For service companies who feel stuck:
Here's How to Actually Grow Again
Here's How to Actually Grow Again
When Your Revenue Hits a Ceiling...
"Marketing Harder" Will Not Fix Stalled Growth...
Stop me when this sounds familiar:
You’ve built a real business. Your reputation is solid. You have a great service.
But after the initial ramp-up… your growth has sputtered out. No matter what you try doing, revenue won’t budge.
And while referrals & repeat clients are propping things up… they’ve also hit a ceiling.
You can stay afloat for now…
But you can’t expand, you can’t make any bold moves, and you can’t realistically sell the business (at least not for life-changing money).
Now to be clear, the bottleneck isn’t your expertise, or the actual value you provide.
The problem is that you don’t have a system for attracting your most ideal customers.
You’re just letting things happen, waiting for the next referral, waiting for the next email to arrive, and hoping that things just… magically start growing again.
(They won’t)
You need a straightforward process that predictably turns strangers into qualified customers, every month.
A process that actually scales. Without adding more staff. Without spending a fortune on ads. And without working 16-hour days.
That’s what we build for you. Here’s what the process looks like…
The One Strategy That Changes Everything...
When growth stalls out, most service providers think it’s a traffic problem…
“If only we could generate 3X our current traffic, then we’d get 3X more leads, and 3X more sales… right?”
Nope.
That only works for low-ticket impulse purchases, or branded searches. Selling expert services is a lot different than selling toasters…
Aside from the obvious differences, the main thing is that it’s not a numbers game; unlike toasters, you can only serve a max number of customers at any given time.
As you already know, your best clients are worth dozens, and sometimes even hundreds of times more than the low-value clients who eat up all your time (and then bail after 3 months anyway).
This is why finding and retaining your most ideal customer type is actually how you reach escape velocity as a service business.
So whether you’re still stuck under $1M/yr, or flatlined somewhere between $1M-$3M… you’ve already figured out how to get customers. So it’s not a traffic & sales problem.
Instead, you need to start figuring out how to turn a ~$10-$20K lifetime value into something more like $100K – $250K+
Because then it’s just a matter of math. You can literally cut your sales volume in half, and still earn 10X more profit.
This is how you fund your dream lifestyle… and eventually sell the business for life-changing money.
(And it’s also far less effort, ironically).
But this also means you need to be specifically attracting only those types of customers.
And ruthlessly repelling the low value time-wasters.
Which brings me to the blueprint.
Believe it or not, we can condense the entire process down to A-B-C…
Let’s quickly run through each part of the process…
- Attracting Your Most Ideal Customer
This isn’t as simple as “qualifying” leads with a quiz funnel…
Instead, we first need to determine who your best customer actually is – and make sure that enough of them exist. Which is trickier than it sounds.
Then we need to uncover their real fears, & secret ambitions. We need to figure out what’s actually driving them nuts.
And in general, we need to understand what’s keeping them awake at 2AM…
Once we know this, it’s like having a “marketing missile” that laser targets only our most ideal customers, and stops them dead in their tracks.
This becomes the foundation of all of our messaging; ads, landing pages, webinars, email sequences – and even the offer itself.
Just doing this first part can completely transform your business, on its own.
- Becoming Unforgettable
Getting someone’s attention for a few moments is one thing. But earning their undivided attention – permanently – is another thing entirely.
To do this, you need to have a message that makes them feel seen, feel understood, and feel alive.
They need to see you as a key piece of their own “hero’s journey”, in their own business, and in their own life.
This is how you turn total strangers into lifelong fans.
And you can do this with just a few critical pieces of content – and largely put it on autopilot.
Creating Lifetime Value
Most service companies treat their funnel like a filter – the leads come in, a small handful convert, and that’s it. Game Over.
It’s the same with their actual customers. The project is scoped, delivered, then invoiced. Next.
This is exactly why most service companies quickly plateau after 1-2 years, because they’re constantly restarting from zero.
What you’re missing is a repeatable system for mining the gold out of your “old” prospects, and a no-brainer offer for turning one-time customers into multi-year relationships.
(And it’s probably way easier than what you’re doing currently)
Real quick, before we talk about how to actually build this process, here’s how this ‘ABC strategy’ completely transformed a struggling SEO service platform….
How PosiRank Went From Being Stuck at $300K... to $4M+ ARR in Just 18 Months...
I was PosiRank’s CMO from 2012 until 2017. At the time, we were one of the first white label platforms for SEO agencies.
When we launched, we assumed that what agencies needed was performance – getting sites ranked in Google as fast as possible, and keeping them at the top. And by that score, we delivered.
The problem was that, bizarrely, nobody cared. People would practically yawn on sales calls when I talked about how powerful our ranking process was, how quickly our existing agencies were ranking their clients… etc.
It was a slog. And our revenue was stubbornly stuck at about $30K/mo – barely enough to make payroll and keep the lights on.
No matter what we tried, it wouldn’t budge.
