17 Ways to Find Agency Clients with Joe Soto | Marketing Agency Academy
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hi everyone Joe soto here and i'm glad you took the next step to come watch this video this is the 17 ways to find new clients in your local market and i'll tell you what some of you have seen other training videos i've done before where i taught you know four or five ways maybe six seven wait I don't know but you've never seen me teach 17 ways so with that said and this isn't an exhaustive list I'm probably getting even in the course give you even more ways but here's the thing I wanted to quickly put together a list of as many as I could think about the top of my head that we use in our agency and that I use for myself to find new local consulting client now when I say local yeah I you know I think everyone should start within their own backyard because I think there's nothing more valuable than being able to actually interact in person with some of your clients but you know when you're first starting out so you can really learn type of business problems these people go through plus or easier to sell now with that said can you be more productive even over the phone selling the clients or even using the Internet you know you've all seen these methods for finding clients using online funnels using Facebook Ads and sure we're gonna talk a little bit about that but the point is some of these methods I'm gonna give you your gonna use Facebook Ads inside of these methods but at the end of the day this is gonna be different than what you're being taught online because I think everyone thinks it's some sort of magic pill that if I put together this online funnel there's gonna be thousands of people come in my way that want to do business with me and now all of us have the quite honestly the attitude or the personality that fits those models and so I want to just give something different and something that works as well that's more importantly so if you're catching this video before catching the other ones so the last video I talked a little bit about how I had a combined 17 years of experience between owning my own sales training company and owning my own social media might now digital marketing company called revenue inbound we've had over 350 clients all around the country over 30 or 40 states now in three different countries it's been really exciting I've spoken all around the country at different workshops and conferences but at the end of the day what my core skill set is is in training and teaching how to go out there and do the things that I do on a weekly basis which is fine clients sell the clients delivering the results to the clients and then generating referrals and that was the system that we talked about in the last video those four things I drew a little triangle and said you have to be a master at all four of these things finding the clients selling the clients sometimes don't understand the sales process or even how to sell the clients and then being able to deliver the results which is ultimately the most important thing for you and for your client and then being able to generate referrals that's kind of that lost secret or art to being able to do this right so I'm excited here's the 17 waste and now this isn't in any particular order I hate to say this but I kind of just threw this list together and I'm not scripted and even delivering these videos if you can't tell I'm just winging this off top of my head however I have given it thought I do have lots of notes and I have provided handouts for you below this video so you can download the handouts and the worksheets and go through it yourself and that way you don't have to take a lot of notes while you're watch this you just listen and understand how I describe these 17 ways so let's talk about the first way this is really while this isn't maybe the first way you'll you'll use to find the clients it's going to be one of the most significant ways you find clients down the road it could be at them in the beginning as well but more importantly I think as you get into your consulting business you find a couple of two three four clients this will be your number one way so I put it first because it's the most important for me it generates the most clients for me and it will for you as well and it takes you know the least amount of effort and it's fun so the first way I remember there 17 here and you've already download the worksheet you know these already but let me talk about each one of them so the first way is through creating a local business alliance okay a local business alliance so what does that mean that means finding a small group of people and that small group can be one person two people three people ideally it's you know four or five people that you can meet with regularly that you that you have formed an alliance with to refer clients back and forth to each other now there's bigger groups that do this we're gonna talk about that later it's one of the seventeen but in this case I'm talking about a local business alliance so what do I mean by that well for instance who else sells to your ideal client so if you sell to restaurants or you sell to real estate or businesses or realistic Realtors or maybe you sell to attorneys or you sell to salons and spas and by the way I'm going to talk about in this course the what I believe to be the five best local niches for you to target and focus on if you're a local business consultant I'm talking with the ones that are like the easiest to sell so stay tuned for that so here's the thing but if you sell any type of business like this maybe it's a weight loss clinic maybe you focus on weight loss clinics whatever you sell – you have to think about who else is selling to your client that is selling something that is unrelated to what you sell or it's not a direct competing products or service to what you're selling so if you're selling if you're a consultant or coach that's selling digital agency services but maybe you don't sell SEO you just sell website design maybe you're a website design consultant well going and finding an SEO firm or maybe a social media agency would be a great little business relationship down just say look guys I do web sites you do social media and SEO let's partner and we'll refer each other clients okay now the beauty in that is if you have a few clients to refer to them right away this is going to be really effective if you don't then you need to just let them know that your intentions are to do that for them and in fact you know one of the things I tell the people listen I'm not here because no one wants people to start you know infiltrating their book of business just remember that I get people all the time will take this piece of advice and I go on met with so-and-so and they don't want me to be in their Network because they think I just want their contacts well you probably presented yourself that way so the best way to get a newa Business Alliance member to be part of your group is to give the marriage client referral so if you this is why this works best now to hang on with me though because it's powerful this is why it works best though when you have two three four or five clients that you can genuinely refer to somebody else so I'll give you an example so if in my case one of my agencies I have a couple different marketing agents one of our kind of sister agencies if you will we're have focused a niche of selling to restaurants in it's called rockfish marketing we have inside of that business I have a local little business alliance of some other people that also sell to restaurants so I have somebody who sells payroll services processing a credit card processing insurance you know there's somebody in my network that sells insurance to restaurants and that's their main focus well and then he can lower their insurance and actually and it's great