In this article, I would like to give you a bird's eye view of the strategy for attracting customers to your service without an advertising budget or telephone canvassing. You'll understand the principles and what to do if it doesn't immediately work the way you want it to. Organic customer acquisition (and I don't mean SEO) is still possible in 2021. And in an honest, authentic way. 

The problem in the agency business

For context, a few words about my own experience with acquisition in the agency business. In my own agency, I always had the challenge of not having enough time for acquisition in between because there were so many client projects. But then there were also times when I had capacity for new clients but didn't know how to get them. Back then, I tried all kinds of different strategies, but nothing really stuck for long because it either didn't work that well or didn't feel right. 

In my opinion, the "problem" why many people find it so difficult to acquire customers - even though, as web designers, Facebook marketers or consultants, they basically know how acquisition works - lies in the oversupply of agencies. Because most of them offer comparable services. Of course, not every agency is equally good, but potential customers will find it very difficult to choose the right provider. 

I realized this back then when I compared my own website with those of other Facebook agencies. If I was really honest with myself, my website looked almost the same as all the others on the market: "We are the best and your success is our priority", plus a few witty marketing slogans here and there. That's how you could summarize the content of most agency websites. However, hardly anyone really contacted me via my website back then. Most customers came via recommendations and contacts. 

My mentor told me at the time: "Stop fishing in the blood-red sea full of sharks! It's much harder to catch fish there than if you just choose a small pond or part of the sea." In other words: I should look for a positioning where there isn't so much competition. 

To anticipate any objections: No, it doesn't have to be an industry. That's often a bit superficial. And no, it doesn't limit you in terms of customer acquisition. The customers who come via recommendations will continue to come! And last but not least: No, you don't have to choose a positioning that is 'final' and unchangeable. Take a target group now, learn something about it, work with it and change it. This is a dynamic process, not a static one.

More on these three points below. Why am I writing about this, even though it's supposed to be about acquisition? Because that was exactly the reason why acquisition didn't work for me the whole time. 

If you find a good positioning, then you can easily decide where you should be on the Internet to attract your customers and how you should address them so that they become aware of you. 

In order to provide you with a guide to "organic customer acquisition", we need a clear positioning. 

Organic marketing: the right target group

So how do you find your positioning now? How pointed or broad should it be? And how do you go about it? And when do you realize that you have found a good positioning? We could write several blog articles on these questions alone and it would still be a closed book for many people.

So here it is in a nutshell: What has worked very well for me (and later for my customers) is conducting interviews to find out the challenges and problems. As providers, we too often ask ourselves "Who could buy my service?" instead of asking the question "What do my customers want to achieve in their lives and what is preventing them from doing so?"

Maybe you think you already know the answer. In that case, I can only say one thing: then do the interviews all the more! They will bring you many new insights.

Basically, you can say that finding a position is a long process that you shouldn't just do for five minutes after work. It involves many steps. But to make it as practical and simple as possible, here's some simple advice: sit down in interviews with different people who you might be able to help solve their challenges. Then work out patterns, similarities and differences to form an initial idea for your target group.

Through this process, for example, one of our customers discovered that restaurants are currently losing sales and having to pay high fees to Lieferando and the like. The solution to this (i.e. their service) was the integration of their own ordering system on the restaurant website (i.e. no more fees for the owner) and the placement of Facebook advertising for the restaurant (i.e. increased sales and awareness). 

The offer sells like hot cakes because it solves a problem and you don't have to share the market with thousands of other providers who also offer "websites" or "Facebook advertising". These are not bad services in general, but they are always in competition with other agencies in terms of price. 

Three final notes on positioning:

• You can change it at any time. It is better to choose a positioning now and test how it is received in practice instead of thinking about it in a quiet room. You don't have to marry your positioning.
  
• It doesn't have to be an industry. Don't just copy what other agencies have for target groups. I can tell you from working with over 350 agencies that the positioning of most companies was too general or flat. SMEs or tax consultants are not a positioning, but an industry. Go deeper, find out what bothers people and develop something "unique" in that form.
  
