Many marketing agency owners love spending money on a marketing coach that can help them grow and scale their businesses. As the owner of one of the fastest-growing digital marketing companies in the US, I’m afraid I have to disagree with some of the things coaches preach.
In this post, I’ll go over seven things I constantly disagree with coaches. Remember to take this with a grain of salt, as we all have different experiences and businesses, and what might not work for me could work for you. Let’s take a closer look at the seven things:
1- One-Call Close
Marketing coaches will get hyped up, saying, “I’m gonna teach you how to close a client in just one call.” This is a trick that works similarly to dating. The quicker you are to get them on board, the quicker they are to leave.
If you want a long-term relationship with your clients, you need to give them a little time and make sure it is the right choice; you want them to know what’s happening. As the person selling, you also want to be able to audit their account and look at their performance; you need to ensure that the expectations you’re setting will keep the client long-term.
2- Facebook Ads
Another practice coaches will try to get you on is relying on Facebook ads. This is an unstable platform. It isn’t good to grow on; the average churn rate in the US with people running Facebook ads is between 20% and 25% – This means that once you get to 20 clients, you will lose 4-5 of those every single month.
One of the biggest concerns with these ads is the way they target people – gender, age, location– is not ethical. You can’t select your clients based on this information; it is wrong. SEO and PPC may be “harder” to sell, but you have a more stable product.
3- High Ticket
A high ticket is not a good model. If you want to charge $15,000 for your services, you need to be able to show them at least a 10X return on their investment. This is hard to do, and it’s not sustainable in the long term. You will get many unhappy clients because they didn’t see the results you promised.
If you only charge $500 instead of $15,000 for a client, that doubles your ad sale. You could get a $15 cost per lead and get more leads for your client. The less you charge, the more opportunities there are to be profitable, and you need to show a return on investment to hit those numbers.
4- Selling Before Getting A Product Lined Out
This is a mistake that a lot of coaches make. They try to sell their services before they have a product lined out. Often, we get a white-label company to reach out and say they just sold their first client and want us to fulfill it, but we need to know your expectations. What products did you sell?
You need to align your fulfillment before selling – know what you can and cannot do. If you want to be a one-stop shop, ensure you have all your products in place before selling them to clients.
5- Hiring VAs
Many coaches will try to get you to hire VAs (virtual assistants) as soon as possible to save money. The truth is, you want to be very careful with this. Outsourcing your entire business to someone who is not a part of your company and does not have the same level of investment in your success is not something you should do.
What you need do is ensure that the people you’re hiring are people who are going to help you grow your business, not just save you money. You want to hire people you’ll pay more because they’re doing an excellent job with clients and will continue to do so.
6- Niching Down
This is a really big one that a lot of coaches get wrong. They think that they need to niche down to be successful. If you’re using cold outreach as your only tactic to reach out to clients, you should niche down; you can’t be cold emailing so broadly. But cold outreach is a very low conversion percentage, and churn with cold outreach is much higher.
If you’re using a strategy using your network, there’s no need to niche down. You want to be able to work with as many people as possible and build those relationships. You’re missing out on many potential clients when you’re niching down.
7- The Difficulty
So many coaches will tell you that this is easy and that in 90 days, you will hit your goal when this is a false reality. Building an agency is not easy; it will take time, energy, and money. You need to be prepared for that before you start.
The difficulty is one of the biggest things people don’t talk about, and you should keep it in mind before you start. It’s not going to be easy, but it is possible to build a successful agency.
Take It With A Grain Of Salt
As I mentioned, you must take this with a grain of salt. Every agency works differently. What works for you might not work for me, and vice versa. The best thing you can do is test things out and see what works for your business.