Agency Owners: Here Are 21 Unique Ways To Consistently Acquire New Clients (2024)
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How I found my first batch of clients
Getting some of your initial clients is hard. Well, it was hard for my software design agency because everything I had read at the time was completely useless. It never gave me a step-by-step guide on how I can start getting eyeballs to my website, or interest in my product.
To the world, I was entirely invisible, but the cool thing about this post is that you don’t have to be a struggling agency owner. Eventually, you could say that I got lucky. I wanted to succeed so much that I was willing to try everything, and I certainly did. Here’s what ended up working for me, which helped me gain about 10 initial clients.
I found a local tech event in Los Angeles and sponsored it. It cost me $500.00
I offered a heavy discount on my services. Something to the tune of $500.00
It’s more than achievable to create a clickable prototype of your mobile app, or web app idea for $5,000.00 USD. You could leave with something even more bespoke in the $10,000 — $20,000 range, but certainly not a requirement. I ended up landing my first client, delivering $4,000.00 worth of work, for $3,000.00. in total. It was a lot of money for me at the time, so I was very excited!
I also learned that sometimes people just need a little push to get started, use discounts to give them their opportunity! In reality, I did not care about landing as many clients as I could get early on, I wanted to build a network of people who were willing to say good things about me. Doing this will make every sale come by with ease.
During my first 2 years in business, I over-prioritized testimonials for my work. Now, those testimonials sit on my Linkedin, Youtube, and our website. They are in the “ether” forever. When people have doubts about you, your brand, your testimonials and reviews will shine in these moments.
Here are some example testimonials that still help me close new business today:
It was hard to get these. People have lives, and others don’t always feel comfortable. I would say that 1 in 20 people were willing to sit down and record the video. So be prepared for many people ghosting you, and with good reason.
The natural evolution stemming from this enables me to charge the prices appropriate for my service while I still can before AI does it for me! I hope this helps young entrepreneurs understand the value of testimonials to do the selling work for you!
Today, my pipeline is primarily driven through re-connecting with the same referrals, and online outreach. I create valuable content for new business owners and entrepreneurs who require my services. The best part about it all is helping them scale. Finding customers online is tricky, and most people quit before they truly learn the skills necessary to succeed. It’s exactly for this reason that I wrote “The Growth Checklist”, an ever-evolving e-book that teaches you how to start driving traffic to your website within minutes after reading your first passage. It gets even juicer than this, and to top it off, it’s now backed by a lifetime warranty. My goal is to truly see you succeed, and I am confident that you will.
“A reason many agency owners are afraid of starting their business is not knowing if they are capable of finding a market interested in their services. Now there’s an almost guaranteed way of doing this, and we’re here to share the news”.
Next, we’ll dive into other activities that you [need] to be doing, in no particular order. This will help agency owners scale their business in no time. Within a few months of you starting officially, or while you’re still working your current day job, you’ll have a pipeline ready to start working with you!
1. Prioritize Relationships Over Profits
Relationships are imperative to your early success. You cannot get to two, without 1. Never forget that line, because many agency owners will skip out on buttoning up the finer aspects of a client project, just to increase their bottom lines.
Many agency owners want to focus on flashy portfolio case studies, or performance metrics that overpromise. The best strategy to find clients online is by prioritizing a few key relationships. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers if “they know anyone who is also looking to build” just as they were! Many people want to be as successful as someone close to them in their inner circle. This removes the sales aspect of this and makes it more of a marketing play.
2. Give Heavy Discounts For Testimonials
When your new agency is just starting out, a great way to secure clients is by offering discounted services just as I mentioned in my experience provided above. You can do this in exchange for a testimonial (video), or a documented case study, but it also gives you the opportunity to show off how talented you are. Remember, sometimes your clients are apprehensive to start, and you’re just giving them a reason to begin. If you did not catch the hint (wink, wink) then I will state it clearly. Be willing to bend (but not break) for clients to start building your portfolio. It will pay you back 10-fold!
3. Offer Startup-Friendly Packages
Securing your first client and creating momentum builds inner confidence. It lets you know that you are truly capable of doing this and provides you with a “zero-to-1” evolution of self. You’re no longer the agency owner wishing to have closed a deal, you are the agency owner who has closed a deal. These are two different people!
Reach out to friends, family, or colleagues that you know while starting up. Offer to do the work for next to nothing (a little something) based upon success criteria. Your inner circle will be willing to help you grow and succeed, even if they are not your target client type.
