 So today we're going to be talking about choosing the perfect audience for your web design agency now My name is Adam McLaughlin and of course I use WordPress. That's why we're here chatting at WordPress Montreal You can see my Twitter QR code down there. That's where I hang out if you'd like to call it X I won't hold it against you, but you can always use the QR code and connect with me on Twitter I would love to chat with you there I'll give you a little bit of a background on me This is a picture of my family and we are living our dream and we get to travel full-time We've been traveling full-time since 2018 and that's because we built our WordPress agency around recurring monthly revenue So all of our clients are on a monthly service contract and they pay us every single month Which means that we don't have to go and find new clients every single month in order to Generate the revenue that we need To travel and so you can also see the QR code in the lower right corner My wife said I can only speak at this conference as long as I showed off our family Instagram So if you'd like to follow our family adventures, you could do that the QR code in that bottom corner now at the end We're gonna talk about questions and I love taking questions So one of the things that I do whenever I speak at a conference is I say about a third of my Presentation has to be set aside for questions and today the organizers at WordPress Montreal WP Montreal have given me the opportunity To take questions and so this is my little guy in Bath, England This is a replica of a statue and he asked can I put my finger up its nose? And so if you have a question that's just as exciting as my little guy's question Then I would love to hear it from you at the end. We're gonna make sure we have lots of time for questions Okay, so we are adrenaline junkies. This is my wife and our three boys getting on a roller coaster We love roller coasters, but we hated roller coaster revenue So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my business model and it is service-based websites websites as a service But you might be less interested in that model you might be more interested in a custom web design agency and That's totally cool as well either way We're gonna talk about how to choose an audience for your web design agency but I'll give you a little context for my agency so you understand where we're coming from I started designing websites in 2011 and in the first few years between 2011 and 2019 I had done all custom work and I'll give you some examples I did some custom work for a British pub a limousine service a plumber a realtor a french fry shop a furniture store a yoga studio and some summer camps so between 2011 to 2019 I did about 80 custom sites is what I built during that time and at the end of that seven-year period. I Had about sorry eight-year period. I'm Practicing my math too. Well, I'm here. I had about 20 clients that said yes to my managed services So hosting regular updates tech support troubleshooting, you know all that kind of stuff was built into our managed service So during that first eight years of my business I got about 20 clients who paid me every month to manage their website for them then in 2019 I completely shifted my business model and I shifted it to growing recurring revenue by building templated designs for campgrounds so from 2019 to 2022 I brought on 80 clients now to build or to populate a templated website it took me about four hours per site and Those 80 clients meant that I also now had 80 clients a monthly recurring revenue So I switched from the up-and-down roller coaster of peaks and valleys of gaining Clients and then losing, you know, or not losing but gaining a deposit and then building their custom website So no income while I'm building the website and then getting the other half of the deposit once we launched the website And then no income while I find the new the next client So I did this roller coaster up and down of revenue until 2019 and then I started building websites specifically for in this case campgrounds and so now Every time I bring on a new client. I'm adding to my monthly recurring revenue so I'm going to tell you a little bit about more about this business model and why I love it and Why this business model works really well when you are clear with your audience? But I'm sure you're going to be able to take the same ideas and the same principles and apply them to your custom design Agency as well now before we get back into that I am going to check the comments because I'm not able to watch the comments Well, I've got my screen on full screen. So I would love if you can let me know Hide the screen share notice, please. Can you hide the bottom bar? Hi, Tom? You can still see my face too. Okay, best of both worlds I suppose you can see me waving my hands and also you can see the Screens as well possible hide the screen sharing notice, please Okay, I'm going to try that and I'm going to keep going. Let's see if I can hide that notice I do see the hide button and we'll we'll try and make sure that that doesn't Stop the slides from showing as well. So I've lost my mouth. So I'm not sure how to hide that go. Let's try hiding it here and then Okay, there we go, I think we've got it Okay, so just so you could see what what that screen share button was hiding on the right side of the screen 2019 to 2022 I brought in 80 new clients It took me four hours to populate their templated websites and that gave me 80 clients on a monthly recurring service contract So my first eight years of business I brought 20 clients on that had a monthly service contract and in the next two or three years of business Roughly speaking I had 80 clients now on a monthly recurring service And that's what allows us the stability and the reliability to travel full-time So here's the model And again, this is my business model and we're going to talk about the first step of that business model Which is choosing a target audience and you will be able to take that and apply it to your custom design agency If that's what you you're choosing or you can use it as the first step in building a website as a service or a service-based Industry or we're not building custom websites. We're basically populating templates And providing value for the clients on a monthly service contract So the model is to choose an industry The second is to create wordpress templates for that industry So now as soon as you've chosen that industry, you know what that industry needs You know the kinds of pages they need how many pages do they need? What do the pages need to say to get their audience? What kind of call to actions do they need? So we create a wordpress template for that industry Next is that we sell the templates as a website service for zero dollars upfront Then we repeat and do it over and over and over and over again We build that