If you have experience as a digital marketer, you’ve likely thought about starting a digital marketing agency. And for the most part, it’s not hard to do. You can establish a brand, build a website, and attract clients to your business for just a few thousand dollars. You can even start turning a profit early on since you’ll benefit from low overhead and decent profit margins.
But if you want this business to sustain you, or if you dream of getting wealthy from this enterprise, a handful of clients won’t be enough to achieve your goals. Instead, you’ll need to turn your attention to growing your digital marketing agency, ultimately increasing your footprint, growing your client base, and contending with the major competitors in this space.
What’s the best way to do it?
Step One: Take Inventory
There are many different directions you can take to grow your digital marketing agency, but the first step will always be the same: take inventory. Take a critical look at how your marketing agency has been performing and what’s been holding it back. What are your critical strengths and weaknesses? What have your clients been saying about you? What’s stopping you from having more clients?
The better you understand your agency’s unique position, and the obstacles preventing you from being more, the better you’ll be able to tackle the challenges that stand in your way.
Step Two: Build Meaningful Partnerships
As you begin to anticipate agency growth, it’s important to build meaningful partnerships with other marketing agencies. For example, you could work with a white label link building agency. This way, you can tap into the power of other agencies, serving more clients more easily and making additional money in the process.
This arrangement benefits you in several ways. You’ll find new ways to make money, you’ll be able to serve more clients simultaneously, you’ll get access to more prominent experts, and you’ll bear less risk and fewer overhead expenses in the process.
However, to be successful, you’ll need to prioritize:
- Capability expansion. Every partner you add to your network should expand your capabilities in some way. That could mean offering a service you couldn’t offer before, providing more experience and expertise, or simply giving you more manpower so you can serve more clients at once.
- Flexibility and adaptability. It’s also important to choose partners who are flexible and adaptable. Whether you’re going through a tough dry spell or a sudden, unexpected surge in new clients, they should be able to support you. Flexible pricing plans are also a must.
- Communication and understanding. You’ll be working directly with these partners to better serve your clients, so communication and mutual understanding are non-negotiable. You need to trust that each partner is going to help you serve your clients better – and have faith that you can resolve conflicts with this partner expediently.
- Cost efficiency. Of course, you’ll also need to think about cost efficiency. In most white label situations, you’ll capitalize on a reasonable profit margin on all the services you sell to your clients – but are you making enough to compensate for your administrative work?
- Long-term reliability. Ideally, you’ll select partners that will be able to grow with your agency over time – rather than optimizing for short-term arrangements that help you solve immediate problems alone.
Step Three: Grow Your Client Base
Once you have better partnerships in place, you’ll be in a position to grow your client base further.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Invest in yourself. You’re a marketing agency, so you should have the expertise necessary to promote your own business. Think of it as “practicing what you preach.” Don’t be afraid to invest money in your own business in the form of enterprise level SEO (search engine optimization), PPC advertising, social media marketing, and other avenues of promotion.
- Ask for referrals. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals directly, especially if you’re a new and growing business. If your clients are happy with your work, they’ll be ecstatic to send more clients your way.
- Specialize in at least one niche. If you’re struggling to stand out, or if you don’t have much of a budget to work with, make sure your agency specializes in at least one niche. It’s an easy way to build more relevance and rapport with a target audience – and filter out competitors at the same time.
With a steady stream of new clients, a network of authoritative partners to help you serve them, and a reputation that continues to grow, your digital marketing agency will have all the momentum it needs to keep growing for years to come. Just be prepared to make further adjustments as you adapt your business to these new circumstances.
