Agency Q4 Playbook: How to sign more clients in the next 3 months than you have all year

Q4 is here.

And there's a lot to be excited about for the agency owners out there...

Nope, not the pumpkins that have been appearing everywhere.

And not the Christmas ads that have already started running - side note, we walked into John Lewis on October 1st and there were 100s of Christmas Trees on display.... Who's buying a tree in October?

Q4 is huge for agencies, why?

Because it's Sales Season.

Q4 isn't just a big sales season in the B2C world, it's huge for agencies too.

When we look at our client acquisition numbers from 2020-2022, we sign the same amount of clients between October-January than we do the rest of the year.

And what causes this?

It's simple seasonality.

The end of the year draws a line in the sand where brands start asking:

"How can we make next year even better than this?"

"How are we going to hit those huge targets next year?"

"What do we need to change to grow again next year?"

and this year... they're asking questions like:

"How do we recover from this terrible year?"

"How do we increase our marketing output and decrease our spend?"

"Do we really need to pay that much to our agency?"

And let me tell you - when your prospects are asking these questions, they have suddenly turned into what we call Now Buyers (more about Buyer Readiness and Now Buyers later).

In essence that's why Q4 is so good for agencies, there are more Now Buyers in the market than any other time.

And here's the bottom line, now's the time to get out and sign clients.

But as you all know, it's not as simple as it sounds. So what should you be doing over the next few months?

That's what we're here to discuss:

Before you begin: What you need in place

I'm not going to spend too long here, but you need the basics of a strong market position in place. The biggest problem agencies have is differentiation, and if you don't solve it you'll never really grow.

So what does that mean:

• Target - who's your target market?It doesn't have to be a vertical or industry, but you need to know what your dream client looks like.Here's litmus test 1: If I show you a company page on LinkedIn, can you tell me in 10 seconds or less, if you can get them some great results?If not, there may be some refining to be done.
• Position - does your target market know you're there to deliver for them?Here's litmus test 2: If a dream client sees your website or LinkedIn Company page, does the messaging and proposition tell them that you are set up to get them amazing results?If they can't see that immediately you may need to sharpen your position.
• Point of difference - Are there clear differences between you and your competition?Here's litmus test 3: If there are key aspects of your agency that prove you're different before a client has spoken to you, that's true differentiation.
• If you have to explain it, it can indicate that there's more work to be done on differentiation. (P.s. we handle 100s of sales calls every year and only 1 or 2 people have ever asked us 'what makes you different?')

Positioning and differentiation is a huge topic and we're not going deep here. If you want to know more, check out this article.

Capitalising on Q4: What you need to do

I'll let you into a secret immediately. The way you sign clients in Q4 is the same as at all other times of the year. There are 1 or 2 special opportunities that the end of year presents, but the basic strategy of client acquisition is the same.

If you've read our content for a while, skip the next section and move to 'How To Amplify'.

If you're new here, get ready to enjoy an education on Authority Building Client Acquisition.

Top of Funnel - Finding Prospects

How do we make sure 20 prospects that don't know us today, know us tomorrow?

It's a pretty simple exercise at Top of Funnel.

We're finding companies that don't know us, and we're making sure they know who we are, what we do, and why it's relevant to them.

This is one of the biggest mistakes agencies make in their marketing, their top of funnel isn't working hard enough, or there's simply no activity there at all.

The top of funnel activity is the fuel for the rest of your marketing. if you don't have enough prospects coming in the top, it doesn't matter how good your middle or bottom funnel activity are, they'll fall flat.

So what activities work best here?

1. LinkedIn Outreach

Very relaxed, non-salesy outreach. Inviting prospects to connect and then simply greeting them without asking for any sale. Golden rule here is none of your messages to cold prospects should be more than a few sentences.

2. Cold Email

High value, educational cold emails at top of funnel are a very scalable model to find new prospects. Again, don't sell in these emails, educate. Prove you're an authority in the space and ask for engagement, not sales. Ask them to engage in your LinkedIn content or download a lead magnet, not to jump on a meeting with you.

3. Meta / LI Ads

We're a huge fan of Meta ads, but LinkedIn ads will work just as well here. Create a high value lead magnet and target prospects with a simple lead form ad. This is a great way to get people onto your email list, ready to nurture.

The key to top of funnel success

The aim here is to bring your prospects into your nurture areas. Therefore, the CTA in all Top of Funnel activity is to get people to engage with you where you nurture prospects.

This could mean downloading a lead magnet so they're on your email list, or following you on LinkedIn so they see your content.

Middle of Funnel - Nurturing Prospects

How can I show up every day, providing value, so I can build trust with my audience?

Lead nurture is always superior to lead generation.

Apart from it being more of an authority move, it just makes sense with the numbers too.

According to Dean Jackson, 50% of prospects will never buy from you. However, of the remaining prospects, only 10% are ready to buy now. That means a huge 40% of your prospects will buy, but only in the future, between 90 days and 2 years from when you first 'meet'.

Lead generation only takes into account the 10%, but lead nurture opens up another 40% of available prospects.

Truthfully, a lot of agency owners are really good at nurture.

They're very active on LinkedIn, and many have an email list which they email regularly. The reason the results don't come is because they don't pair middle of funnel with any top or bottom of funnel activity.

So what's good practice for middle of funnel activity?

1. LinkedIn Content

The simplest and easiest is LinkedIn content.

Why?

Well, it's an easy platform to start on, with text-only posts.

It also offers very favourable organic reach.

These two points together make it an obvious choice, and that's before you consider how easy it is to locate prospects and add them into your network.

How often should you post?

As often as you can each week that you can maintain for a year.

