Podcast Episode 6: A powerful lead generation system you should be using

Today, I'm going to tell you about a beautifully simple, yet incredibly powerful 3 step system I USE, to help every business I work with, to get new clients.

This system IS your new client funnel

And thats' why I want you to listen up and start implementing this 3 step marketing system in your consultancy as soon as this podcast episode has finished.

Now before I tell you what the steps are, I'm going to give you a bit of background...

In last week's podcast episode, I spoke to you about 3 basic marketing laws that you should definitely know because I use them to help me guide my decision making pretty much every single day.

And it's important for you to know these too, because if you don't, and you get them wrong, then your marketing will most likely fail which would be really sad.

So to recap quickly, the first law is to leverage your client's emotions.
The second is to be highly relevant.
And the third is to create a marketing system.

And his is where my lovely 3 step marketing system comes into play.

So let explain why I created my marketing system in the first place by covering a few points. 

The first is that People are receiving an unprecedented amount of content at the moment so it's harder than ever to cut through the noise and get your brand and message in front of potential clients.

Think about your own LinkedIn feed and emails for a second - I bet you're inundated every day. 

The second point is that People only buy when they're ready to buy which is why you need to be in the right place at the right time with the right message.

In the other big marketing company I lead, people tell us that they've been listening to the podcast for years before they decided to buy which I always find crazy.

But it just shows that your client's 'right time' to buy is completely out of your control.

It could be there and then, a week later, a month, or even years.

And the third point is that you need 28 to 62 touch points before someone is ready to take action with you.

Sadly we don't have a crystal ball and there's no way to predict when that perfect moment will be.

So the best thing you can do is to show up consistently.

And because of all of this, one-time marketing doesn't work.

One time marketing is when you something like send a bunch of emails, or send out a bunch of LinkedIn DMs and try to get people to take action straight away.

I know loads of business owners that do this, don't see any results and then give up saying that marketing doesn't work.

The reality is that they're doing marketing completely wrong.

So what does this tell us?

It tells us that you need to create a marketing system that builds connections with people for as long as is needed before they book an appointment with you and turn into a happy client. 

And that's exactly what my 3 step system does...

So let me talk you through the system now....

Step 1 is to grow multiple audiences

The main audiences I like to build are linkedin connections and an email marketing list.

I call these activities lit building and it's the first thing I focus on when trying to grow a business.

Step 2 is to then build a relationship your list.

So once you have a bunch of LinkedIn contacts and an email marketing list, it's important to build a relationship with them.

This needs to be done indefinitily because you need to be consistently seen and heard over long periods of time before people are ready to buy from you.

And then the third and final step is to commercialise your relationship.

This is when you turn your warmed up relationships into happy clients and you'll do this by encouraging your people to book in a discovery call with you to talk about their HR requirements.

And there are lots of ways you can do this such as specific campaigns, webinars and via entry level products or services.

So let me tell how how I used this 3 step system when I launched the HR Marketing Box.

I knew exactly what the HR Marketing Box service was going to look like and I couldn't wait to get started. 

But if I knew if I went straight into selling mode, I would be put people off, it would damage my reputation and it would all be a big huge flop. 

That's why I spent the first 6 months growing my list and building a relationship with my list. 

I started to do this by creating an awesome lead magnet.

A lead magnet is kind of what it says on the tin.

Something you create of amazing value that you can give away to attract potential clients.

I launched this business just as we were coming out of Covid.

It was a great time for the HR consulting industry because loads of people were taking the leap from corporate to consultancy and I decided to write a book called  "Firing people doesn't grow your HR consultancy"

The book was full of marketing advice and strategies but it was also very much about work/life balance which was a key theme coming out of Covid. 

I had the book designed up into a nice little A 5 thing and got it printed out so It looked like a professional published book. 

And at the same time, I built a basic website and LinkedIn profile so that people knew that I was legit.

I put a 4 k on a credit card doing all of this, but I knew the investment would work out because I had used the 3 step system a lot before. 

Once I had created my lead magnet and website, it was time to create my target list.

Because I was targeting HR consultants, this was a really easy exercise.

I scraped Google, Companies House and LinkedIn for every HR consultant that I could find and then found someone offshore to research the list for me and clean up the data.

And now I had a cold list of every HR consultant in the UK and an awesome book that I wanted to give to them for free.

You might think, well James, you've already created a list of every HR consultant in the UK.

