Alex Brittingham has his eye on the ball. The former Twitter personality realized just how interested he was in developing effective solutions for his clients when he started his Facebook ads agency, Viewtop Media.
In pursuit of this, Alex developed a business model that’s first and foremost about obtaining results. It’s obviously working for him; his 18-pager 10 step agency blueprint regularly earns him rave reviews.
A process of trial-and-error landed Alex on his eventually lean service offerings. In the beginning, he offered just about every and any digital marketing service. When this left him exhausted, however, he gradually cut all his services except for lead generation. He cites this as the reason he was able to scale his business so fast.
We’re thrilled to have Alex with us on this installment of Agency Gurus. Read on for his insights on finding your business niche, how to generate leads through Facebook, and optimizing funnels for high conversion.
Cloudways: You started out by creating popular parody Twitter accounts with an eventual network of millions back in 2011, and went on to become one of the foremost social media lead generation experts out there. What sparked the decision to sell your wildly popular Twitter accounts and start your own brand development and digital marketing agency in 2016? And what lessons have you taken to heart along the journey?
Alex: To make a long story short, I honestly just got kind of bored. It wasn’t a challenge anymore and I was doing the same thing every day.. it just got boring to me and I needed some excitement.
Along with this, I would use my Twitter accounts to promote other company’s products to help them out with getting sales and although it was profitable, I didn’t feel like I was making a difference in the world. I didn’t know much about the products I was promoting, didn’t know if the owners of the company provided good customer service, stuff like that.
I eventually kept growing more uncomfortable and I wanted to make sure my work was making a real difference. Once I decided to start my agency, I could instantly tell the difference in my efforts when it came to helping my new client base.
I was now working with local chiropractors, loan officers, dentists, etc. who I would actually meet in person and get to know. When we do well on their campaigns and see the excitement and the growth that happens within their business, that’s a hell of a feeling. After killing it for our first client, I kept chasing that feeling.
Cloudways: Tell us about Viewtop Media, your social media agency serving mortgage professionals. Why did you come to target this niche, and what advice do you have for digital marketers struggling to find their niche?
Alex: After working in pretty much every industry, I found that the mortgage space had a lot of opportunity. Most lead vendors and marketing agencies in this space are pretty terrible in terms of their lead quality, lack a guarantee, have 12-month contracts, etc.
I saw it as an opportunity to create a better program and system that was affordable for MLOs because honestly, they don’t have the best options to pick from. Loan officers are pretty much their own boss, a lot of the time responsible for gathering their own leads, meaning the company they work for doesn’t provide them with leads.
So, I think along with the opportunity I saw, I can also relate to MLOs because they are essentially entrepreneurs who are grinding to make a name for themselves in a noisy industry.
For entrepreneurs who are struggling to find their niche, I’d recommend trying a bunch of different niches first before niching down. The reason being is so you can see the type of client that you can connect with/get along with, can find out what industry you get great results in, etc.
If you niche down right away from the start, you may miss out on that golden nugget niche that you may have had a great time working in and completely dominated. Also, in order to truly scale your agency, you’ll want to make sure that the niche that you decide to go with has a high population.
Source: alexbrittingham.com
Cloudways: How did you come to develop your intensely results-oriented business model?
Alex: Competitor research. We saw the lack of deliverables and lack of guarantees most big lead vendors/marketing companies were operating with. After realizing this, we wanted to make sure that we stand out from our competition to make it a no-brainer to work with us as opposed to our competition.
Cloudways: What do you think most agencies and digital marketers get wrong about using Facebook to generate leads? How can they further refine their Facebook lead generation?
Alex: I think the biggest thing people overcomplicate for lead generation for local business clients is the targeting. People try to get way too fancy when it comes to their targeting options, where their ads are seen, etc. and it’s just not effective especially if you are running a lower budget of around $20/day. For us, we let Facebook do the heavy lifting by leaving the targeting options completely blank most of the time, doing automatic placements, etc. and just letting our ad copy and images/videos speak to the audience we are going after. Facebook is VERY smart. I’ve found the more I try to complicate things, the worse my results end up being. So, we usually let Facebook do the heavy lifting in terms of targeting.
Cloudways: The pandemic has forced agencies all over the world to change the way they do business. In 2020, what should agencies change about their lead generation strategies?
