lot of learning to do.
• Does the niche have a high market cap in your area? If there isn't a lot of money in the niche, you can spend years working only to cap out in a small market (small gym owners)
• Do forums and publications exist for business owners exist in this niche? If not, you'll have to figure out how you're going to get in front of these people.
• What does the competition look like? This is my least favorite thing to look at but if you see a lot of competition, then it could be too saturated, especially based on the market cap. If you don't see any competition it good either be really good or really bad. It's really bad if there is no competition for a reason (as in no money in that niche).
• What is the best way to promote to business owners in the niche and does it match your skillset?
• Do you even like the niche? If you don't inherently like the niche, you won't like your life after you pursue it. Creating a successful agency takes time and hard work. You're not going to flip it in a year -- your niche will become your career for the next 5-10 years or more.

It's also important to remember to not spend too much time overthinking. You can do multiple niches at once and figure out what you like along the way, but some preliminary research will go a long way.

Here's some homework for you:

• Find 5 niches you're interested in.
• Find online forums or groups for business owners in this niche.
• Find magazines/publications specifically for business owners in this niche.
• List strengths and weaknesses for working with these niches (Example: high average profit for businesses and high market cap versus no online forums or publications for business owners in the niche)
• List barriers of entry for business owners in these niches

Once you do this, you'll help narrow down which niche(s) you should start with.

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

----------------------------------

Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

A few episodes back we dropped episode 35 on how to get published in a niche magazine -- the problem with that is figuring out what to write for that magazine that resonates with that audience.

This is something everyone who produces content asks themselves.

"Should I publish this content on my own site or should I give it to a publication?"

The default answer is to usually give the least impactful or the lowest quality content to the magazine as all you're looking to do is get the branding and the link that comes with it. However, oftentimes, this is the opposite of what you should.

For starters, ALL of your content should be high quality. Second, this was the #1 way we got most of our leads back when we first started.

When you don't have a large audience coming on to your site, you can leverage the audience of a publisher and get your great content in front of that audience.

In this episode, we dive into how we determine what piece of content goes on our site and what should be pitched to a publisher. Sometimes, we write the piece first and then decide after it's written.

It's all about what it's about and who the audience is better suited for:

• Someone on our site looking for this information
• Or someone not looking for the information but should be aware of it

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

----------------------------------

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

----------------------------------

Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u

We read a listener's question regarding how they can turn their graphic design skills into a service where they can work for themselves rather than someone else.

In the past, we've mentioned how it's really hard to turn graphic design services into something that people want to buy every month multiple times. In other words, it's a service you have to keep selling over and over again which makes it really hard to scale and requires you to constantly be looking for new opportunities.

The question comes from someone who doesn't want to do that but still wants to utilize their passion and experience in graphic design.

Join us in this episode where we give our individual inputs on how we would use this skill as a productized service for an agency or freelance concept that keeps clients paying every month. Not only that, but a service that clients find value in and you don't have to keep selling your value to existing clients.

HINT: Don't think about how you can provide graphic design services to clients... think about how you can use graphic design in the services you provide.

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Our recommended agency tools:

everbrospodcast.com/recommended-tools/

----------------------------------

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general and want to leave us a review or rating, head over to Apple and let us know what you like! It helps us get found and motivates us to keep producing this free content.

----------------------------------

Want to connect with us? Reach out to us on the everbrospodcast.com website, subscribe to us on YouTube, or connect with us on socials:

YouTube: @agencyu

Twitter/X: @theagency_u

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/agencyu

Facebook: facebook.com/theagencyu

Instagram: @theagencyu

Reddit: r/agency & u/JakeHundley

TikTok: @agency.u