because I feel comfortable that I can refer my clients to him so and then you know the person who offers to payroll and processing has been doing it for like seven years so I'm comfortable that I can refer my clients also to him and he does the same inside of our Alliance we also have somebody who's a wine rep that sells wine to restaurants so that's great because we share some of the same clients as well restaurants and bars and when you get the picture so you know if you think about who sells to your client and now if you sell let's say you're a digital marketing agency and you do you do it all well you're not gonna you know if you do everything then you're gonna be limited to you know completely different services but if you let's say you're specializing in you have a video marketing business and you your consultant and you do video marketing well maybe you don't do website design so you better find somebody an area that you can trust as a website designer who also needs clients now if you're referring business to them first it shows that good intention it's that good first step to say look man I know I I know you've got a lot of clients I'm fairly new starting in the area so let me refer a couple of clients to you before you feel comfortable sitting some clients to me just so you understand my intentions are good just be honest and upfront with people when you meet with them and meet with them for coffee you can reach out to them on LinkedIn you can call them up because tenant these people didn't have phone numbers in their business they're always looking for business anyway you might call somebody has a website company for instance I don't design our own website I have I outsource most of that and so I'm always looking for new vendors and partners to refer business to so for a website design kind of might call and say look I've got some website projects that I'm gonna have for you in the near future and love to talk with somebody particularly the owner about referring some business to them so get them to get on the phone with you and say you know let's be for coffee and I can talk to you about what I have planned for the future that I can bring to the table I can really help you out and then you know you could present it in there look you know one thing I'm looking for is to have an alliance with somebody that I can count on it every single time to refer clients to you but I also just would like to ask for in return that you think of me first when you have clients that need let's say for example my case social media marketing so you're being honest with them you bring sure you're not just trying to infiltrate their book of business and you can tell them that because that's what they're afraid of but if you if you get good at reaching out to these people you just have to use your head and say okay what does my what does my client purchase or buy okay I'll tell you what I'm gonna give an example so let's say my target is attorneys or lawyers guess what all attorneys are lawyers have in their office they have copy machines in their office they have office machines if big giant expensive least they've leased these big usually at least them or they're buying they're gonna my payment plans or or they've purchased a really expensive copy machine because they prey on a lot of paper so go find the office systems rep that selled them sells them and sold them that that office machine and how do you do that you can call up an attorney and say look I'm not trying to bother you can walk into any attorneys office and just say real quick you know I'm just trying to figure out who sold you guys your office machines you know what because you're not soliciting them you're not trying to do they'll tell you they'll say you know what here's the card you know Jimmy you told us they operate my business might be in the business of looking for an office machine and I figure that you guys probably best because attorneys always had the best office machines don't tell you who they're repens they'll tell you who the person is it sold to them go have lunch go by that person lunch and tell them you might have some referral business for them and it's true specially if they're happy with well here's the thing here's the caveat if you're talking to a office Mich if you're talking to a lawyer and maybe you're talking to the administrative assistant who sits at the front and he or she says well we're not happy with our office machines they give us a lot of problems that might not be the rep you want to choose and as part of your business lines you want somebody who they feel comfortable so you might say well how's he doing is he servicing you well you're doing great if they say oh man Jimmy is fantastic he's always in here if we have any problems with our machine he's in he's the first one in here in the morning that's you want to work with because you can go to him with that compliment and say look man I heard you're on top of it when these people have issues and I want to work with you that's how you gain new friends that are in the business of what you're doing and you start just local business life the most powerful way I'll tell you this right now probably I would say 60 to 70 percent now of my clients come from this one way we refer business who's your I'll tell you what not everybody will want this because they genuinely just want you to help their clients but they may want you to introduce them in a center of system so what I do is I offer if you bring a new client to me I'll pay you ten percent on their up on their setup or their first month's fee and I'll pay you ten percent residual on that client if they become a retainer based client that's pretty good I mean I've got one of my referral partners it gets a good little paycheck from us every single month it's like a side business so much just like I said because we're each other sales people helping each other so this is number one right we're like twelve minutes into this video and I've only given you one of the seventeen so I'm going to go through a few these other ones faster because I'm diving into all of these inside my course in fact I'm gonna teach you and of course more what to say and how to say it so you can get these alliance partners really locked in so I have some notes down here pardon me for looking at them so number two way I've talked about this in some previous trainings as well but I really want to outline it here too is that you can find people particular if you sell digital marketing services of any kind who are struggling online now so let's talk about this so let's let's talk about how to find something class so one of the ways is by going to Google and finding people who are have not claimed their own Google listing so they're not showing up on Google Maps correctly they're not showing up on Google with a Google listing correctly you don't you Google a local business and it should show up with them pulling up on the right side with their business and their their logo and or maybe some pictures of their food or their restaurants or a restaurant or pictures of the building or whatever it might be along with our website information there ours are open and all that that's a good Google listing and a lot of businesses don't but still I know it's like it's an epidemic I don't know how this is possible but here's how you find those businesses in one shot doing a Google search I'm gonna give it to you right here and I'm gonna write it out for you all right so you're gonna go to Google and you're gonna find people who haven't claimed to Google and why would you do this let's talk about why you would do it because people who have it clean claim their Google listing or don't show up on Google Maps have overlooked how important it is for them to be found as a local business on Google so I don't care what kind of business coach or consultant you are if you can help