Then, one day on a sales call, a prospect interrupted my usual spiel and said…
“Chris, this all sounds great, but to be honest our main concern isn’t the SEO itself. The problem we have with our current outsourcing partner is that the content they use to build links is literally garbage.
“And our clients are finding these garbage articles on spammy sites that link to their business – and then they call us, pissed off, and we lose the account.
“Can you promise me that you guys only use fluent English writers? And build links from real sites? That’s all we want. We’re sick of looking like idiots.”
It finally clicked: We were solving the wrong problem.
See, our best customers didn’t care about “performance”. They wanted to sell something they could actually be proud of.
So the next day I whipped up an ad campaign with a super simple message: Stop Reselling Garbage SEO
This single ad campaign started driving in leads at 1/10th the cost of everything else we’d tried for over a year. And the quality of the calls was 10X better – our sales guy was closing almost half the calls with a test project.
Bottom line: Once we discovered what our best customers actually wanted, growth became easy. And it rapidly transformed the business.
Building the Machine that Consistently Generates
Your Most Ideal Customers...
Let’s move beyond theory and talk brass tacks.
Here’s how we actually build the “A-B-C” Breakthrough Process for your business, so that you’re no longer relying on sporadic inquiries or random referrals…
It starts as a 3-month sprint, where we build The Machine in three phases, as follows:
Phase 1: Research
- We reverse engineer your most successful competitors – what they’re actually selling, who they’re actually targeting, how their sales process works, how they’ve evolved.
- We determine your most ideal customer avatar based on your current customer base + competitor insights.
- We develop the core problem statements that become the building blocks of your messaging, ads & content going forward – this is what turns marketing into predictable ROI, not just an expense.
- We run a small-scale ads test to validate market interest & indicate the most compelling focus areas. (We can typically gather meaningful data with less than $500 in ad spend)
Phase 2: Building the Growth Engine
At the end of the day, you can only really own 2 things on the internet: Your domain name, and your email list.
Everything else is “rented”. Your social audiences, retargeting pixels, Youtube subscribers and even your Google rankings – although valuable – are ultimately controlled by someone else. (And they can disappear overnight).
That’s why we build a growth engine that you truly own forever.
Here’s what we build for you – all based on the discoveries from the research phase…
- A professionally-produced Deep-Dive Webinar that expertly solves your ideal customer’s biggest pain point. (This is where you become unforgettable)
- A landing page that laser-targets your most ideal customer, capturing them as a qualified lead.
- A 30-day warmup email sequence expertly designed to turn total strangers into lifelong fans who will open your emails (and buy your services) for years to come
- A 4-day promotion sequence. While the 30-day warmup soft-sells tactfully throughout, it all culminates into an irresistible offer that reliably turns “maybe” prospects into paying customers.
- A professional Founder Story interview with our pro podcast host. This is a great way for your prospects to get to know you & your business authentically – it goes a long way, and you’ll be the first person they choose when they need help next.
Note: The video at the top provides a detailed rundown on each of these components.
In short, this is a Growth Engine designed to generate an ROI from day one – but it also builds you a hyper targeted prospect list that will buy from you consistently for years.
This gives you an incredible advantage over your competitors – and once you establish trust with your prospects, this email list can print millions (with the right strategy).
Speaking of…
Phase 3: Go To Market Strategy
With all the components of your Growth Engine ready – it’s time to go to market, and start driving leads through the machine.
But this is a different process for every business, based on your existing strengths & weaknesses – as well as your resources (people, time, capital).
Since there’s no “one-size-fits-all” playbook that you can just copy & paste, here’s how we work with you to create a strategy that stacks the cards in your favour from day one…
- We assess your team’s capabilities and bandwidth, so that any strategy is realistic and right-sized
- We audit your current marketing assets and look for any low-hanging fruit or quick wins out of the gate
- Taking all of this into account, along with your initial ad & content budget, we craft a strategy that’s uniquely tailored to your business – and designed to win.
- This is delivered as a customized playbook + presentation, along with a 1:1 session for as long as is needed to ensure you’re fully equipped, with no stone left unturned.
Bottom line: In just 3 months, you’ll finally have a sales funnel that attracts your best customers, and predictably converts prospects into high-paying customers like clockwork.
This is what a real breakthrough actually looks like.
The Process That Can Turn Every Dollar of Marketing
into Ten Dollars of Profit...
Once you have the growth machine built, and the strategy to run it – it’s time to roll your creation out of the garage, and start doing laps.
And much like the proving grounds at the race track, your success will be mostly determined by how quickly you can learn & adapt to the reality of your market.
This is where everything gets real.
Most screw this up, because instead of adapting their messaging (and sometimes their offer) to what their best customers actually want, they instead keep trying to make their own assumptions come true.
This is why the strategy we create for you is all about how to listen to your market, and then how to respond. Specifically – which levers to pull, and what to prioritize.
This doesn’t happen overnight. And it can take a few rounds of “spaghetti on the wall” until something sticks.
But if you can hold the line, run the strategy, and commit to discovering & solving your best customer’s actual problems (and what makes them respond) – then it’s entirely possible to turn every $1 of marketing into –> $10 of ROI, like clockwork…
And that is when everything changes.
