Building An Authority Machine In Your Branding Agency
Imagine…
…hungry, excited, motivated clients just come to you…
…blowing up your email inbox…
…blowing up your voicemail asking to work with you…
Isn’t that basically the dream of every small business owner?
It’s possible - and it all starts with a solid Authority Machine.
I hear it all the time from branding agency owners.
“I really just want to do the work, I don't want to have to go out and find clients.”
“I wish somebody else could go find the clients for me.”
And I get it. I know you didn’t get into this business because you wanted to be a salesperson - you wanted to be a business owner.
You’re a creative person, or a strategic person, or maybe you worked at a big agency and at some point you said, “I can do this for clients directly and make a lot more money and have a lot more freedom.”
Thing is, if you can’t find clients, you don’t have a business.
You need to be marketing (getting yourself in front of potential clients), and selling (turning potential clients into paying clients).
So let's talk about what it looks like to actually sit back and have clients approach you and ask you to work with them.
The least sexy, most effective ways to find clients
You’re probably tired of hearing yet another marketing message in your newsfeed or inbox that says ‘Hey, wouldn't you like a way where you didn't have to go chase clients?’
Well, it really boils down to a simple strategy, that probably isn’t that sexy, but IS effective.
You need to ask yourself these questions:
How do I get in front of the right people more and more?
How do I generate demand?
And you have to make an important assumption:
There are tons of people out there who, if you just happened to meet them at a party, would be ready to buy from you on the spot.
So your job is to get in front of as many of those as possible.
Right now, they don't even know you exist!
In order to sit back and have clients come to you, you have to go out there in some way and be seen by those people.
And if we're going to really simplify it, there's really only two buckets of how to do that.
Creating content, so your ideal people can interact with you.
It doesn’t matter if you’re creating your own content by writing blog posts, creating videos, being active on social media, in person speaking at events, or appearing on other people's existing media (being a guest on a podcast, speaking at someone else's event where they bring the audience and you are a speaker, guest blogging, being featured in some sort of press or being quoted in an article.)
These are all ways to get in front of more people. You can do some of that for free - it just costs you the time to actually create the content.
Or, you can pay to have that content get out there.
Take speaking at events. Some people are invited to speak and they either do it for free, or get paid for it, or actually pay to speak at events. If the audience is being brought to you, it can sometimes be worth it to pay to get in front of them and share your message.
Same with getting placed in a blog or even getting press. You can do the work yourself, or you can hire a PR company to help you get placed.Paid advertising
You can pay for ads on Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram and you’re paying to have your message be seen by your ideal market.
Some of those people opt in and get to know you, come into some kind of funnel, and then eventually buy from you.
So which do you choose? Is one better than the other?
Let’s break it down.
For a long time, I went down the first route.
I spent a lot of time creating content from scratch, and my opinion is that, regardless of whether or not you're eventually going to pay for marketing, you still need to do that - it’s the foundation of what you're going to put out there.
Even the best marketing agencies, ad agencies, digital marketing agencies can’t really do that for you. The process of synthesizing your ideas, how you think and your point of view into content that people can relate to and connect with - nobody can do that for you.
And if you hire people from the very beginning to do that work for you, at best, what they’ll create is a regurgitation of whatever is already out there.
So the only way to truly create something that is special and unique to you is for you to do the work to create that initial content. You have to ‘pay’ with your time and your effort.
And it’s an investment, right? It's an investment in the future success of your business.
So how about paid advertising?
It’s really not something I recommend anybody do until they have done a decent amount of that foundational organic work.
You’ve got to do that first, so you can figure out what is actually going to be special and interesting about you.
It's the same way that you don't want to do marketing until you've built a brand.
You want to have really sussed out what your point of view is, and all the interesting things that you have to say. If you try to pay for marketing without doing that work, you're going to say generic things, you're going to go first level messaging, and your audience is going to ignore you.
Because there's just SO much advertising out there, there's a lot of crap!
But there's also a lot of great stuff.
When I started doing paid advertising, it was based on very thoroughly thought out organic content that I know resonates with people.
