Groove Digital Marketing Agency: Key Activities and Results Week of June 23rd
Since writing a post about how I’m planning to grow my agency, Groove Digital Marketing, into my next 7 figure success story, the feedback I’ve received from readers has been very positive. Thank you to those of you who shared the post, commented on it, or emailed me directly. Your feedback is very encouraging.
In today’s post, as promised, I’m going to give you a look over my shoulder for the past week and share with you what I did, as well as the results we achieved. If you missed last week’s post, you can find it here.
As always, my hope is that my transparency with you can be the fuel you need to achieve similar results in your own business. Sound good? Here we go!
Key Activities in the Week of June 23rd, 2014
During the past week, here’s a summary of what happened:
- We published 4 blog posts
- We did a discovery call with another new lead
- I handed prospecting off to my VA
- I hosted the June Marketing Agency Mastermind meeting
- I developed a new daily routine
- Ian and I held our webinar
- Liz and I took off for the weekend to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary!
Now that you’ve seen – at a high level – what the key activities were, let’s dive into some details.
4 New Blog Posts
- The 3 Key Inbound Marketing Metrics to Track in 2014
- How (And Why) to Define a Targeted Audience for Your Marketing Campaign
- The Best Social Media Sites for Promoting B2B Content
- 8 Tried and True Methods for Creating the Blog Content Your Audience Wants
Discovery Call with a New Lead
Yet another podcast guest has expressed interest in working with Groove to help them with their inbound marketing. This company is a very successful agency; however, content marketing has thus far not played a huge role in their success.
They’d like to change that, and so we booked a call to talk about options.
It’s too early to tell the outcome just yet; however, I’m fairly sure they are going to retain us for some kind of ongoing help with their content marketing. With that said, having had two other agencies get excited about content marketing, and then not follow through, I’m really not sure how this one will turn out.
At the end of our meeting, they told me that budget was not the issue and they were very likely to proceed in some capacity. Look for an update next week.
I Handed Off Prospecting to My VA
Since creating my Target100 list, I have been very hands on with the prospecting and have invested quite a number of hours into sending LinkedIn requests, one-off emails, and tweets.
Now that I have tested a number of strategies and found that podcast invitations seem to work the best to get conversations started, I have handed the ask off to my VA.
What a time saver!
Now, all I have to do is reply to the people who accept my invitation for a pre-interview.
Like I have said before, if you’ve not yet started a podcast, there is no better prospecting tool on the planet.
The June Mastermind Meeting
Once per month I hold an online meeting for the Bright Ideas Elite Mastermind and last week I held our most recent meeting. Our special guest was Rachel Cogar and she spent 80 minutes answering questions from myself and the other members of the group.
Rachel has built a very successful 7 figure agency that allows here to earn a very nice six figure income; all while working from home and raising her kids. Impressive!
If you’d like to apply to join our mastermind, you can do that here. It costs $179/month.
My New Daily Routine
After reading a post on Michael Hyatt’s blog about creating a daily routine, I decided that my routine needed a tune up. Since Kiana was born, I’d been sleeping in more than usual (due to a lack of sleep!) and now that she’s sleeping most of the night, I felt it was time for me to resume waking up at 5:30am.
If you’d like to see my current routine, check it out here. Over the years, many people have written to me to ask how I get so much done, and I will tell you that this routine, combined with the help of my team, is how I do it.
Ian and I Hosted Our Webinar
On June 26th, Ian and I hosted our webinar and out of 230 registrants, 90 people showed up. If you haven’t hosted a webinar before, you might be surprised to see that the “show rate” was just 39%. This is actually slightly higher than normal, as far as webinars go.
There are a number of reasons why so few show up. Some people only register so they can get access to the replay, some people’s schedules & moods change, and some people like to register for just about every webinar they are ever invited to, even though they know they probably won’t attend.
Content-wise, I thought the webinar was excellent and quite a number of people emailed afterwards to say as much. However, I think one of the mistakes that I made was to host it in the afternoon. Being as I’m such an early riser, my energy is usually much lower in the afternoon than it is in the morning.
One of the unexpected benefits of the webinar was this email:
Trent,
I was able to attend a conference call last week hosted by you and Ian Altman (Discover How to Make Clients Chase You).
As you know, a banker’s services are highly commoditized. It seems that everyone has the same thing, and says the same thing. Distinction is a challenge. Regulations play a part in this, and they also limit communication avenues, and make selecting clients tricky.
Economic reports are starting to reflect what I have seen firsthand this year. I entered the year with a full pipeline comprised of walk-in clients and prospects. However, the flow quickly tapered by the end of the first quarter, and is dry now.
Now I’m in the position of being on the “hunt” for new clients to refill the pipeline, keep a steady flow, and grow my book. As I am not simply tending to walk-ins, I want to be effective by being selective. I have been spending time every day trying to get better at reaching those prospects that I believe I can best serve.
Your call was very helpful, so I have been looking for more information from you – hence my prying around on your profile. I have shared with others in my company the things I have learned from you, including the article you posted on LinkedIn, How (and why) to Define a Targeted Audience for your Marketing Campaign. Some have asked if the webinar I attended was recorded and if others could view it, so far I’ve not seen that it is available.
If you are looking for corporate clients like the bank I work for, Columbia Bank, I would be happy to do my best to make introductions.
As you might guess, I wrote back and told him that I’d love any introductions that he’d care to make. Below is the reply that I got a few minutes ago:
I am working on the bank side of things now to try to coordinate an introduction for you. Respecting your time, and the time of our folks, I want to get you to the best person possible. It may take a few days to nail this part down.
You didn’t miss anything, CB does not have a blog, at least one that I’m aware of. We do have a Twitter account, but I ‘m not sure how effectively it is being used. We actually have people assigned to “social media,” but I really believe we are missing the boat still. These are the folks I would like you to meet.
I’ll be in touch again soon.
Thanks!
The lesson here is this: the production and distribution of genuinely helpful content rarely goes un-rewarded, so get on it and start producing helpful content today!
Liz and I Celebrated Our 1st Wedding Anniversary
Here in Idaho, we are surround by beautiful country and to celebrate our first anniversary, Liz and I booked a cabin up at a place called Redfish Lake. We first discovered Redfish back on our honeymoon, so it was pretty cool to go back a year later.
To say that Redfish is a beautiful place is an understatement!
Traffic & Leads
Thanks to a webinar we held on June 26th, new leads this past week were up quite a bit. For the month of June overall, the increase has been huge. Look for a full report in the June traffic report.
Marketing Agency Duel: The Race to $20,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue
Just in case you missed it last week, I have challenged my friend Drew Sanocki to a marketing agency duel where we are literally going to race each other to $20,000 a month in retainer income. You can get all the details in last week’s update here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:58 — 20.8MB)
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Additional Resources
- See prior posts in this series
- Get my B2B Lead Generation Training Course
- Get a copy of my Digital Marketing Handbook
What Questions Do You Have?
If you have questions about this post, or anything to do with marketing, please leave them in the comments down below. That way, I can look at the most commonly asked questions and write detailed blog posts on these topics in the future. If you don’t ask questions, it’s much harder for me to come up with ideas to write about, so please don’t be shy!
Now What?
If you liked this post and want future updates on our progress with how to start a marketing agency, just click the image below. If you’d like to get even more help and surround yourself with other agency owners, be sure and check out the Bright Ideas Mastermind Elite, which is my mastermind group for entrepreneurs running marketing agencies.
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