“I spoke to around 20-30 agencies about how to generate new business in a way you can track, doesn’t cost a shitload of money, or rely on experts outside your agency,” says Matthew Stanners, MD at Bearded Fellows.
“The only common denominator I got from them was direct mail.”
This time last year, Matt was seriously worried about new business. He’d recently been made MD and knew it was down to him to take responsibility for lead generation.
Adamant that outsourcing wasn’t an option, Matt decided to go down the direct mail route.
“Direct mail is not going to create a bad brand experience. It’s very polite, it’s very specific, it relates to us as a business, and it’s me – I’m sending it. I’m human, and they can find me on LinkedIn.”
“It relates to that whole gifting methodology – you give someone something, they feel like they should give you something back,” he says. “I’m genuinely confident that in a year, we’re gonna generate at least £150k a year from this.”
Matt’s process looks like this:
- Identify a client you’d like to work with using Luscher.
- Find the HQ address.
- Send them a book via Amazon (the book in question is Hegarty on Creative by John Hegarty, which was picked as it relates to the bearded fellows’ proposition).
- Follow up a week later with a Bearded Fellows bookmark to say whom it came from.
- Connect on LinkedIn.
“It’s a short book, but it doesn’t really matter if they don’t read it. Because it can sit on their desk like a calling card – it’s a constant reminder of who we are.”
Matt’s goal was to send out 15 books every month, but he soon had to whittle that down to 10 due to time restraints. Another challenge was trying to figure out who in the company to send it to – and remembering to follow up afterwards.
“The main problem I have with it is I’m doing it all myself and it’s quite a few pieces of mechanics,” says Matt “But I have to do it on my own. If I include my leadership team at this point, they will just have different points of view. And right now it’s not about consensus, it’s about just doing.”
So far, a little less than 30 books have gone out to prospects.
“In the two conversations I’ve had, both clients are intrigued, but I now need to nurture them. I need to be posting more on LinkedIn so that people can immediately see what we’re about.”
“But if I do 10 every month, that’s 120 high-quality, qualified leads a year.”
Have you ever considered direct mail as a new biz strategy?
In this month’s marketing and new biz mastermind, we’ll be hearing from Matt about his venture into direct mail campaigns.
- Which clients should you be targeting and how?
- How do you decide what to send?
- What steps do you need to take to increase your ROI?
Come along to hear the benefits and drawbacks of this new biz strategy, and decide whether it’s worth the effort for your agency.