Alex: Use the pandemic to your advantage in an ethical way. When you’re on sales calls, you need to really make sure your potential clients understand that the old way of getting new patients/customers/clients is dead. No more networking events, shaking hands with new people in public, etc. Now more than ever is the time to take their business online to make sure they get a consistent flow of new patients/customers/clients on a daily basis.
Along with this, I think it’s important to make sure you keep clients open to adjusting their business model. For example, when gyms shut down for weeks at a time, someone in my coaching program who primarily works with gyms was a little stuck. How can he market for gyms if they’re closed?
Instead of dropping all of his clients because gyms were closed and basically closing his agency down for the time being, he worked hand in hand with his clients and developed an online training program. The goal of the program was to help people stay and get in shape from the comfort of their own home.
Cloudways: What tools and software have you found to be most effective at making digital marketing more productive? What would you especially recommend to digital agency managers and marketers?
Alex: High Level – all in one agency solution; it’s a CRM, can do lead nurturing sequences, has a scheduler, landing pages, surveys, pretty much anything you can think of. We use this for our own agency and for all of our clients
40+ Best Agency Tools You May Not Have Used Yet
Zapier – a tool that is the glue that allows other softwares to work together and automate pretty much anything
Asana – allows you to create and manage SOPs (standard operating procedures) for your team to refer to so you can delegate work to them
Slack – team communication tool
Canva – free graphic design website that’s really user friendly
Docusign – Software to allow clients to sign contracts very easily
…I’m sure I’m missing a few but this is a majority of what we use.
Source: www.alexbrittingham.com
Cloudways: What’s the biggest mistake agencies make to let highly motivated leads slip out of their hands? What are some creative or unusual ways that you have generated leads?
Alex: Not following up. Sometimes leads get busy with life where they aren’t available at the time you may have them booked, or maybe they were interested and now’s just not the best timing and they asked you to check in later. ALWAYS follow up. We closed 3 new clients last week that were follow ups from sales calls we did with them weeks prior.
I’d say the most creative way I’ve generated leads was sending what I call Value Videos. Basically it’s when you record a video of your screen and your face (I use the Google chrome extension called Loom) where you show your prospect how to market efficiently in their niche. You don’t want to give away ALL the secrets, but you show them just enough to prove you’re an authority and know what you’re talking about.
From there, if they watch the video, 8/10 times they will ask if you can do that for them. This method along with a few others is essentially how I started and grew to a few clients at the beginning, and after that we moved to running ads on Facebook to gather leads for our agency and it’s been smooth sailing from there.
Cloudways: Your funnel optimization gets some rave reviews. What are some quick techniques digital marketers can apply to boost their acquisition and conversion rates?
Alex: 1. Speak to your audience; make sure you understand who exactly it is that your target audience is, their pain points, and provide a direct solution to those pain points while speaking their language.
- Social proof; make sure you add testimonials throughout your funnels, whether that be written or video testimonials.
- Give a clear value proposition; don’t make it confusing, make sure your traffic understands exactly what they will receive and what it is going to cost them.
- Value stack; make sure you break down your entire offer when it comes to describing what it includes.
- SPLIT TEST; when all else fails, split test different things on your funnel; button color, font sizes, headlines, etc.
Cloudways: Off the top of your head, what are the projects you’ve most enjoyed working on at Viewtop Media? What was the challenging task of that project?
Alex: I’d say the thing I’ve enjoyed that absolute most is my Agency Growth Hacks coaching program. I love working with my mortgage clients, but being able to help entrepreneurs who want to start an agency has been VERY rewarding for me.
The reason why is because I know how difficult it is to start an agency without any guidance, especially while working a “normal” job. Seeing someone go from a brand new entrepreneur who’s working full time, to someone who quits their job, runs their agency full time and works anywhere they want is the best feeling in the world.
I’d say the most challenging part of creating the program was to really learn how to teach. Although I know how to do marketing well, teaching is a skill in it’s own that I had to learn that took me years to get decent at. I still study industry leaders to this day to see how I can improve my teaching style.
Cloudways: And finally, what industry specialists and giants do you follow for inspiration?
Alex: Luke Shankula, Alex Hormozi, Jeff Miller, Joel Kaplan.
Thanks a bunch for the interesting responses, Alex!
You can contact Alex on his LinkedIn or Twitter, or get in touch on Alexbrittingham.com.
Arsalan Sajid
Arsalan, a Digital Marketer by profession, works as a Startups and Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves all things entrepreneurial and wakes up every day with the desire to enable the dreams of aspiring entrepreneurs through his work!