somebody with this it's your foot in the door for other services that you provide good believe me if somebody doesn't have their Google listing they probably need help in other areas their websites probably bad their businesses probably not ran very well I mean they're missing the boat and so they tend to be people who just you know don't get don't don't get it but it's a foot in the door so you may have just say look at me I even helped you with this part for free if you want to meet for 30 minutes I can get all the information from you and that's your door opening to be able to have a conversation with them that's longer about the services that you offer in addition to this but this is a way that we've gotten our foot in the door some people just saying look I looked you up on Google I can't find your business and your competition is stealing your customers they're getting your coffee I've actually messaged people and said I can see that your customers are going to your competitors because they can't find you on Google correctly they're finding your competitors correctly on Google so let's talk about how do you search this to find people who don't have the correct listing verse instead of just having to search everybody so you type in site this is how you search any website by the way just site colon and then you're gonna put Plus Google cuz it's still listed as plus Google and right before right in this video I tested this to see how well it worked and it still worked really well okay google.com now then you're gonna have a space so this is all one word altogether is no spaces in here okay site colon plus google.com and you're gonna put space this is space all one line though is there's a couple ways you can do is this your business Google doesn't even know if it's their business right is this your business in quotation marks and you're gonna do the plus sign this is space between here and the plus plus and you can put whatever you want you can put restaurant you can put a tourney so let's do attorney plus and you can do let's say Houston your area Houston Texas you can do to pica Kansas Cleveland Ohio I don't care what you put so site colon Plus Google calm space is this your business in quotation marks plus space plus space attorney plus Houston Texas now if I had targeted restaurants I'm gonna put restaurant if I target salon I'm gonna make put salon now I don't also have to put anything I could just leave our attorney and just put plus Houston Texas and I'll get like all the local businesses in Texas that haven't claimed their Google listing page and it'll go on for pages and pages now not all these businesses are gonna care but you're gonna see what happens when you it'll pull up their Google map listing and it'll say claim this business it'll have a little line on the left side of your screen that will say claim this business because this business has even claimed their business for the web for the Google for their Google listing and you can find some clients particularly you're looking for digital marketing clients this is a great way so let me get move on let me talk about the third way and this is if you particularly if you sell advertising of any sort or if your business is gonna sell any type of advertising and you want to know whether or not a business a local business is willing to spend money on advertising it's one of the easiest ways and you go to Yelp hopefully you're familiar with Yelp if you're not familiar with Yelp I'm surprised because millions of people a year a week a day probably use Yelp but to find restaurants salons attorneys you name a type of local business they're using Yelp because Yelp has user reviews on there almost like the Amazon for local businesses at least a fight and reviews on businesses it's fantastic so here's one of the things you can do on here is that on Yelp one of the interesting things about Yelp is that first of all Yelp if you have a local business they call you every week to try to solicit you because they're trying to get you to buy their ad package inside their ad package they have for sale videos inside that so it's not for sale it's actually part of the package so if you buy an advertising program with Yelp they'll include a short 30-second video for your business so what they actually do is a contract with video ographers around the area which is a great person to be part of your network by the way for your number one for your local Business Alliance is they partner with these local these um these local videographers to go into a business and do a 30-second commercial and they edit it for them it's like a part of their service well they're getting hundreds of dollars and sometimes thousands of dollars from the local business client for this advertising service so they pay you know at least an upfront fee for this video to be done for you then so anytime you see a Yelp profile that has a video on it playing a commercial like a 30-second commercial of their business rest assured they're paying Yelp for advertising every single month and it's expensive so it's more expensive than Facebook advertising if you happen to sell that so here's what you do you're gonna go to Yelp and you're gonna type in very similar to how we did it here you're gonna type in site remember I told you I tell you I say you know type in site Yelp comm then you're going to type in this for space and do quotes and you're going to type in watch video and it's two words or space inside there and then you're gonna put plus whatever your market is let's say it's restaurant plus Houston Texas or whatever you're in there you have it hopefully you can see that so Yelp your new site : this is all inside your handout in your notes and you're gonna you're gonna have them find you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna find that if they have a video on their Yelp profile so you know it'll pull up every listing in Google of every business whose advertising with Yelp boom right there your local market go get them because number what there's a couple reasons you can even leave this question I see you can here's how you can leave your voicemail if you're we're calling them okay I can say but I wouldn't call me just email and say you know your input in the subject line you're wasted Yelp advertising dollars or something that's gonna catch their attention or you're wasting money on Yelp advertising because they're gonna be like because that you know what because they already are they know they are they're thinking they are – that nobody really believes or getting great value out of Yelp advertising right now sorry if somebody's working for Yelp watching this but I've dealt with a lot of local businesses that have paid Yelp and they're not even sure if it's working for them you know Yelp convinces them that it has but and on the end of the day it's not a very powerful program for them well I can tell you it gets them some results but doesn't get them great results so you can tell them for Less dollars less money I can show you how to use digital marketing particular if you sell advertising services and you have a lead in so Yelp we're only on number three alright so another way to find clients number four is I have on here speaking speaking locally like to your Chamber of Commerce events so any type speaking now some of you aren't good speakers so you might hate this that's fine skip it go to the next one just fast-forward this video or something but if you think you could see yourself speaking in front of groups and most of you could because once you put together a little presentation of what you've learned in either my course other courses you've taken or if you've been a coach for a long time just put together a side show of a certain topic I used to do my speaking topic used to be called something like you know how to grow your business in 90s less using social media using