4. Establish A Robust Online Presence
In 2024, it’s almost impossible to succeed without a robust online presence. This begins with a well-designed website (well-designed), active social media engagement (go where the people are), and an SEO strategy that puts you in a position of authority around keywords that resonate with your business and service offerings! When your website is live, don’t forget to add the atypical “trust signals”. This includes testimonials, portfolio work, guarantees, team presence (team page), privacy policies, refund policies, terms and conditions, and even a blog.
5. Aim For A Low “Bounce-Rate”
Your bounce rate is the percentage of visits that only contain a single page view. This means people came to your website, quickly browsed, then left. They may have left for many reasons, maybe something came up, and they had to leave their desk and close their laptop. Regardless of the reason, you did not keep them around for long enough. There are a few ways to keep people interested at every scroll and click of your website.
Have a blog that people can browse through. Chances are, if you have a blog, they probably found your website through a high-intent search. Within your blog, you contain the keywords matched with their search criteria and now are providing them with “valuable information”, which is free. They will appreciate this, and reward you with longer dwell time on your website, which increases your overall listing rank in Google Search results.
Have a clear, concise, and interesting message for users “above the fold”. This represents everything that they see. The question that needs to be answered here within a few seconds is “Who is it that you serve, what are your services, and does it smell good enough for me to nibble?”. If you cannot answer this question, or it does not align with your visitor’s intrinsic goals, they will leave quickly.
Make sure you’re driving “the right” traffic. Just because you have visitors, doesn’t mean that they care about you. Chances are they could have accidentally clicked on an advertisement, or were just curious about what your website actually is if people do not have matching criteria like funds or demographics to match with your targeted persona, kiss that visitor goodbye!
A final note, which is a little unrelated, but affects us all is bot traffic. There are bot farms out there that serve to wreak havoc. There are even theories that some of these bot farms are built to juice up your ad spend as fast as possible, to keep your campaigns from succeeding. Rumors aside, you will run into bot traffic. This is why it’s vital to have your session recording up. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to make a strong enough case to platforms that this is happening in a way that they can actually take action on it. This is why it’s better to take an organic approach to growth and have an iron-clad SEO strategy!
6. Build A Bad-Ass Portfolio
In the early days of being an agency owner, you will run into many different types of “rejection methods”. A common one is asking to see your portfolio. Having a robust portfolio isn’t as important to a client, as it is to you. For them, they are seeing if you have any experience with a product or industry like their own. If you don’t, they are more than likely to choose the agency that does. A few tips for this:
You can stay focused on a single, or small niche group. This can help you succeed in the long run.
If you’re agnostic, do research, and write content about the niche you’re interested in exploring. It helps to be knowledgeable in a particular area, to win a client in a unique niche that your agency doesn’t serve.
Offer a discount, and show maximum excitement. Sometimes you might be able to win a customer over with your honesty. Tell them that you may not have the experience, but you have the expertise, excitement, and sweetheart deal to win them over!
Honesty goes a long way in the RFP process. People want to be surrounded by more awesome people!
7. Join A Founders’ Network
It’s our personal and professional Rolodex that helps us bring in clients first. Linkedin, alumni networks, sports clubs, social clubs, or any community that you may be involved in. Put the word out that you’ve recently started, and looking to grow. I would frame the questions as, “I*’m starting an agency doing XYZ, and I am looking to perform research and build up case studies. I am open to any sort of advice that you may have”.* The benefit of asking this way as it clarifies your intentions, along with suggesting that you’re open to feedback. People love helping others, especially those with knowledge! Sometimes, many of us are not prepared to receive feedback, while those who give it are often afraid of the responses they may receive. This makes it easier for both parties to engage. After all, we are social creatures!
8. Create A Verifiable Deal-List
This might be something unique to the agency world. I’ve seen it in the e-learning world quite often. It’s an open invitation for potential subscribers to join with a certain benefit for being an early adopter. For example, “Join today, and get it for (X) pricing”.
Applying it to the agency world, you could offer a discount on your hourly rate, or a fixed package deal in exchange for certain deliverables. But, you must make this an open format. People must be able to see and verify how many customers have taken this offer, their names (if open to it), and the price point that they got in. This ensures that people know pricing up-front, and it shows that people are actually interested in you, because no one eats at an empty restaurant!
This creates a FOMO-type effect on potential customers, which can give you a nice boost in the pipeline in the early days. Just be prepared to take on a lot of work, or turn down clients if you get overbooked! Since we’re on the subject, learning to say no as an agency owner will save you many years of stress, and headache. The expensive clients and the cheap clients are equally difficult to serve!
9. Be Clear On Your Ideal Clients
Someone, somewhere is always spending money. Just because you haven’t closed a deal today, doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t. Even during the COVID lockdowns, while many businesses were not able to continue to service their customers, many other businesses saw a BOOM cycle, completely upending the way we did business as a society. Believe it or not, the conscious decision to service clients digitally was the difference maker between offline, and online service providers.