monthly recurring revenue by selling that same service contract over and over and over to others in that industry Okay. So how do you start when you're building that agency? That's the recurring revenue model First, we're going to choose an industry or we're going to market to that industry And those are the two steps that we're going to talk specifically about today How do you choose an industry and how do you reach that industry? And then the other steps there so creating services for them pricing your recurring revenue or pricing your Your service selling the websites creating repeatable procedures how you outsource and scale And then creating outstanding customer service and really at the end of the day That's the reason our clients stay with us because we provide incredible service Which means that it doesn't make sense for them to want to switch And hopefully it never even crosses their mind to want to switch because when they send us an email We reply right away for them. So today we're going to talk about those first two in that list choosing an industry and marketing to that industry So why a single industry? I hear this so many times from web designers And I understand because in my first eight years of business I wanted to do websites for anyone in our little town in Canada in Ontario, Canada That wanted a website. So again, we go back to that British pub and the limousine service and the plumber So why choose a single industry? Well, the reason is Focus right now There's so much skepticism when somebody is making a big decision and especially if you're thinking about Serving small businesses they a website for them could be a big investment And they want to know that you're the expert in that field They want to know that you understand their industry inside and out And so they could go to old adam and they could have somebody who you know Had built a website for a restaurant and a website for a plumber and a website for a realtor Or they could go to the new version The new agency and say hey these are the people who are the experts in building websites for my field And so your portfolio now grows to lots and lots of clients that are already in their field The people with the same pain points that they have and it creates this sense of expertise for you And your agency if you are focused on one specific industry Okay, so now let's dig into the nuts and bolts of choosing that one specific industry that you're gonna you're gonna Choose for your agency. You're gonna serve with your agency So there's four kind of options or four Approaches that I found have worked really well when I've been mentoring agency owners So the first option is an industry that you've enjoyed working in before So this could be you know, a summer job you had this could be straight out of college This could be something that you've really enjoyed working in before and because you worked in that industry before You probably know the insides and the outsides of that industry You know the ins and outs you know the behind the scenes You know the pain points of what the owner of the business in that industry is looking for and you can speak directly to them I'll give you an example. I worked at a restaurant for a year between high school and college to save up money for college While I was there Somebody came in to give their resume to the manager and they walked in at 12 o'clock on a friday During lunch hour and they handed their resume to the manager and the manager looked at them and very politely said Thank you very much And as they walked out the door the manager put that resume in the garbage and I asked I said they look like a You know a sharp dress sharp dress person, you know great attitude great smile It seems like they might be really great for the restaurant And the manager said to me adam if somebody walks in at noon And tries to speak to the manager at a restaurant It's a very good indication They don't know anything about the restaurant industry and I'm not interested in training somebody Who doesn't even put in the foresight to understand a little bit about the job They're applying for ahead of time and I thought that was really interesting that stuck with me So, you know, if you know a specific industry inside and out You probably know when is the time to speak to the decision maker? What are their pain points? What are the things that they're looking for and how can you solve those problems? The second option is an industry that you grew up around Now you probably inherently know some of the things the ins and outs of an industry Even if you didn't work in that industry But maybe your parents had a business or your cousin had a business or your aunt and uncle or grandparents and so you kind of could Make some pretty educated guesses about the kinds of ins and outs of that business specifically So an industry that you grew up around now You could probably also pick their brain and you could say hey, here's what I'm looking to do I want to create digital marketing solutions or websites or Digital marketing packages with websites as the core of them or whatever it might be To serve this specific industry Can I pick your brain about what what your pain points were or or what interests you had in getting new clients or What kind of things the customers were looking for so an industry that you grew up around Or you could pick somebody's brain who knows about that industry the next one is a hobby where you know the industry inside and out so maybe the hobby is Maybe you're a musician and so you can help build websites for music schools or music teachers or music Stores, you know a hobby that you know inside out. Maybe you love golf So you understand how things work at a golf course and so maybe that's a great industry to go after for your agency The next is if you bring on a salesperson or partner with a salesperson who already knows an industry They bring the credibility of knowing the ins and outs of the industry and possibly some sales experience You know somebody who's semi retired from an industry might already have contacts in the industry They might be able to make some introductions or do the sales themselves and you can look after the back end in your Agency so you look after building the websites maintaining them making sure that they're serviced And that person looks after connecting with the industry speaking their language And really being the face of the credibility of your agency So those are four options an industry you've enjoyed working in before an industry You grew up around a hobby where you know the industry inside and out or partnering with a salesperson who knows the industry So now what we're going to do is we're going to take that industry And we want to divide that industry or we want to section down that industry into a segment of a segment So we don't just want to say hey We're going to build websites