Surely that's step 1 of the 3 step system sorted?

Well, when it comes to any type of audience, the engagement of that audience is the most important thing to think about.

The cold list I created was purely for targeting purposes only.

The people on this list had no idea who I was and hadn't engaged with me in anyway.

So the goal of step 1 is to really grow multiple audiences of people that are interested in you and have engaged in some way. 

LinkedIn connections are a great audience, because they have to accept your connection request and there is a small degree of engagement there by doing so.

But for me, the most important audience I can create is my email marketing list.

Because in order to join that list, those people will have given me their contact details in order to receive something like my free book and their engagement by doing so is arguably the highest.

So when I was ready, I worked my way through my target list and started to connect with HR consultants on my LinkedIn.

Once they connected, I popped them a quick message offering them a free copy of my book and loads of people replied giving me their contact details and address.

I also sent out a bunch of cold emails to my cold list, offering them a free copy of my book and asking them to complete a webform on my website in order to receive it.

You've probably got loads of questions here about email marketing, which I'll cover off in another podcast episode. 

Within the first month of list building, I had around 400 HR consultants join my email marketing list and had got over 1000 connections on LinkedIn.

I was really happy with this because I now had a nice number of engaged people to start building a relationship with.

And in the background, my VA kept on connecting with people on LinkedIn and sent them a nice little message offering them a free copy of the book once they had connected. 

I think this is really important to remember. 

The individual steps of this 3 step system are an ongoing thing and you should figure out how you can keep them ticking along in the background. 

Whether that's doing it yourself, finding a VA to do it for you, or tentatively using software to automate your list building activities. 

Now that I had built multiple audiences, it was time to build a relationship with my audience.

The key word to remember here is value.

Your marketing has to deliver genuine value, otherwise what's the point of people reading it.

So on a weekly basis, I created a big old educational blog post on my website and I would send my list a little email about it and would post about it on LinkedIn too.

I call this kind of activity evergreen marketing or your basic brand awareness marketing, because it's the stuff that ticks along in the background to make sure you're consistently seen and heard.

And this is how you build a relationship with people for as long as is needed before they're ready to speak with you about your services. 

So for the first 6 months of my business, I simply focussed on step 1 and 2 of the 3 step system. 

I had built a nice email marketing list and had a nice number of LinkedIn connections. 

My VA was working in the background to keep these numbers ticking over. 

And I was sending out a weekly blog, email and LinkedIn posts to ensure I was being consistently seen and hard and to build a relationship with my lists.  

And when I felt that I had built a good enough relationship with my lists, I decided to then go into sales mode and move onto the 3rd step of the system and that's to commercialsie the relationship. 

I did this by creating an early bird discount for the HR Marketing Box and I followed the Jeff Walker Launch formula, which I had used in a few other busiensses with great success.

And on day 1 of launching the HR Marketing Box, 22 HR consultants had signed up putting me in immediate profit.

It really was a text-book launch and that's because I followed my 3 step system to the letter.

I made sure I did each step well and I did each step in chronological order.

This is something you can easily do too. 

Yes you can do the whole multi-channel thing that I did by creating an awesome lead magnet and doing it that way. 

But I think a much easier place for you to start is by doing the 3 step system on LinkedIn. 

And just focus on getting that right first before moving onto emails and all that jazz. 

So here's an easy way for you to do this on LinkedIn. 

And the best part is that you don't need Sales Navigator or any bells and whistles. 

First of all, you need to decide who you want to target. 

I'm going to do a big podcast on target markets on this, but long story short is that you need to give yourself some sort of focus when doing marketing like this otherwise you'll end flapping about like a headless chicken. 

Then, you should try to connect with 10 business owners a day. 

You can do this yourself, get a VA to do it for you, or tentatively use software to automate this for you. 

Please be super careful when using software - LinkedIn did do a big crack down a few years ago and the last thing you'll want is to get your profile blocked. 

In the words of Justin Timberlake, I'd cry a river if that happened to me. 

Okay so when you're connecting with people, you'll want to send a nice connection message. 

I say something along the lines as "Hey, would great to be connected on here. Looking forward to reading and liking your posts in the future" 

Then when they accept your connection request, start to build a relationship with them by going to their profile and interacting with the last few posts that they've done. 

You've done what you said you were going to do and that builds trust. 

At the same time, make sure you're posting regularly to your LinkedIn profile as your new connections will see these too. 

