Towards the end of 2018, I posted in a Software’s Facebook group a little bored and lost, looking for a new direction for with my career. After a 3 years of focused determination, technology, and automation, I had successfully freed my time from my landscaping company, 855RILAWNS, and was looking for the next “thing” to pursue where I could do something I love. I knew my strengths were technology, marketing, and system-building, but I didn’t know where to go from there.
From that Facebook post, a few people reached out to me looking for help with service software called Service Autopilot, which is an advanced CRM/marketing platform for service based businesses that I use to run my landscaping company. I was excited for this new project! One thing lead to another and I became a Certified Advisor with Service Autopilot on December 18th which opened the doors to my next venture, Ready Business Systems.
Since last September, Ready Business Systems has been my priority, building a website, marketing, preparing content for the marketplace, as well as building a team. I forgot how much work it is to start a business! I am proud to have built a team to help push Ready Business Systems forward, as well as generated 200 leads and 20,000 in sales in 2019.
Given my experience in running a business, I am going to tell you exactly how I got started with my new business venture:
1) The first thing I did was create a website. I know the website would be my funnel to market and capture leads. I spent time picking a domain, which is what I also used to come up with a company name.
2) Next, I had to have a logo made. I went on Fiverr and got my logo made for about $200.
3) I hired an SEO company. I knew I needed to start building traffic to my website, as this would be a long process to start seeing results so I started it early for $199/month for their basic package.
4) I set up a CRM to run the business from. I used Service Autopilot to set up as the CRM for this as well, as I was very familiar with it. I built all the automations from within this software which would automate the processing of the leads as they came into the system. Depending on which service they were interested in on the contact form, it would then perform a series of processes. If they didn’t buy anything, it would send them down a marketing funnel of different advertisements I had put together in the form of emails, text messages, letters, and automated voicemails.
5) At the same time I marketed the website, I put up an ad on Indeed for help. Although I didn’t need help at the time, I wanted to be proactive and generate leads so when I did need help, I already had people in my back pocket. This ad led to finding my first business partner, Rob, who now does most of the production while I focus on continued marketing efforts.
6) I created ads on Adroll, which is a social re-marketing platform. As I drove traffic to my website, visitors would get cookies on their devices which would them display ads to them on Facebook and Instagram. My most successful campaign costs me about $5 per lead and it gives away a free pricing worksheet, which is simply an excel spreadsheet which helps company owners price their services. In exchange for name, email, and phone number, we let people download this spreadsheet for free. From here, they are now in our marketing funnel in hopes that they will purchase in the future.
7) I also created a YouTube channel and blog on the website, where I discuss various business topics and concepts, as well as make how to videos on how to use Service Autopilot. This also helps with the website SEO.
8) Lastly, I signed up for affiliate programs for different services I use, such as payroll and marketing platforms so I can also generate passive income through the traffic to my site and my YouTube videos. This has been successful so far and I have been awarded over $2000 in Amazon gift cards through the payroll service I affiliate with.
I have a ton more ideas in the works to generate more revenue and leads, but it has been a balance of producing enough work to have enough revenue to implement these marketing tactics. Rob and I are on a revenue split, and the portion I keep I put straight towards marketing. Through my indeed ad, I also met up with a well qualified local woman who is interested in making sales calls through our leads list to generate more work for a commission. She is a realtor so is used to working on commission. At the moment we are focused on creating webinars for training on the platform. Our first training webinar was a success with 10 attendees at $149/each. Our next venture is another training series, dropping the price to $49 and making the webinars shorter to see if this increases our sign ups.
I am also in the process of hiring a remote assistant through Upwork to help with some of the mundane tasks I perform, such as posting in the software’s Facebook group, friending the members as they join, and inviting them to like my Facebook page.
Once I have more capital, I intend to step up the marketing calls, letters, as well as market to new service companies throughout the nation by scraping information through public online listings. I will also run Adwords campaigns and optimize my YouTube channel.
I hope this information was helpful and you can use some of these ideas in your business start up venture!
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