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From $0/mth to $5,000/mth challenge - marketing agency

Marketing, social media, advertising

ryss

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Hi,

I was watching Matrix recently.

And inevitably, the famous line rolled in:

28502

Dang! It made me think.

For the past few months, I haven't walked the path, and my income has dried up.

So I decided to get back on it.

Stop action faking and start action taking.

The problem is, I've made this commitment to myself before.

And I discovered I don't keep it when I'm accountable only to myself.

I believe it'll be different this time.

But..

"You can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results"

Of course.

I must do something different.

So I decided I'll be accountable to the people on this forum.

Hence this thread.

--

Now,

Let me share some details and self-imposed rules:

The challenge: Earn $5,000/mth online.
Time frame: ASAP
How: Service business - marketing agency.
Traffic: Various methods of cold outreach (email, IG, FB, LinkedIn).
Conversion method: Get people on the phone, diagnose a present pain, offer a solution.

I realize the only specific thing above is the $ amount. The rest is vague because I don't know how it's going to turn out. I plan to throw a lot of noodles on the wall and see what sticks. And then throw more of the same type. In other words: double down on what works.

I'll start where the herd is but I hope to discover some green pastures where the fresh gra$$ grows

--

I'll write my next report by Saturday evening (3 days from now).
In it, I'll include:
  • what progress I've made
  • how much I've worked
  • what I've learned
  • how I plan to improve.
--

That's it. Thank you for reading.

Please watch this thread - I'll try to share valuable lessons along the way.
 
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RazorCut

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That's it. Thank you for reading.

Please watch this thread - I'll try to share valuable lessons along the way.

Looking forward to watching you transition through.

You might find it useful to define your steps in lower increments (first dollar earned, $500 month, $1000 etc.) and set a time frame for each accomplishment.

I won't wish you luck as we all know luck has very little to do with it.
 

Galacticum

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Agree with @RazorCut and also like you noticed yourself already.
The first thing should be to make a specific and attainable plan. Use trello (or similar) and note down exactly what and how you want to achieve it for the next 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month and 3 months.
Otherwise you will get analysis paralysis and get nowhere.

Alot of the times when I see posts like that I know that OP (not directed at you) will have a hard time since the only specific goal is the revenue they want and/or need.
But this should be the last metric to reach for... Atleast until everything is moving.
Get your hands dirty first and then start dreaming about your money goals.

How: Service business - marketing agency.
Traffic: Various methods of cold outreach (email, IG, FB, LinkedIn).
Conversion method: Get people on the phone, diagnose a present pain, offer a solution.
Those 3 points are where it gets interesting.

How- Niche down before going broad! And also specify what exactly you are offering with your agency. Marketing agency could be anything and I have no clue what you would be doing.
Do you already have experience within one area?

Traffic- Again... Niche down before spreading yourself too thin. Focuse on the one platform where your customers are hanging out the most.
How do you plan to approach them? FB, IG and Linkedin are great to build up a personal brand, put out free stuff that benefits them and warm them up.

Conversion method- Start writing a script if you plan on closing over the phone.

Start working on these 3 points and make them ultra specific. Not just in terms of quantity but how it's going to happen in a realistic way.
 
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ryss

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Looking forward to watching you transition through.

You might find it useful to define your steps in lower increments (first dollar earned, $500 month, $1000 etc.) and set a time frame for each accomplishment.

I won't wish you luck as we all know luck has very little to do with it.

Thank you @RazorCut. I added the increments as you suggested - $500, $1000, $3000, $5000. I'll wait with time frames a bit more until I have a better picture of how much time/work it takes for me to get one client.

Alot of the times when I see posts like that I know that OP (not directed at you) will have a hard time since the only specific goal is the revenue they want and/or need.
But this should be the last metric to reach for... Atleast until everything is moving.

Thanks for your input @Galacticum. I don't think revenue/income goal should be the last metric to reach for. In fact, I think it should be the first one. It's a good motivator and a good place to start reverse engineering. But it is a "lagging metric" - I have no direct control over it. To get things moving I need "leading metrics" - like the # of hours I work, or the # of emails I send. I track them but didn't mention it because I don't yet have benchmarks for them.
 

Sandholdt

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In my opinion you shouldn't wait with making a timeframe until you have a better picture. No timeframe doesn't make you accountable to any real action. Give yourself a deadline - atleast for the first client. If you near it, and still don't have a single client, it's time to hit that phone over and over.

Even pay someone to help you find the first client. Do W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R to reach it.
 

ryss

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Update #1

Hi,

Over the last 2 days, I've spent about half of each day on productive work (~5h). My energy drops significantly after about 2 pm. So to not feel like I'm wasting my time in the afternoons I was reading/watching business-related content (action faking).

I set up a few cold email campaigns.

4 different niches, 2 versions of email copy, 4 versions of subject line.
157 emails sent, 48 opened (33%), 0 positive responses.

I send to low-quality emails (generic emails like info@, contact@, etc.) and do little personalization. It's basically a spray and pray approach. The upside is that it requires little manual labor. I plan to up my sending to a couple of hundred emails per day.

After I get a paying client, I'll invest in getting higher quality emails (personal emails).

