How We Helped a PR & Personal Branding Agency Build a Sustainable Outbound Growth Engine

1. We Started with an NPOT Methodology™ Workshop To Finetune The Client’s Positioning Strategy & Define their USP

The workshop lasted for about 4-hours and we went in-depth in all aspects of the client’s business, analyzing their service and marketing through the lens of our NPOT Methodology™.

Our NPOT Methodology™ involves gaining clarity on the 4 key elements of any agency’s business model. Here’s what they are:

• Niche – WHO do you want to help?
• Problem – WHY can’t they achieve their dream outcome?
• Offer – HOW do you get them past the problem to the transformation?
• Transformation – WHAT is their dream outcome?

Through the workshop, we helped the client gain clarity on all 4 factors and we decided on the key differentiators of the agency.

Since the client had worked across several industries, we knew we had to niche down, but weren’t sure which niche would be the best fit. In the end, we realized that it would be best to niche down in a non-traditional way by the performance of the ideal client – being at a 7-figure level with either an existing personal brand or an interest to build one. We ended up focusing on 4 different client types: 7-figure creators, sales trainers, tech startup founders and coaches/consultants, because these were the archetypes most likely to need personal branding.

We also gained a lot of insight into the problems Digital Phosphenes often solved for clients. The two biggest ones we identified were the client not having the time/expertise required to build their personal brand and simply hitting a glass ceiling in terms of growing their business, to which building a personal brand was the answer.

In the past, the client had sold services separately – we realized that the big value of the company was in selling a big package which would combine several services to deliver an amazing transformation.

That’s why we helped the client define the USP of the company around The Titan Accelerator™, a unique formula we helped them develop around leveraging 3 of their core technologies to make their client the “Go-To-Person” in their niche, massively boost their audience & credibility, and then leverage it to accelerate revenue growth and other opportunities (speaking, JVs, partnerships and so on). The Titan Accelerator™ would involve a combination of press publications, podcast touring and social growth by leveraging the influencer network that Digital Phosphenes could tap into to magnify the impact of the client.

In addition, we also helped the client reorient their marketing around the emotional drivers behind the needs of their ideal client, and away just from the monetary impact. Most entrepreneurs at the 7-figure level know they have so much value to offer, but somehow cannot unleash the growth and maximise their impact. And enabling them to maximise their impact and make the biggest difference possible was the core benefit Digital Phosphenes offered them.

2. We Prepared Several Different Angles for Each Niche to Test

With the clarity that resulted from the NPOT Methodology™ Workshop, our team began putting together possible combinations of offers & angles to test for each niche. We had several ideas and we ended up testing all of them to find the ones that performed the best. Some of the most prominent ones were:

• Targeting tech startup founders who were looking to raise another round of funding & could leverage personal branding to do so
• Targeting creators who already had a personal brand, but needed a way to leverage it to grow their audience and magnify their impact.
• Targeting entrepreneurs whose companies had recently reached the 7-figure mark and were rapidly growing, and may be looking to build a personal brand for the first time to accelerate or sustain that growth.
• Targeting Instagram Influencers who followed mega influencers like Alex Hormozi and wanted to build similar brands.

These angles helped our team map out the multiple ways through which Digital Phosphenes could help a diverse range of clients, so that messaging could be created specifically for each segment.

3. We Created the Necessary Marketing Assets & VSL

Our team was then ready to create the marketing assets that we would be using.

We crafted the Titan Accelerator™ offer into a Google Doc that an SDR could use to share details about working with Digital Phosphenes and pre-qualify leads before booking them on the client’s calendar.

We also put together a VSL script and advised the client on how to record it and put it together. The purpose was simple, we needed a quick 10-minute sales letter to use to attract leads and show them why they needed Digital Phosphenes to start with. This would be very useful in nurturing leads and introducing them to the company.

And finally we also helped the client put together more detailed case studies about their previous clients and the results they had achieved for them, including for some very famous clients. These marketing assets were key to making the conversion process work later down the line.

4. We Built Hand-Picked & Quality Scored Contact Lists From Multiple Data Sources

We leveraged 12+ data sources in the process to build contact lists of the right client type for both cold email and LinkedIn. Gathering leads was complicated by the fact that we needed leads who had already crossed a certain revenue threshold, 7-figures, or raised funding, and quite often this data isn’t public.

We ended up relying on databases like Crunchbase to access recently funded startups, and be able to personalize messaging accordingly.

And we developed more complex ways to infer if someone was at 7-figures or not. For example, a creative way we developed was to look at the top 1% podcasts in the world, build lists of people featured in at least 5 of the top 1% podcasts in the world, and then reach out to them specifically around getting featured in even more, or getting featured in press, or even leveraging their existing credibility to grow their audience.

We did something very similar with regards to being able to locate prospects who had worked for Fortune 500 organisations, and hence being able to target those who were at the top of their game, and who were, thus, most likely to be doing 7-figures or more.

And a final example, we found ways to identify the followers of big influencers like Alex Hormozi on Instagram, who also had a number of followers between 10,000 and 100,000 and were looking to quickly grow that number.

