People-based marketing: Why going tribal attracts more leads

Are you on the verge of throwing in the towel because you’re not seeing any traction in your web design agency?

Likely, you’re not using effective marketing techniques to get the right clients.

(Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard that before!)

Web design services, like any other industry is driven by disruptive digital technology, and it just keeps transforming.

It can be confusing and overwhelming.

You need to stay on your toes and follow its dictates, or be crushed by the rising tide of change.

You are likely facing challenges such as complexity in web development, outsourcing to flaky web developers, and building inadequate capital to keep the lights on.

We’ve all been there before!

No matter what you’re dealing with, don’t get overwhelmed! The marketing world may seem like a chaotic mess of advice, full of frantic changes, disruptive technologies and panicking business owners…

But underneath it all, some things never change.

In reality, humans are still human, and your agency can only grow if you focus on the people you serve. Your customers must become your tribe. Once you find the right tribe for your services, help them, build deep trust with them, and understand them well enough that you can solve their problems. Then you will find sales comes easily and naturally.

The solution is people-based marketing.

What is people-based marketing?

It’s a marketing approach where the people come first. People are not the same as data points, clicks or traffic charts.

They are people like you and I. When you understand this, then marketing becomes easy.

For example, in the digital marketing world, rather than relying on cookies and traffic stats, we can do much better by leveraging real-time information from customers to deliver valuable products and services that they actually need. Technology simply enables us to serve the people in our tribe better.

With this approach we can focus on serving customer’s needs better by connecting “soul-less data” to real people.

Effectiveness of people-based marketing on your web design agency’s growth

This’s how people-based marketing contributes to the success of your marketing efforts:

Establishes Trust and Loyalty

People-based marketing is poised towards the needs of your customers. It’s not a splash-and-pray kind of marketing; it’s about reaching out to real people amicably, and solving their web design problems; this kind of marketing creates trust and loyalty.

It’s important to note that 90% of your clients value recommendations from others, while only 4% trust ads they see every day on social media, blogs, and YouTube. 70% believe in opinions from others online.  

Market to People, Not Devices

Marketers need a paradigm shift in their digital marketing efforts. Cookie-based kind of marketing is not effective because cookies come from devices. Imagine spending your marketing time and resources targeting devices; frustrating, right?

According to Gartner Group, 80% of your agency’s future profits will be from 20% of your current clients. To execute effective digital marketing campaigns, you must have the right customer data and avoid noisy data from third parties.

Reduce Wasted Ad Spend and Wasteful Marketing Endeavors

The reason why most agencies experience a dwindling client base is because they spend marketing investment resources haphazardly.

Many agencies are too focused on chasing after the next shiny thing, when your current tribe of customers are your biggest asset by far.

You can save on marketing investment resources such as all the extra time, apps, systems, PPC marketing channels, and lost capital if you stay focused on your tribe. Help your people, and build a people-based marketing approach to get ahead.

The more people you help in your tribe, the more insight you gain, fueling your growth

Targeted digital marketing campaigns enable you to gather feedback from real customers. Use the feedback and the insights from your marketing campaigns to maximize the growth of your web design agency. Customer information such as their geographical location, interests, source of revenue will enable you to offer more customized offers to them, and actually help them more.

How to Apply a People-Based Marketing Approach

Since you now understand how essential people-based marketing is to the growth of your web design agency, here’s how to actually do it:

1. Perform customer profiling

Profiling is a digital targeting technique that describes your target client and includes elements such as age, interest, buying patterns, and demographics. Businesses that profile their customers more have a higher chance of succeeding because they are able to reduce the noise and focus on the people that matter for their business.

At Upscale Method, we teach you to master this technique and boost the number of qualified leads coming your way.

Here’s how to profile your customers fast:

Collect customer data:

You can’t profile clients without their data. Collect customer data such as purchase channels, revenue streams, how they respond to emails, and purchase behavior. Keep this in a spreadsheet or simple database.