for restaurants because the challenge with doing that Is the website for the steakhouse or the marketing for the steakhouse is very different than the marketing for the sandwich shop And so we have to think a little bit differently. So we're going to try and segment down Okay, so now you're going to choose a segment. So for instance, we're not going to do steakhouses We're going to just do sandwich shops. Okay, we're going to segment down one more past that We're going to choose a specific segment of that segment So here are some ways that you can narrow your industry down by segments One option is by geography. So You know, for instance, you might choose new york state Or you might choose wherever you're local to or you might choose where an industry is really well Established so for instance, if you're going to sell websites to golf courses There are golf courses everywhere But there are a lot of golf courses in the southern states where snowbirds might go for a few months over the winter So maybe you're going to choose that as your segment You could segment down by product or service offering Whether somebody is organic, whether they're offering specifically premium brands Whether they're offering a budget brand or they're offering american made or canadian made or locally made or Whatever that case might be that could be your segment or you might segment by Customers so by families by kids by singles by couples You could choose a segment that serves a specific demographic Again based on the industry that you choose because you already know that industry inside now You could probably already start to think of some of the segments that might be helpful or might be specific or might be well Served by your web design agency. So we choose a segment of a segment Now What we're going to do is we're going to apply this thing that I like to call the 125 rule now, please somebody think of a better name for this I use this system when i'm trying to help people figure out if their industry is suitable for You know their segment of a segment is is enough of an audience to serve with their web design agency Somebody please come up with a better name for this. Okay taking suggestions for better names in the comments But the question goes like this. How many businesses make up 100 of your of your industry of your segment of a segment then Could 20 of those businesses use a website as a service in my case website as a service You might be doing customs. So you might be looking at a custom website project So some of those people in just about any segment of a segment. They might have a head office They might be a franchise. They might have multiple locations. They probably already have a marketing team on staff So could the question is could 20 of those businesses use a website as a service And then the five part is if five percent of the businesses in those industries Became service clients. Could you build a sustainable business? So what is a hundred percent of that segment of a segment? Could 20 of those businesses actually use your website services? And if five of them became clients, could you build a sustainable business? So you need to kind of guess a little bit ahead. What would my price point be? What would be realistic for that industry? So for instance, if you are going to go for premium golf courses, Maybe their monthly service package for their website or their digital marketing is $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 Maybe that's not the same as a local community golf course, right? That's a different segment of a segment But the local community golf course they might not be doing the whole digital marketing package But they say listen, I can do $200 a month for a website that brings us new clients new golfers Okay, great. So again, you have to try and figure out what is that five percent of the business And what is my price point going to be and will that actually build me a sustainable business? So to try and simplify, I'm going to give you a real life example and Put it in real-term perspective. So here's my example So I'm going to talk about pizza shops in New York. So here's my industry So my hundred Is there are 5,719 pizza shops in New York state as of when I did this homework Just checked up on it last week. Okay, so that's my hundred. What is the 20? So about 55 percent of pizza shops are independent So 45 percent are franchises the pizza huts the dominoes of the world um, and so Could 55 or could 20 percent of pizza shops use a website as a service Well, the answer is yes because 55 percent of them are independent And I would assume a good chunk of that Is people who don't have a marketing team, you know independent could also mean somebody who owns five locations You know not quite a franchise because they own them all themselves And maybe they already have a marketing team, but definitely 20 percent of those pizza shops in New York state could use a website. So that works on the 20 percent rule 5 percent is 285 restaurants Okay, so now this question is could I build a sustainable business with only five percent of the market? So the segment is or the industry is restaurants The segment is pizza shops the segment of the segment is pizza shops in new york state So could I build a business off of five percent of pizza shops in new york state? 285 restaurants. Well, let's do a little bit of math on that one 285 restaurants at $200 a month service plan is $57,000 a month for your web design agency So I would suggest that yes that is a reasonable amount of gross revenue for an agency To be able to sustain a functioning business now We haven't talked about pizza shops in ohio or pizza shops in florida or pizza shops are in canada or in ontario and and then in quebec and then the rest of canada and then the rest of North america and mexico and then expanding into europe. We haven't talked about any of those this example is just narrowed down To pizza shops in new york state. So there is tons of potential outside of your segment of a segment So the question is now what so now that we've got our hundred our 20 and our five percent rule in place And we know that yes, we could build a sustainable business with $57,000 a month gross revenue Now we want to talk about how are we going to reach that target audience, right? So we figured out our target audience, but now we have to figure out how do we get in front of them? And so there are lots of different avenues. Which ones make the most sense? Well, there's blogs or facebook groups or podcasts There's email newsletters. There's youtube channels. There's conventions or associations or organizations So what I recommend is to find somebody who has already made an audience out of your segment of a segment So for instance in new york state again just to go back to my example in new york state There might be an association of restaurant owners or an