And then a few days later, you could start a conversation with your new connection. 

What you'll say will depend on who they are and what industry they're in. 

But it's important to not be salesly as this point and to deliver value. 

If you do this consistently, I bet you'll get a nice handful of discovery calls booked in and this will lead to hopefully lots of lovely work in the future. 

So let's recap what we've discussed already. 

There's loads of reason as to why one time marketing doesn't work and that's why you need to use my 3 step system. 

Step 1 is to grow multiple audiences. 

Step 2 is to build a relationship with your audiences. 

And step 3 is to commericalise the relationship. 

You've heard how I used my 3 step system to do a text book launch of the HR Marketing Box. 

And I've given you an idea as to how you can get started with the 3 step system on LinkedIn, ,making it nice and easy for you. 

I LOVE this 3 step system. 

It's honestly the answers to all of your problems. 

It's your lead generation and marketing funnel. 

And actually, every marketing activity you do can be organised via each step of the system. 

I often get stuck with my own marketing quite a bit... 

You do when your head is in the business a lot. 

And when I get stuck and I want to create a growth action plan, I start by asking my self 3 questions. 

What am i doing to grow my audiences this month? 

What am I doing to build a relationship? 

And what am I doing to commercialise the relationship. 

So let me finish this section of the podcast by asking you the same 3 questions. 

What are you doing this month to grow your LinkedIn connections and email marketing list? 

What are you doing to build a relationship with your lists? 

And what are doing to commercialise your relationships? 

Give it a go on LinkedIn and let me know how you get on! 

This week's thought of the week: 

I've had some really lovely feedback recently about the podcast which has filled my little heart with joy, it honestly has.

Doing something like this does take up a lot of time and energy.

So it's really nice to hear that you're enjoying listening, because it makes every second worthwhile for me.

And if you have any feedback for me, whether that's good or more constructive then I'd LOVE to hear so please hit with me it and make me smile or cry depending on what you've got to say. 

When I do get a lovely message or email, I cheekily ask if I can share it the community because this sort of social proof is honestly the best type of marketing that any of us could ask for.

This made me think that you should be asking happy clients for a review too - so that you can shout about the great work you've been doing and give your own marketing a bit of pizzaz. 

Social proof is one of the biggest phycological influences you can use when marketing your HR consultancy. When a new prospect hears or sees someone else saying you're great, this will fill them with trust and they'll be more likely to work with you in the future.

So I'm going to set you a little challenge.... 

I want you to start systemising how you get reviews from happy clients. 

And to help you do this, I've broken this challenge down into a few steps. 

Yes I know, this podcast is very step heavy. But I do love a good system and process. 

Okay, so step 1 is to decide on what type of review you're going to focus on.

For HR consultants, the best types of reviews to get are Google Reviews and LinkedIn Recommendations.

Google reviews are great to increase brand awareness, improve local SEO and click through rates to your website. LinkedIn Recommendations are great to increase your profile trust, increase SSI score and improve response rates.

You should focus on Google Reviews if you're wanting to improve your local SEO and get more clients that way. And you should focus on LinkedIn Recommendations if you do a lot of your prospecting on LinkedIn like me.

Most HR consultants I know will probably want both, so the answer is to have a nice mix of both.

Okay moving onto Step 2 now and that's to decide what happy clients you're going to ask and email them

Depending on the above, you may decide to ask half of your happy clients to leave a Google Review and the other half a LinkedIn Recommendation. OR, give them the option of both and you'll naturally build up both.

I'd probably advise giving them the options because this is another marketing principal called Hobson's Choice + 1. If you give someone two options they're more likely to pick one than if you were to have just offered 1 in the first place.

Subject line: Could I ask a favour please, name?

Thanks in advance,
Name

This is an internal thing you need to decide. The best way to do this is look at your client journey and when the client is at their happiest, ask for the review then. If you use a CRM or project management software, this should be automated as much as possible.

And then the forth and final step is to screen shot your reviews and scatter them throughout your website and marketing materials

The best way to display reviews these days are to scatter them throughout your website and marketing materials, as opposed to having them all on one page. 

By having more reviews across your marketing, you'll build trust faster and will hopefully get more lovely happy clients as a result.

And that's it really. 

Like I said, getting social proof like this is a really powerful way to shout about the awesome work that you do and is a great way to get new clients. 

And if there's lovely feedback you have for me, then please get in touch to brighten up my day.