We post 5 times per week on LinkedIn, and have done for 3 years - that consistency has paid off hugely.

2. Email List and Content

Building an email list is a hugely undervalued strategy.

Many agencies have a list, but few know how to handle the list.

Email lists need regular content.

Send high value emails to your list as often as you can maintain, and don't forget to ask if they want help with what you offer every so often - you'd be amazed at how many meetings are being left behind because you're not asking enough.

The key to middle of funnel success

Consistency.

Don't let this stuff slip or there's no point.

If you need help, empower a team member to handle it for you, or find a partner to support.

Bottom of Funnel - Booking Appointments

One of the most common questions I'm asked is 'what funnels do I need to grow my agency?'

It's a question I understand because people often think the tool is more important than the strategy. But it never is.

The funnels are important, but only at bottom of funnel.

The key here is to ask your nurture audience if they want a meeting with you often but in a very relaxed and authentic way.

So how do you do that?

1. 2-step funnels

Every lead magnet or webinar we put out is a 2-step funnel.

Page 1 offers the lead magnet, resource or webinar registration.

Page 2 offers them to book a meeting with us.

We book around 75% of our meetings through these funnels every month. These are all meetings that probably wouldn't have happened if we hadn't asked.

Here is a great example of a 2-step funnel: https://content.authorityagency.co.uk/theagencyceochecklist

2. Send SPER emails

SPER emails are Short, Personal and Expecting Response.

These are simply emails that ask your audience directly if they want help or want to work with you.

If you have over 100 people on your list, send one SPER email per month and it will book you meetings.

The key to success at Bottom of Funnel

No-one wants a discovery call.

Make your intro call sound more value led.

Make sure that your prospect knows that when they book a first meeting with you, you're not going to hard sell them and that they'll actually get some great value out of that meeting.

And it goes without saying, that you have to deliver that value, not just say you will.

Better names for calls than a discovery call:

Agency Growth Audit

Brand Positioning Audit

Ad Account Audit

Organic Social Audit

UX Strategy Session

Amazon Gameplan Session

Personal Brand Scale Session

The list goes on.

Be creative, and move beyond discovery calls.

Crushing Q4: How to amplify your results

So let's imagine you have a rock-solid position, and your full funnel marketing is rocking... What can you do to truly sky-rocket your results?

Here's 2 Plays for you:

#1 - Seasonal Offers and Price Increases

When's the last time you ran an offer-based campaign or you raised your prices?

The end of the year is a pretty good time for that.

For example, let's say your monthly retainer is ￡7,500/month, but you really want to charge ￡9,000/month.

If there was ever a good time to increase that it would be January 1st.

But don't just increase it, shout about it!

Remember, there are more Now Buyers in the market right now than any other time in the year. Those Now Buyers, if they know you and want to work with you, they want your current price, not your future price.

So tell your audience, your LI followers, your email list, your listeners... That your prices are going up.

Not only that, but that if anyone signs to work with you before the end of the year, they lock in the current price and are immune from the price increase.

And btw, don't feel you need to justify why your prices are going up - everything is going up. If anything it will make your service better and attract better clients.

Incidentally, while we're discussing it - Our Prices at Authority Agency are going up:

Academy Price Now: ￡600/month

Academy Price in 2024: ￡850/month

Growth Service Price Now: ￡3,500/month

Growth Service in 2024: ￡4,500/month

If you want to speak to us and lock in 2023 prices, book in with me here.

#2 - Run a Year-Saving Webinar

What you'll see over the next few months is a lot of people running thought leadership about 2024.

Don't do that. Here's why:

1. Do it in January and February, that's when people want to know about 2024
2. Right now people want to squeeze all the juice they can out of 2023, so help them do that instead

Run a Year-Saving Webinar, where you share your strategies on how to get the most out of the last few months of the year.

Here's a good example - every year in Mid-November, we run a webinar called Clients By Christmas. It's 6 weeks before Christmas, and we show hundreds of agencies how to sign clients before 25th December.

That always attracts a load more people than a 'get ready for 2024 webinar'.

So what's your version of 'Clients By Christmas'? Get that together, and you'll be amazed at the numbers you can pull.

P.s. Look out for our Clients By Christmas Webinar on Nov 15th - more to come on this soon ;)

Bringing it together

Q4 is here and it's big.

Actually, this year it's bigger than usual for small agency owners like you.

Why?

Because 2023 has sucked.

Big brands are sick and tired of paying huge agency fees to large network agencies, getting average results and even worse service, so it's time to capitalise.

You are the answer.

You are the agency that can deliver better results, with better service for more reasonable fees.

The only thing standing between you and that household name client is that they don't know you or trust you.

Follow the strategies above and that can all change.

Becoming An Authority Agency

For those of you that don't know me, it's wonderful to meet you :)

I'm Oliver Duffy-Lee and I run a company called Authority Agency.

If this article inspired you to jump start your Agency's marketing, then there are a two ways we can help:

The Agency Advantage Podcast

Every week I share my thoughts and insights I have from working in the agency world and serving clients like Porsche, Electrolux and Unilever, for over 10 years - each episode is always less than 10 minutes.

You can check that out?here:?https://open.spotify.com/show/4n7hdfxdRYMz0XAWd06JPQ

Agency Growth Audit

If you want to move faster, you can book an Agency Growth Audit with one of our Scale Specialists. It's a super-quick, free call where we'll help outline what's slowing your growth and show you what's possible in the next 90 days.

If that's you, can you book?here:?https://content.authorityagency.co.uk/

I'm very happy to be here on your journey to building the agency of your dreams.

If you ever need any advice, send me a DM.

To your success,

ODL