the power of social media something like that but it was like 70 slides long of a bunch of images and pictures and stats on social media I whipped it together it became my presentation I did all around all around the country but also all around my local market when I first started out the local Chamber of Commerce is pretty powerful because if you go to the Chamber of Commerce its inexpensive to join them for the year and they have monthly speaking events and I would probably you know and here to speak at several chamber of commerce's if you live in a big city there's several chamber of commerce's and you can go and speak at all of them you don't have to belong to all of them speak at them so keep that in mind you know so if I talk to anyone who's watched this video who's not speaking who likes to speak or likes to get in front of groups who isn't doing it you're missing out because you're gonna get dozens of people sometimes 20 30 50 somebodies a hundred or more people inside of your chamber luncheon that you're speaking in front of you usually they're luncheons they do breakfast and luncheons but usually it's a luncheon and you're like the the featured speaker and you get they give you like thirty minutes to speak to that group and so I want you to take that take take me up on those opportunity just contact the local chamber and say you have any speaking opportunities I have a very specific niche in X Y Z and I can get your audience you're really excited and I think I'm a fresh new perspective to the area you're gonna be surprised you know they'll put you on the docket or just ask for an appointment and they'll give it you one and then you can talk about what your topic would be all right number four number five number five is local networking groups okay so this is in your handout local networking okay you heard me mention you know Chamber luncheons and Chamber breakfast –is so when I first started my agency here's a secret when I first started and something a lot of people don't know when I first started my agency in 2010 the very first thing me and my partner's in and it had a couple sales people that were working with me we were all in it together I said let's the first thing we're gonna do is every morning we can finally a breakfast going on any type of networking breakfast we're gonna go in there early they're usually at 7:00 a.m. 6:30 a.m. 7:30 a.m. they're always early because everyone goes to the breakfast is didn't go to work so we throw on at the time we were throwing on suits and ties we thought we had to be all fancy and you don't you just have to know what the heck you're talking about but we would throw you know maybe a sport coat and jeans and I'd go talk to these local groups and we did it we did I felt like we were going like three or four these breakfasts and two or three of these luncheons a week because every chamber of commerce has breakfast and luncheons and sometimes they have after our cocktail events too so you want to find out now if you're in a smaller town or smaller city you still have a Chamber of Commerce and you still can do this if you're in a big city you got a great opportunity because they're all over they're all over there's so many you couldn't keep yourself busy enough they couldn't go to enough breakfast and luncheons so if you're not going out there networking particularly if you're starving for clients right now this was the first way we went and got clients and it was the fastest way we got clients we got you know I remember we brought on a security company that sold locks and securities for homes and businesses we got several car dealerships this way we got you name it we had the business we'd like in the first like six months we had 70 businesses and none of them were that'll like we didn't really have a niche and I do encourage you to go after niches but in our case we just went to these lunches and breakfasts and we took on any clients that we could because we wanted to get started and we started helping businesses so local networking events number six is meetup.com in my course I'm gonna go into this more directly but I'll tell you this if you've never been to meetup calm or you don't have the meetup app on your phone you're missing out because you know meetup got some grabs we know it's here if I don't know and I don't know you know some people have never even been to meet up they don't even know what meetup is and and I'm I don't understand that because it's it's a wasn't it yeah it's to me it's like the forgotten social network right it's actually a social network and it's the largest network of local groups that you can find to attract clients will help you lead a community of your own ideal potential clients so I want you to go on to meetup.com and do a search in your area and if you live in any type of area that has any type of population at all I don't care if it's even a smaller city like you know Provo Utah or Des Moines Iowa you're gonna find meetup groups in my area you know in Northern Virginia and then DC there's dozens and dozens probably hundreds in fact and I signed up to be on the notification list for different meetup groups and there's meetup there's me two masterminds there's business masterminds there's so many and if you just you know instead of watching TV you know or or you know twiddling your thumbs during today if you have any freak because it teaches us all the time I teach in my course Li 80% of your time particularly when you're new and I say new within your first year of starting your business if you're not doing a minimum of a year uh if you're not doing a minimum of a million dollars a year in revenue eighty percent of your time should we focus on sales and so how do you spend that eighty percent some of it is going to these type of groups so meetup.com leverage it go learn it you know go to the site and you're gonna be like wow there's a whole networking community out there other like-minded business people who can refer clients it could be part of your number one your business local business alliance one of the great ways to find them okay number seven be and I if you look up be and I just do a Google search for BNI online BNI groups there's BNI networking groups all around the country and you know it's a Norton paid networking organization that you actually have to be invited into so you have to tend to find somebody who's NB and I already to invite you into the group it's not that hard once you start networking and these local groups you're gonna find people who are part of be and I they meet I think it's weekly or it's by we clearance monthly I don't even know which they meet usually at a restaurant and it's a group of people and nobody in the group can be from a competing industry so if you're a social media marketing agency then nobody else who has a social media marketing they could be in that be in a group if you're an accountant nobody else is in that group can be an accountant so the group usually they're pretty large the pretty large groups it's like a large local business alliance that you have to pay for however and so and it's not super cheap I think it's a few hundred dollars a year not that expensive either but you do have requirements so you have to be generating referrals for other people you know a quarter of them you have to attend a certain amount of their events or you get booted out and they bring somebody else in it was more serious than you to fill in the industry slot that you'd have filled in the end that BNI group so P and I has actually never really been but I have very good friends and I have people at my local business alliance who believe wholeheartedly in BNI and so I can with confidence recommend it so take a look at B and I and in your local area just there's either several chapters of BNI chapters all around your area where you're at right now that you can join I have seen people recently