Not gonna lie - it's still really expensive. You can spend a lot of money testing things that don't go anywhere. It's not a straight shot with paid ads at all, and I don't think anyone should go into the paid advertising space until they have truly tested their message.
But when you've done that work, I see paid advertising as the fuel on the fire.
I wouldn't even spend money on paying a marketing firm or a PR firm to help you get placement, until you've put the time and energy into thoroughly untangling your ideas, putting them into a compelling message that you feel really strongly about and that you have experienced that at least a small group of people really resonate with.
So how exactly do you get that message clear?
You have to realize that it’s not just one word or one sentence. It's a bunch of ideas that support that message.
For example, the No BS Agency brand, which is a relatively new brand that I started building less than a year and a half ago, has a lot of the same concepts as my previous brand of Badass Your Brand and my book.
They're all going to be very similar because these are things that I've experienced, but I built the new brand in order to support the small branding agency world.
It’s got a lot of clear messages that I talk about over and over again. Like, the idea of profit over revenue, how to price your services, not doing free proposals, right? If you listen to my stuff, you’ll hear it over and over again, so these are my ‘pillars’ of my brand idea.
So now when I pay for advertising, I already have a sense of the kinds of topics I'm going to be spending money on.
It still takes testing and costs money to figure out which ads are going to work where but at least I'm starting with something that's pretty solid.
And if you still think that ads are a quick, easy way to solve some problems - They're not.
Like I said, they are amazing as fuel on a fire - you’re building your content, connecting with people, and literally cooking with gas - that's when you can spend money to amplify that reach. And that's when marketing dollars make sense.
OK, I’ve just given you this high level idea of what it looks like to build a presence online, and how to build an audience.
And the reason that that is so valuable, is that when you build that audience, you have a machine. I call that an Authority Machine.
What you’re doing is bringing an audience in, nurturing those people over time into being your biggest fans and also giving them a lot of insight into how you think and how you work.
In the process, they're getting to know you and trust you, without having to interact with you one on one.
They can interact with your content over time and build that trust, much like you might be doing right now with this blog post, or if you listen to my podcast.
When I publish these blogs, and record my podcast episodes, people will continue to consume that content over the next months and hopefully years. That's part of a machine that is allowing me to do something once but allow an infinite number of people to get value and get to know just a little bit more about me and what I think.
Eventually some of those people will learn enough about me that they'll say ‘I really want to work with this person.’
And that’s an Authority Machine. If you put enough of this stuff out there, you will be able to step back and let that content do the heavy lifting.
You still have to show up and create that but you have to create less and less of it over time.
You don't need infinite amounts of content, you just need a stable of content.
And it’s what I teach in the third phase of my No BS agency Mastery Program. I leave it till that far into my curriculum because it does take some time. You can't just do it in a couple of days, or even a couple of months for it to really work as a machine that lets you sit back and have ideal prospects come to you.
It took time in the beginning, but these days, I don't have to create much. And I can sit back and get emails every single day from people who are interested in working with me. That's a well-oiled machine.
And if you don't have anything like what I'm talking about, don’t worry! It is absolutely in your future if you want it to be.
I remember when I had the aha moment of realizing that I could build this machine for myself, I didn't need permission.
For a while there, I thought ‘Oh, I need somebody else who has a big audience to recognise me and then somehow that's going to help me.’
When I was published in Forbes, and even way before then, I thought that was going to change my business.
But really, it didn't open the floodgates. It was one article that was fun to put up, and then it was kind of over!
What I’ve learned is that nothing is going to magically do that. You have to create it yourself.
It's just showing up doing it, no ‘special power’.
It’s having systems, structure and putting it into a machine that can market you while you're not there.
I go through all the structures in the Authority Phase of the Mastery Program, because that structure is going to make it a lot more effective a lot sooner. But you still have to show up and do the work.
And I'm telling you this because we're inundated with marketing messaging that says you don't have to do the work - and that's absolutely false.
If you’re still not quite convinced about that, let me share something with you.
Years ago, I took a program that was telling you how to close high ticket clients, without doing content. Instead, you needed to do paid advertising to a webinar that got people on a sales call, then you had to be really good at the sales call.
