Does visiting potential Facebook Ad clients or pitching your services make you break out into a cold sweat? When you are new to prospecting clients, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and intimidated.
Or maybe the problem isn’t that you are nervous to prospect, it’s that you don’t have the time to spend hours each week pounding the pavement to get new clients.
I understand how you feel. Prospecting is hard. It takes time, confidence and perseverance. I thought prospecting in person was a necessary evil until finally, someone convinced me to give this new system a try. I thought there was no way that email communication could replace in-person pitches, but here I am, with extra hours in my day, and new clients on my list.
How to land new Facebook Ad clients via email
Finding new clients via email is easy – but it does require you to follow a specific system to do the job right and not come across as a spammer. Anyone can send out mass emails to potential clients, but it takes some finesse to build a relationship via email and seal the deal.
There are 5 necessary steps you must take to crush local prospecting in your PJs:
- Get past the gatekeeper and get your potential clients attention
- Build relationships and earn trust
- Land a trial contract
- Knock their socks off by producing results
- And, grow your client list
… without ever leaving your house.
This system completely changes the game for people who can’t do face-to-face prospecting. You can build relationships and generate leads through email – if you are patient and you follow all of these steps.
Prep Work: Finding Prospects
Before you start this process, you need to create a list of local prospects. You’re going to want a large list to work with because not all businesses are going to reply to your emails.
Start by searching on Google for businesses in your niche in your local area. Go down the list of businesses, one by one, looking for contact forms or email addresses so you can reach out to these people directly.
This legwork will take you some time when you are doing it manually, so settle in with a cup of coffee and get comfortable.
Once you have your list of prospects, you can work your magic to turn these businesses into clients.
Step 1: Get the Gate Keeper’s Attention
This first step is key. You would never ask a woman to marry you on the first date. And you should never pitch your services in the waiting room, or in the very first email you send a cold contact.
Before you do anything else, you need to get the attention of the gate-keeper, or the person standing between you, and the person who will hire you.
The first email you are going to send needs to be a simple conversation starter. Try a question that anyone looking for new business will be dying to answer. If you are emailing a dentists office, try asking “are you accepting new patients?” or, ask a brick-and-mortar store to confirm their business hours.
When done correctly, businesses who are on the top of their game will be answering these emails quickly. And what will be in this email? The name of a real life, flesh and blood person. This person is now your contact at the business and will help you move forward.
Step 2: Follow up with the gate-keeper and get the opening you need to present your services
Oftentimes the difference between a client and a cold lead is the timing of your presentation. You should never pitch your services unless you are asked to present your services. It’s simple psychology. People want to feel like they are in control, and you are so much more likely to get to a “yes” if it is their idea to hire you in the first place.
In your second email, you are going to transition the conversation to who you are and what you want to talk about. You’re going to ask the business a few questions to establish that you are a marketer and want to help them get new business.
Ask them these questions:
- What is the best way to refer someone to their office and send business their way?
- Who is responsible for marketing in their office?
- When and how can you get in touch with their marketing person?
With this email, you are forming a personal connection with your lead at the office, and moving forward to connect with the person who will be responsible for hiring you. The end goal with this email is for them to ask more information and give you an opening to pitch your services.
Step 3: Share your service offering
Once you have the proper contact, you can reach out to that person and present what you do and how you can help them.
If you are speaking to a new person, make sure you leverage the connection with your first content. Mention that the first person told you to email them, and then make sure you circle back to thank them with a Donut Bomb (stop on by with some treats to sweeten the deal) or have some other thank you gift delivered if you aren't able to visit in person.
When you share your service offering, it’s a good idea to do it via a short 3-5 minute video.
In this video you’ll want to:
- Open with your name and company
- Give an overview of your proposed promotion
- Share the offer and a specific audience
- Show them an example of a landing page you would send leads to
- Share the Facebook ad you would use
- Tell them that leads will call them, and they’ll know the leads are coming from Facebook
- Explain to them the results you expect to see
When you share this offer, you want to sweeten the deal by offering them an introductory price, or trial offer. Offer to do the work for the cost of the ad spend only, but whatever you do, do not work for free.
