The document provides 11.5 upgrades that marketing agencies can make to grow their business. It recommends hiring a new team member, committing fully to inbound marketing, and improving marketing strategy deliverables. It also suggests firing the worst client, pulsing engagements more quickly, creating a defined sales process, telling an inspiring story, focusing only on activities that generate leads, raising prices, getting intimate with key metrics, and asking for help from experts. The overall message is that agencies need to make strategic, operations, sales, financial, and process upgrades to drive sustainable growth.
Unraveling the Mystery of The Circleville Letters.pptx
Mike Lieberman - How To Grow the Hell Out Of Your Agency
1. INBOUND15
HOW TO GROW THE HELL
OUT OF YOUR AGENCY:
11.5 UPGRADES TO DO
TODAY TO GROW
TOMORROW
Mike Lieberman
President, Chief Inbound Scientist,
Square 2 Marketing
3. 1. Context for these Stories
2. Strategic Upgrades to Drive Growth (3 Upgrades)
3. Sales and Marketing Upgrades to Drive Growth (3 Upgrades)
4. Operations Upgrades to Drive Growth (3 Upgrades)
5. Finance Upgrades to Drive Growth (2 Upgrades)
6. Wrap Up and Questions (the elusive ½ an upgrade)
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• Clients on FIVE continents
• 62 team members, both in-office and remote
• Did $4.4 in 2014 and on pace to do $6.4 in 2015
• 14% net profit
• 48 active clients
• $12,500 average MRR
• 0 projects
• $1,272,000 in annual licensing revenue for HubSpot
• Our business had doubled every year since 2012 in both revenue and team members
An Update On Square 2 Marketing
2015
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• Revamped our website design and development methodology TWICE with a focus on
page by page site strategy to drive more results
• Added new UI/UX roles
• Upgraded our own website home page and secondary pages (improved conversion
rate by 72%)
• Implemented company wide Content Strategy and Planning for every client (monthly
or quarterly)
• Inbound Sales Engagement V2 with CRM and Sidekick for Business
• Upgraded and formalized Conversion Optimization engagement tactics
• Testing Agile Marketing with Scrum Methodology for deployment company wide in
January
Changes We’ve Made This Year
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• Client website conversion rates associated with our new sites have
practically doubled
• Designed content strategy have impacted profitability internally and
improved results for clients
• Revenue from Inbound Sales engagements is improving 50% month over
month
• Percentage of clients with Inbound Sales services is 20% up from 5% in
January
• Client renewals through JULY were 100%
It Was Worth It
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• Ignore the OLD RULES!
• Start an “always hiring” mentality
• Build a bench of people who want to work at your agency
• Implement a “just in time” hiring program
• Screen for Core Values and Culture
• Interview for past performance and use behavior questioning
• Test candidates with a “live” project
• Look for in-house people for consulting roles
Hire A New Team Member Today!
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• Ignore the OLD RULES!
• Start an “always hiring” mentality
• Build a bench of people who want to work at your agency
• Implement a “just in time” hiring program
• Screen for Core Values and Culture
• Interview for past performance and use behavior questioning
• Test candidates with a “live” project
• Look for in-house people for consulting roles
Hire A New Team Member Today!
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• It makes for a better story
• Clients and prospects are less confused
• It focuses you and your teams
• You’ll get better at inbound faster
• It’s a growing segment, instead of a stagnating segment
• It’s differentiating in your local market
• Commit to experimentation
• Finding efficiencies within the organization
• Applying technology
Make The Decision To Go ALL IN On Inbound!
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• Personas are only part of the puzzle
• Technical details for a website is NOT marketing strategy
• A content plan (blueprint) is NOT marketing strategy
• A list of inbound tactics is NOT a marketing strategy
Upgrade Your Marketing Strategy Deliverables
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• Inbound marketing is conducive to product thinking
• You repeat tasks over and over again
• Playbooks for each “product” align perfectly
• You’ll notice holes where you need services to round out your offering and
drive better results
• Drive innovation by adding new products/services…Inbound Sales
• Product catalogs support pricing, profitable growth, and value engineering
Create a product catalog and add to it regularly
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Alex turns to Ted, an entrepreneur and old
family friend, who encourages Alex to pursue
three criteria to make his business sellable:
• Teachable: focus on products and services
that you can teach employees to deliver.
• Valuable: avoid price wars by specializing in
doing one thing better than anyone else.
• Repeatable: generate recurring revenue by
engineering products that customers have
to repurchase often.