When deciding the ideal client type, keep these things in mind:
Know who they are.
Know where they are.
Know what they like.
Know what they dislike.
Find out what they are saying (Yesterday, today, and tomorrow).
Find out who they are following.
Learn what influences buying decisions.
This varies from group to group, so performing some market research with SurveyMonkey.com, or other websites is a good place to start. Also, observe communities and IRL interactions. If a group of soccer moms are not rushing to buy your Porche 911s, please do not be surprised!
10. Be A Content Creation Queen (or King)
Believe it or not, you [do not] need to spam the world with endless Chat GPT posts. We’ve all had our fill of “being in a world”, or “imagining what life would be like”. In fact, chances are you’ll get punished for doing this, as more and more platforms are becoming wise, as are readers! What does work is creating content relevant to your competitors, like “comparison articles”, or “utility content” like this article you’re reading. This article is meant for Agency Owners looking to find clients online, and offline. Perhaps, it is the best way to find clients online for your agency!
The best way to find clients for your agency
Also, 1 article can be updated to have more content over time. it’s better to have 10 solid articles, covering 10 important questions, that are updated over time than to have 1000 articles, all spammed with the keywords you’re trying to rank for.
11. Have A Commanding Presence
Even if you’re starting a new agency, as a business owner, perception is everything. If you give off the impression that you’re small and incapable of handling large loads of work, you simply will not receive these opportunities. The way to go about this is about your first impressions. Does your website give off the impression that you’re capable of taking on enterprise clientele, or does it look like you can only handle work Fivver. Nothing against, Fivver, we’ve heard stories of companies doing millions per year who started out on the platform, so it’s certainly possible, but not the expected outcome!
12. Punch Above Your Weight
The best way to get new clients for your agency is by delivering what you can promise. Start by helping out friends, and family, but deliver something so amazing that your [first] client will have no choice but to brag about your creation. Once done, use that creation to show off your skills. Make it shine so bright that future clients will need shades to even take a phone call with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re super talented, or you’re outsourcing your work. Just deliver results. If you’re outsourcing, make sure you hire someone who is capable of delivering front-page-worthy work. If you’re not sure, ask questions and A LOT! Ask every question you can think of and imagine. Challenge their work. If they disagree and make it hard for you, don’t work for them. Make sure they are just as hungry as you. Every failure is a setback, so getting right must be as valuable to them, as it is for you!
13. Invest In Offline Clients
Since the COVID pandemic, the frequency of offline meetings has diminished. Get out and network with other people in your industry at your earliest convenience. It’s also a great way to unwind during the week. Some of us aren’t getting out enough anymore, and would really appreciate a fun social event. When you get out and “shake hands”, spend time getting to know what people are doing at networking events. Some are there for fun, while others are there for business.
Invite them for coffee, or any activity that you think they would be interested in. Tell them that you’re just getting started and that you would love their opinion on the best route that they should take. Even if they can’t help you, it’s a great way to practice your elevator pitch. This is the exact process I used to find enterprise clients as an agency owner. Compared to any online contract which can max out pretty quickly, offline relationships have brought me enterprise deals all exceeding 6-figures in design budget. This doesn’t include engineering costs.
This is the exact process I used to find enterprise clients as an agency owner. Compared to any online contract which can max out pretty quickly, offline relationships have brought me enterprise deals all exceeding 6-figures in design budget.
Online clients are great for our agencies, but you will never beat the power of being able to meet your clients vis-a-vis.
14. Establish Accounts On Service Platforms
There is a list of platforms that you should consider as an upstart agency that can help streamline opportunities for you. Of course, just like in real life, you need to stand out and be an authority. Create a profile that attracts. If you’re able to get connections, testimonials and referrals into these platforms do it. Play by the platform’s rules, and who knows, you could be well on your way to bringing in 6-figures of deals from these platforms alone.
Here are some popular platforms that you should consider when looking for new clients:
Reddit.com (sometimes)
Bubble.io (great for developers & designers)
Adalo.com (great for developers & designers)
Social Media — If you’re a social media expert, then you better have a large following or create content that sells.
Google / Bing — If you’re an SEO expert, then you better have good rankings!
Let’s be honest, if you’re an expert at something like marketing, but cannot find clients, it kind of defeats the purpose. In most cases, people want to grow their brands on the same platforms you should be marketing yourself on. Use this to your advantage. If you are not having success standing out from the crowd, offline may be the way to go. Perhaps it’s slower, but you increase your likelihood when people can physically get to know you!