Now, because these people came through an ad, they didn't know you, so you had to put all that effort into the webinar, and then do some high-pressure sales calls to close them.
Look, there's really nothing wrong with that. But just remember, you're putting your effort SOMEWHERE. If it’s not in creating that content, which is going to do that trust-building for you, then you're going to have to put that effort into being an amazing salesperson.
If you want clients to come to you, remember, it’s a long game.
But it doesn't have to be that long.
Let me tell you about Alana, one of my students.
One August, she was still hunting for clients on LinkedIn and other platforms. But she put in the work to build her Authority Machine, and by the following January, she had closed $130k in business.
She had closed that much because she was executing her Authority Machine for months. That $130k she closed in just the 1st month of the 1st quarter of that year was all from clients who were being nurtured over time and had come to her.
So it doesn't have to take that long, and it’s also not something that's going to happen overnight.
I think it’s important you know that, because I was tricked by a lot of the marketing messaging that’s out there as if there was some magic pill, some secret way where you could have clients come to you and not have to do anything to get them there.
There is some work to be done in order to make that happen. And anybody who tells you there isn't is just not being straight with you.
But there are faster ways to do it. And certainly, you don't have to figure it all out on your own. It took me years to figure out how to build this Authority Machine that I am now able to teach people for a few months.
There is no magic bullet.
You can't just hire somebody, like a salesperson, to find the clients for you. That's just not how this works.
And you know what else you can't find? (I'm sorry, I'm being such a naysayer.)
Guaranteed referrals.
You know, those people who say, ‘Oh, give me 10% and I'll send you clients.’
I mean, how many of us have signed those contracts?
I have had multiple contracts with people where I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I'll give you 10% and you send me clients.’
Why not? They're going to send me all these clients now because they'll be making all this money.
No, that's not how that works. I've learned from personal experience.
I've had plenty of people send me referrals. And they always do it, not because they're getting paid, but because they're genuinely a good fit for me.
They’re excited to recommend us because we make them look good, because we do good work.
So in my experience, all those deals, those contracts of commission and trying to get you to pay them for those introductions - it’s not a long term solution, unless you have some amazing relationships.
And I think it’s a unicorn thing - it might really exist.
There may well be someone you build a relationship with who just happens to have tons of ideal clients for you that aren't a good fit for them, and they just feed them to you. For example, if somebody wants to retire and they're closing up their business - they just refer all enquiries to the next person, and that's a great situation.
Even in that situation, however, I would challenge that person receiving all these enquiries to still invest in building their Authority Machine.
Why?
Because when that funnel runs out, that person's business is going to shrivel up.
And sadly, I’ve heard that story so many times. Like ‘I had a great run for years, this woman would send me clients, and it was amazing, and now that she's out of the picture, I don't know how to get clients.’
So if you’re in it for the long haul, and you want to have a business where clients are coming to you, you need to build your Authority Machine.
You can start now, whilst you keep doing what you're already doing. Then, in the next year or two, you’ll likely find that you don’t have to do any more networking, go meet people, or talk 1-on-1 with anybody…
Imagine that?
Ideal clients will knock on your door and fill up your email inbox saying ‘Yes, I'm interested in working with you!’
And the first thing you need to do is get profitable, and then create the time and space to consistently do that.
When students come into my Program, they want to get to the Authority Machine right now. But we need to have you create your Lead Product and Bullseye Product first, so your branding agency is profitable and tight.
Then, we can create time and space for you to build your Authority Machine, because it does require some mental work. And it's going to require some time upfront in order to build it.
But once you build it, you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor for years and years to come.
Here’s what you need to get…
Building an Authority Machine is critical if you want your branding agency to be around for a long time. It will cut out those endless networking meetings and 1-on-1s, and have ideal prospects coming to you, without having to chase.
But you need to give it time, and be consistent with it. It’s not a magic bullet, and doesn’t replace getting your agency set up with a strong Lead Product and bigger project that you can easily sell to get you profitable.
Once you put in the work, you’ll be rewarded with having the kind of branding agency that gives you financial and creative freedom.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to learn how to build your own Authority Machine and all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!