Groove Digital Marketing Agency: Key Activities and Results Week of June 16th

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 16th, 2014

During the past week, here’s a summary of what happened:

1. We published 3 blog posts
2. I met with a new prospect (the new CMO of a very large software company) and gave them a proposal
3. I finalized the slide deck for this week’s webinar
4. I added some more content into Groove’s funnel
5. I developed a mind map for the Ultimate Guide to Inbound Marketing
6. Liz, Kiana, and I attended the Eagle Rodeo 🙂
7. My friend Drew Sanocki and I decided to launch a marketing agency duel!

Now that you’ve seen – at a high level – what the key activities were, let’s dive into some details.

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Check #thebrightideasblog How Trent’s Using #ContentMarketing to Grow Groove Digital to 7 Figures

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3 New Blog Posts

Proposal Sent to a New Large Prospect

Using the LinkedIn prospecting strategy that I explained here, I was able to secure a meeting with the CMO of a large UK-based software company that is struggling to get traction in the US.

The meeting was actually in person, because, strangely enough, the CMO lives here in Boise.

When we met, I asked him to explain the marketing issues that were at the top of his list. I then asked him to explain to me the impact these issues were having on his company (this style of questioning is something we are going to cover in detail during this week’s webinar, so make sure you register).

Once I’d confirmed what his pain was, I explained to him a few ways that I thought we could work together to solve the problems. He told me that he really liked the concepts that I’d explained and asked that I sent him a proposal. As my proposal is pretty much a boiler plate, sending it out is pretty easy, so I was happy to do it.

The proposal was sent on the 16th, and on the 20th, I received an email from him that said:

Hi Trent,

The pleasure is on my side. Thanks for the documents and links. Well done. I need to review in detail while I am travelling extensively over the next two weeks. Will likely get back to you after July 4th weekend.

Regards,

After receiving this email, I logged into DocSend (use this link for free access) to see how much of the proposal he’d looked at, and if it was shared with anyone else. As you can see below, he viewed 96% of the proposal and spent 1:07 on the pricing page…which is a good sign.

During our meeting, he told me that he was the sole decision maker, so it’s not a surprise that it’s not been shared with anyone else so far.

At the end of our meeting, he told me that he was most interested in starting on a retainer, so with a little luck, after July 4th, he’ll sign on for a $3,000/mo retainer.

I Finalized the Slide Deck for This Week’s Webinar

I have to say that I’m pretty stoked about this week’s webinar. Over the last year, I have learned a LOT about content marketing and my results continue to improve as a result of what I’ve learned.

In the last two weeks, in particular, I have notice the quality of inbound leads has increased quite a bit. I’m happy to say that we are now starting to generate leads from companies doing $5M+ in sales….which is exactly the type of leads we want.

I attribute this increase in lead quality to how I’m using Oktopost (affiliate link) to promote my content on LinkedIn. Here’s the video that I created last week that shows how I’m using the software. If you haven’t yet grabbed your spot for the webinar, register here before it’s full.

While seemingly an unexciting announcement, I included it in this week’s update because I wanted to make sure you understood something about a marketing funnel.

The goal of the funnel, especially at the top of it, is to build trust, and the way to do that is with content. But you knew that already, right?

Well, here’s a tip for you: the content that you are using doesn’t all have to be yours! In fact, it’s a good idea to also curate some other people’s content in your funnel, especially if it is content that will help you to convey the point(s) you are trying to get across.

In my case, the way to do this was to find some posts on other people’s blogs that would help me to demonstrate the value of inbound marketing to my prospects. To do this, I simply wrote emails that gave brief introductions to the content along with a link.

Here’s an example:

So, the take away for you here is this: you don’t have to be the one to write every post that you use in your funnel. In fact, it’s better if you curate the work of others in addition to your own content.

The Ultimate Guide to Inbound Marketing Mind Map

Over the last few weeks as I’ve been carefully watching the leads we’ve been capturing, I have been thinking hard about ways to attract more of the right kinds of readers.

In order to do that, I have to first decide who I really want reading the Groove blog. At this point in time, my most desired type of reader is the CMO of a $5M+ technology company that isn’t yet getting very good results from their inbound marketing efforts….if they have even started, that is.

Once I know the who, I need to discover what makes these people decide to hire a company like mine. What problems are they having? What language do they use to describe these problems? Where do they look for solutions? Who already has influence over these people now?

This isn’t a step that I put enough effort into when I first launched Groove; mostly because I thought I already knew the answers to these questions.

Well, it turns out that I didn’t.

Oops.

So, with that in mind, I developed the mind map below.

There are a couple of reasons why I think this mind mapping exercise is worthwhile.

First, I’m a visual person, so seeing the problem laid out in front of my eyes helps me to think my way through it.

Second, once I have a visual representation of my plan, I can share it with others and ask for their input (please leave your questions down in the comments).

Third, when I showed this to another agency owner, she said, “Trent, that thing is awesome. You should show it to prospective clients so they really understand what it is that you are going to be doing for them.”

Liz and I Went to the Rodeo

Ok…so this has nothing at all to do with how to build a marketing agency…but we had a blast and I like to share a little bit of our personal lives with you as well, so here’s a pic of my better half 🙂

Traffic & Leads

Thanks to a webinar we are holding on June 26th, new leads this past week were up quite a bit.

Marketing Agency Duel: The Race to $20,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue

I’ve saved the best for last in this week’s update!

On Friday, I was on the phone with my friend Drew Sanocki, owner of Mineral, a paid search agency, and we were talking about our plans for the future.

Drew and I actually have fairly similar backgrounds. We have both founded multi-million dollar companies and sold them. We both have a new babies, and we are both growing marketing agencies.

Among the many things we discussed was our mutual desire to get to $20,000 a month in retainer income as fast as possible. I told Drew that I’d been writing these blog posts and publishing income reports and I suggested that he become a contributor to Bright Ideas so he could also write a weekly update.

He thought that was a great idea, so look for his first post soon.

Another of the things that we agreed to do was to create a “Marketing Agency Duel” so we would publicly race each other to the goal of $20,000 in monthly retainer income.

If you think this is something that you’d like to see, please be sure and tweet out this post, as well as to leave us a comment with any questions or suggestions you have on how we should run the duel.

Personally, I’m hoping to kick his butt! (and I’m sure he plans to do the same, lol!)

Here’s a podcast episode Drew and I recorded to give you more information on the duel.

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Check out the Marketing Agency Duel with @trentdyrsmid @drewsanocki

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Additional Resources

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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