association of pizza shop owners. That would be even better, right? There might be a A podcast for pizza shop owners There might be facebook groups for pizza shop owners in new york But there's also somebody out there who supplies all the pizza boxes who supplies the best cheese Who supplies the best pepperoni who delivers the supplies to the New york pizza shops. There's somebody out there who fixes the pizza ovens locally when they break down There's somebody out there who is already connecting with your target audience So the best way to connect with your target audience is to get in front of somebody who's already connected with them somebody who's already built that audience provide that person of value so Can I guest post on your blog? Can I sponsor an email newsletter? Could I be a guest on your podcast? Could I give away a free ebook to everybody on your list about 10 ways to increase your pizza shop revenue? How can you get in front of people or how can you connect with people who've already built an audience out of your segment of a segment? And there's so much that we could dig into in this one and so many strategies and options But really solving the question of who is my segment of a segment That starts to make it a lot easier when you're trying to figure out Where are you going to put marketing time? Where are you going to put marketing dollars? Where are you going to put your focus? Because now you're going to try and get in front of the people who've already built your audience as a list The next thing you're going to do is you're going to build a marketing website A portfolio website that shows off You know all the things that you've done and the services you provide and your pricing and your website as a service and what's included All those things But you're going to now make it speak to that target audience So before you may have been abc websites And now this time you're going to be pizza shop websites.com Okay, you're going to try and speak directly to that audience now You don't have to say pizza shop audience in new york.com Really anybody who has a pizza shop can come to you, but that segment of a segment helps you Really create focus when you decide where you're going to put your marketing dollars and where you're going to put your marketing effort and time and focus so anybody who has a pizza shop can go to pizza shop websites I'm just using that as an example and Connect with your service for pizza shops, but you're going to spend your time focused on new york. So In that marketing website We need to speak specifically to your target audience Everything from your domain name The names of your packages your imagery your call to action Your blog content is all targeted towards the decision makers in your segment of a segment You're even going to have good and better best templates built specifically for them And we do this so that a client can choose You know, what are the things that suit their industry? So for instance Let's Talk about the pizza shops in new york You might have some pizza shops that do only take out and some pizza shops that do table delivery so maybe there's value in having a separate page all about the inside of your restaurant specifically or how to make a reservation or you know Special events coming up on the calendar, whether there's a game on that You're going to be showing on the tv and you're inviting everybody to come hang out for that All those things are different than somebody who just has a takeout restaurant So a good better best template if in our case is typically like You know seven or eight pages is in a good space Eight to ten pages is in a better space 10 to 12 pages is the best template So not something entirely different But just a little bit larger depending on the actual business that that you're going to be serving and what their needs might be So here's an example that I put together This is something different from new york pizza shops altogether So we could just see outside that box for a minute, but you can go to this This is at coffee shop websites net. You can check it out So again the imagery talks about where you know That kind of stone brick coffee shop feel that so many people are going after right now My content says we're coffee shop lovers and website builders. We go together like cream and sugar And then the call to action contact us contact us. Sorry to get started on your coffee shop website So everything about this website needs to speak directly to coffee shop owners Including the domain name coffee shop websites net Okay, we've got one more slide and then we've got q&a Uh, and we're back to daddy. Can I stick my finger up his nose? Yeah, okay, whatever I don't care q&a one more slide and then q&a and the reason I stick this slide in before the q&a Is because we almost always I say we shouldn't have we I almost always get asked this question during q&a So I want to answer it now before we get to q&a and then we can dig into some other questions So what do you and adam? What do you include in that monthly service? So our monthly service includes hosting it includes wordpress management things like updating themes and plugins Removing deprecated plugins finding replacement plugins if that happens It includes the subscriptions to premium plugins and themes that are applicable to the industry 60 minutes of design time per month. They just send us an email. Hey, we need this change We need this new picture uploaded. We need our office hours adjusted or here's our new rates And uh, it also includes uptime monitoring. So again, we want to try and catch a problem with the website before the client catches it So that is often a question that gets asked About our monthly service. These are the things that we include hosting management premium plugins design time and uptime monitoring Okay, so uh, we're gonna go to questions I'm gonna move the slides off my screen so I can actually see your questions and just give me a minute Well, I stopped the screen sharing so we don't get the infinity matrix thing going on here and I'm gonna stop sharing and I hope you can see me By the way, I'm in a hotel room right now. We're actually in Glasgow Scotland at the moment. So That's you know, this isn't my house. It looks like a hotel room but That's where we are and that's what we're doing. So I'm going to take a look at your questions here and Let's take a look and see What I can answer for you. So Jacqueline's asked, how do you position yourself as a better alternative To something like wicks or squarespace? Do you fall? Do you find small business owners are even aware of these services and that they can build a website themselves? If so, what messaging do you use to show that you're a better option? Jacqueline, this is a great question And not uncommon that that this shows up and now in the realm of AI I think we're going to probably get to a point at