This is how you finally gain control of your own growth. When you can generate your most ideal customers at the push of a button – you’re in charge of your own destiny, for once.
And it’s how a “just-getting-by” business starts turning into an empire.
This is why after the 3-month sprint (building the Machine), we can also work closely with you & your team during this critical proving-grounds process… so you’re not paralyzed by the unknown, or relying on guesswork.
We can either handle everything (DFY), or work with your team on a coaching basis (DWY).
Key Questions:
While we can answer any of your questions fully on a discovery call, the following Q’s should help set initial expectations…
We don’t deal in guarantees – which as we both know, only attracts un-serious amateurs.
Instead, we deal in probabilities. And our job is to increase the odds of your success in generating an actual marketing breakthrough – as much as possible.
But this won’t happen overnight.
Marketing breakthroughs don’t come from “data driven” split tests or iterative optimization. (That’s only useful once you’ve nailed your offer).
When you’re trying to attract a fundamentally different (more valuable) type of customer, it’s going to take some time to measure & react to what the market is telling us.
But if you’re serious about getting un-stuck, and figuring out what your best customers actually want most – and you commit to making that happen – then yes, this process has the highest odds of utterly transforming your business.
Pretend that you’ve just discovered an awesome new TV series on Netflix.
The story is mesmerizing, and you binge watch the first 3 episodes, and can’t wait to watch the rest – but then a message comes up saying: “Please enter your email to receive all new episodes. We’ll email you a new one every 2-3 days”
Would you be annoyed to receive a new episode (from your favourite show) every couple days in your inbox?
Probably not.
In fact, speaking for myself, I’d wish that they’d send me emails daily. Maybe even multiple times a day.
Why?
Because it’s a story I care about, and because it’s what I actually want.
This is our goal with your funnel – our aim is to figure out what your ideal audience actually wants most, and deliver that to them with story-driven content that they’ll love receiving.
If we do our job well, your prospects will literally look forward to receiving emails from you.
In fact, that’s the most important success indicator that we’ve truly created a lifetime asset.
So to answer the question: No.
People will not be annoyed to receive content that they are truly interested in, or digest stories that deeply resonate with them.
Just the opposite 
We’re happy to go over our service options & investment levels on a discovery call.
As a general guide though, due to the productized nature of the 3-month sprint (we’ve got this down to a science), this costs less than hiring a junior marketer, even on a monthly basis.
Last, it’s worth noting that this is designed for businesses with existing customers and meaningful revenue. (We can’t help steer a parked car).
In general, we can’t help you if you’re selling low-ticket products, rely on sponsorship / adshare / affiliate revenue, or have truly one-off customers who will never buy from you again.
We also can’t help founders that see marketing as a “cost”, and who assume that finding the lowest-price provider is a “win”, somehow.
(This is like assuming that the cheapest stock to buy is also the one with the most growth potential… good luck with that).
If that’s you – I invite you to try a service like Fiverr, which is a great way to ‘save money’ and attract the most ideal tumbleweeds to your business.
But if you’re actually looking for a growth breakthrough, and to build a business that you can sell for millions – then let’s talk.
Perhaps – it depends on your required scope.
Also, keep in mind that in general we won’t want to do anything that bypasses the Research phase – as that’s the critical component that actually makes the assets (like a landing page) truly valuable.
The Lazy Marketer isn’t a conventional agency or full-service contractor. Instead, we run a specific process based around our core competencies.
We only want to be doing our best work.
So if you want to propose a modified scope or something otherwise custom, please reach out at help@thelazymarketer.com and we’ll get back to you either way.
Thanks!
What's it Like Working Together?
Here’s how David Krauter (CEO, WebsitesThatSell) describes working with us to help build a funnel for their most ideal customers…
Is it Time for a Real Breakthrough?
If your growth is stuck, and everything you’re trying to “fix it” is just making you busier (without the payoff), then it’s time to face the facts:
You’re not going to split-test your way to a breakthrough, and just doing more X (traffic, leads, social media, etc) isn’t going to result in better customers who actually pay what you’re worth – and stay with you for the long run.
If you’re serious about making a change – then it’s time to get serious about your offer, who you’re attracting, and how you’re selling.
And that means working with a serious team that’s actually been there, done that – and can see through all the noise.
We cannot help everyone. In fact, we can only help a limited number of clients at a time – so for that reason, we have to be a bit selective.
Please apply below to see if we’re a good fit for your business.
If it looks like a good fit, then we’ll send over a link to book a call with Chris Rempel (founder) to explore the opportunity.
But either way, we’ll respond ASAP so we don’t leave you hanging…
Have a question that isn’t covered here?
No problem. Just email us at help@thelazymarketer.com and we’ll get back to you right away.
Regardless, I hope we get the chance to work together – either now, or sometime in the future.
And even if not, then I hope that at least talking through our process can be instructive to you in some way.
Sincerely,
Chris Rempel
Founder, The Lazy Marketer
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