You want to be working with clients who will be able and willing to pay you — feeble seekers need not apply. They need to have skin in the game and show commitment to work with you.
When you get to this step you may face some client objections.
This is a normal part of the prospecting process. Be prepared to swing back against them. Common objections include:
“We don't have a budget for Facebook Ads.” The service you are offering here is way more valuable than the 100 dollars you are asking them to spend during the trial. You are going to be sending them new leads which means more business for them and more money in their pocket. If they aren't willing to put this up, they aren't going to be willing to hire you for more work. Thank them for their time and move on.
“I already have a Facebook ‘guy'.” You aren't trying to steal their guy's business. You're there to offer your services and see how you can help.
“Facebook doesn't work.” You don't need to prove that Facebook Ads work – you already know they do. You're there to share your process and deliver the results.
“I don't want to encourage freebie seekers.” Your lead magnet may be a freebie, but your targeting is sophisticated. You aren't just fishing for any person to come into their business, you're seeking out the right person, who has reason to stay, spend their money, and become loyal customers. These people already have a reason to purchase and are more likely to convert.
You're new to the game and don't have results or testimonials to share. This isn't a reason to stop you from landing clients. There are many things you can do to build trust and land clients when you don't have experience – but the first thing you need to do is have some confidence in yourself and not give up at the first objection.
Step 4: Deliver Results
Once you get the go-ahead, it’s time to rock your ad game. Get those Facebook Ads running, and bring in the results. The trial doesn’t end, and you don’t sell your larger ad management package until you are able to prove that what you do works.
With their initial 100-300 dollar ad spend, you should be able to send them at least a handful of quality leads. You'll want to make sure that you are tracking the results from your ad, and know which calls or visits to their office are coming from your ads. They need to be able to see the evidence that what you are doing works.
Once you have results, you can then say:
“If you’d like to keep this going, I can offer ….” and pitch your package.
Step 5: Grow Your Facebook Ad Client List
Your client list will just grow from this point. Once you deliver results for one business, you're going to get a testimonial from them, and earn referrals.
Business owners are connected with other business owners, and if they are having success with you and your ad agency, they will be telling their contacts about it. You are also going to directly ask them to refer you to their contacts and share a list of their friends that may benefit from your services.
Your job is to act on these referrals and turn your referrals into new clients. You need to do the research on them, reach out to speak with them, send a video to show them you know your stuff, and follow-up until the deal is closed.
And that’s it. Clients on the list, money in the bank.
Sounds easy right? Once you get going, this really is an easy way to grow your client list.
The downside to prospecting new Facebook Ad clients via email
The one downside of this system is that you are going to need to send a lot of emails to get past steps one and two. Not all potential clients are going to email you back – and that’s a good thing.
If an office can’t be bothered to respond to that first email, they aren’t going to be bothered to do the work it will take to get more leads. They aren’t going to be reliable to communicate with you (or pay you for that matter). You don’t need them. There are too many quality clients out there waiting for you to waste time on them.
The trick is sending a ton of emails. You’ll want to send out emails to 10 times the number of clients you are hoping to have. This is an ongoing process and you need to put in the leg work.
You can automate this step.
You probably don’t have time to waste manually searching for offices to prospect. In order to make this system work, you’re going to need to send hundreds of emails. For each office you prospect, you’ll need to search for the correct email address or contact form to use.
Lucky for you and me, there is a tool that will completely automate and streamline this process so you can find and contact more clients with minimal effort.
With Rocket Contact, you are able to search for potential clients, narrow down the list to people you want to reach out to, then set the system to automatically fill out their contact forms and send emails.
Just like that, they’ll do the leg work of sending that initial reach-out email, and you’ll soon have the gatekeepers emailing you to talk.
From there, you’ll follow the steps above to land the client.
Check out Rocket Contact today, and share your successes in landing new Facebook Ad clients via email in the comments below!
