The 6 Ways to Get More Clients Ep 244

In this episode, the host discusses six effective customer acquisition strategies for businesses, emphasizing the importance of consistency and volume. He highlights paid advertising, outbound efforts, referrals, affiliates, earned media, and owned media as key channels for attracting clients. The host shares personal insights on the challenges and successes of utilizing these methods, including his recent venture into outbound sales and email marketing. He stresses that businesses often fail to give strategies sufficient time and effort to yield results, and recommends focusing on systematization to ensure long-term success. Additionally, the host reflects on the importance of delegating tasks to specialists and transitioning from a 'how' to 'who' mindset for problem-solving in business growth.

• Speaker A introduces the topic of customer acquisition strategies.
• They emphasize not stopping current strategies but adding new ones on top.
• The importance of diversifying acquisition methods is highlighted.

"Any of those six channels will get you more clients than you have. But the key is to not stop the one you're doing. You just add this on top."

The quote underlines the strategy of layering new customer acquisition channels on top of existing ones rather than replacing them.

• Speaker A discusses the common mistake of not giving marketing strategies enough time or volume to work.
• They use an anecdote about a chiropractor who tried and quickly gave up on Facebook advertising.
• The speaker stresses the value of patience and persistence in marketing efforts.

"We don't give things a chance so quickly, right?"

This quote reflects the speaker's observation that businesses often abandon marketing strategies too quickly without fully testing their potential.

• Paid advertising is identified as the first customer acquisition method.
• It includes all forms of paid ad platforms and placements.
• The speaker suggests paid advertising is about buying access to potential customers.

"First off, you've got paid, right? Paid advertising."

The quote introduces paid advertising as the first of six customer acquisition methods, encompassing all paid platforms and placements.

• Outbound marketing is the second method discussed.
• It involves cold calling, emailing, messaging, and paying for outreach at scale.
• Speaker A emphasizes the need for high volume in outbound efforts.
• They also note that outbound marketing effectiveness grows over time, similar to paid advertising.

"Outbound, that's cold calling, cold emailing, cold messenger, paying people to reach out at scale, one on one."

This quote defines outbound marketing and the various activities it includes, highlighting the importance of reaching out to potential customers directly.

• Referrals are the third customer acquisition strategy mentioned.
• Speaker A points out that client referrals can be a significant source of new business.
• The structure and incentivization of referral programs can greatly impact their success.

"The third is referrals. So internal referrals."

The quote introduces referrals as a key strategy, emphasizing the role of existing clients in referring new ones.

• Gym launch has a significant portion of clients referred by other gym owners.
• Importance of creating and incentivizing referral processes.
• Discrepancy between tracked referrals and actual referrals indicated by a show of hands at an event.

"Gym launch to date, I think at our last event, in two different instances, what my finance team tells me is that we're like one third referrals. But when I went to our event and I asked everybody to raise their hand, if another gym owner had referred them, like 80% of the room had raised their hand, so we might not be able to track it well."

This quote highlights the importance of referrals in client acquisition and suggests that the actual impact of referrals may be underreported or not accurately tracked within the business.

• Affiliates are strategic partners who can refer clients.
• Incentivizing affiliates can be done in various ways.
• Some companies are built entirely on affiliate partnerships, such as MLMs.

"The next one is affiliates. So that would be like strategic partners. So people who have your clients that you could send over, that you'd want them to send over, and you can incentivize them directly or indirectly in a multitude of ways."

This quote explains the role of affiliates as a method for business growth and client acquisition, highlighting the potential for incentivizing partnerships to boost referrals.

• Earned media involves getting free exposure from platforms due to valuable content.
• Regular use of earned media can generate business inflow.
• The speaker's current activity is an example of utilizing earned media.

"The fifth is earned media. All right, so this is if I make a post on Instagram or you make a post on your Facebook, anything that platforms have given you a certain amount of eyeballs for free because you've earned it from the value of the content that you provide."

This quote defines earned media and its benefits, emphasizing the free exposure gained from creating valuable content that platforms reward with visibility.

• Owned media refers to direct communication channels like email and text lists.
• Direct access to clients through owned media contrasts with hoping for platform distribution with earned media.