15. Create A Trial Process
Not to be confused with free, a trial process is an opportunity for you to build rapport with a potential client, while ensuring them that you’re the right agency for the job. This can be a paid trial or a consultation process where you’re answering their questions along the way. For example, as a design agency, founders are often concerned about the process, costs, and how to scale their apps to impress investors.
Not only are we comfortable answering these questions, but we’ve even published a book that helps SaaS founders find their first clients online. The book also extends itself to serve agency owners and e-commerce owners who are looking to build an audience online as well. In this case, not only are we prepared to answer their questions, but we become a knowledgeable resource for them, consulting them from start to finish!
16. Don’t Quit Your Job Until You Have Clients
I started my agency while working at another agency. It’s pretty wild to see how far it’s come along, but it was never my goal to quit and start my business. My motivations for starting are far different from what yours will be, but the one thing I don’t regret is knowing that my product was interesting before I ever left the nest. Don’t rush to make decisions too early without enough confirmation. Otherwise, you’ll quickly learn what it’s like to be pushed out of the bird nest, without ever knowing how to fly.
17. Create Digital Products
Diversification is a powerful way to supplement revenue, especially during off seasons. Creating e-books targeted at your niche, affiliate marketing through content creation and SEO, or referral fees are all ways you can supplement your offerings without needing to change the way you offer your services. These items can be sold to clients, or entirely different demographics, while you focus on your primary client.
As a new agency, this should not be a primary priority, but something that is accessible, as more and more clients are being prospected online. Another thing you can consider is adding additional resources that are considered “next in line” activities. For example, we’re a design agency, focusing on bespoke design. Our clients need a myriad of additional items for their business ventures. This ranges from pitch decks, landing page design, brand books, SEO, marketing, engineering, and more!
We would much rather have our partners handling this, but it’s something to consider doing to keep things mixed up. You never know where your next opportunity will come from!
18. Help Other Agency Owners
Some of the best brands in my portfolio have come through partnerships. It’s a legitimate way to scale your agency as a new business owner. The hard truth about creating partnerships is that in some cases both parties must wait to see who will pull the trigger first when it comes to a referral, but sometimes agencies will have a genuine need. If you’re the person they keep close to during these times, you’ll be the one they call when the situation arises.
19. Never Respond First
“Whoever speaks first, loses” — A quote that’s repeated often in the halls of Sales organizations throughout the world. It has a deeper meaning which expresses that during negotiations it is important to not show desperation. I find that quite paradoxical, as sales (in my opinion) is the effort to convince others that they need to purchase something, whereas marketing helps you to position yourself to be the expert who can respond with the solution when the problem arises.
Regardless, of what I think, it still remains true that you ultimately will find yourself in a position where you’ll have to negotiate what someone else perceives your value to be, in comparison to what you think it is. The trick here is to state your offer, set it, and forget it. Research has shown that Western professionals aren’t very comfortable with silence, so we like to fill in the blanks, while other cultures are meant to embrace it.
“We often think that silence is people simply not speaking. But it allows both people to settle down and reflect a bit deeper.”Katie Donovan adheres to the adage, ‘He who speaks first, loses.’ Early in her career, the founder of US-based consultancy Equal Pay — Gavin Presman
20. Plan For Failure
Mistakes are going to happen. Humans are not robots, and information gets dropped daily. Notes are misinterpreted, and iterations fall short. The focus should be less about failure, and more about how you handle it. As a software design company, we have fallen short of delivering many times, and in those instances, we’ve offered free hours to fix the mistakes, and even heavily discounted prices. It’s never ideal to find yourself in a situation, especially when you’re the guilty party, but it always helps to take ownership and provide a solution for your clients.
Your clients will greatly appreciate your service, dedication, and honesty. This is what builds long-lasting relationships! This is how you build an agency!
21. Understanding Seasonality
Depending on the type of agency you plan to build, it’s important to learn about the seasons and cycles that will affect your bottom line. If you knew that summers typically are light, due to travel schedules, would you work hard to prepare during Q1 and Q2? As an agency owner, it’s your responsibility to create processes that can weather time and down seasons. They come for every business at some point or another. Prepare your agency by creating plans that will reward you the longer you deliver. Make payments based on time & material, but focused on delivering results. If your clients are happy, and making money, they will happily extend contracts to you, as everyone sees this as a win!
Finding clients for your agency isn’t so hard!
If you found this article helpful and are ready to start growing your new agency, feel free to grab a copy of our book The Growth Checklist. It helps agency owners like you find new clients both online and offline. If you’ve already purchased a copy, and are struggling to execute upon any strategies, you can simply book a meeting with me here.
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