Secrets to Growing a $7-9 Figure Agency with AI

All right, so we have a little treat for you. So this is a coaching call from the Agency Owners Association. This is a group that Neil and I have for agency owners to help you grow faster. So if you're in the agency space, you are a services business, this is applicable to you. It's a little preview of a call. It's probably 10, 15 minutes or so, and you get a sense for what it looks like to be in the group. If you want to learn more about the group, you can go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io/agency. Hope you enjoy. I hope you enjoy the episode.

All right. So someone had actually reached out to me and said, these Friday calls have basically turned into like the AI tool sharing calls. And since AI is moving so fast, that's kind of like, you know, where things have gone in the recent Friday calls. So I'd love to open up the room now and either share like one word that's on your mind about what's alive in you, how you feel today, Or if you want to jump in and say, this is a cool new AI tool that I found this week, I would love to hear. Dmitry, no? Yes?

Well, we're working for hours, but not— no, no tools for me. No, I actually have a question. Like, because I try— like, I'm trying to reach out people on LinkedIn. I know this very basic question, but 12 years in performance marketing, so I don't have that much connections with the, like, personal connections. Yeah, it's pretty much business to business. So I'm trying to reach out the people I need in LinkedIn, and obviously I think either most of them doesn't use it as some sort of messaging app.

Yeah.

Either it just like, uh, outstaff. Yeah, it's used by outstaff where there is a team who makes the communication for the— for, for this kind of people. Yeah. So yeah, I would love to hear what's the best scenario if you meet certain people that you actually want to talk like afterwards, because I get few connections on the Web Summit in Lisbon, and I got a verbal agreement to have a call, you know, and I'm trying to reach them out on LinkedIn, uh, no reply, never, uh, the message is never read, never been read. So what's, uh, what's, what's your experience? What's your scenario to get the contacts, like either to grab the phone number, either Facebook, what's— What's the flow? Like, I need really help with this. Yeah.

My experience has been, yeah, get their phone number and then connect with them on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is pretty, uh, we run an association that has contacts worldwide and, um, those people love WhatsApp. They prefer to be on WhatsApp than LinkedIn.

Do you mind mentioning the type of people, like the industry? Because I, I've seen a huge impact on different industries.

Well, there is several business service businesses. There's like the recent one is, I don't remember the company, but just give me a second. The guy's position is Vice President of Growth. And, you know, it's kind of busy people, I do understand. Um, give me a sec. His name, uh, and the company name is— yeah, I don't know. Uh, so is that like a local service type of, uh— No, it's, it's like, uh, the— it's integrators, uh, on demand. Let's say, uh, this entire company. Um, they're pretty huge.

Like, let me, let me ask a question then. When you met these people, you said you had a verbal commitment. Was that just like a verbal, like, hey, we should chat, or was it a verbal, like, no, no, yeah, outcome?

Yeah, I actually explained what I want to get from them, and, uh, like they said, like, yeah, it's fine, sounds interesting.

I mean, I, I don't know if this has been anybody else's experience. And Dimitri, I don't know how many, um, shows like this you've done, but I feel like I've been doing shows like this all my life. Um, and, um, unfortunately, we go to these shows and we make great connections and we have wonderful conversations and we come back really excited, like, okay, look, there's at least half a dozen people here. And, uh, then they ghost us.

Yeah. So we have a, like my, I have my senior account executive, like her responsibility and what she's measured on conferences is how many meetings she gets booked from at the conference. So the, the, she has a booking link there. It's like this most recent conference, we had a target of 15, we got 19 and qualify them in conversation and schedule the follow-up meeting. So for the next 3 weeks, we have a wall of meetings following this conference. That's the, that's the approach I've found that works best.

Exactly.

And Brendan, they show up for the meeting?

Oh yeah, 100%. I mean, we're— I would say we have a fairly substantial presence in that space. And like the conference that we were at most recently, the conference itself is a client of ours. So we have authority there and people want to speak with us. I would say it's otherwise 80 to 90% show rate. It's— this one's 100%, but most are— they're pretty high. But the Industry has a lot of, like, the travel industry keeps their promises. The B2B SaaS industry does not. So that's another consideration.

Yeah, it's mine.