get clients from B and I so I know it works and so it's one of the things on my list again this is 7 of 17 let's move on number 8 is LinkedIn and more specifically its LinkedIn direct outreach now LinkedIn has some paid some paid versions of it right so if you're a recruiter and that's your business it can help you with recruiting they have a version for that if you're a sales person which in this case is the what's called sales navigator it's the one I recommend I think it's like sixty or seventy nine dollars a month it's a premium version of LinkedIn which allows you to in mail a certain amount of people per month which means Direct Message people who aren't in your network now if you don't want to pay for that you don't have to just make sure you're out there constantly connecting and adding people to your network and giving value of course don't go out and just try to solicit people on LinkedIn right away LinkedIn happens to be LinkedIn happens to be a subject a know a lot about there's a book called social boom written by Jeffrey Gitomer one of my mentors who gave me an opportunity to contribute a chapter called I think it's called they're the 15 imperatives of LinkedIn inside of that book it was it was also a topic I trained on and taught for about three years in my own local market is one of my topics I taught to local chamber groups as well as seminars nationally so I happen to know a lot about LinkedIn I'll tell you this you want to grow your linkedin network because that's your network it's just like a business network online it's fantastic and it's a lot easier once you're connected to them that you can then direct message them without having to pay so you want to add to your network and then you want to be able to message them and when you message them you might just message them and I'm going to talk about some of these different ways with some additional value that I'm gonna give you in this and this is still in this video and also in the course but you can direct outreach just say look you know I help local businesses with X and I can see your business are struggling online because I saw your website which have these spelling and grammar errors and I'd love to sit down with you and talk to you about how we can help you get new clients on the web if you're a website designer maybe you're you're a local accountant and you just want to simply just let them know that you're excited to be part of their network because you'd like to know a little bit more about them and then I always say ask people when you connect with them on LinkedIn something that they never get asked and that is ask them who their ideal client is because you might have an opportunity to refer them business on LinkedIn so if I outreach to somebody who's an accountant I might say hey Jim good to be connected here or let's get connected here on LinkedIn and let me know who your ideal clients are who your accounting firm 10 is a service because if I can think of anyone in my network who might benefit from that I'll keep you in mind and that's it I didn't say can you also keep me in mind for my business no just simply reach out to them and let them know you'll think of them but you need and do that and I meant you to be genuine with it keep a log of different people in your linkedin network who you might build a reefer business to because you know what's the most powerful way of all these ways I'm teaching you to get a business referral it's part of the referral system is by giving a referral first giving a recommendation first it's one of the most powerful wastes in that four part system I taught in the previous video where you've got to be great at finding selling delivering and generating referrals one of the ways I'm giving it to you right now you know that's like a sneak peak is by giving people value and by giving people business they're gonna reciprocate and give you business back so there's ways to do that but right now let's just keep it keep it simple okay LinkedIn dragged out direct outreach and here's number nine I'm gonna turn the page here I'm not short number nine is facebook facebook Messenger direct outreach so you mean jail you're telling me I can reach business owners on Facebook through their through direct through messenger through facebook messenger just message them yes that's the answer yes in fact if you're a social media agency consultant or a social media coach I'll tell you it's really interesting if their social media sucks they probably don't have anyone helping them lord help them if they do they need to fire them but if they do have somebody helping them or they don't guess who's watching the page guess who's reading the Facebook messages the owner particularly for local businesses now I can't get this I just tested this last week because I wanted to make sure I could talk with a little bit of more little more confidence because I don't use this method a lot anymore but I I went I was watching Shark Tank how many of your fans of Shark Tank probably I don't know all of you hopefully so I was watching a great show by the way a great show about how not to present bitch so often times and the value that you get from listening to the sharks really listening to their advice it's invaluable so there was a business on there it was a guy who's represented he's the owner of the business and he gets on it has a really passionate story it's a cause based business that was started with a cause but he has a product it's not a caused as a cause story as a social cause behind the story where he gets the product from but the pride that he has which happened to be in the food and beverage and I and I have a niche in the hospitality and the food beverage industry and so I thought well that's interesting so I was watching his and he didn't get a deal on shark tank and for a couple different reasons but he didn't get a deal but nonetheless as you know everyone who goes on shark tanks makes a ton of money they they get a ton of sales they Russia and people go I wanna try the product because it's Shark Tank it's cool getting a massive exposure shows you why reach the exposure can work for a business anyway this particular business was out of the Midwest and so literally as I'm watching the show now I had it recorded so don't do this for the shows live because probably getting a lot of messages I'm watching a DVR but a week old and or maybe even two weeks old and I go on to Facebook message I go their Facebook page and it's it's awful and I'm like wow they have like 3,000 fans it's less than most of my local restaurants including the ones that I own and I said you know wow I went to their facebook Messenger and I messaged and said you know I said you know I just saw you on Shark Tank great products you have a great product I'm excited to order it and but more important to have a great social cause that doesn't look like it's being told very well on your social media your story you told on Shark Tank needs to be conveyed in your social media presence whether it's Facebook Twitter Instagram and I see you guys have a very you know quite a bit I was very candid and I said a very poor social media presence I bet you're getting sales but you're what you're getting for sales in the audience you're generating it isn't none of that presence that brand is congruent with what you got going on social media now true story it's within minutes and I'm not talking about an hour later within minutes the owner actually addressed it to the owner that the guy's name and said hey Kimber's name and I'll tell me and although I have an appointment with his marketing director and him in a week but I messaged them and just said you know that was right now I just told you what I messed him but he within minutes he messaged me back and said hey Joe thanks for reaching out sales have been crazy since the show but we know our social media needs a lot