When it comes to getting your first SEO agency or digital marketing client with no money or experience, most have no idea what to do. In this video Matt Wacek shows you the best way to get first marketing agency client FAST for free whether you do SEO, SMMA, website development or Google Pay Per Click Advertising services.
Overview
One of the number one things that beginner marketing agency owners struggle with is how to actually get your very first clients. And so in this video, I want to break down how I did it when I was trying to get my digital marketing agency up and running. And I also want to cover why that was probably the wrong way to do it, because frankly, it just took way too long. And I will give you a better strategy and map out a good plan for you to be able to do this. So that way, you can start getting results and actually getting paid clients coming in way quicker than I did. So if you’re brand new here, my name is Matt Wacek. I’m CEO & Founder of Landscape Marketing Pros, a digital marketing agency currently doing about $35,000 in monthly recurring revenue. And I make these videos because I really, really wish this information was available to me 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago when I was trying to get my agency off the ground. And the reason that this is so important is because if you’re not able to get your first couple of clients, get them really good results and turn them into testimonial videos that are going to be able to speak to your future prospects, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle for as long as you own this particular business. And you don’t want to try doing it because it just sucks without doing it this way.
Now with that said, what encourage you to do at the end of this video is go down below to the first thing the description board the pin comment dominate this video register for my HVA webinar. On that broadcast, you’re gonna want to watch that end to end because I’m gonna show you some insane concepts, they’re going to help you attract close and retain clients for the long haul. So you can actually have a profitable marketing agency with clients that come to you and stay on board for month after month after month, you can stack that recurring revenue, and have yourself a very nice, profitable business. And after this presentation is complete. Firs link in the description or the pinned comment down beneath the video.
How I Got My First Digital Marketing Agency Client
And I’ll just go over very briefly how I got my first couple of clients. And so basically 2015, 2016, I had a landscape company, I discovered that the fact there’s entire economy online, I wanted to build a business there because the scalability, the low overhead, it just seemed like an absolute win win. It took a lot longer than I anticipated though. And so what I was doing was cold, calling cold, emailing cold outreach, and even running ads on Facebook trying to get clients of course, I had terrible offers at that point in time, I’m just hammering them with, hey, I’ll do your SEO, hey, I’ll do your website, this and that. It’s going to be 1000 bucks a month and all these sorts of things, reaching out to roofing companies, siding, companies, chiropractors, dentists, and it just never went anywhere. The only thing I got were a couple meaning emails back to me.
So what did finally work was kind of swallowing my pride and reaching out to my existing network of business owners that I had met over the years because I had a landscape company for about five years. And I had offered to do their website and SEO for free. And I finally got one to say yes. And so I did that. I’m paying for the hosting, I’m writing all the content on all their pages, and there was no AI to help you back then you had to write this stuff from scratch, and then doing all the backlinks and all that sort of good stuff took forever to get his website to rank because he was in a pretty competitive city, brand new domain, Google, his profile was brand new as well. But then once he finally got ranked, he’s getting tons and tons of leads. And it got me my first testimonial didn’t know that I needed to do testimonial videos back then. But he just did a write up and it worked out fine, because then I use that to get my first actual web design clients. And those were two other landscape companies. And I believe it was like 3000 bucks for each website put a ton of effort into their website. So we’re talking probably a couple 100 hours into each, because I wanted to make sure that everything was going to work out really well for them.
And so it did because their business is absolute just skyrocketed. Over the next year, we’re talking six and seven figure revenue gains. And so what I did then was I got them to make testimonial videos for me. And so this was fine and dandy. However, this took way too long. That was a three to four year long period, where a lot of it I was really struggling and I hated my life every single day and while that was a really good character building journey for me, I really don’t want you to have to go through that it’s just not needed. It was just it was a disaster.
How to Get Your First Agency Client FAST
So with knowing what I know now, I want to break down the process of how I would go out if I was getting started today to try to get my very first clients and to get this snowball to start rolling.
1. Get a Job or Secure Source of Income FIRST
Alright, step number one with getting all this going as you need to have a job. I tried to do this by not having a job very limited funds coming in with like the lead gen SEO that I was doing and I was living back with my parents. And because of that I had limited funds to be able to invest to make things happen. And so as a result of that it just took way longer, you have time you have money, you got to pick which one you want to use, because when you use more money, you can use less time and vice versa, when you have a job you can be able to spend in order to make this happen is if you could just save about two to three maybe 4000 bucks to put into this business that’s gonna save you a ton of time and rapidly increase your path to success compared to a lot of other businesses like a restaurant or a construction company or engineering firm, all these sorts of other businesses, there’s absolutely nothing that you have to invest to get this thing off the ground. So have a job, set aside some money, live really cheap for a period of time and continue living cheap, even when you get clients and you’re able to go full time, stay living very cheap, because it’s just gonna make your life easier.
2. Pick a Niche and Stick With It!
Step number two is very, very quick and straight to the point pick a niche. I know a lot of agency critters out here we’re gonna say just try to do something broad, but I think the sooner you niche down the better because you’re gonna be able to be specialized in it. I did a video a little while back on selecting the right niche, check that video out and get some ideas for an industry to serve. This is gonna help you that much more because when you know and understand an industry that you’re gonna be doing marketing four, you’re definitely gonna get better results for them because you’re going to understand that industry that much better.
