The 4 Step Process To Grow Any Local Business
Building a business is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
There a ton of individual pieces that need to fit together to create success. And when you look at everything spread out in front of you- marketing, sales, operation, finances, and more- it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
In fact, our readers tell us all the time, “I’ve learned a ton about prospecting or marketing or sales or delivery… but I’m having a hard time seeing how it all fits together. I’ve gained a lot of micro knowledge, but I’m still lost in accomplishing the macro goal which is building and growing my business.”
With a jigsaw puzzle, you need to see the picture on the front of the box. When you understand exactly what the end result looks like it creates context. Everything else comes into focus. Now when you pick up a piece it’s not just a random splotch of color. You have an idea of where it belongs, how it fits with everything else, and how it plays a role in the big picture.
That’s precisely what you need with your business. If you’re not where you want to be yet, chances are it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s not because your mindset isn’t right. It’s not because you haven’t found the perfect podcast episode to teach you the one magic trick.
You just need the big picture that brings everything into focus.
So my goal with this article is to give you the “picture on the front of the box” for your business. Rather than being buried under a million different pieces, the strategy I’m about to outline for you will create context for everything else. Now all the skills you’ve learned so far can fit together and move you towards the ultimate goal.
Let’s get started…
Step 1: Start With A Killer Offer
I have a hunch you’re going to be tempted to skip this section. DON’T! This is absolutely critical, and if you mess this up, everything that comes after will be like a mansion built on a sandy foundation.
A lot of people are going to hear the word “offer” and think it just means “have something to sell.” It’s actually so much more than that.
Think about the last time you bought a car. Did the dealer say, “Hey, you want to get from Point A to Point B? Here’s a car.” No.
Likely there were countless factors and sub-decisions. First, they found the perfect vehicle that matched your needs- size, style, color, and more. Then they enticed you to buy by saying it was the last one left on the lot. Then they made some kind of a deal- they could knock off $X if you traded in your car or put more money down.
Whatever the details were, it was a specific set of variables that pushed you over the hump and made you decide to buy. That’s the difference between an offer and a product. And that’s what you need to do- create that combination of variables that make customers want to do business with you.
There are four key things you need to have in place…
First, you need to know your specific audience. Using the car example, you can’t just say, “I sell cars to anyone who needs to get from Point A to Point B.” Imagine instead if you sold cars to construction workers, or soccer moms, or professionals that work downtown. Each of those identities probably brought an image of a specific kind of car to your mind, right?
Next, you need a specific situation. Let’s say you decide to focus on moms. You know they’re going to want a car for driving kids around. But how are you going to know if they want to buy a new car at all? At any given time, what percentage of moms are shopping for a car?
Well, let’s say that we’re focusing on moms with a new baby on the way. There’s a higher chance that they’re going to need to upgrade to a car with more space. Suddenly by picking this one situation we hone in on the subsection of the market who are more likely to be interested in our offer.
Now that we know who we’re talking to and a situation that makes them more inclined to buy, the next step is finding a product that has high value for them. If you offered an expecting mother a sports car, it’s not going to work. But if you offer them a minivan, suddenly you have their attention. But you can take it one step further. What if the car has built-in car seats? Or what if it has safety devices specifically for kids? Now they’re not just buying a vehicle, they’re buying security and comfort for their family.
The last step is creating a reason to claim your offer now. What if you said, “We’re running a promotion, and if you buy within the next 7 days you’ll get a free baby stroller.” Or what if you partnered with a local furniture store and said, “The next 5 buyers will get 25% off all items for decorating your baby’s room.” Suddenly people will be running to your car lot.
Whatever you’re selling, you can use this same strategy to turn your product into an irresistible offer.
- Pick a specific audience
- Pick a specific situation
- Pick a high-value product
- Create a reason to buy now
Step 2: Create A System For Capturing Leads
Now that you have a killer offer, you have to be able to put it in front of potential buyers.
There are countless ways to do this. We’ve talked about tons of crazy methods on this blog. But my favorite way, and the best way for digital agency owners and their clients, is to harness the power of Facebook.
Facebook is inexpensive, it’s hyper-targeted, and it’s automated. It’s the winning combination to allow you to scale up quickly and drive massive results.
In order to do so, you need to have four pieces in place…
First, you need a landing page. It’s not a full website, it’s not a full sales funnel… just a simple page where you can send prospects and turn them into a lead.
