Get Your First Lead Generation Agency Client In Under 3 Weeks (Going From 0 to 1)

Warning: This guide will be super actionable.

If you’re looking to take your lead generation agency from 0 to 1…

And land your first client in under 3 weeks…

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What lead generation for marketing agencies looks like.
• Getting ready for outreach as a lead generation agency (week 1)
• Getting your first client, outreach, and tech stack (week 2-3)

Whether you just launched your agency yesterday, or you’ve been working for a while now, this guide’s for you.

As long as you want to find a new client ASAP, keep on reading, it’s going to be worth it.

What Does Lead Generation Typically Look Like For Marketing Agencies?

If you started a lead generation business, you probably already know what that involves, right?

You know what lead generation means, we’re not going to spend time explaining it.

However, to land your first client, it’s important to have a few things defined first.

So, let’s do that real quick.

Inbound or outbound lead generation?

Both are very valid forms of lead generation.

Inbound, however, often takes longer.

And since we want to get a client ASAP (in under 3 weeks), we’re going to be focusing on outbound here.

In other words, we’re going to be targeting prospects to turn them into paying clients.

Common lead generation business mistakes

For lead generation agencies, the most common challenges they face include struggling to:

• Generate high-quality leads and find prospective clients.
• Manage budgets and expenses.
• Build scaleable marketing campaigns.
• Track and analyze conversions.
• Get organic website traffic.
• Manage time efficiently.
• Keep clients long-term.
• Get results for clients.

Every business that provides a service needs new leads.

Even if their current client roster is full.

That’s where you come in.

Here’s how to make sure you avoid those challenges.

Getting Ready For Outreach As A Lead Generation Agency (Week 1)

If you’re lead generation agency, here’s what you need to determine first:

• Your offer.
• Target audience and ICP.
• Pricing model.

1. What’s your offer?

Before you start any lead generation or outreach, your first need to have a clear offer.

This means knowing who you help and how.

You need to have an offer so good, people will have trouble saying no to it.

❌ “Helping B2B businesses generate new leads”

✅ ”Helping eCommerce marketing agencies book 15 new meetings per month with qualified leads. Pay only for successful booked calls.”

See the difference, right?

If you’re looking to get your first client as an agency ASAP, your offer will be super important.

You could also promote your service for a discounted price in exchange for a video testimonial.

In your offer, also consider:

• Who you help (niche).
• Timeframe.
• How and what the mechanism is.
• Avoiding what painpoint.
• Risk reversal – what happens if you don’t deliver results (work for free until you do?)
• Social proof.
• And so on.

Another option is to do a white label lead generation.

2. Determining your target audience

Your target audience, or your ideal customer persona means who you help.

And this should be as specific as possible.

For example, LinkedIn is an ideal platform for B2B lead generation and outreach. We’ll cover that in more detail below.

But the reason for that is because of its filters that let you really zoom in on a specific audience.

With LinkedIn, you can filter for:

• Locations.
• Current company.
• Connections of someone you know.
• Followers of a specific creator. For example, many SaaS owners follow Nathan Latka on LinkedIn.
• Past company.
• University they went to.
• Industry.
• Profile language.
• Service categories.
• And so much more.

To take this a step further, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is also ideal for this.

Once you know this kind of information, finding potential clients becomes much easier.

Some other things you should know about your target audience include:

• Their pain points.
• If the offer is relevant to them.
• How much they’d be willing to pay for this.
• Who would be the right person to reach (e.g. CEO or head of marketing).
• So on.

As a rule of thumb, high demand lead generation niches include:

• Technology.
• Healthcare.
• Real estate.
• Finance.
• eCommerce.
• SaaS.
• Marketing.
• Consulting firms.
• Legal.
• Education institutions.
• Plastic surgeons.
• Insurance.

3. Pricing model

How much to charge for lead generation depends on many factors.

Here’s a quick overview of the different pricing models for lead generation agencies:

• Cost per lead – You work out how much it costs to obtain a lead for a client. You add a profit margin, and arrive at a “per lead” price. This can be anywhere from $30 to $400 per lead, depending on industry.
• Cost per appointment – Determine how much it costs to get a single appointment for a client (time, software, etc.). Then, work in your profit margin to arrive at a fair rate. This should be higher than your “per lead” price.
• Retainer – Most popular form of pricing. Typically, retainers last anywhere from 3 months to 2 years. To find your retainer price, determine the cost of a month’s worth of work for a client and add in a profit margin. This can range anywhere from $1,000/mo to $10,000/mo+.

Everything we’ve covered so far:

1. Coming up with your offer.
2. Target audience.
3. And the pricing model.

All this so far should take 1 week or less.

Don’t overthink this part.

Because you can always make changes as you go.

Now, let’s cover the most important part of this step – getting your first client as a lead generation agency.

Getting Your First Client – Outreach And Tech Stack (Week 2-3)

This is the tricky part where most lead generation agencies fail.

Here, we’re going to combine the above and create actionable steps you can take to get one step closer to landing your first client.

You’ll need to:

1. Find a target audience.
2. Scrape their contacts to get ready for outreach.
3. Target them with the right nurture sequence and template.