• Positioning describes a process and is therefore not static. That summarizes the first two points well, in my opinion. For your customers, your positioning describes the transformation they are going through. And for you, it's an ongoing process and not something you do once and then tick off. There is no point at which the positioning is "finished". 

Organic marketing: the right platforms

Now that we have defined the target group, we can easily decide which platforms make sense. Because we can simply be where our target group is. Before the positioning process, most agencies have "SMEs" or "anyone who gets in touch" as their target group and are therefore also "on all possible platforms" without having a clear plan of how to reach new customers there. We have "solved" this problem with positioning.

Important here: Don't just limit your thinking to which social media channels you can use yourself, i.e. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., but also which platforms others have already set up and where your target group is located. In other words, blogs, podcasts or YouTube channels that your target group consumes, but where the operator of this platform does not have the same offering as you. 

Example: You do a joint webinar with Shopify on the topic of conversion optimization. This is how a CRO agency that we support did it and was very successful with this approach, as many Shopify customers want to optimize their online store. 

Internally, we call such strategic partners "target group ownership partners". Many people immediately ask themselves how much they have to pay for this. The answer is: nothing at all. It's about building a relationship with the target group ownership partner and then moving each other forward. 

So ask yourself: Which one or two social media channels can I set up myself in order to reach my target group there? And which one or two target group owner partners have a reach in my target group but a different offering and are open to collaboration?

Organic marketing: the wrong platforms

In addition to the things you should definitely do for customer acquisition, there are also many things you should definitely avoid. For example, having your own YouTube channel if you don't yet have any ads running for you and generally don't get much time for acquisition alongside your agency business. 

YouTube - just like podcasts - is great for building trust. But it should also be pursued over the long term. And especially if you only have a little time in addition to customer projects, you should focus on activities that have a direct impact on sales. 

In the best case scenario, you have a social media network (or a maximum of two) that you actively use - how exactly - and a handful of target group owners. 

Running your own blog, building a relevant YouTube channel or making a podcast that is really successful not only involves a lot of effort, but also high opportunity costs. This means you may have less time to build a good team culture, attract new customers or deliver good results for your clients. In-house marketing is good and important, but putting "too much" time into it automatically means "too little" time for projects or your own team.

For our clients, the benchmark is: YouTube, podcast and your own blog can be run if you generate at least €100,000 in revenue per month for a few months at a time and have ads running for yourself. The profit margin should be around 50 percent or more. Before that, it's more of a distraction than a profit. Just like you can easily get bogged down if you're constantly on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, going live and writing to people. 

So it's better to choose one platform and do it really well! 

Possibilities of addressing

So now that you've found your social media platforms, the only question left is how to use them to get quality inquiries "at the touch of a button". 

There are also several options and many things you should never do. Let's start with the "no gos": 

• Spamming people: Offering to speak directly to every contact in your network and sending links to webinars etc. is unlikely to go down well with the other person and will damage your reputation throughout the industry. 
• Use bots: There are "robots" that send networking requests for you or even send initial messages or perform automatic follow-ups. Not only does the platform quickly notice this and possibly even ban your profile, but individuality is also lost. Which brings us back to the first point and makes us look like a spammer. 
• Posting boring content: There are countless opinions on the subject of content and the question "What should I actually post?". Mine is: If you have nothing to say, then don't post anything. Basically, as an expert in your own field, you have a lot to say, most people just don't think of it because they have built up subconscious competence. 
• Sending voice messages: This also falls into the category of "spam." Very few professional contacts on LinkedIn will be happy to receive a voice message in which you tell them what you do and how you can help them.

Now that we've discussed the no-gos, let's look at the other side and consider how you can acquire new customers on your chosen social media platform in an authentic and effective way. Because this organic marketing workflow for customer acquisition has proven to be effective for us.