of work when can you meet and so I said an appointment with him to meet actually this was like three two or three weeks ago but our appointment is for next week and I meet with his director actually with a Reese called we scheduled a call once but nonetheless it worked right and I know it worked because I used to do this all the time and I've seen other people do this as well it's just another way it's like can you believe the owner and it's like just can use on a shark tank doesn't mean he's on a business owner who's struggling with social media so I contacted them right through Facebook now sometimes you're gonna hit the people that are managing the Facebook for them and that's just hit or miss and so you also can message them this was on their facebook business page but you could also try message them on their personal page which is fine too you know it's whatever it takes if I didn't get him on Facebook I would have went to LinkedIn them but in this case I just want to test the Facebook and then okay here's another one number 10 Facebook page interaction so I'll give you an example let's say you're a dentist and you want to target other dentists or you're a dental marketing agency and you want target dentists if you go to the Facebook page for the American Dental Association they have like two hundred and forty thousand fans and they're getting hundreds of comments hundreds of likes hundreds of shares per day on our per post per day on their Facebook page now you could go in there as yourself and comment and interact on that page but you also can go in there and interact as the Facebook page of your agency on that page next year a little picture of your icon on your on your if you if you go to a business page go there right now particularly if you're also a page owner go to a Facebook page of any type of Facebook page and you'll see a little icon where you can put a comment I'll save comment or share and you go to comment and you're gonna you're gonna see your your little icon it's real tiny and there's a little drop there's a little arrow next to it if you click that arrow you can actually select any page that you also own to do the commenting so you can interact as your page on a page all your interaction on social media on it should be as one of your pages or as your business page so that way when people go oh who made that comment it directs them to your business page not just your personal profile so Facebook page interaction there's gonna be a lot more on this I'm gonna really dive in and I'll show you examples on how to do something do it in real time and live in my course but I wanted you to have this as a way because you could take that right now and start doing it number 11 building your online funnel I'm not going to go into this there's lots of courses on this one of my mentors fact several of my mentors use this to fight all their clients I have used it to find clients for myself that's building an online funnel so people can come to you they can get their strategy session through you to meet with you for thirty minutes which is really just a long sales call for you and them but you know there's some really awesome ways to do this I don't need to teach this in this course because it's already being taught so much out there on how to build an online funnel now the the the difficult part about it is that it takes a lot of time to set this up but it is worth it but more importantly some people just don't have the aptitude for they just for some reason you know I watch people who doesn't work for you know maybe it's their personality it's a lot of different factors and so I wanted to make sure in this course and in these video series I gave you ways you can go right now you don't need to learn a whole system and a whole program for using Facebook just to build your online funnel now I'm a big fan of online funnels and I'm gonna dive into this part how you dive into all of these actually inside my course but in this one I dive specifically and I will teach some of it but I also direct you to some of my mentors who teach it even better so you can learn it but it's just one of many ways it's actually I was learning this about a year ago and started applying it but in the meantime I was still finding clients using these other methods because they're fast and they're easy and they're free this is not free it's gonna cost some money to do it and but I do encourage you to play with it okay number twelve was it wasn't a very good order is LinkedIn groups so if you go to LinkedIn and you search groups go to groups if you don't belong to LinkedIn groups you're missing it okay so LinkedIn groups are powerful basically LinkedIn groups are groups online now there's lots of Facebook groups too but LinkedIn groups are potent because everyone's been in a business mindset when they're on LinkedIn keep that in mind I love Facebook but it's a little more like a social party LinkedIn is business so you go to LinkedIn you join a LinkedIn group there's all kinds of social media groups there's all kinds of groups now here's the secret make your own LinkedIn group and start inviting other people in your local businesses too it may be called a local business new develop new business development group new business marketing and sales group whatever it might be and you start bringing people into your group there's two ways that you want to use LinkedIn groups you want two interacting groups that are already done in your local area or city there's tons of them you can just search in LinkedIn groups you can search keywords specific to cities etc join them interact them don't solicit in them biggest mistake I see people make is they don't know how to give value first you know um I have to write a blog article or something else at LinkedIn to show that you're willing to give and contribute not just take be a giver I don't take her if you be if you're a giver and social media if you're a giver and some of these tactics it'll come back to you business will come back to you I'm gonna I'm giving you all ton of tips here so most of my mentors would tell me Joe just give them four or five and tell them the other ten or whatever or you know the other 10 of the 17 are inside the core so they have to go to the course to you know I'm giving you all 17 here I might deep dive in them in the course but I want to give it all to you here I don't want repeating excuses I want somebody to go through these three free videos and say I was able to get clients because of what you taught for free that is my goal okay cuz I know you'll want to learn more with me down the road you'll want to maybe personal coaching you want something else but I'm not worried about that I'm worried about how can I get you by now watching us to do some of these things to start getting more clients that's my goal so LinkedIn groups go participate go learn everything you can about LinkedIn groups and start participate because it takes no effort you instead of watching reality TV in the evening and watching The Bachelor and survivor and whatever else is on start spending time in LinkedIn groups interacting just chime in offer some pieces of advice tell people great job that I was helpful interact so they can see who you are and enter and build your network it pays off and then obviously when you have your own group here's the reason it establishes you as a local expert you want to be the highest paid highest profile consultant your local market you got to be perceived as the expert and the authority in your local area and you can do that also on LinkedIn let's move on or twelve yes do you more left here okay number thirteen I have is audits and what do I mean by audits this is one of the main ways I give value to other businesses I will spend time looking at a business particularly when you're new in business so if you're just starting out you can look at it let's say