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• You’re probably losing money anyway, at the very least it’s less profitable
than your best client
• They’re extremely demotivating for the team
• They’re never going to be a good reference for you…so they’re never going to
help you get new clients
• They’re never going to be happy, no matter what you do
• You’re not learning anything from the engagement
• You’re actually opening a slot for a new, more profitable, happier, more
potentially referable client
Fire Your Worst Client TODAY!
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• It has to be more than just delivering “stuff”
• The faster your client teams are able to cycle or pulse the engagement, the
better the results
• A cycle represents a series of activities with specific outcomes in mind
• The team needs all the resources required to pulse more quickly
• You can’t have organized chaos, so some mechanism needs to control the
process of pulsing
Find A Way To Pulse Your Engagements Faster
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Find A Way To Pulse Your Engagements Faster
Analysis
Review
Respond
Action
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Find A Way To Pulse Your Engagements Faster
Analysis
Review
Respond
Action
Data in HubSpot
Team Discussion
Action Plan
Implement the Plan
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Find A Way To Pulse Your Engagements Faster
Analysis
Review
Respond
Action
Data in HubSpot
Team Discussion
Action Plan
Implement the Plan
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• A quote from the book “the Agile Methodology
and Scrum is perfect for creative and highly
complex tasks.”
• Inbound marketing is a creative and highly
complex set of tasks that repeat over and over
again with the result being a desired set of
outcomes – LEADS!
Find A Way To Pulse Your Engagements Faster
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• Make it about your prospects, not about you
• Anyone who asks you to deviate from your process is not a good fit
• Make your prospects feel safe
• Use content the same way you’d tell your clients to use content
• Use the automation tools – CRM and Sidekick
• Model for your clients….this sells inbound better than anything else
• Practice what you preach
Create a defined sales process and stick to it
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Inbound Sales Is Ready For
Prime Time
http://www.square2marketing.com/inbound-sales-effect-read-the-first-chapter
Special Limited Time Offer
Get a pre-release version of the first
chapter TODAY and get notification when
the book is available for full download.
Visit This Special INBOUND 2015 Link
www.square2marketing.com/inbound-sales-effect-read-the-
first-chapter
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In everything we do, we believe in teaching
entrepreneurial CEOs, marketing and sales execs to
think differently about how they sell and market their
businesses.
The way we help clients is through the strategic
implementation of inbound marketing and inbound
sales; making it simple to understand and apply.
Reality Marketing™ + Inbound Marketing + Inbound Sales = Revenue Growth
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• Websites without content, offers, compelling messaging
• Content out of context or without landing pages, CTA buttons and lead
nurturing
• SEO (getting on the first page of Google is NOT a lead)
• Logo Redesign (ever pick a company based on their logo?)
• Press releases
• Outdoor advertising
• Promotional campaigns…discount coupons
• Cold-calling
• Inbound marketing without optimization software
Things That Don’t Get Leads
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A lot of those
services have been
commodized down to
almost no value and
that’s not how I want
spend my day.
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INSTEAD…build your inbound marketing
methodology (the machine) and get good at
delivering it so you drive results and
increase efficiencies in your agency…this is
how grow revenue and profits.
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• Raise your monthly retainers by $1,000 a month
• If someone is paying $5,000 AND they value what you’re doing for them,
they can afford $6,000
• The value you’re providing them is NOT equal to what you’re getting paid
• If you’re getting them leads, does it matter whether it’s $9k, $10k or $11k a
month?
Raise Prices NOW!
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Magic Question…
How much would you pay if I
could give you a Marketing
Machine that delivered the
exact amount of leads you
needed to hit your revenue
goals every single month?
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• Visits, Leads and Conversion Rate for your agency – DAILY
• Blog Views and Blog Subscribers – DAILY
• Average Client MRR – MONTHLY
• Client Profitability vs Target Client Profitability – WEEKLY
• Team Utilization Rate – WEEKLY
• Percent Billable by Team Member and Company Wide – WEEKLY
• Company Net Promoter Score - QUARTERLY
• Current Renewal Rate and Projected Renewal Rate – QUARTERLY
• Team Member Happiness Score – MONTHLY
• Cash on Hand – WEEKLY (two months of payroll)
• Client Program Performance – Weekly/Monthly (Leads vs. Lead Goals)
Numbers You Have To Know Cold!
78. INBOUND15
New Coaching
Cohort Is Launching
In September
Space is already limited but if
you’re interested
www.agencies2inbound.com/coaching-sign-up
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• If you love servicing but selling is challenging
• If you’re concerned about trying to “figure it out” on your own
• If you’re all in on Inbound and share our vision
• If you want to be part of a bigger team
• If you want to selling. stop collecting money, sending invoices, or
handling office admin
Let’s Talk!
We’re Still Buying Agencies