1. Visibility

Do you ever feel like you’re in a bubble all by yourself? 

Other vendors have a bigger following than you do. Or maybe they’ve been around longer than you. Or maybe you just feel like marketing isn’t really your thing but, of course, you still need leads.

If you ask a garden-variety web agency what to do, they’ll run you through a “discovery” call to learn about your business. Then they’ll create a “custom strategy” just for you. But you don’t need a new and untested strategy; you need a proven system that works.

 

Over the last few years, almost everything has changed when it comes to local marketing. Today, you need a lot more than just a fancy logo and an old-school website. To get discovered, you need multiple lead generation sources all working for you simultaneously. In other words, you have to show up where people are searching.

 

Your clients are looking for you in a wide variety of places, including Google Maps, Google Business, The Knott, Wedding Wire, Zola, and of course, Instagram.

 

If you’re just relying on word of mouth referrals, you’re leaving a lot on the table.

 

Websites are important too, but how you use your website has changed dramatically. We’ll cover the role of your website in an upcoming lesson because without the right tools on your website the majority of your traffic will just slip through your fingers. 

 

Right now, we’re talking about visibility and getting discovered. If you want to generate leads in today’s new economy, you have to show up where people are looking for you. We’ll get you listed everywhere you need to be. I think you’ll be shocked by how fast that fills up your calendar.

 

If you liked today’s lesson about getting you discovered, you’re going to love tomorrow’s lesson when I show you the next step that makes people choose you over everyone else.

2. Authority

Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. You need to get somebody to help you with something so you hop over to Google for a quick search. Up pops a list of businesses. How do you decide who to call?

If you’re like me, the first thing you check for are reviews, right? How many people like this business? How recent is the last review? Are there any bad reviews? If so, how did the business respond? 

 

You narrow your list down based on reviews, then you check out the websites of your top contenders to see if you can see who you’re actually going to be dealing with. 

 

Does the website make you feel like you can trust the business? How good are their examples of past projects? Wouldn’t you like to actually see a recent photo of the team - or at least the founder? You also want to verify that they actually serve the area where you live. 

 

Are they open right now? When should you expect them to get back to you?

 

In other words, everybody is looking for these five things:

• Social proof (Do they have plenty of reviews?)
• Responsive (Do they respond to reviews and care what people say?)
• Quality (Do they do a good job?)
• Trust (Can I trust these people with my WEDDING!?)
• Integrity (Do they care about their clients?)

When a business checks all those boxes, that’s who you call.

 

In a nutshell, we call this your authority. We take care of all five of these categories for you. We are essentially your online PR firm covering all of these bases without you having to spend any time on it.

 

Yesterday I showed you how we get you in front of the right people. 

 

Now you know why you get the clicks.

3. Lead Capture

With everything we’ve done so far, your calendar is already starting to fill up like never before. But, what about the people who click through to your site who aren’t quite ready to hop on your calendar yet? 

The businesses that drive traffic to their websites but only connect with the people who are ready to buy on the first click are leaving a lot on the table. 

 

Even if people love what they see when they first discover you, some people are going to want to learn more about what you have to offer before they’re ready to work with you. We want to stay in touch with these people even after they leave your website. 

 

Run of the mill web agencies will post your phone number and set up a contact form for you. But this doesn’t align with what the customers actually want. They aren’t ready to contact you yet. They are trying to discover if you’re offering what they need.

 

We take a different approach and create a variety of lead magnets for you. A lead magnet is something interesting and valuable that we develop for your customers in exchange for their email address. We’ll test a variety of lead magnets such as coupons, top 10 lists, and even small educational courses (kind of like what your'e reading now). The idea is to give people something of genuine value so we can stay connected with them while they are in the decision making process. This is vastly superior to crossing your fingers and hoping they remember to come back to your website. You stay on the top of their mind, and they get something valuable from you; it's a win win!

 

The big takeaway for today is that you’ll get far more customers by onboarding customers who are ready now without losing touch with the people who are interested, but not quite ready yet. 

 

If you’re not using lead magnets you are losing touch with over half your traffic. Not good.

4. Lead Nurturing

Wouldn’t it be great if you could be educating your client, building your authority, and staying top-of-mind all at the same time without actually having to do anything?

Yesterday we talked about how to get the email addresses of people likely to want to work with you but who weren’t quite ready to jump on your calendar yet. Now, that we have those email addresses we’ll create an email drip campaign for you that will accomplish three major things:

1. Educate your leads
2. Repel leads that aren’t a good fit for your business
3. Attract leads that are your ideal clients

By automating the lead nurturing process you:

• Get a shorter sales cycle
• Stop wasting time talking with unqualified leads
• Reduce the cost of acquiring new customers

Most businesses don’t have any process for nurturing leads and simply let people bounce off their websites with no way to follow up. They completely miss out on these leads even though it can represent over half of your website’s traffic. 

 

Whether you’re driving traffic organically or with paid ads, you’re harvesting more leads from the same traffic. Landing more customers with a lower cost of acquisition per customer puts you ahead of everyone else. In other words, this makes you much more profitable.

5. Client On-Boarding

The point of all of this is that you’re sick of slow months and tired of stressing about the inconsistency of getting clients on your calendar.

What difference does it make if you’re increasing your visibility, building authority, capturing leads, and automating your lead nurturing sequences if that doesn’t translate into more clients for you?

 

We make sure your client onboarding process is a finely tuned machine by making it as easy as possible for your clients to hire you. 

 

You’ll get all the tools so your clients can:

• Message you directly from Google
• Book an appointment with you from your website
• Schedule an appointment from your automated emails
• Get in touch with you the way you actually want them to

If your clients discover you in other business directories we’ll make sure there’s an easy and obvious link to your booking page. 

 

Remember all these discovery points back from lesson one? Now we’ve added even more.

• Google Maps
• Google Business
• The Knot
• Wedding Wire
• Zola
• Instagram
• Website
• Email nurturing sequences
• etc.

How many of these touch points are you currently leveraging? 

 

Think about your calendar like a pool and all of these touch points as hoses filling the pool. 

 

We’ll set it up so your clients can sign up for available spots on your calendar. You can even collect payment at the time of the booking if you want to. Of course, we’ll also make sure everyone knows your phone number. 

 

Whether your clients book their own spots, or you book the clients yourself, the bottom line is you can finally stop worrying about how you’re going to fill up your calendar.

 

When you’re ready for more clients, let's schedule a time for us to talk.