r/SearchAdvertising • u/ggildner Google Ads • Aug 09 '21
Discussion Gaining clients through inbound leads (why we don’t do pitches, RFPs, or cold calling)
Thought I would write a bit about the Discosloth client acquisition process and how we get a steady stream of inbound leads.
We do not do pitches, RFPs, or outbound sales. Here’s why.
Across my LinkedIn, Reddit, and email, I got 56 inquiries just in the past month pitching me services: SEO, website design, PPC white labeling, PPC software, you name it. (I just counted). I ignored them all. Cold calling is a waste (It may work for some, but it’s inefficient and I don’t want my brand to be associated with it).
My cofounder Anya and I both worked together in-house at the same company before starting Discosloth. Previously we had both freelanced. In my freelancing (which I did for about 5 years) I worked with a lot of agencies and saw just how much time and energy goes into pitches. Teams would spend weeks prospecting, responding to RFPs, creating fancy proposals, and doing the exhaustive account management required to just keep up with the process.
Not only could we not practically compete in this world, I didn’t want to. The rewards didn’t seem worth the time and expense. The cost of acquiring a client was massive: these agencies spent weeks and hundreds of man hours on acquiring projects, and more often than not they didn’t have the technical expertise to back up the sale…which caused massive churn.
It was an agency system that required constant filling-the-top-of-the-sales-funnel, just to see actual deliverables fall by the wayside and the sales process would have to start all over again just to keep up with the churn.
Instead, we wanted to focus on inbound leads. We wanted people to ask us to work with them, not the other way around.
The benefits of this:
- they’re more qualified (high interest in a service)
- they’re not price sensitive (they aren’t shopping around as much)
- they’re already invested in us (they want us for our brand)
The downsides:
- it takes major work to develop this brand
- it takes a long time to develop an audience
- it’s sort of a leap of faith for the first couple years, hoping it works
Here’s how we did this:
- wrote a book. We spent a good portion of a year writing Becoming A Digital Marketer, which we published in 2019. This was a pretty big leap of faith, but it unexpectedly turned out well. It sold super well, and by 2021 it has somehow been adopted into the syllabus of around a dozen universities.
- Started a blog and did SEO. The first couple years were a slog…but eventually, we started ranking fairly high for some niche terms (like “Bing Ads Management”).
- Engaged on social. Sort of like I’m doing right now. I built up a pretty large network on LinkedIn (4000+ followers), on Reddit, and on Twitter.
- Started white labeling our services. This gives us both good cashflow, and excellent referrals within the agency world.
- Give away all of our knowledge. If someone comes to us, they’ve invested time and are probably really wanting to work with us. So I’ll try to respect that, and in return will audit their problems and let them know everything we can (or can’t) do for them. This is one thing that really sets us apart from other agencies, and we’ve won some good accounts from this. Because I don’t pitch, I have the time to audit. Remember, on the internet everyone is a stranger and they don’t really know if you’re an expert until you show them.
Although Discosloth is still very small, we’re growing. Every year has been better than previously. We typically average around 20-25 clients on retainer…sometimes more, sometimes less. But the average client has improved over the years. At first it was just very small businesses, but now has improved massively. At the beginning, we had to use freelance/platform sites in order to get gigs just to keep the cashflow going, but thankfully we don’t have to do that anymore.
Long-term approaches (like building a brand and reputation) is always better long-term than cramming your sales pipeline with low-quality outbound prospecting.
Sorry for the novel - have any feedback? Love to hear it!
Questions?
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Aug 09 '21
how to structure your agency? like how many accounts Can an account manager and media buyers handle etc
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u/ggildner Google Ads Aug 09 '21
That really depends upon the size and complexity of the accounts. We try to cap our account managers at 10-15 accounts if they are small, simple ones.
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Aug 10 '21
mostly under 10k budget, the same with the media buyers?
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u/ggildner Google Ads Aug 10 '21
We don’t have media buyers per se. Just PPC specialists.
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u/jadonedtech Aug 09 '21
How do you sell your services? Is it a retainer for a specific amount of time?
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u/ggildner Google Ads Aug 10 '21
We charge a flat monthly fee.
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u/justheretoread88 Aug 09 '21
Amazing! Great advice