Discover How a Business Consultant Built Up his Business to a 7 figure turnover through Authority Marketing
Greg Roworth has successfully built and sold 5 businesses, 4 of them within the business consulting and coaching space.
While his earlier entrepreneurial projects nearly sent him bankrupt, he was determined to move on and learn from his experiences. He vowed never again to go ‘cup in hand’ seeking out clients. He dreamed of clients coming to him, and he worked out how to do it.
Greg took the time to learn how to leverage digital marketing and social media. He tried and tested many types of campaigns and within a few short years, steadily built up his latest consulting business to a healthy 7 figure turnover.
In this interview, I ask how he did it, and what platforms he used to help him build up a steady flow of leads and new business.
What have been some of the keys to your success?
There have been two strategies that’ve been a turning point for the growth of my business:
- Content marketing
- Authority marketing
The biggest game-changer was when Greg published a small 70 page book and started offering that to prospective clients.
“The book gave me immediate authority”, as an example, Greg said “I was trying to acquire this particular accounting firm as a consulting client, and he was very skeptical, but when he found out I was an author, it changed the dynamics completely”.
What other activities helped you build the business?
- Guest Blogging
- Webinars
- Facebook Advertising
- LinkedIn Marketing
“Over the years I’ve written a few blogs on other people’s sites which I found worked well” But one of the real leverage points was using a pre-recorded webinar sequence. Greg would advertise through Facebook and send people through the funnel to invite them to a webinar recording. At the end of the webinar, the participant was invited to have a conversation.
“The conversation was more about ‘how can you help me’ ” it diminished the feeling of them being skeptical and defensive because they were entering into a sales conversation.
Gregs dream of having great clients approaching him was becoming a realility. Because after listening to Greg offer value in his webinars, there was no need to try and ‘convince’ them to buy.
They were already to buy.
So providing good value through webinars and content help the prospective client relax and look forward to chatting about solutions.
“Content Marketing and Authority Positioning have changed the dynamics in the sales and marketing process so much that I highly recommend it.”
What LinkedIn marketing were you doing?
As an introvert with not a lot of spare time, Greg found LinkedIn invaluable to shortlist the people that he should be talking to.
“I’m a fairly shy person so going to a networking meeting for me was always a struggle. Often I’d go to these networking events, and find myself talking to just one or two people who weren’t my ideal type of client. It was a lot of hard work for not much result.”
“When I discovered LinkedIn I found that I could duplicate that networking methodology, but instead of meeting random people, I could target people who are specifically in my ideal client market and set up a conversation with my ideal clients, without being spammy or try and sell my services. I’d just make sure that the connections were ideal for me and then start a conversation and an email or a message backwards and forwards, about the same sort of the things that you’d talk about at a networking event. ”
Greg would send invitations to connect with people who fit his criteria as the ideal type of client, and then start a conversation on the message function of LinkedIn. The type of questions he’d ask would be to get to know the person:
- What do you do?
- Whose your ideal client?
- How can I help?
“Those sorts of questions get you knowing who could be potentially a good fit for either supporting each other in growing our business, or perhaps becoming a client.”
“The authority marketing component comes in strong at this point, so instead of suggesting we have a coffee, I suggest they read one of my books, or read one of the articles, or watch one of the webinars.”
Greg is leveraging the content he has created to help position him within his market, so when it comes time to talk, he is not talking to a cold prospect.
“This is a much softer introduction than getting them to meet cold, and then them wondering if I’m just going to try and sell them something.”
“LinkedIn has made networking much more efficient.”
LinkedIn saves time when it comes to filtering to find the ideal type of clients. “By the time its right to meet someone, it’s a sales conversation, rather than having a coffee meeting and wondering if they are even a good fit to be a potential client.”
I’ve found LinkedIn to be a useful tool to leverage the networking and to only end up with high quality meetings.
Interested to find out more about Greg?
Greg is launching an online coaching program to complement his offline services and to celebrate, he is offering a FREE copy of his book “How to Run Your Business on Autopilot” .
Go to Business Flightpath to find out more.
Leave a Reply