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Even if you have your act together with your business branding— you have a website, a logo, business cards, and a social media account— if you’re a small service business, there’s one thing you are probably not giving the love and attention it deserves. And this one thing is your very best opportunity to take your business to the next level.
It’s having a clear, actionable, repeatable, easy-to-maintain lead generation plan. A clear set of actions you can take that will bring in qualified clients every month, warm them up, and turn them into raving fans, amazing referral sources and, best of all, paying clients.
Since there are so many options for lead generation for a service business, I recommend starting with and focusing on one clear marketing strategy, and tweaking it until it’s a reliable source of clients.
And the most powerful option for most entrepreneurs and solo service business owners?
A high-touch, one-to-many experience for your prospects.
Remember, as a service provider you don’t need thousands of clients. If you’re trying to build a profitable business that provides a lifestyle full of freedom, you just need a handful of profitable clients who will pay higher prices for valuable outcomes, rather then hourly rates for freelance-style execution.
Therefore, the best lead generation strategies will take an individual through an experience that can build trust with prospects as quickly as possible.
And there is nothing better than an interaction on video or live, in person, to build that trust and bring your brand to life for them. This is usually something along the lines of a presentation, a masterclass, or a webinar—an event or experience where they feel like they know you by the end.
If you’re a service business, like the 1-2 person branding agencies I coach, you just need 1 killer one-to-many experience that is going to quickly turn cold leads into your biggest fan club by positioning you as an expert.
And once you have this, it will quickly become your most valuable brand asset.
What Makes One-to-Many Marketing Your Most Valuable Brand Asset?
I know it sounds like the old chicken-and-egg cycle. You need a brand to inform and drive your marketing, but you need marketing to help you show off your brand.
But consider that prospects experience your brand through your marketing. People get to know you not just through the words on your website, but also how you market yourself.
The one-to-many approach is such a powerful strategy that one business owner I work with—Amanda Dahler, owner of Outspoke Design—focuses solely on helping people build their brand with a powerful presentation, class, webinar, or masterclass. The goal of her service is to take your existing brand and bring it to life in a way that puts you squarely in the position of “trusted expert.”
I recently asked Amanda for her take on this one-to-many strategy: “I see a presentation as the most high-impact, the most high-stakes, the most bang you can get for your buck as a business owner. You’ve got a room full of people who are ready to connect with you. And if you position yourself the right way and do it authentically, you have the opportunity to connect with them. It’s not like having a one-to-one sales call where you have a great relationship. You make a connection doing this with many people at one time, and there’s simply no equivalent for the amount of trust that you can build in a presentation as opposed to any other form of marketing.”
Marketing and Branding Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Speaking in front of an audience in a one-to-many setting is powerful. It turns your brand into an experience that is unique to the entire audience and yet shared between them at the same time. That connection is what is going to make people buy.
And it doesn’t stop or start with the presentation. There are touch points before and after that contribute to the whole experience. In the end, the goal is that there’s an internal transformation within the presentation where somebody moves from sceptical to believer.
But when a client doesn’t have their brand together, it’s impossible to do this well. That’s why all marketing starts with branding. That brand work, that strategic work, is the thing that makes your one-to-many presentation punchy and memorable and powerful. It’s what makes you stand out from the rest.
How to Build Your Best Brand Asset
When I coach 1-2 person branding agencies on scaling their businesses without growing a team, using one focused, one-to-many strategy is a key method we use to bring in the biggest, most profitable clients. But you can’t do this without having your brand and business model in order. My method for doing this has been my No BS Agency model which is all about simplifying who you work with and how so you can focus on becoming an expert in one area. If you’d like to see what that model looks like, grab the free blueprint to see if you can implement this model in your business.
Feature Image Credit: illustration by Steve Wasterval
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I am a partner and brand strategist at Worstofall Design where we build brands that turn expertise into profit. Unlike most branding firms, we build entire brands in days instead of months, and only work for 1-3 person service businesses. Our unique process and niche positioning has helped us to overcome the hurdles we struggled with when we were starting our business, reliably attracting a steady flow of high paying clients and allowing us to enjoy the freedom that inspired us to become entrepreneurs in the first place. At Forbes, my goal is to clarify and simplify the elusive idea of “branding,” and share practical tips and tangible steps to help businesses find their unique brand voice that leads to profit.
