2 Paid Campaigns That Every Agency Should Be Running, Especially Now
The Marketing Companies That Don't Market
There is an age old question that haunts the agency world...
Why are agencies so bad at marketing themselves?
Truthfully, there are loads of reasons, and agencies (unfairly) get a hard time for this. For example, why would a Tik Tok ads agency for e-commerce brands be good at marketing a B2B company? (which an agency is).
The story stays the same though, on the whole agencies are bad at promoting themselves - most leads and new business comes from an existing network, which is hugely limiting in terms of scale and growth.
But here's an extended version of the original question:
Why do very few agencies use paid advertising to promote themselves?
Frankly, I'm not in the mood to hypothesise over why they don't. Rather, I'll explain why now is a great time to start. Not only that, but I'll give you 2 paid campaigns that we run, that I think you should too.
So here we go...
Why Now? It's That 'R' Word Again
What happens in a Recession?
One outcome that tends to occur in a recession is companies advertise less. Their marketing budgets get cut, which means they take their foot off the Ad Gas. This is probably a terrible idea, but it presents a good opportunity for us.
It means that the cost of ads will plateau and maybe reduce. CPCs (cost-per-click) across Facebook has increased fairly relentlessly for the past 10 years - in other words, advertising has been getting more expensive.
It could well be the case that this trend stops in 2022, and maybe even reverses temporarily. This presents an opportunity for slightly cheaper clicks on your ads.
On top of that, it's likely that your referral stream will halt in a recession.
This means, you'll need new ways to find new business, which means you need your network to grow and grow fast!
These two things combined make it a great time to start your foray into paid campaigns to market your agency.
Top Of Funnel Activity At Scale
When it comes to B2B marketing, which is what we're doing when we market an agency, I see paid campaigns as driving top of funnel activity at scale.
In other words, it's a quick and consistent way to get more people to know of you and about you - that's what the top of funnel is all about.
So with that in mind, here are two campaigns we run every day, which we think you should too.
Campaign #1: Lead Form Ad
Ask any of my clients, I'm a little bit obsessed with Lead Magnets.
So obsessed that we create a brand new one every single week and share it with our audience.
You don't have to do that, but you definitely should have at least one. (BTW, if you want our ACES Lead Magnet Builder, then DM me 'ACES LM Builder' and I'll hook you up).
Once you have your lead magnet, then run a lead form ad.
Why a lead form ad? It's easy set-up and track.
Both Facebook and LinkedIn have a fantastic Lead Form Ad feature, which keeps them on the app the entire time (v important for tracking) and often auto-fills the contact info for the person, reducing friction and increasing downloads.
If you have a good (what we call 'snackable') lead magnet and decent targeting, you should get leads for around £3 per lead. When we run this campaign, if we go over £2.70/lead, we refresh the lead magnet we're offering out.
Run this at £10/day, every day and in 3 months' time you'll have over 270 emails on your list. In 1 year, you'll have over 1000 emails - that's a good sized list.
Campaign #2: Waterfall Campaign
One of the keys of good marketing is finding engaged audiences; people that not just see your stuff, but really engage in it.
A great marker of that is a video view.
Both Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to re-target people based on the amount of a certain video they have watched, for example 25% or 50% of a certain video.
This is great insight, as it allows you to put specific content in front of people who you know are engaged in your brand.
Here's how we run waterfall campaigns.
Video 1 - Pain Point Video - Broad Targeting
A video that clearly outlines a big problem your target audience faces, showing your audience that you understand the problem and laying out a really nice solution that they won't have thought of.
Let's call this positioning you as an expert.
Video 2 - Explainer Video - Shown to people who have watched 50% or more of Video 1
This is a seriously simple explainer video (using Dave Gerhardt's explainer formula) that outlines who we help and how we help. If you want to see a version of that video, check out the video on this page: www.authorityagency.co.uk .
We use this video to send people to our site, where they can check us out and book a call if they feel they have a need.
Video 3 - Testimonial Video - Shown to people who have watched 25% or more of Video 2
Here we place some of our best testimonials for people to view.
Why target people who have watched 25% instead of 50%?
Our hypothesis is, on a second recall, people may jump to the site quickly the second time - this is a hypothesis and is not yet proven!
This ad sends people directly to a Book-A-Call Page specifically created for Paid Traffic.
This means we're sending highly engaged people, who know us and have seen our results, to a page where they can book to talk to us.
At Authority Agency, we book an average of 30 new business meetings each month. The Waterfall Campaign only creates 2/3 of these, however, it serves to drive more and more people into our world, who will book in later.
Which is because...
Paid Needs Nurture To Back It Up
When we've failed with paid in the past is when we've had a poor nurture game to back us up. When you have a good Lead Nurture system, your top of funnel (in this case paid) is just about getting eyeballs into your network.
A good Lead Nurture system could mean:
- Email newsletter
- LinkedIn Newsletter
- Facebook Group content
- Regular personal brand content
- Podcast appearances
- Guest blogs
- Webinars
- The list is endless
You need this in place to make the most of your paid spend.
In Summary
Don't wait for 'the right time' to start your paid campaigns to promote your agency.
The time is now, get ahead before your referrals dry up.
And as always, if you want support with this - you know where to find me.
Becoming An Authority Agency
For those of you that don't know me, I'm Oliver Duffy-Lee and I run a company called Authority Agency.
Our mission is simple, we want to help as many scale-up agencies to reach and win high quality international clients as we possibly can, whilst also helping the founders to get more time back in their life at the same time.
If that sounds like you, there are 3 ways we can help you immediately.
The OD-L Podcast
Every day I share my thoughts and insights I have from working in the agency world for over 10 years - each episode is always less than 10 minutes.
You can check that out here: https://open.spotify.com/show/4n7hdfxdRYMz0XAWd06JPQ
Free Training
We also run a free Facebook Group and every week we put new training in there for all of our members.
You can join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/authority
Agency Growth Audit
If you want to move faster, you can book an Agency Growth Audit with one of our Scale Specialists. It's a super-quick, free call where we'll help outline what's slowing your growth and show you what's possible in the next 90 days.
If that's you, can you book here: https://www.authorityagency.co.uk/book-a-call
I'm very happy to be here on your journey to building the agency of your dreams.
If you ever need any advice, send me a DM.
To your success,
OD-L