Now, there are MANY different ways you can approach lead generation and outreach.

But since in this guide, we want to get our first lead generation agency client in under 3 weeks…

We’re going to be focusing on targeting the right people with the right offer. Instead of building relationships and networking, which also works but takes a bit longer.

So, let’s jump into it.

1. Preparing your audience for outreach

Before you start outreach, you need to know where your audience hangs out.

This can be:

• LinkedIn search results (see above with the filters).
• LinkedIn groups.
• Facebook groups.
• Scraping the followers of a LinkedIn influencer.
• Comments of a post that went viral.
• And more.

For this, you’d typically need:

• Marketing tool to scrape audiences or groups.
• Outreach tool for automation.
• CRMs to keep track of your leads.

But for simplicity’s sake, we’re going to be focusing on LinkedIn and email here.

Instead of using 3-5 different marketing tools, you can just use Expandi’s free 7-day trial to start your outreach now and start seeing results in under 24 hours.

Assuming you want to get your first lead generation agency client ASAP, you’d want to minimize your budget and marketing tools.

Then, you can scale up accordingly.

2. Scraping audiences for lead generation outreach

With Expandi, you can scrape the following audiences for free:

• LinkedIn basic search results.
• Sales Navigator search.
• LinkedIn Recruiter search.
• Company followers.
• People who engaged with a certain post.
• LinkedIn groups.
• LinkedIn events.
• ‘People you may know’ suggestions.

This is the part where knowing your audience and where they hang out matters.

To scrape audiences, all you have to do is paste the relevant URL into an Expandi search and wait till Expandi does its thing.

Other places or ways you can find leads for outreach include:

• Using tools like Apollo.io.
• Scraping audiences with tools like TexAu and Phantombuster.
• Getting an SDR to outsource some of your work.

But again, this will depend on your budget and time.

If you want to simplify things and save costs on 3-5 different tools, you can just use Expandi to start with.

With it, you can automate LinkedIn AND email outreach. 

3. Nurture sequence, outreach templates, and conversions

For this, we’ll be using Expandi as well.

Because, with it, you can simply automate your cold messages, follow-ups, and even emails.

All you have to do is create a new campaign based on actions:

• Visit LinkedIn profile.
• Follow profile.
• Follow company page.
• Send a connection request.
• Send a LinkedIn InMail.
• Send an email,
• And more.

And conditions such as:

• If connected.
• If someone follows you.
• If someone visited your LinkedIn profile.
• If your email was opened.
• If someone liked your post.
• And more.

As you might have guessed, there are many different ways you can set up your campaign with this.

Here’s one example you can follow for a straightforward outreach campaign.

For more info though, see some sample lead generation funnels in our marketing funnel automation guide.

Again, don’t overthink this for now.

Your objective is to connect with and be able to message people.

Finally, to launch the campaign, you also need the right outreach sequence templates.

Here are some potential templates you can adjust based on your niche, audience, and value proposition.

Connection request:

“Hey {first_name},

Saw that you’re also part of (LinkedIn group name)!

Guess we have (topic) in common.

Hope we can learn from each other.

Cheers,

(your name)”

(Follow up) message #1 if connected

“Quick question, {first_name},

Was just wondering how do you solve (pain point) at {company_name}?

Asking because we just helped (client) achieve (case study/outcome).

Can send over the unpublished case study, if you’re interested? No strings attached.”

(Follow up) message #2

“Any thoughts on this, {first_name}?

Asking because we tend to help agencies like yours at (company name).

Can send over a Loom video instead, if you’re interested.”

(Follow up) message #3 if connected

“Don’t mean to annoy you with countless follow-ups.

Let me know if you’re not interested in achieving (outcome or results)?”

(If email exists), email #1

Subject line: Knock knock…

“Hey {first_name},

Wanted to connect on LinkedIn but maybe you missed the request.

Anyway, was just wondering how you solve (pain point) at {company_name}? Asking because I noticed we’re in the same {LinkedIn group}.

We helped our last client get new 3 clients (not leads!) in just 4 weeks. Can send over a 3-minute Loom video if you’re interested?”

No strings attached”

(If email exists), email #2

“Hey {first_name},

Got 4 potential ideas how you could achieve (outcome or results) over at {company_name}.

If you’re interested, I can send over a Loom?”

(If email exists), email #3

“Hey {first_name},

Here’s some work we did for clients that we can replicate for {company_name} as well:

[URL].

If you’re interested in (outcome or results), you can book a call here as this will be my last follow up:

[Calendly URL].”

Everything we’ve covered so far:

• Finding a relevant target audience.
• Scraping leads.
• Setting up a campaign, templates, and nurturing leads…

Should take 2-3 weeks.

Where To Go From Here

Finally, if you’ve followed all the above steps, all that’s left is:

• Setting up meetings.
• Educating and/or selling to leads.
• Closing deals and delivering on your promise.

Every niche is different, but hopefully, the above steps are enough to help you get started with lead generation for your first client.

As long as you do this at scale, you will get your first client following those steps.

Finally, so that you’re not alone in your journey…

Be sure to claim your free, 7-day Expandi trial as it will help you in every step of your journey to getting a client!