Really all you need is a button where they can download a freebie, sign up for a sales call, or schedule an appointment. You just want a way for them to “raise their hand” and tell you they’re interested in your offer. And then you want a way of getting their contact information so you can start a conversation.
Next, you need a thank you page. Once the person clicks on the button, you need to confirm that the action they took was successful. And you also need to let them know what to do next. For example…
- “Check your inbox, we just sent your free guide.”
- “You claimed your free phone consultation. Here’s how to book a time…”
- “You claimed your discount. Here’s a coupon code…”
In my business and the businesses we work with, we take it one step further. We make some kind of an offer to sweeten the deal. Maybe we’ll give them a discount on a product that they can purchase right on that page. Or we’ll link to another offer that might be a good fit for them. By doing this, we convert a certain percentage of our free leads into paying customers. This helps cover our advertising costs.
Once you have your landing page and thank you page built, you have to get eyeballs on them. This is where Facebook ads come in. You can take the criteria you created in the offer section and speak to those exact people. Facebook allows you to target people by gender, age, location, interests, and much more. So in just a few clicks, you can start putting ads in front of “Women between the ages of 20 and 40 who live within 10 miles of my business and are interested in the following pregnancy-related pages…”
The best part about Facebook ads is that you can use dynamic targeting. Using the car example, if we’re making our offer to expecting mothers, it’s obviously only going to be interesting to our specific audience for 9 months. Thankfully Facebook automatically tracks this, and every day that our ads are running, they’re adding and removing ideal prospects from our targeted list. This ensures that we’re only spending money to speak to the exact people that are most likely to buy our product.
Step 3: Maximize Your Efforts With A Concrete Follow-Up System
How many times have you seen a sales message and instantly bought? That works at the grocery store… and nowhere else.
In most cases an idea gets planted in your head and you think about it for a while, you read reviews and research it, you forget about it for a few days, finally, you take the plunge…
There’s a whole cycle to making the buying decision. And in most cases, it requires several “touch points.”
That’s why when you’re building your sales process, you don’t want to give yourself only one chance to succeed. What happens if the phone rings while the client is reading your sales page? What happens if they don’t open your confirmation email? If you don’t have a follow-up system, then the customer is lost forever. It’s like stepping up to home plate and only having one strike.
What you want to do instead is give yourself three strikes… or preferable 5, 10, or 50 strikes!
The way we teach businesses to do that is by creating an automated email followup. As soon as someone claims the offer on our landing page, they instantly receive an email. That way if they don’t take action on the thank you page, or if they close the tab before reading the page at all, they still have a message sitting in their inbox. It allows us to close the deal any time in the future.
But it doesn’t end there. We have more emails that get sent 24 hours later… and often 48 hours, 72 hours, a week later, and maybe even monthly indefinitely. That way if the initial email gets buried in their inbox, we have automated messages that constantly go out so that we stay top-of-mind.
We use text messages as well. Ask yourself this question: how many unread emails do you have right now? And how many unread text messages do you have? If you want to cut through the noise and speak to your prospects, having a way to automatically send texts is insanely powerful.
Not only do text messages have astronomically higher open rates, but they also let you hit two separate mediums. When your name pops up on two different platforms, you stand out more. That’s why we use the phone as well. If our emails and texts don’t work, we’ll call the prospect too. Or we’ll create an incentive to have them call us. For example, we’ll ask their receptionist to call to book an appointment. It’s another touch point.
Without a follow-up system, you only get one chance to swing and hit the ball. But when you add all of these together, it’s like getting unlimited opportunities to hit a home run.
Step 4: Turn Window Shoppers Into Loyal Customers
The three steps so far get customers to walk through your door. Now it’s game time. This is what it all comes down to: providing value and processing payments.
For the local brick-and-mortar businesses we work with, we usually offer an incentive for people to come try our service. A chiropractor could offer a free 15-minute massage. A dentist could offer free teeth whitening. A veterinarian could offer a free exam.
But how do you turn a free “tire kicker” into a paying customer? I’ve designed a system that I call The Internal Upsell.
It starts with a “clincher offer.” This is another offer that is even more enticing to get them to come back, this time for something that we will charge money for.
The way we make our clincher offer is with a parting gift. For example, we’ll write a letter that says, “Thanks for coming in for your free teeth whitening. Did you know that teeth whitening is even more effective when your teeth are clean? That’s why if you book a teeth cleaning in the next 7 days, we’ll offer you 25% off.”