1. add people from your target group to the network

On LinkedIn, this works very well via the search, on Facebook via Facebook groups. Our experience has shown that it is more effective not to include a networking message in the request. Because no matter what you write, it will always come across as if you want to sell something to the other person. And nobody wants that. Even if you write that you "just want to network." 

I won't mention Xing at this point because it has proven to be less effective across the board. Platforms such as Clubhouse or TikTok do not yet offer the possibilities for our project either. 

When adding the target group on LinkedIn, always select the "2nd degree of contact", not the third, as you will only add people with whom you have contacts. Once this is done - we set aside around 15 to 30 minutes a day for this internally - we move on to the next step. 

2. post relevant content

It is important to note that your content should be entertaining, informative or provocative. It should stimulate discussion, tell exciting stories or dispel the beliefs of your potential customers. 

To get some inspiration, I can recommend these three people on Linkedin. Have a look at their postings: 

• Moritz Neuhaus
• Nico Kusterer
• Samuel Hess 

3. responding to inquiries and making contact 

The third and final step is responding to inbound inquiries or proactively writing to contacts. Responding to inquiries is pretty easy, so we won't go into it here. A tip in passing: If your positioning is really good, it will appeal to the target group so well that they will build up interest just from your profile. A good example of this is Robin Schmidt, one of our clients. He regularly receives numerous inbound inquiries and was able to build up his consultancy relatively quickly.

But how exactly do you do it if your positioning is not yet so good that you receive inbound inquiries? This is difficult to answer in general terms, because I would not work with "templates", i.e. send the same message to every contact.

We have found that a good conversation opener is sincere praise that refers to the other person's experiences, customers or projects. And then the equally serious question about which customers their offer is focused on because it is not clear from the profile.

An example message would be:

"Hey Peter, thanks for accepting my request! It's exciting that you once did the design for Loewe, it was certainly a cool time.
The only thing I couldn't make out from your profile & website was which target group you are now focusing on?

The address is "quite general".
Looking forward to a professional exchange

First name Last name"

And we have already started an exciting conversation. Our typical response is that the other party does not have a target group and therefore does not have a good acquisition program. This is then the door opener to give the contact a few valuable ideas and build trust in a free initial meeting.

Then we have a warmed-up lead, which we invite to a sales meeting as soon as there is interest in our service. Of course, this is just one example, your "chat flow" can look completely different and that's totally okay. As long as it remains personal, personable and honest, everything is fine.

As a rule, the routine should "cost" 30 to 60 minutes a day and generate 1 to 5 new prospects - depending on how "well" you know your target group, what content you post and how you write with the contacts.

The procedure is similar with target group ownership partners, except that you directly state your idea of a joint interview or blog post in the first email or message on social media and ask them what they think of it. You can watch an example of a joint interview with me and a target group owner partner in this YouTube video. Pascal offers a form tool for WordPress, so he also has agencies as a target group.

And yes, that's the organic marketing routine to win lots of inquiries and customers every month with ease. This works extremely well for our clients. There are many things to consider and I'm sure you also have questions about individual subtopics. I invite you to write exactly what you want to know in the comments and we'll be happy to answer them.

Optimization of the procedure

Now it's time to find your own way. Your style for relevant content and your own "chat flow" - in other words, the way in which you turn contacts into prospective customers who want to buy from you.

Important tips for successfully pursuing this approach in the long term:

• Regularity: Even when the store is busy. Otherwise it's exactly as described at the beginning. Sometimes you have too few orders and sometimes too many. You can keep the balance by doing a little something every day. Even if it's only 10 minutes and you answer your messages, that's still better than doing nothing at all. 
• Don't give up too soon: Just because it doesn't work the way you imagined at the beginning doesn't mean that it doesn't GENERALLY work. Take a look at the individual adjustments and optimize them bit by bit.

I hope this post has provided some clarity on how you can use social media to attract your ideal customers with the help of organic marketing.