3 MAIN Reasons SMMA Owners Aren’t Landing Clients
In this blog, we’ll be discussing the 3 main reasons why you’re not landing clients for your digital marketing agency, and how you can fix that. That way your SMMA can start getting the results both clients are looking for.
When it comes to running any business, the most vital part of finding success is, unfortunately, also the hardest—landing clients. Though landing meetings with clients is also half the battle, you’ll only be able to turn a profit if you land the clients as well.
If you’ve been paying attention to our blog and have been following our tips and tricks, but still aren’t landing the clients you’re going after, then it might be time to start thinking of a more customized approach to approaching prospective businesses.
1. Pre-Qualifying Audit
One great way to attract clients is to provide prospective clients with a digital marketing audit (which you can easily do by using our free digital marketing audit template!) but there is one key step you’re probably missing if you haven’t found success with this technique. There’s a good chance you might be going after the wrong clients, and there’s an easy way to fix this—doing a pre-qualifying audit.
Before you even decide to create a marketing audit, or set up a free consultation, or purchase catering for a potential client, you need to make sure you’re doing your ‘due diligence.’ This essentially means that you need to spend some time reviewing any prospective client by doing a quick little analysis of their online presence. Check out the potential client’s current website, social pages, and search engine presence, or anything else you can think of to see where they stand at the moment. Basically, you should be doing a quick a mini-audit that is mainly visual, but helpful nonetheless.
This quick snapshot of the prospective business will allow you to have a slight understanding of whether or not the business is currently spending any money on marketing, which can help you manage your expectations and shift your approach to gaining their business. Keep in mind that potential leads that are already spending on their marketing are more likely to want to work with a marketer, as they better understand the need for online marketing. Approaching a company that doesn’t seem to have much of a digital marketing presence might be an uphill battle, as you not only have to sell them on your services but on the very idea of digital marketing.
Some other things you should be looking at in order to get a better snapshot of your prospective client during this pre-qualifying phase include:
- How many locations does the client have?
- What is the financial makeup of the business?
- Do they have higher or lower than normal profit margins?
- Does the average client bring in a lot of revenue per sale?
- Is it B2B or B2C?
- How many employees does the company have?
These questions will help you gauge the size of the company so you can better assess what their marketing needs are, and what you can offer them.
Performing this quick pre-qualifying audit will help you spend less time talking to businesses who aren’t going to purchase your services so that you can spend more time on prospective clients that will give you results.
2. Pre-Qualifying Questions
Once you’ve weeded out the businesses that aren’t worth going after, and you’ve landed a meeting with your best leads, it’s time to focus on improving your meeting strategy.
Once you’re finally sitting down with your potential client, it’s important to make sure you’re asking the right questions to determine how much the client can afford to spend.
This information will help you when you go back to the office to build the proposal, as you’ll have an idea of what type of marketing package to put together for that client given their budget range.
To determine a potential client’s budget range, here are some of the questions I like to ask:
- What type of marketing have you done in the past?
- How long did you run that campaign or use that service?
- How much did you spend on that campaign? Did you get the result you were looking for?
These questions will help give you an idea of what they have spent on previous campaigns, and what services and budget they might be interested in procuring from you.
From here you will want to ask if they’ve tried anything else and repeat the same 3 questions, before continuing you with the following questions:
- What was your revenue goal for last year?
- Did you hit that goal?
- What are you expecting to hit for this year?
These final 3 questions will give you an idea of how much the company makes in a year to once again help you assess the services you should offer them and at what price point.
Take into consideration that smaller businesses usually allocate around 2-4% of revenue for marketing, and from there you’ll have an idea of what their marketing budget will be.
3. Provide 2 Price Points
Pricing your services can be another challenging part of running your own digital marketing agency. Even after performing the aforementioned tasks and getting an idea of your potential client’s marketing budget, you still don’t want to assume you know exactly how much they are comfortable spending.
The best way to show that you’re willing to work with your prospective client to find the right price point and marketing package for them is to provide them with multiple options. Presenting the client with AT LEAST 2 but NO MORE THAN 3 price points in your proposal shows that you’re ready to customize a plan that works for them.
Though it’s best to show a willingness to work with the client to find a price point they’re comfortable with, it’s also important not to underprice your services, as this is one of the biggest reasons that most agencies fail before they’ve even gotten off the ground.
By following these easy tips, you’ll be more prepared to approach prospective clients with a proposal that they’ll be ready to sign on for. These simple adjustments can make a huge difference, and once you apply them you’ll be landing clients left and right!
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