We put that letter inside a red envelope. When the customer leaves after their initial appointment, we hand them the envelope. This is so much more impactful than just putting a sign on the counter. It feels intimate. It feels like a gift. And it creates more rapport and reciprocity. It might seem like a small thing, and you might be skeptical that it’s worth the extra work, but we’ve seen huge conversions just through this one change.
We also create what we call the “Viral Spread Offer.” When repeat customers come in, we hand them referral cards that say, “The bearer of this card is entitled to _____.” Usually we offer the same freebie that brought the initial customer in. And then whenever someone books using that referral card, the person that gave it to them gets a reward as well.
By doing this you turn the customers that you worked so hard to get into an army of marketers that bring new customers to you for free. It becomes a virtuous cycle that generates more and more business for less and less investment.
Lastly, we proactively generate testimonials. We ask our best clients to film short videos talking about our business, or write down their experiences. This gives us content we can use on social media, in Facebook ads, or on our website.
Most businesses wait for clients to leave reviews or give testimonials… and the result is they wait a loooong time. But by actively asking for them, we’re able to generate huge numbers of testimonials. And when you provide fantastic service, customers are more than happy to help out and be part of the mission.
Putting The Four Steps Into Practice
You now have the roadmap for building a thriving business. This is the exact formula I used in my chiropractic business, my online businesses, and the countless businesses I consult with. And you can use it in your business too.
But here’s the real value of this formula… every small business in America needs this too. Businesses in your town and in your niche are desperately trying to figure out how to adapt to life after the Coronavirus. And now that you’ve read this article, you’re armed with a strategy that can drive real results for them.
You can use this formula to get yourself in front of local business owners, and then use it to get customers to walk through their doors. The digital agency owners we work with have used this exact roadmap countless times to create massive results for their clients in as little as a month or two.
There’s only one problem… there are a ton of moving pieces to building this out.
When I first started experimenting with this process years ago, I had to use a ton of different tools: a page builder, an email autoresponder, the Facebook ad manager, graphic design software for my ads, a keyword research tool, and the list goes on and on.
It was worth it. The results we were getting for our clients were astounding. But the effort it took was ridiculous. I spent so much time cobbling everything together, and so much frustration as things constantly broke. I knew there had to be a better way.
I looked everywhere for an easier solution. And when I realized one didn’t exist, I waited for someone to make one. After years of waiting, I got so fed up that I decided to do it myself.
That’s when I created MeetRoost.
MeetRoost is a powerful tool that allows you to do everything we’ve outlined in this article in a matter of minutes.
- Create killer offers
- Build beautiful pages
- Design ad campaigns
- Drive traffic
- Track conversion
- Send emails
- Send texts
- And much more
No more cobbling together countless tools. No more crossing your fingers that everything works together. No more banging your head against the wall because “you’re not a tech person.”
Now you can approach chiropractors, veterinarians, dentists, lawyers, therapists, even pressure washers and countless other local businesses, and sell a service that brings customers through their door. And you don’t need to secretly be scared about how you’re actually going to deliver.
But the thing is, MeetRoost is more than just a piece of software. It’s all of the knowledge you need as well. That’s because we’re constantly testing campaigns for new industries. Every time we build a winning campaign, it gets added to the platform. And then in a single click, you can clone the campaign for your clients.
So not only can you build campaigns lightning-fast, MeetRoost lets you build the best campaigns… ones that are currently driving sales for real business.
We also have a thriving and engaged community. Every Tuesday we do live calls that answer your questions and share new campaign ideas. And every Wednesday we do live calls where we show you click-by-click how to set up these campaigns in Facebook.
Frankly, this is just scratching the surface. To learn more about what MeetRoost does, click here. But in a nutshell… MeetRoost saves the world.
That might sound like an exaggeration, but here’s what I mean. I’ve been a business owner ever since I graduated from chiropractic school. And I’ve been an online entrepreneur for nearly a decade.
I believe that business owners are the backbone of this country. We keep people employed. We create solutions that make people’s lives better. And we create wealth that raises everyone’s standard of living.
But right now we’re under attack. The Coronavirus, the lockdown, changing consumer behavior…
Suddenly we’re being forced to adapt or to die. I honestly believe you cannot find a more effective strategy than that one outlined in this article. And there is no easier way to implement it than with MeetRoost.
Small businesses are hurting, and you can help them survive and thrive with what you’ve learned today. And you can build an incredible digital agency for yourself in the process.
We’re on a mission to save the world, and I hope you’ll join us.