some time soon Where you can say, hey AI build me a website for my bowling alley and next thing, you know, it's it's gonna kick out some kind of website There's a difference between helping a client see a website as the The solution and helping the client see a website as a tool Right lots of small business owners think to themselves I need a website and then they'll go on wicks and build themselves a website But what they don't know is they don't know is this actually bringing in customers. There isn't an opt-in I'm not building my email list. I don't know if this is working. I see google analytics Seems like there's some traffic to the website But I don't know if there's actually any people coming from the website into my business And so you have to position yourself as a strategist now More than a website builder, right? If you're just a website builder Yes, you're an alternative to wicks if you're a strategist who says We're going to build a website and it's going to do these things and we're going to measure those things And we're going to show you that what you invested in the website Is shown multiple returns Because you get this many people placing orders you get these this many people coming into your business then you're going to want to stick with us to to Stay with us for a website service. So you have to see yourself As a strategist who uses a website as a tool to get your client's results Then you have to show them those results. That's something wicks can't do something ai won't be able to do At least right away eventually probably but in the meantime, you know Those tools do exist. You're always going to get somebody who wants to use those tools instead of hiring A web designer, but if you position yourself as a strategist and one of the things that you do is web design Then you're going to see a lot more success when you have that conversation with clients I hope I answered that question and please feel free to leave a follow up Anna asks could it be a good strategy to start by doing work for everyone? To ensure that you have revenue and then learning which clients you could apply this more automated approach Then only take on new clients in this segment of a segment That's a good question A lot of people that I work with have a custom design agency So they get their deposit and then they don't make any money while they build the website And then they they launch the website and they get the other 50 percent of their deposit And then they don't make any money until they're finding new clients and a new project So it's this roller coaster revenue and that's why they come to me and they say hey adam How did you do this thing where you took people? To do a segment of a segment and create a monthly service contracts You have stable reliable monthly recurring revenue And so my answer to those people is keep doing what you're doing. You're making money in custom work Take maybe one day a week and start this segment of a segment with service packages for that segment of a segment And eventually build your recurring revenue over time Because you know the first month I did this we made two hundred and sixty four dollars Which is Something but not enough to pay for our family of five to live It's barely enough to pay for my family of five to get groceries for a week anymore So it does take some time to build up that recurring revenue And yes, if you're doing custom now and it's working for you, you can do it And then take some time every week and build up that recurring revenue Okay Second question Anna Asks has this model and price tag been hit at all by the ease of other platforms to people use Themselves like Squarespace. Okay, so that's the same thing as we want to position ourselves as experts for their industry And we want to position ourselves as strategists. They're always going to be clients out there who want to DIY their own website That's inevitable and that's always been the case Um Squarespace makes it easier for them, but they don't necessarily know what they're doing They're just dropping in some pictures and text So again position yourself as the expert and there will always be a piece of that audience Like again to build a substantial business. We're only looking for five percent of that massive market So if 20 of that massive market are squarespace users and 50 of them don't Need a website because they're a franchise or something like that and the other 30 percent they've got You know, their cousin's going to build them a website or they're going to hire a custom designer because they want a custom website for whatever reason Again, we only have to go after five percent of that segment of a segment that very specific market In order to have enough clients to run a sustainable business Once you've got the five percent of the pizza shop owners in new york Again, just as an example then go after pizza shop owners in ohio and pizza shop owners in georgia and pizza shop owners in michigan And pizza shop owners in ontario and pizza shop owners in qabac a pizza shop owners in alberta And start expanding and expanding and expanding and if you just need five percent of each of those markets One of those markets is $57,000 a month You can see pretty quickly how this scales and expands Even by just continuing to laser focus on you know, a little tiny segment of a segment Uh, and then next question from anna. How do you overcome the 20 percent that already have websites if they're bad websites? I don't If they come to me, i'm happy to explain to them what I could do better um, and maybe there is an approach where your Email opt-in could be a free website evaluation And so you're going to send out an email list to the pizza shop owners association of new york and offer a free website evaluation Bunch of people sign up they send you their website and you send them an evaluation And maybe some people recognize that their website is bad and needs work Maybe some people don't again They could fall in the 20 that I never talked to because I could build a large sustainable And reliable business on five percent of that segment of a segment uh, number number four Or number five Would you or did you share these slides? Also this whole talk was brilliant I'm happy that you would here's what I'll do I'll give you my wife's email address and you can let her know that you enjoyed my talking It was brilliant because she doesn't give me that kind of credit. She's my biggest fan Which means she keeps me humble by going I could have been better, but I would I'd be happy to share these slides. We're going to figure out a way to do that I'm going to contact the event organizers And give them the slide package and they'll figure out how to how to let you know that they're available Thank you, anna for those questions Mark asked you have an onboarding or setup fee or is it only the 200 a month? So mark we can get a website