Tip: Don’t overcomplicate this step! I have even used paper and it works too! Just divide the paper into 2 columns and start counting positive email replies from 2 different demographic targets (for example). The main point is that tracking is better than not tracking.

Have segmented profiles according to KPIs

Customer data helps develop a holistic approach in your multi-channel marketing. You need more than one profile since your clients have varied interests.

Create customer illustrations

An illustration is merely a drawing showing an ideal representation of your customers. This can help you see and have more empathy towards your people. You can have more illustrations based on the number of segmented groups you are targeting. These illustrations enhance clarity and conversational marketing in your messages.

Use results to optimize your customer profiles

After deploying a series of digital targeted campaigns, use the tracked feedback to create better customer profiles. Never lose sight of the people you are trying to help.

2. Geo-targeting: Be local to your tribe

SEO is competitive. Since the Hummingbird algorithm update, it has become nearly impossible to rank if you’re new to SEO. However, geo-targeting helps to reduce competition. Why launch digital marketing campaigns that a global brand is undertaking while you can achieve a lot more relevance to your tribe by focusing only on their geographic location. People are most familiar with where they live, so going local with your SEO gives you a leg up over the competition.

Here’s how to do it:

Start with your website domain

Do you know you can target a specific country using a subfolder or subdomain? A subfolder such as upscalemethod.com/us will be more likely appear in local US searches. Use a subdomain to tailor your services to different segments of your clients.

Leverage PPC

Carrying out a PPC campaign helps to target different user profiles. Using customer data, you can create conversion optimized PPC ads for different customers based on interests and location – When targeting local PPC ads, make sure to use the local terms in the actual ads, like city, state, or other nuances that will connect you to your people.

Geo-targeted content

You can create content targeted to a specific geo-location. Content isn’t limited to text alone; use geo-targeted images, videos, and GIFs.

People-based marketing is delivering the right content to the right people. Geo-targeting enhances your people focused approach to marketing.

3. Optimize cross channel customer experiences

Think about your customer’s actual experience. Reach out to all your customers everywhere, in whatever device they use. A holistic approach to cross-channel marketing is essential to maximize sales.

John, for example, sees your ad on a website and fails to click it. In the evening, John is resting in his house and logged into Facebook. Since you use multi-channel marketing, he will see your targeted Facebook ad and click through to your website to request more information on your web design services.

Here’s how to optimize your cross-channel marketing:

Personalize your marketing messages

Your clients are human beings. Reaching out to them in a more humane than a robotic way will win their trust and loyalty. Personalized messages are effective in driving sales because a person’s name is the sweetest thing to hear. People value themselves and want to be cared for.

Optimize conversions based on customer data

Use your customer data to increase conversation rates. It helps to know the channel your customer interacts with regularly. Understand their interest, and demographics to optimize conversion.

People-based marketing will define the landscape of marketing ahead. The trick is not to be “good at marketing”, but to serve and help others to so both sides win. This will maximize the growth of your web design agency.

Let me show you my simple method for scaling digital agencies to $500k – $1M per year.

Are you struggling with sales? Are you trying to grow your agency to the next level? Need a simpler way to grow sales and revenue?

If yes, then I’ll be happy to help.

I ran my own successful agency since 2007, helping my clients earn $160M. I started mentoring other agencies fulltime in 2018, and would love to be your ally and friend to help you reach your goals!

The Easy Way to Get Your Creative Agency to $1M/year

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Yes! Get a proven mentor! Shameless plug: Yes, I know it’s hard, I’ve been there before! I’m here to help you grow your agency to the next level, whether that’s 6 figures or 7 figures, I will be happy to help you get there faster.

If you need help scaling your agency to 6 or 7 figures, or just want to get “unstuck” faster, then grab the free training and let’s start scaling!.

Chris Johnson,
Upscale Method,
Agency Growth Mentor