In this instructional video, Joshua Nelson walks viewers through the "Ultimate Agency Funnel" and provides concrete benchmark targets for each stage of a digital marketing agency’s client acquisition process. He explains that a healthy lead magnet should achieve a 25‑30% opt‑in rate, that converting opt‑ins to booked appointments should reach at least 5% (with active, multi‑channel follow‑up versus 1‑2% for pure automation), and that appointments should close at a minimum of 20% (ideally 30‑40%). When these rates are combined, the overall funnel conversion from initial traffic to a signed retainer client is roughly 1%. Nelson emphasizes the importance of aggressive follow‑up, using an appointment setter, and refining each funnel step to keep cost‑per‑client low. He invites viewers to access a detailed step‑by‑step training at 7figureagency.com/funnel for deeper implementation guidance.
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Hey guys, on today's video I want to talk about the ultimate agency funnel and some of the key benchmarks and KPIs you want to be shooting for. So if you're trying to figure out if what you're doing is, is performing or whether there's room for improvement, or just so you have something to shoot for, you're going to want to watch this video. Over the last couple of months, I've talked a lot about the Ultimate Agency Funnel and how to really get clients to come to you pre-positioned to buy. We talk about the opt-in, the appointment, the hot lead follow-up, and then of course the sales process to convert those opportunities into sales. Um, and on another video, I really walked you through that entire process from the, the pages to the confirmations to the show-up sequence and, and some of the messaging that goes in between, what I wanna talk about today are benchmarks and KPIs. So if you're promoting a lead magnet or you're promoting a book or you're running ads, what should you be shooting for? Because if you don't know what's good, you don't know what should be improved or you don't know what you should double down on. And so now having worked with several hundred digital marketing agencies and helped implement this Ultimate Agency Funnel that now have almost 100 agencies have grown to 7 figures in their agency following this process. I can tell you kind of what some of the benchmarks are and what you should be shooting for. So again, we're gonna have some type of opt-in in our funnel, whether that's a free book, a checklist, a keyword list, an ultimate cheat sheet. There's gonna be an opt-in that we're offering. And then the whole purpose of that is to get them interested so that they schedule in, so that we can have them schedule in for an appointment and ultimately go through a sales conversation and ideally become a sales prospect or a new client that we bring on board into our retainer-based services. So what we wanna be shooting for with the lead magnet, now this could be you're emailing it out, it could be you're running Facebook ads to it, it could be whatever marketing strategy, maybe you're promoting it through a JV, what we wanna shoot for is a 25 to 30% opt-in ratio. So if we drive someone to the landing page for whatever the thing is, ideally we're shooting for 25 to 30%. If you're in that neighborhood, your, your, your landing pages are performing pretty good. Your lead magnet is compelling enough that you can continue to run down that track. If it's significantly less than that, your cost per lead is going to start to get higher, which is going to throw the entire process off-kilter. So what we're shooting for on the opt-in is 25 to 30%. From there, what percent of those opt-ins are you able to move to appointment? And really, this is where most agencies miss. I think a lot of agencies focus a lot of time on the lead magnet, they focus a lot of time on, you know, making it cool on the landing page, and they know that metric, but they don't know what percentage of their appointments or of their opt-ins turn into appointments or strategy sessions for themselves or for their sales team. And so really what we're shooting for there is 5%. If you can get 5% of the people that opt in to go to appointment, you're doing really well. Now I can tell you, if all you do is let automation run— so somebody opts in and then you run an email or maybe a text message, and you're just gonna let automation email and text message them— you're you're gonna be more like 1 to 2% to convert from opt-in to appointment. If you put the right process in place, which I've talked about in other videos, you're more aggressive with the follow-up, you pick up the phone, you try and connect with them on social media, whether that's Facebook Messenger or LinkedIn Messenger or Instagram, you can get that up to 5%, but it takes a concerted effort. Typically, if you're doing this in volume, you're gonna want an appointment setter That's Johnny on the Spot following up with those leads. So 5% or more opt-in to appointment, you're doing really, really well. And then from there, appointment to close, right? This is where the money's made. That ideal prospect in your niche gets on the calendar, you have your sales conversation with them, you take them through the consultative sales process, you ask the questions, you kind of build rapport, you get clear on where they're headed and what the gap is and what they're doing today. And you show them what your agency can do to help them grow, ideally we want at least 20% of your appointments to convert into sale, right? 20% or more. Ideally, you know, if you've really got this dialed in, you're really well positioned, you can get that north of 30 to 40%. But the minimum benchmark there is 20%. And so again, if you think about this as the lifecycle to bring a stranger into your world, to actually becoming a signed client that's paying for your retainer-based services, there's lots of nuance in here. There's lots of connecting dots. There's lots of authority and positioning you can leverage. But if we can get 25% of our people that get to our landing page to opt in, we can get 5% of those to move to appointment, and we can close at 20% or higher, we could really have a great client acquisition engine to get new agency clients come into our world on a very consistent basis at an affordable cost per client acquisition. So if you kind of play this out from beginning to end, really what you're looking for is about a 1% conversion from entering the funnel to becoming a client. And, you know, I've studied this individually. I've studied with Aaron Fletcher, and he's kind of proven these metrics out on his end as well. And so Really what you're looking for is 1% of the people that you bring into your world converting into a client. And if you know you can optimize for that, then you can double down, drive more traffic, get better with the lead magnets and the conversion of those, get more and more of them to actually turn into qualified prospects that, that meet, and then you just dial in that sales process, you dial in that authority on the front end and continue to up those metrics. So hopefully this is helpful. I know, um, you know, a lot of us are students of this stuff. We, we like read the books, we sit in the webinars, we like study and funnel hack the other agencies, um, but don't really know what we're shooting for. We don't know what a good target to aim for is. And if you don't have a good target to aim for, you have nothing to improve. And so hopefully this gives you a great benchmark to shoot at to aim for. If you'd like more details on the Ultimate Agency Funnel and really going deep on how these pages should be structured, how you stitch them together, what the, you know, the retargeting should look like, what the email sequencing should look like to get people from opt-in to appointment and then from appointment to sales call and from sales call to signed agency client, I do have a step-by-step training I'd like to give you access to. You can get that by going to 7figureagency.com/funnel. That's 7figureagency.com/funnel. Do you have any other follow-up questions or thoughts on this? Post them in the comments. Maybe some questions on the, the numbers or how you track those numbers or kind of what you're shooting for. Post that in the comments. And as always, please be sure to subscribe and be sure to share this with other agencies that can benefit. That's it for today. I cannot wait to hear your numbers and see you take your agency to the next level by attracting more clients, by really knowing your KPIs and benchmarks as it relates to your agency funnel.