live based on a template in four hours So we charge zero dollars up front for a couple reasons number one I can outsource the website at four hours at 25 dollars an hour Somebody's doing some copy and paste. They're doing a little bit of mobile formatting Of course depending on the content and they're choosing in some pictures They're happy to do that in four hours at 25 dollars an hour So I could be profitable in the first month when the client hands me 200 and my cost was 100 So we don't do an onboarding setup fee. That's the first reason the second reason is that We found that as soon as we charge something up front The client sees it as a product and we really want them to see their website as a service Not a product because as soon as you buy a product you think to yourself. I've already paid for this Why do I have to keep paying for this right if I have to pay a thousand dollars up front Then why do I have to keep paying for this every single month? And we just found that the sales process was a lot easier and the retention was a lot easier If we do the zero dollars up front and the 200 dollars a month for example Each industry might have a different price and I will throw in a bonus there that we do ask for a 24 month minimum commitment for our clients Obviously, we don't want to go through the work of setting up their website and have them only stick around for two or three months We want the opportunity to show them that our service is reliable that it's quick that it's fast that it's knowledgeable Takes a little bit of time to make sure that we do that and we also find that after the 24 months Most clients just keep their service contract and it continues We don't have clients who typically go out 24 months is up time to end my service contract Uh, okay, josh will ask what is your advice for approaching a potential customer after you've done all the research have templates, etc So again, I'm going to look for uh, the opportunity to get in front or to use or to leverage an audience of people Um, or of somebody who's already built My audience. Sorry. I'm going to start that one over I'm going to try and find somebody who's already built an audience out of my segment of a segment and Help them or pay for them or sponsor them To get that audience in front of me or to get in front of that audience. So being a podcast guest Putting an ad in an industry magazine. It sounds might sound odd that you i'm a web guy suggesting We use print but if somebody doesn't have a website or somebody has a poor website they're probably also that person who reads that industry magazine still Or sponsor an email newsletter or be a podcast guest or write a blog post a guest post on a blog You know somewhere out there. There's a marketing blog for pizza shop owners So you could write a blog post about you know 13 things your website needs to have Going into 2024 That's an example So my advice for getting in front of that audience Is to find somebody who's already built that audience and leverage the fact that they've already built that audience after approaching Your question might be a little bit more specific about approaching those potential clients So what I like to do is offer a free website evaluation because Most websites check some of the boxes, right? So you might come up with 40 things, you know Do they have an SSL certificate? Is their word press up to date? Have they removed any excessive previous users is their is their website mobile friendly is the phone number clickable Is there a logo is the contact information on the home page? You know these these might seem like really basic things But if you say to a business owner, listen, I've got a free 40 point website evaluation And I will look over your website and figure out what Checks the boxes for that evaluation and what needs to be improved in order for you to be Presenting your business as best as you can online then a lot of business owners will go sure. I'll see it Next I'll go through the evaluation and I'll reply to them. I'll say hey good news You've got 37 out of 40 things are firing on all cylinders on your website But these last three things They could use some improving let's talk about how we improve those And that's when they say well, what's that going to cost me? It's like well Actually, we can do it for zero dollars up front We give you a brand new website checks all the boxes and and explain your monthly service package So that's how I would approach a potential customer is I love the option to offer them a free website evaluation And then come back to them because they've opened the door to a conversation about okay So you got x number of things Are doing perfectly well on your website and there's some opportunity for improvement on the other You know three or four things for instance and here's what it would take to improve that and you already know going into the conversation What is going to take to improve that? Okay, Anna says let's see you've answered the other questions I think with a focus on strategy and niche niche niche niche if you expand you outsource that 60 minutes per month of work Eventually, that's something you could do again depending on your industry In in our industry that we started with in 2019 in campgrounds We would find that people would contact us maybe once or twice a year They'd say hey, we did this new landscaping We'd like some new pictures or we're updating our rates for this season and most of those changes take 15 minutes So typically in a week to service, you know 80 to 90 clients right now In that campground industry. We are I'm taking about eight to 10 hours a week To service those clients so right now that happens by myself, but for sure something you can Outsource and as we grow and as we expand I'm definitely going to be looking to outsource those things So I could focus on growing into noon niches niches industries let's just go with industries and But yes, you you can outsource that work I don't have the need to yet. So I don't I don't do that yet, but Hopefully grow there soon I didn't realize when I was joining this talk that I'm already doing this great mark. That's great news I started my general design business in 2005 But in 2019 I started a second niche design business doing exactly what you teach great within two years It became my primary source of income great. This strategy works great mark I would love to connect with you I would I would love to hear more about your story If you can track me down on twitter that would be great if you use twitter Otherwise I'm also on instagram And I would just love to connect and hear more about those specifics and some of the things you learned along the way Birds of a feather like to stick together. So they say What sort of onboarding does the client go through mark a good question? How do how do I get their content? So because you are building a template for