Industry is a, is a huge factor.

Absolutely.

If you go after, and I think the individual, like, if the company is hiring, of course a lot of the executives are gonna be more active, most likely on, on LinkedIn, just random example there. But on the counter side, and then it's like, On an extreme, another extreme would be like recruiting in and of itself, like recruiting companies. Now, on the other side of the spectrum, look at like contractors, like home services and stuff like that. Like they have a LinkedIn profile, but they're not logging into it. They're not using it at all. So like people that work with their hands and not on the computer, right? Like that's the other extreme of the spectrum. And like, I think it's really important to understand where you fall. On that. And then, yeah, what Brennan just said was pretty awesome advice. If they're saying that they want to hop on a call with you already, you might as well just book the call right then and there. Suggest a couple times and like have a few times in your head already as you walk up to people and engage with people and then just throw them out there. See what they say.

Yeah. So let me clarify. So just like As soon as we agreed, as soon as we said yes, I just opened up the calendar and proceeded for the booking, like at the same moment.

Yeah, just say, hey, let's get it on the calendar so we don't forget it.

Okay, okay.

Even if the show rate's 50%, that's more than you'd get otherwise.

True, like, I mean, I'm the new one in B2B SaaS, so yeah, I didn't expect that. In our performance marketing, you know, everything was before.

I, like, have learned to not touch B2B SaaS with a 10-foot pole. That industry is full of assholes. Like, that is, that is what I've learned. So thank you for doing the Lord's work. Like, they need it. Um, like, oh God, does anybody else have this experience with B2B SaaS where like they are the worst clients across the board?

Yeah, this is where I live. Thank you very much.

only done B2B SaaS for years and actually agreeing with Brennan, I've had to pivot out of it this year just because their lack of money.

Oh, it's, it's, it's their lack of like of everything accountable. Like they all have like, so I've hired, I've recruited 5 employees out of a company called Directive. That's a B2B SaaS consulting firm. And the owner of Directive is a coach of mine too. So like I see the shit that he deals with. And I understand from them that the people that I've hired, what they say is basically B2B SaaS is a bunch of people who have set unrealistic goals to generate basically investment funding to exit before the business actually generates any real value. So it's a bunch of vanity.

True.

It's a bunch of vanity. And then the people that they hire are not like— they hire people. It's all vanity. It's just like in travel, it's very different. People are Like they want relationships, they want to do good work, they want to stay there for the long term. And it's like, it seems like the exact opposite in SaaS. So Demetra, I think that, I don't think it's you as much as it is the industry.

I think it's a generalization, Brennan.

Yes.

There's a lot of different types of people in all different types of industries.

There's a high, I have an experience of high concentration in B2B SaaS. So I am speaking from my experience specifically.

Yeah, this is like, this is very new for me. Like, uh, before we worked and we had a different flow, you know, so it's kind of very new for me. Yeah, like, you know, it's, uh, pretty basic for everyone. Yeah, who have the company, who have the own business and everything, but for me it's like a gap that I'm feeling only 12 years after. Yeah, but we have what we have. All right, so this is it from my part. I'm, I'm, I'm good. Thank you.

No, that's a great topic. That's a great topic because I, I feel like over the last like 2 or 3 months, there's been so many of you who have been going to conferences and meeting people and setting up connections and like really preparing for the next year through organic relationships. Yeah, so that's a great topic. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, who else would like to share either like what, what's one word that you're feeling like what's alive in you, or share a tool, or if you'd like to take it in another direction, that's fine too.

Yeah, I mean, I'll jump right in. Nice to meet everybody. I'm new to this group. I just joined maybe a couple weeks ago. Run a marketing agency, focuses in higher education. That's our niche. Napkin.ai is a tool that I've been using for my LinkedIn posts. I just put it in there. Really cool for presentations. We're starting to use it for pitches, proposals. The free version works great as well. But that's a tool that I've started using, and I've got people on our team also starting to use it, and it's pretty neat. But nice to see everybody.