"And the final one is owned media, right? All the lists that you have access to. So earned media. Like, I don't have access to you directly, but I can make a post and hope that the platform pushes this out there. Whereas if I email or text our list, then that's direct access, that's owned media."

This quote distinguishes between earned and owned media, with owned media providing direct access to clients, allowing for more controlled and targeted communication.

• Volume of client acquisition efforts must be sufficient and consistent.
• Simple strategies are not necessarily easy to execute.
• The speaker's niche podcast experienced limitations due to its focus but still achieved significant downloads.

"But what I think is what's interesting is that you have to have one more than enough volume done consistently, right? And all the things that I'm saying right now are all the things that everyone is all the simple, not easy, right? All these things are simple to do, but not easy to do."

The quote emphasizes the need for consistent and ample effort in client acquisition strategies, acknowledging the challenge in executing seemingly simple tactics.

• Diversifying acquisition channels is a common strategy among highly successful businesses.
• Businesses often start with one channel but expand into others as they grow.
• The speaker's business is beginning to explore outbound sales and messaging owned media.

"And a lot of this came from seeing how all the guys who are doing nine figures plus were doing it, is that they didn't just have one acquisition channel. Now, mind you, they built a lot of their business off one. But then once they kind of, I don't want to say, had tapped it out, they started to roll into other channels real quick."

This quote discusses the strategic move to diversify client acquisition channels after initially focusing on a single method, a practice observed in very successful businesses.

• The speaker creates content to document their journey and reflect on past thoughts.
• The podcast was initially niche-focused but has since been rebranded for broader appeal.

"I do these, for me, I do these because I want to document the journey and kind of think about, I want to be able to go back in time, be like, that's what I was thinking about at that time in my career."

The quote reveals the speaker's personal motivation behind content creation, which is to document and reflect on their professional journey over time.

• The speaker does not run ads or sell products through the podcast.
• The only request from the audience is to help spread the word to assist more entrepreneurs.

"Guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the word so we can help more entrepreneurs make more money, feed their families, make better products, and have better experiences."

This quote serves as a call to action for the audience to support the speaker's mission of helping entrepreneurs by sharing the content, as the podcast is not monetized through traditional advertising or sales.

• Reviews help increase visibility and reach of the podcast.
• Positive impact on others by sharing valuable content.
• Reviews can take a short amount of time to leave but have significant effects.

"And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast."

This quote emphasizes the call to action for listeners to rate, review, and share the podcast to help improve its reach and impact.

• Paid advertising requires significant investment and skill.
• Each advertising platform has unique nuances.
• High cost of learning through spending on ads.

"I think paid is one of the hardest ones because each platform is so specific and so nuanced and you have to spend a lot of money to learn the lessons, unfortunately."

The speaker is highlighting the complexity and financial barriers to mastering paid advertising due to the unique characteristics of each platform.

• Outbound marketing is labor-intensive.
• It often involves investing time or paying for someone else's time.
• Outbound can be more cost-effective than paid advertising.

"Outbound, again, is way more work. It's way more effort, right? You're paying in time, not in money, but a lot of times you're going to pay someone else's time to do it."

This quote explains that outbound marketing requires substantial effort and time investment, which can sometimes be outsourced.

• Marketing strategies fluctuate between inbound and outbound methods.
• Businesses tend to follow the most cost-effective strategies.
• Wise businesses maintain existing strategies while adopting new ones.

"I feel like if you look at it on like a ten year long window, it cycles back and forth between inbound and outbound because people will just always use the thing that has the cheapest cost of acquisition..."

The speaker is discussing the cyclical nature of marketing strategies, suggesting that businesses gravitate towards the most financially advantageous methods over time.

• Successful businesses keep and refine their marketing processes.
• Adding new marketing flows is essential for growth.
• It is recommended to expand on existing marketing types for efficiency.

"And so the big thing with paid, for example, is that people don't spend enough and they don't have the skill... And maybe when another platform opens up, they're going to be like, screw this, we're just going to go on the platform or the wise ones will just keep the flow and stack the next flow on top, which is what we're trying to do, is just keep the flows, like never turn a flow off, get the process dialed, and then just add flows, and add flows and add flows."

The speaker advises maintaining current marketing efforts while continuously adding new ones to build on the foundation and foster growth.