a specific industry You know all of the things that need to go into that template So our onboarding form walks through all of the steps So some obvious ones like what's your address and you know phone number and office hours and all those types of things are all on the onboarding form And the onboarding form takes about eight to ten minutes For a new client to fill out and if you're having challenge getting the client to fill that out You can do it on the phone with them So you call them and say hey, I've just got a few questions so I can get your website started You open the browser you fill it out themselves It's a great way to get their actual content if they're dragging their feet themselves And then the only other thing that we ask for is we ask for their photos and often that's The more challenging part than the eight to ten minutes Of the onboarding not because they don't send photos But because they send vertical photos with their finger over the lens most of the time Because that's exactly what we want on their website. So I would guess that would be the biggest challenge But we do use an onboarding form and the onboarding form nearly is copy and paste to the WordPress template that we've created So your websites are WordPress. How do you stop customers from logging in creating a backup of your site and running away with it after the first month? We don't give them logins So that's one way But you know at any point in time some other designer could open we use divi They could open a divi template. They could create something similar They could you know, even if they don't use divi they could use whatever they want create something similar copy and paste our content I guess there's no real way to There's no real way to warrant against that most clients that has not been our experience But I mean we can copy and paste text from just about any website And then you know at two hundred dollars a month on a 24 month contract. We're looking at about five thousand dollars total over two years Um, frankly, it's it's really not worth it taking them to court for that. We we would basically just walk away But we try to position ourselves as the expert so they see us as an expert and they don't end up You know going to somebody else who's then going to charge them three or four thousand dollars to recreate the website When we did it for zero dollars upfront on a monthly service plan But we don't give our customers logins That's the that's the long and short of it. How do you market yourself? Oh, uh, joshua How do you market yourself to a business as a younger person with limited real world experience? Ah, great question So this it comes down to how well, you know the industry and how you position yourself ahead of time What I would suggest is again if you Have concerns about business owners taking you seriously You need to create credibility quickly a couple ways to do that Number one is on your website. You have a video of yourself talking about your specific experience in the industry so hey growing up my mom and dad owned a golf course and I saw a real need in golf courses for x y and So this is what I do for clients now because I know the golfing industry inside and out by the way My name's whatever and uh, I'm going to be the one who contacts you as soon as you click that button below and ask me for a Free website evaluation. So that's what I would do is establishing credibility as quickly as possible The other thing you could do is you could partner with somebody who might be semi retired Or who might uh know again back to knowing the industry inside and out You know, for instance, if you're going to sell websites to golf courses You might find somebody who wants to be semi retired who used to sell Fertilizer to golf courses or who used to sell irrigation systems to golf courses or who used to do You know the the maintenance for golf courses They have credibility in the industry if age is a factor they might have a Better connection with a business owner But I think at the end of the day credibility Is the key and I think you will find josh while i'm assuming that this is one of your students asking Correct me if i'm wrong on that assumption I think you will find that a lot of business owners when it comes to technology They're interested in having somebody Much younger get involved, you know, they typically will recognize. Hey, these are the people who know social media better than I do You know, they know their phone Inside and out a business owner might say I can't even get my camera open on my iphone Meanwhile, these people are getting millions of views using the camera on their iphone So I don't think age is as much of a concern, but as quickly as possible You need to establish reliability and credibility because those are the things that Are the concern right I can hire somebody who knows how to do instagram really really well But when I need changes to my website, are they going to be more interested in spending time on their friend's instagram and tiktok videos? Then they aren't actually servicing the website that I need service and updated. So again credibility and reliability Too big things to establish up front and as you build your portfolio starts to sell itself You know when you have 70 or 80 websites in your portfolio in your specific industry and client testimonials from people in your specific industry Now it just becomes a matter of it's nearly order taking at that point in time You know, I want a website you're the person I want it from when could you get started? So Great question. Thank you Jay, do you include any marking marketing automation funnel features or kpis? That is going to be dependent on each specific industry And I think that is a great way to expand your service package offering So you could do things like creating an email newsletter every month for your clients You could do social media management. You could do blog content To increase search results There are all kinds of things you could add on to your service package In order to number one increase your dollar value increase your profitability But increase the list of things that you're offering to your clients and the likelihood That they are going to see a tangible return from those things as far as kpi goes I would always recommend finding a way to Track the results that you're getting for your clients and show them those results and the end You know the profitability of those results. So, hey, you know, every time I bring you a client It's worth a thousand dollars to your business last month. I brought in 12 new clients That's equivalent to 12,000 dollars for your business and just round numbers and your service package is $2,000 a month So your service package for $2,000 a month brought your business $12,000 in gross revenue Which I know at a 50% margin is $6,000 in gross profit. So congratulations your investment with