you sell social media so you can go and look at their Facebook look at their Instagram look at the Twitter look at their social media presidency if the other social media connected to Facebook do they have a connection to their blog you know how are they using social media are they using snapchat are they using YouTube look at everything if your digital marketing agency you're looking at their website presence and everything so you'd maybe do a website audit or a suit what I call social media on it for that business there's templates you can use there's automated tools online that you can use I have a secret weapon that I'm gonna I'm gonna show off in the course on how to do a website on it without with with a push of a button there's there's a few free ones online but the one I'm gonna show is awesome but anyway you can do audits for businesses and you can send them the audit as a way of adding values who say hey go to LinkedIn do the LinkedIn direct outreach you could just email the business owner directly and say I've done a complete audit on your social media presence you're gonna want to read this or hey your social media sucks and here's the audit to prove it however you want to say it I've done all of it and it all gets attention just get their attention and that's that's part of selling you know you get to learn memorator master selling that's mastering selling is mastering copy and copywriting but I love to do audits for businesses and I'll send them to an audit it's like it's like a mini audit maybe three four pages so I used to send just one page outlines here's the ten things you're doing great and ten things you're doing bad that works too it doesn't really matter how you do it just do it because you're giving value first now you'll tell people what to do but you won't tell them how to do it's just say look you need to do this need to do that you need to do this you need to have this you need to have some cross promotion doesn't look like you have you know your Facebook talking to your Twitter or vice versa doesn't look like you have your you know share buttons on your blog you know make sure you start adding their business or you can let's say you're a business coach who teaches you know strategic business and business just pure business coaching across the board all kinds of things not just digital marketing so maybe you look at their website and look look I can tell you're not telling your story well I can tell you're you know I'm looking at your website and I can't tell what you do or what value you bring to the marketplace and so you you know you need some help so here's some of my recommendations there's a couple books to buy just give some advice just give them some advice on what to do to change and they'll appreciate that because you just kind of hotter than their business for them this is a whole module on it of itself and I'm excited to really go through it more in depth but I'll tell you what what I just told you is enough to get started I don't care if it's a one-page outline what the business is doing well what they need to be changing and doing better we're doing better areas for improvement however you want to word it it doesn't matter you can just email it to them you may need to have a template or anything like that I have a template below this video so you can use as a template for an audit but at the end of the day you don't even need that you could just email them an outline and say look you have an opportunity here to improve and I wanted to help you if you want to reach out and talk about it I'm happy to review this audit with you I'm available but that's it you're not trying to hammer them the ones that you do a good out of for that really needs you and they see enough value in what you provide them will call you they'll contact you they'll respond they'll reply with hey can we set up a time or let's meet but shoot for the value first because not for the solicitation okay let's move on number 14 industry events I love this one I happen to love my family I love spending time with my family so I don't go to a lot of these anymore oh just threw my pen okay I don't spit a lot I don't I don't spit a lot of time with these but industry events I'm gonna switch the blue pen here okay so let's go to industry events what do I mean by that so you know okay no matter what type of business you have there are you know industry events there's associations you know like for instance there's the Financial Planners Association the International coach Federation National Association of Realtors National Association of Professional organizers is the National Restaurant Association just type in lists a restaurant or a list of associations a National Association of business women owners or women business owners there's associations for every single industry there's events for every single industry for goodness sakes if you're in digital marketing or social media there's social media vent for everything but if I was a still more Keynesian see selling to restaurants would I rather go to a social media event but I want to go there to learn social media sure or what if I only had to choose one though of where to spend my money and my focus was on finding clients what I picked to go to that when I can learn most that online or from a course like this or what I go to the restaurant associations event that they have in all the different cities they have a national one but then they have regional ones why wouldn't I go there that's where all my clients are all there while you're at these you know events patting each other on the back how great you are at you know kind of owning your own business and practice and social media see I'm over at my industry event picking up clients so I want you to think about where do your clients go to events have trade shows and go to those in grab class nationally or in your own area now locally they're all over I don't care what city you live nearby if you have to drive two hours Kansas City because you live two hours outside of Kansas City drive two hours to Kansas City and go to your industry you focus on your niche go to their trade shows if it's just walk around meet people doesn't mean you walk it out passing it your card saying hey I help businesses I help restaurants out of restaurants no just going me to have them talk to you about their business this is part of the sales piece get a master I'm teaching how to find clients you're gonna master how to sell them you have to mash try to get those appointments and in tomorrow's video we're gonna talk about more about how to get results the sales pieces in the course but I want you to think about what events your clients are at okay now there's two ways interact and one more thing I got just to share this with you one of the ways I met one of my mentors is I actually went to their event and I sponsored the event I paid 10 grand what's true to the true story 10 grand to be a table at the back of this person's event that they were putting on I had a booth there I got them as a client and I got other clients for people that attended the event way worth the ten thousand that relationships been going on for years now so do you have to do that no you can just go to these events and network and be great but if you've got the financial means you might want to be doing both let's keep moving number 15 this one's funny local newspaper ads anybody who's advertising in a local newspaper number one they need help because they wouldn't be advertising they're looking for more business so I like that so they're already primed and they're willing to spend money on ads the other number two is they need help because they should be advertising in a local newspaper so I don't care what kind of business coach you are agency owner or consultant get them to stop doing that right or if they just have a lot of money saying okay great but