• Each paid advertising platform requires a unique approach.
• Systems and processes don't need to be overwhelmingly changed when adding similar types of marketing.

"Like paid is like, you've got Facebook and Instagram, you've got YouTube, you've got Google display network, you've got adwords. All of these things are different places and placements for your paid ads. And each of them is nuances."

The quote illustrates the diversity and specificity of different paid advertising platforms, each with its own set of nuances.

• Outbound teams can consist of SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) or BDRs (Business Development Representatives).
• Adding new outbound processes can feed into existing team structures.

"And so then it's really just like, okay, we're going to just also add people who are doing message requests in mount, but all of them are feeding to this team to then set close calls, right?"

This quote explains how new outbound strategies can integrate into existing team workflows to streamline the process of generating leads and closing sales.

• Referral strategies require ongoing investment and nurturing.
• Affiliates play a crucial role in the success of referral-based businesses.
• Consistency in effort and value is key to a successful referral program.

"Having a structure in place that you continue to pour value until you continue to hone and refine, continue to stick with them is the hard part."

The speaker is emphasizing the importance of continuously investing in and improving referral strategies to maintain a successful affiliate program.

• High volume of activity is often necessary for success in various marketing tactics.
• Consistent and sustained effort is required across different marketing channels.

"Everyone thinks that they did 100 cold calls and they're like, why didn't I make money? It's like, well, you need to do 200 every day, right? ... You need to make five pieces of content a week for two years and then you will have your earned media."

The quote conveys the idea that successful marketing requires persistent and high-volume efforts, rather than expecting immediate results from minimal actions.

• There are six key acquisition channels mentioned: paid, outbound, referrals, affiliates, strategic partners, earned media, and owned media.
• Utilizing any of these channels can increase client flow.
• It's important to continue using current channels while adding new ones.
• Systematizing existing channels is crucial before adding more.

Maybe you have no goodwill yet and you need to do it more frequently. And so I say all that to say, hopefully for some of you who want more flows of clients, just thinking about one of those six, whether it's paid, whether it's outbound, whether it's referrals, whether it's affiliates or strategic partners, earned media or owned media, any of those six channels will get you more clients than you have.

This quote emphasizes the variety of acquisition channels available for attracting more clients and the importance of considering which one to implement to enhance client flow.

• Gradual addition of acquisition channels is part of a business growth strategy.
• Expansion takes time and requires skill to manage effectively.
• Systematizing processes allows for the addition of new growth methods.

That's why people don't go from zero to ten acquisition channels in their first month. Like, it takes time and it takes skills to find the people and all of those many lovely things about business.

The quote outlines the reality that developing multiple acquisition channels is a gradual process that requires time and skill, highlighting the complexity of business growth.

• Delegating allows for specialization and can improve business functions.
• Hiring individuals with specific expertise can lead to better outcomes.
• The speaker has personally experienced the benefits of letting go and bringing in experts.

And so it's just this constant, at least for me right now, it's this constant journey of letting go and finding people who can do the things better than I am, hiring solutions, not people, which is a very different way.

This quote reflects the speaker's personal journey of learning to delegate and hire experts to handle specific areas of the business, which has proven to be more effective than trying to manage everything personally.

• The approach to hiring shifts from doing tasks to finding experts.
• The focus is on finding people who have pre-existing solutions.
• Incentivizing experts properly is key to leveraging their skills.

But at a certain point, and this is why there's always levels to the game, at a certain point, you don't think how, but you think who. You don't think what, you think. Who can I find who already has this problem? This solution preloaded into them.

The quote discusses the evolution of the hiring philosophy, where the focus moves from figuring out how to solve problems to finding the right people who already have the solutions, signifying a more strategic approach to growth and problem-solving.

• Creating consistent systems around acquisition channels is recommended.
• Without consistency, the channels will not work in the long run.
• Learning from existing resources like blogs and YouTube is advised for those unsure how to systematize.

My recommendation is systematize around it, right? Create a consistent system, not a one time, one off thing. Because if it is not consistent for any of those six things, it will not work in the long run.

This quote advises the importance of creating consistent systems for each acquisition channel to ensure long-term success, rather than relying on sporadic, one-off efforts.