Very cool. Yeah, welcome in, Rustom, and thank you for sharing that. So you said you were doing it for like LinkedIn posts and you were encouraging your team to use it. Are you doing it for like proposals or just like general authority building or—

Proposals, presentations. So we also do some— we also do consulting in the space, and so Been introducing it to a lot of my clients as well to use in their work internally for their teams, and they love it. So yeah, it's been really great for all of it. And I use it in my newsletters as well.

If you're an agency owner looking to break high 7 figures, 8 figures, or even 9 figures, the Agency Owners Association is for you. It's ran by my partner Neil Patel and myself. And we've been there, done that from an agency standpoint. And if you want to learn more about it, if you want to grow faster, get more clients, take yourself out of the day-to-day, just go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more.

Oh, that's, that's, that's good. Does it have— I was playing around a little bit with it, but not too much. Does it have animations in there? I can't remember.

There are, there are some animations. It's limited. I've got the free version still. I'm testing it out. It's still in beta, so we can kind of see what happens with it. Some of these AI platforms, they'll come and go, as we all know. So hopefully this one stays around, but there's definitely some animations like things moving, you know, and so on. So yeah.

Super cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I saw Scott posted something in the chat where ByteDance is being forced to sell TikTok to the US or get banned. Scott, what prompted you to Put that in the chat, other than it being amazing news.

Well, I don't know if it's amazing. I'm just wondering how everyone, if anyone is on TikTok or anyone is thinking this is going to have an impact, but they are basically, they can't overthrow the original decision. And so it seems like they're going to be banned from operating in the United States, which is going to be interesting because all that traffic or that all those eyeballs are going to shift somewhere. Like Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and back to it maybe. So that's going to be interesting to watch.

Or maybe Elon will buy it.

Maybe. Yeah, that is—

Diane, you are also new. Welcome in. Would you love to introduce yourself? Because I would love that.

Sure, I'd be happy to. So I run an agency that's focused mostly on regulated industries. So we do healthcare, legal, cannabis, wine, and spirits, although we do trades as well just because referrals. So we don't actively push that, but we've got a number of good clients there. I also do fractional CMO consulting with some kind of targeted larger clients and just really excited to be a part of the group. And I echo, we don't do very much in sort of in the past. I've been a CMO on a couple of of accounts for that were B2B SaaS, and I will absolutely attest to the fact that that's where the crazy-ass founders live.

Diane, you were— you had posted something in the community about using ChatGPT and how the effects of AI are affecting SEO. And I know that you had watched the Strategy Circle on SEO, but I'd love for you to maybe re-ask the question here, and I specifically think that maybe Scott and Kevin would have something to say, or at least a comment. Would you mind, like, kind of resharing the question?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, obviously, you know, AI, I think, has our industry in the crosshairs before anyone else's. So, you know, we're kind of the early adopters, I think, as a group, all of us in general, not just my company. But And it's interesting because when generative AI first kind of went, I would say, mainstream, there was all this, you know, warnings that if you use it to produce content like blogs, for example, that it adds a digital signature to the blog and therefore Google recognizes it. It'll, you know, call it— notice it as spam. And so, you know, basically you're wasting your time. And it's worse because now you're producing a bunch of junk content for a site that can actually, you know, cause it to potentially be rewritten. Deranked or lost in ranking. So, but then more recently, because I'm trying to consume as much content as I can in, in the, in the AI marketing space in general, I'm hearing things like, well, it's, you know, first of all, Google can't always tell if you're using it to produce long-form, high-quality content. You're embedding videos, you're embedding links, you're kind of doing all the right things such that a human would want to read it. Then actually it is okay. And there's just, there's a lot of opportunities that I think we have. So like for our clients, for example, we, for one of the things we do for local SEO is we build out location, detailed location pages on websites. And it's time consuming because I have to have an actual writer go in and create that unique content for each page. It would be really cool because we can absolutely imagine how we would use AI to do that, but we don't want to, you know, Nobody cares that you use AI. Okay, well, thank you. Is that the answer really? That, you know, does Google, like, does Google care, I guess is the question?

No, it was— I was pointing to the video that I posted in the chat. Oh, it's literally what it's called.

That was just your general answer to my question.

Oh no, sorry.

So to answer— all right then, moving on. To answer the question, does Google care? Yeah, to answer the question, does Google care?

They definitely Right.

There is a reason why, is because it's the index size that they have.