In this presentation, the speaker advises niche‑focused marketing agencies to accelerate business development by deeply engaging with industry associations tied to their target verticals. The core strategy involves three pillars: (1) joining relevant associations to access member lists and affinity, (2) securing speaking slots at association events—both live and virtual—to showcase expertise and position the agency as the go‑to authority, and (3) exhibiting in virtual trade shows, using virtual booths with video, live‑chat, and downloadable assets to maintain a presence when in‑person events are limited. The speaker illustrates the approach with concrete examples, including Service Roundtable’s virtual Service World Expo for plumbing, HVAC, and home‑service contractors, and success stories of Danny Barrera (Concrete Marketing Crew) and Kris Rodriguez (martial‑arts studio specialist) who grew their agencies by writing, speaking, and publishing within their associations. Emphasis is placed on becoming omnipresent—appearing repeatedly in association newsletters, inboxes, social feeds, and event materials—rather than relying on anonymous cold‑email blasts. The talk also previews a live session on lead nurturing for home‑service businesses, and demonstrates the setup of a virtual booth, highlighting registration numbers, speaker line‑up, and interactive chat features. The overall message is that sustained, visible involvement in niche associations is the most effective shortcut to authority, client acquisition, and long‑term growth.
Chapters
marketing agency, which is getting involved in the industry associations, getting involved in their events, looking for opportunities to speak and present at their events. If you're, if you're running an agency and you've chosen to be niche-focused, which ideally most of us have, right? We want to be the very best in a very specific vertical. One of the best things you can do from a marketing and business development perspective is to find the association, and associations tied to to your niche, right? Join the association. You get access to their list. You get access to the affinity. Say, "Hey, I'm contacting you because we're also members of this group or this association." And then the ultimate is to be at their events. Most of these organizations get together live and in person throughout the country several times per year. And those live events where you can be face-to-face, elbow-to-elbow, break bread together is really where relationships are developed. It's one of the best shortcuts to develop your authority, your positioning, and to grow your client base within your space. Now, recently everything has gone virtual, right? The entire trade show world has switched from live and in-person to virtual. And that doesn't mean you can't participate. You know, as an example, I was gonna kinda show you I'm a member of one of the bigger organizations in plumbing, HVAC, home services, which is called Service Roundtable. We always participate in their Service World Expo and their Service Roundtable International Expo, which happens twice per year. Big event, hundreds of contractors come together, they hang out, there's cool sessions and things like that. This time they haven't been able to do it live and in person. So what they've done is they've switched to virtual. I just want to kind of show you, I'm gonna be speaking at this event. I want to show you kind of how the exhibit is set up because there's still— this type of stuff is still happening. As you can see, tons of people registered for this event. Lots of speakers from across the country. Obviously they're eager to find speakers to come out, speak, add value, and share. So I've got a session that I'm gonna be running today at 4:15 PM. Eastern Time, solving the biggest marketing challenge for plumbing HVAC home services, which is lead nurturing, lead conversion, making sure that they're converting their leads at the highest level possible. But really, you wanna be participating in these types of organizations within your niche. You know, Danny Barrera from Concrete Marketing Crew, who's grown to 7 figures in his digital marketing agency, has done great with us. He joined the association, he started writing for the association, he speaks at the association, and of course, when you're writing, when you're speaking, when you're actively involved, there's no doubt that you're positioned as the go-to expert within that space. Another great example of this is Kris Rodriguez, whose focus is on martial arts studios. She's become a key player in the martial arts industry. She runs coaching calls for them, she publishes for them, and recently one of her articles was featured on the COVID of the industry magazine. And so I really want to encourage you, you know, don't try and play anonymous in your space. Don't try and be like, okay, well, I'm going to buy a list, I'm going to cold email that list, and that's going to be all I do. Really, the whole purpose of being in the niche is to become the expert and to be known as the expert, and that only happens by getting really entrenched and becoming borderline omnipresent in their world, at their events, in their inbox, on their social feed, in their mailbox, right? So they see you again and again and again. They hear your content, they see your case studies, they hear the wins of the people that are working with them, and that's really what we're wanting to do. So I just wanna show you, like, here's Service World Expo, As you can see, I've got one of the sessions at 4:15. I'm gonna be going live. I've got my picture on here. I've got a little bio. This is great. It's great positioning. Of course, I'm able to then talk about it. I'm able to email it out. I'm able to re-syndicate the video recording of the session. But here's another thing that's kind of interesting, and that's this idea of a virtual expo. I don't know how well it's gonna work. I'll keep you posted on whether this turns into something that's super productive or not. but the idea is people can get in, they can see all of the people at the exhibit hall, and they can log in, and I just wanted to show you this, 'cause I thought it was cool. Like, our booth is set up where they've got a picture of our flyer, they've got like a visual of our backdrop, and then there's a video they can play, where it's me welcoming them, "Hey, you know, welcome to our booth, we specialize in doing this, that, and the other," We love the opportunity to chat. And then they do have a live chat feed here where people can engage in one-on-one live chat or communications. Of course, this, this, this booth's actually going to open up in about an hour. So if you've never seen a virtual booth, I thought this would be interesting just to kind of show you that this, you know, this can be done and this is how they're doing it, at least for the short term. Ideally, COVID-19 gets behind us relatively quickly. And we can all get back to productive, you know, in-person business. But for the time being, like, these events are happening. They're drawing a huge audience, and this audience is huge because usually you have to pay for ServiceWorld. You have to fly down to the place where it's gonna happen, and not everybody has the time, the energy to do that. And so they're actually making the event free, and they're giving access completely virtual to everybody that wants to participate that's a home service contractor. So, I think it's gonna be pretty, I think it's gonna be pretty great, and I wanna just remind you, this is what you need to do. You need to be getting involved in the association, you need to be seeking opportunities to speak, and you need to be positioning yourself as the go-to expert, and that does not happen by anonymously publishing blog posts and sending cold emails. So, that's it for now. If you have any questions on this, Let me know. I'd love to check in with you. What's up, New Gear Media? Thank you very much. Any questions on this, let me know. Other than that, I'm about to grab some food and pop into our virtual exhibit and get ready for my session at 4:15. So I'll keep you posted. I'll talk to you later.