All these ways were indirect ways to assess their wealth and growth levels. As a result we ended up building 5 new technologies internally that we can leverage now and in the future to get very specialized types of leads, who are predisposed to meet wealth and growth-related criteria.

Overall, we built lists larger than 20,000 potential leads that we could then use.

5. We Created Different Outreach Sequences for Each Niche & Angle

For each of the segments we ended up coming up with, we created separate copy that would target their biggest pain-points. The sequences were focused as being direct and positioning Digital Phosphenes as a provider who wouldn’t just help their clients make more money, but would enable them to unleash their impact and make a positive difference in the world.

The key here was several tactics that we used:

• Instead of asking for a sales call we leveraged the marketing assets we had created to nurture clients and start conversations, and then deliver a specialized 15-min Personal Branding Audit session.
• Instead of selling aggressively, we relied on social proof in the form of case studies and the VSL to share the impact that our client was capable of delivering.
• We clearly articulated Digital Phosphenes’ vision and NPOT Model™, which made it instantly clear that they were THE #1 choice for anyone looking to build a massive personal brand or leverage an existing one for maximum impact.
• We made sure to call out and turn down everyone who wasn’t making 7-figures yet.

6. We set up the LinkedIn & Email Infrastructure Required

Using 5 domains, we created 10 email accounts and connected the client’s LinkedIn to our systems. We began warming up both the email accounts and the client’s LinkedIn profile, and began leveraging our technology and infrastructure to reach out to people at scale and start testing the different approaches we had prepared.

In the process we developed new infrastructure to test if emails were landing in the Inbox, rather than Promotions or Spam – which was very important in actually getting responses and key to the success of the campaign.

Our process involved building a relationship on behalf of the client with their leads, rather than just trying to aggressively sell.

7. We Put an SDR Into Digital Phosphenes’ Account To Manage the CRM & Pipeline

In order to facilitate this, we had to train and place an SDR in the client’s account who could monitor LinkedIn and the client’s email accounts to carry the conversations, manage the CRM, nurture the pipeline, qualify the leads and then book them on the Client’s calendar.

The SDR was essential in communicating with our direct response copywriting team in order to pass on information about what was working in practice and what wasn’t working so that we could refine messaging and eliminate segments which were usually not responsive.

In addition, the SDR also communicated with our technical team, whenever there were deliverability issues or issues with the email infrastructure so that things could be improved.

8. We Refined & Adjusted Messaging & Targeting

As a result, we began refining and adjusting both messaging and targeting. We quickly realized, for example, that Instagram influencers would usually not have the required budgets if they had less than 30,000 followers, so we set a limit for the future for our list builders – everyone had to have at least 30,000 followers.

We also realized other issues such as the difficulty of bypassing VAs and other gatekeepers when it came to getting through to consultants and coaches. Our copywriting team had to produce special messaging to help our SDR bypass VAs and gatekeepers and get through to the actual consultants and coaches behind the business.

All these adjustments were crucial in actually getting results. In the first 2 months, we only booked 3 calls, 2 which didn’t show up or hadn’t been qualified properly. It took a lot of testing to identify everything that was going wrong in our processes and begin improving results massively. And this is an important point – it always takes time to test and iterate to perfect a business growth system.

We also detected there were issues with the client’s own sales closing process by watching the client’s sales calls. As a result we proposed intervening and having the client implement our 2-call sales process to magnify closing rates.

9. We Improved the Qualification Process To Ensure Leads Had Budget

The first step we had to take was improve the qualification process so more meetings would be qualified rather than less than 50%. As a result, we created different response sequences and templates for our SDR – based on identifying the common replies of the leads, we templated responses and started testing them to see which worked best.

As a result, we began improving qualification success AND the ease of actually booking meetings. We also began qualifying through the email automation that would be sent, and set up reminders to ensure that people actually showed up to the calls.

By month 4, we successfully qualified and got over 75% of sales calls booked to show up, and ensured that they had budget.

10. We Provided Comprehensive Sales Training for our 2-Step Sales Process

To enable our client to increase closing rates from around 10% to 20%+ we provided them with access to our Learning Platform and the tools required to guide their business growth into the future.

As part of our help in this regard we provided:

• Access to scripts and templates, as well as comprehensive sales training to enable them to demonstrate value & close new business.
• Sales call reviews by our team
• Mock sales calls to improve the Founder’s closing ability from around 10% to 20%-30%.

This enabled us to begin perfecting the sales process and laid the foundation for work we would be doing next with the client.

11. We Provided Business & Systems Consulting to Automate & Magnify Results

And finally, as results started to quickly build up in the final two months, we started working with the client on what would be required in the future to achieve both their personal and business aims.

They now had a system that worked to generate leads and the founder could close them – what they needed next was a way to bring the rest of the business to the point where it could leverage this system for maximum growth.

We identified 3 key goals we would pursue next:

• Helping the Founder increase his closing rate from 20-30% to 40-50%
• Systematizing and automating as much of the sales process as possible & creating additional assets to make the process easier.
• Building a sales team to replace the Founder and enable further scale.

This is what we’ll be working on in the next 12 months with the company.