I was considering doing cold calls and LinkedIn outreach. I'll start with LinkedIn, but cold calls seem scary as F*ck. But I'll try them. Next week. I'll let you know how did it go.

--
Mindset:

During those 2 days, I felt very confident I can make it happen and very afraid I will not make it happen.

Moving forward I'll just try to focus on doing the work, and worry less about the outcomes.

--
A useful heuristic I've learned for decision making:

"70% Rule"

Quote from Jeff Bezos:

Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Source: Letter to shareholders 2016

--
Next update: By the end of Wednesday (4 days from now).
 
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Andy Black

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MattR82

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My tip: resource partners. Which is a fancy way of saying outsourcing but that was the term used at a sales conference I just went to and I like it.

Pick carefully though.
 

Andy Black

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“Who already has your clients?” (Jay Abraham)

Can you build relationships with business owners who already serve your potential clients?
 
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Devampre

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I agree with @Andy Black on this... Work your personal network and give yourself a portfolio first from some people in your network (or your friend's/family's network and get them results. At least 1 person.

This way you have more credibility in the event a stranger asks something like "what have you done" or "what are your credentials"? If you can show them results you got for someone else, they'll be easier to close at a more desirable price.

Also, if you are doing cold email campaigns, be sure that they do not violate any "Anti Spam" laws in the countries that you are sending them.
 

Andy Black

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Do warm before cold?

10 years later I’m still not doing any cold outbound. Not saying don’t do cold outbound, just showing that there’s other ways.
 

ryss

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Thank you for contributing ideas guys.
I'll use some of them and report back in a few days.

I'll reach out to people I've worked with.
I'll also start talking to people in my network and ask if they need help.
 
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J.F.

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While I wish you the best of luck of course, I've never had any luck focusing on the money part of the goal. I stayed broke for a long time trying to "chase that paper". When I actually made a product people wanted, the money came faster than I ever could have expected.

I compare it to guys who go out "Looking for sex". With that mindset, if they get it, it wasn't really that good or sustainable. Versus the guys who go out and say: "I'm hoping to meet some positive people and have some good conversations" who always end up finding themselves in much more interesting places.
 

SkyLake

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Did something similar and made bank.

My two cents:

If you’re sending email to info@ or contact@ addresses, don’t. Waste of time. 157 emails is nothing. You’d need to send 1,000 emails every day to get bottom feeders sales.
Get the owner’s name and call instead.
Some business that doesn’t even have their employees personal emails is not a serious business that is growing. It’s a local small business that will be crying over giving you $500.

Better approach:

Quality > Quantity

1. Pick a niche. Don’t do what everybody and their mother is doing (real estate, doctors, dentists, restaurants etc).

2. Choose a specific service to offer them (no web design, SEO, ads etc).

3. Want to close high paying clients? Only contact companies with 5M to 50M revenue between 25 to 200 employees.

4. Find the CEO/Founder/Director or Marketing’s personal emails.

5. Do 10 minute research on the company. Check their website, Twitter, news articles, LinkedIn, whatever. Find something specific. Ex ‘I noticed you are leaving 100k in revenue a month on the table because your X is not optimized/whatever’. This has to be real, because when they see your email they must be thinking ‘holy shit this guy actually knows my problem, I better talk to him’. Initially when you still suck it might take you hours to uncover a very specific problem.

6. Send the email. Short, 2-3 sentences email. ‘Hi MJ, I saw your post on LinkedIn regarding your plan to update your forum in 2019. We at X have helped X forum transition into a modern look helping them increase their online revenue by 21%. I’d love to have a conversation with you to help determine what your specific needs are. Tuesday 2pm works? — Mark.’ Leave your number in the signature and your company name and address. No links.

7. Send 100 total emails over a week and if you uncover their needs and do everything correctly, you should get 30 meetings and 20 sales. You’ll have more business that you can possibly handle. Hell, even if you suck you should still get the low hanging fruit and make 1 sale with only 100 emails.

This is just a general framework. Everything must be applied to your own niche and services. You need to be good at copywriting, have a solid understanding of cold email deliverability, be good at selling and many other things. If you just copy and paste it won’t work.
 
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ryss

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@J.F.

Great analogy. I'm not obsessively focused on the money aspect, but it's a good reminder anyway. Thank you.

@Mr992

I thought about targeting $5M+ companies before but I abandoned the idea because I was afraid I won't be able to sell to them because I'm too small or whatever. Just writing it now I realize it's ridiculous. If I can identify their problem and I have the expertise to solve it - then I'm in the position to add value.

As a consequence, I'm where everybody and their mother is. 402 emails sent so far - and no positive responses.

It's time to try something different.

Thank you very much for writing this post.


--

Update #2:

This week so far I've done 4h of focused work per day. It's not bad, but I want to do better. For the rest of the week, I'll try to up it to ~6h/day.

I've taken @Andy Black's advice and contacted some of my previous clients and old leads that never turned into clients. It's a handful of people but I got some positive responses (3 to be exact). None of them turned into contracts yet but I have one call scheduled for tomorrow. I'll let you know if I sign a client.

Next update on Saturday.

Thanks!
 
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