me last month tripled your investment You know profitability so again always showing those things and adding service packages where you believe That the investment in that service package is going to be much more profitable for the client than The cost to them Okay Jacqueline totally agree worked with a lot of people who see tech and websites as a scary new thing and youth can sometimes build trust I will hire a young salesperson who knows what they're doing any day over somebody who is stuck in their ways, but has gray hair because That's that's not the results. I'm looking for the result. I'm looking for our sales results Do you get pushed back from clients about the fact that sites can look a bit alike when you get a big client base Since they're all template based. Hey great question. I love this one For us, you know the the industry that I started in was campgrounds So my wife and I RV when we're in north america And so we spend about six months of the year in the in the states and six months of the year in canada in our RV Again, when we're over there We're going to seattle for instance. We're going to look for Uh a campground near seattle and when we're going to montreal We're going to look for a campground near montreal when we're going to quibac city A campground near quibac and we're in calgary a campground near calgary I don't care if the website of the campground in quibac looks the same as the campground in seattle I don't really care and I probably won't even notice because I look at that many Websites in that industry so often And and that's an example now will your client care? Well, that's a different conversation So what you have to say to them is we're going to customize the website with your logo with your colors With your picture and with content specific to your campground We are using a template, but you know between us We also know that wordpress is essentially a pre-made box that we could put all kinds of different things in And so we're using a template because we know that that template brings results for our clients And we know that you want results. You don't just want a pretty looking website You want a website that actually brings you customers And so we're going to use a template that we know has worked for other customers And in light of that it's going to be completely customized to your logo your color schemes your photos and your text so For most clients that's not a concern and in fact we have clients who have You know in the campground space They have eight or ten campgrounds and they're all on the same template And they don't really care because the logo looks different the pictures look different the text looks different And they're in different physical locations So they're near different cities and they're really just caring does this customer or does this website bring me new clients When somebody's looking for a business in my area George asks uh, uh, George says great session. Thank you, George What platform do you use to manage all your clients on we use iThemes sync? Um, and oh, this is a question for my tech guy rob um, we use iThemes sync and we use, uh some Like a site admin or something like that. I'm really sorry and tell you what send me an email adam at fresh idea websites.com. Let me see if I can Okay, I just put it in the chat adam at fresh idea websites Send me an email george and ask me that question and I will get my tech guy to let you know what our tech stack looks like Also, if anybody else has a question that you didn't want to ask publicly Or if you want a copy of my notes, let's just do this Send me an email adam at fresh idea websites.com and say, hey, can I get your keynotes from wp montreal? And and I'll I'll make sure that I get that to you. Ha there we go Just killed george you helped me killed tubers with one stone on that one Okay, tom do you offer tom asks do you offer hosting and that type of tech maintenance as part of the package? Or do you keep the hosting package separate and in the client's name? So you're not you're directly responsible for downtime and other acts of god We do put our hosting into our own service package Because we don't want the client to go to have to go somewhere for hosting and somewhere for their domain registration And somewhere else for their tech and somewhere for you know changes We want them to come to us for all of those things And so we roll the dice or we take the risk on the back end pieces Because we want to be the client's one pivot point. We don't want to complicate things if their website goes down We don't want to have to tell them to call an 800 number. We don't want to have to You know, we want to take that off their hands for instance In my case, we have our own hosting. We don't use a third party hosting I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that we have our own This is another one for my techie guy. Okay. We have our own server That is managed by a company local to woodstock, ontario where where I started my business where we live before we started traveling in 2018. So, um, I can call them directly They don't have an 800 number because I can call them directly They look after our hosting is just for our server. And so we have a lot of control over that We do have installed a redundancy a fallback And we do that even though that there's a more extensive cost to that we do that again for that reason, you know, how do we Mitigate potential downtime keep clients happy and keep them on their service package for as long as possible and keep them paying for as long as possible Okay, I love that you spin it with pragmatism approach and results return on investment. Yes, all those things Well, thank you everybody for Chiming in for asking questions for hanging out today. If you have any other questions now would be a great time to ask them Or to leave a comment. Let me just see if there's anything else here in the questions And if there's something that you need or you have a follow-up question again Hit me up on twitter would love to hang out with you there Or send me an email adam at fresh idea websites.com and I would love to chat with you. I do I love world a wordpress world and I love helping people get off the roller coaster of their revenue and build recurring revenue And I would love to answer any questions you have about that chat get started And we will talk to you soon. Also, let me know where you are And if I ever get a chance to be in your area, I would love to connect with you And the best way to do that is on twitter and I post where we're going and and where we are and then you Hey adam, you owe me coffee Come hang out and we'll we'll chat. Thank you so much for listening everybody I appreciate your time. I appreciate your questions And I look forward to continuing to watch you grow and take this information and And build that agency of your dream. Thanks. Have a great day