let's compare it to what I'm going to teach you I remember one of my restaurant clients when I first met with them they were they were they were advertising and in a local magazine they weren't tracking it they were paying hundred dollars per month to do it they were doing it for brand awareness because they thought they had to be in that local magazine and we stopped it and they never missed a beat financially they went up because of what we did for them instead local newspaper ads though whole bunch of Louisville clients show up in local newspaper ads that are all willing to spend money in advertising who just don't know any better so if you sell digital marketing services in particular call them they need help if you sell any type of coaching business though they're looking for help they're a cry for help ok let's move on number sixteen leadless leadless what do I mean I lead lists well you can go to info USA i think.com or just type in leadless and google and you're gonna find all these different lead brokers now some of them are good some of them bad info USA is one of the good ones do your due diligence and you can buy email lists you can buy telephone lists address lists for sending audits to you sometimes but that's the cheapest list by the way the address lists and then you can just send audits to those lists address it in the owner some of these lists will come with the owner's name some of them all so you want to find all that stuff out if you've got the financial means to spend a few hundred dollars sometimes a few thousand dollars a very large list there are industry lists – in your industry do some research on google you're not using google well enough go to google and type in your industry lead list and you might be surprised what you find there are lead lists of people some of these linked lists are well researched to give you n tell that you can even use then use instead of an audit to send them or to an indirect outreach so leadless more on that later but i want you to understand that that's one of the most powerful ways to get started as well so here's number 17 there's my favorite doesn't mean we used all time it's my favorite competitors clients no mercy movies i love looking at clients of competitors particularly when I know those competitors suck and getting results now all's fair in love and war and in this case in business you know I want to leave my competitors in the dust I have a lot of respect for them I would applaud them shake their hand and tell them good luck I'm glad your your you know your help in the economy we're on business but man if I can outperform them and I can prove it I'm gonna go after some of those clients there's a couple reasons why you know those clients are all really willing to pay the money and they may not be getting the results they deserve so I know a particular couple of competitors I happen to do now in my industry I'll go after their clients now I I do this within reason so there's actually a couple really big national agencies that do a really crappy job and they really do I think they're doing a disservice to their client pace and so I have no problem telling the client base that I won't really bash the competition I'll just say look I don't know whether you're getting results or not and I know they're not but if you're not you we need to have a conversation because I think you might be throwing your money away I've gotten clients that way so but you already know they're willing to spend the money on your industry in business so pay attention to who your competitive clients are because they're fair game they're fair game I don't care who tells you at the end of the day you want to be respectful about it but they're fair game so and they may need help no one's married to anyone remember that no one's married to you right now they might be locked into a contract which is even more of a reason for them to get away because I stopped doing contracts a long time ago when I realized that having a contract meant I was scared because if I'm getting someone results number the third piece of the system of the triangle finding clients selling clients getting them results getting referrals if I can get them results and they're never gonna leave and they're never gonna leave you as well which is why in the next video we're gonna talk about how to get some results I'm actually gonna give a case study of how I got some results I'll give me a couple different examples I'm still trying to figure out what that's gonna look like but I'm gonna do something over the shoulder where you can see how you get results for clients and that's the next video and just but to recap here you have 17 ways there's no excuses none of this is just pick up the phone call cold I didn't say go door to door and you start knocking on local businesses doors I'm walking in and I'll tell you what that type of interruption pisses businesses off it's not respectful it's not professional it doesn't work very well so I'm going to encourage you to look at these 17 ways and say which one's worked best for me just pick two or three of them pick one pick two or three and say look which is gonna work for me and then go and do that it's a little overwhelming it's a lot of different ways to go find clients but there's no more excuses and so I'm here to help you do that find clients sell clients and getting results tomorrow when I talk a little bit more about how do you get those clients results particular once you find them and they're become your client how do I get them results and and that's where your focus needs to be once you've got them on board so thanks for listening I know it's a long video it's been an hour-long video here I hope you've appreciated some of the things that I've shed some light on and looking forward to seeing in the next video as well see you then

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32 thoughts on “17 Ways to Find Agency Clients with Joe Soto | Marketing Agency Academy

  1. I typed in the text he shows for 2 and 3. Either it doesn't work or I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know how I would be.

  2. If anyone wants to learn more about working remotely or join a fun & active community, check out www.guavabean.com! We love helping freelancers & digital nomads find their dream jobs. 💕

  3. I’m not understanding how to type in the search for the “is this your business” or the yelp “watch video” portion. Please explain these to me if you can

  4. Dear Joe Soto, please add sentences in English what you are saying , we are not native and cant get you. English sentences what you are saying on the screen will help us a lot.


    Fazal Rehman


  5. I thought there was supposed to be a download link so I didn't have take notes. Very excited to get through this info, and would like notes if you offer them.
    Thank you.

  6. This has to be the BEST video I have seen in a LONNNGGGG time.. Thank you!! BNI by the way here in Australia is about $1900/yr

  7. Hello Joe,
    You did a splendid job with this video. You gave so much value and a great in depth description to most of the 17 ways.
    You just got a new subscriber!!! I decided to subscribe right after tip #3. 🙂 🙂 🙂 You did an awesome job. Thanks

  8. Joe, this video blew my mind! Some of this stuff I already do, but most if it I never even knew about. I'm just starting my digital marketing consulting business doing DM for local offline and service-based businesses, this is so helpful. Thanks for all the free value!

  9. Joe, Not sure if you will see this. I have a Link account but it shows my real estate business and I am transitioning to SMMA. Suggestions?

  10. JOE the site: search doesnt work any more it seems. can you suggest another way of doing this search? maybe a tool or website or something. seems super powerful to me.

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