3. Create a Service Program that Will Get Results Quickly
Step number three, you need to create a service program for what you’re actually going to provide your first clients. I highly recommend not doing what I did, which was SEO, because that’s what I knew. And that’s where I was comfortable with it, you need to do something ads based because it’s going to work 10 times faster, you can get an ad campaign up and running in about two to 2.5 weeks, SEO takes months and months and months and months. Yes, it’s an amazing, amazing service to provide great long term profits for both you and your client as well, because the lead cost goes down so much over time. However, it takes a long time. In the very beginning, you don’t have a lot of time.
What I would suggest you do is put together a service program that’s going to include running the ads, building landing pages, and then some type of call and form tracking. So that way your client can assess the performance of what you’re providing them based on my experience, Google ads is going to be the absolute best way to go Google Pay Per Click specifically for home service businesses, law firms, dentists, chiropractors, all that sort of stuff, it’s going to be way better, it’s going to convert better, the lead quality is going to be way way higher, because there’s buyer intent versus Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. And all the other places where you have to do a pattern interrupt, and those people aren’t even necessarily looking for the service, you want to have the path of least resistance when it comes to client results. And so that’s the best way to do it.
All right. So by this point, you have a job or some money set aside. So you can actually make this business work way quicker than what I had done and what many others do because they’d never even get off the ground because they’re stalking la-la land. And the next thing is that you have a niche selected, and now you now have a service program. And so it’s natural that step four is to put together some type of offer.
4. Create an Enticing Offer
And this is essentially what you’re going to be communicating to your prospects of what you’re going to do for them. And how it benefits them. The easiest way to do this with a trial client is going to be providing the service of creating and managing the ads and the landing pages 100% free for the first month. And you can even include ad spend, if you want to do the first month, let’s say it’s two can add, you cover that. And so you’d be out about 27 or 50 bucks, maybe three grand and that’s if you’re covering all the ad spend, you could also work out a deal and say, hey, we’ll cover the first 1000 bucks in ad spend. And let’s say that takes about two weeks for them to burn through that much ad spend. And then if they’re happy, they can continue with the ads. Then after that first month, they liked the results so far, they can then continue on for X amount per month. And so I’d kind of give them a little bit of a discount rate at that point if and only if they provide a video testimonial. Actually, I’d really make that mandatory that they create that testimonial video. If the results are good, especially after that first month or even two months or whatever timeline it is, the sooner though that you can get that testimonial video, the better.
Because then you have a business owner in your industry on camera saying their journey of working with you over whatever time period that it is saying, “Wow, this has been amazing. We came into this with really no idea what was gonna happen. We added 50 grand in revenue, 100 grand in revenue”. And then the final question that you want to ask in that video testimonial is, what would you say to somebody considering our services. And so many business owners are going to say “Man, I wish I would have done this sooner” or something along those lines. And then congratulations, you have one of the most powerful tools of leverage when it comes to closing agency clients because you have other business owners saying how great your services.
5. Spread the Word to Prospective Clients About Your Offer!
So the next step, which is number five, and that is to get the word out of your new offers. So that way you can get some trial clients coming in right and get them results, get them turned into testimonials, and then use that to start scaling to get actual paid clients for how to actually get the word out there. There, of course, is the standard stuff that everyone talks about cold email, cold calling all this sort of stuff, I think the absolute best ways if you have very little money to spend is going to be social media messaging from your agency’s page to a business’s page. So ideally going to be something niche focused, and make sure that your actual page has some stuff on there, don’t create a page today and start messaging, create a page two weeks ago and start posting consistently and have a link to your website and have a logo and make it actually look like your accompany, versus you just looking like a complete spammer.
Now, again, your offer’s gonna be really good. So it should be a little bit easier to convert. But you could also do this, if you have had a regular agency, you’d say you’re just ABC media or whatever. And you’ve had that in existence for two, three years, that would work actually well, too. You could kind of just say in your messaging, hey, we’re focusing in on working with roofers, would you like to try insert your offer 100%, free, hands covered, whatever all that sort of stuff, that’s going to work out really, really well. I think the absolute best way to do this though, if you already have some money set aside, let’s say you want to put 500 bucks into this. And this is what I would do. If I was to start over again, run ads on Facebook, the amount of exposure you can get for just 500 bucks is insane, especially if you have this type of offer where it’s 100% free to try out, there’s literally no risk for the client to take, you’re going to have a ton of leads coming in and then you can screen out who’s going to be the best fit for you to be a trial client for your new program.
So those two methods are going to be really the best way to get the word out of your new offer to get those first trial clients. That is how you can get your first client in the next seven days for your digital marketing agency.
Start & Grow Your Agency using HVA
What I encourage you to do is take this a step further go here to register for my HVA webinar firstly in the description, pinned comment underneath the video as well. That’s where you’re going to be able to see some absolute life changing concepts when it comes to attracting, closing, and retaining digital marketing clients and also the potential opportunity to work with me one-to-one for how we can help you start and grow your marketing agency below. With that said, my name is Matt Wacek, thanks for checking out my channel. See in the next video.