Here’s the truth: Starting a digital agency is easy, but running it and turning it into a successful digital marketing agency is tough, and ensuring its continued growth is even tougher! That’s why it is crucial to carefully focus on strategies to boost the growth of your digital marketing agency in the 2020s. But don’t worry, we’re here to prepare you for your growth journey.
As digital ad spending is huge and is estimated to reach $600 billion in 2023, starting your own digital marketing agency sounds like a real winner, but without the right strategies and steps, it may be a bumpy ride and nothing more.
So, there’s a lot to worry about in hiring, accounting, optimizing accounts, marketing, automation, and, most importantly, getting results for clients. While achieving significant results for clients can potentially lead to new business opportunities, it’s not always guaranteed. That’s why we’ve gathered the top tips to tackle the million-dollar question: “How can you grow and promote a digital marketing agency?”
Let’s learn and explore together!
If you’re ready to adapt to these changes and drive massive growth for your agency, grow your brand, generate qualified leads, close more deals, and increase revenue, you can use these 16 tips from industry experts to grow and scale:
How to Promote a Digital Marketing Agency
If you’re ready to adapt to these changes and drive massive growth for your agency, generate qualified leads, close more deals, and increase revenue, you can use these tips from industry experts to grow and scale:
Increase Your Web Presence with Online Directories
One of the most overlooked strategies is to get on as many online directories as you can. Without doing anything more, potential clients can find you in online directories, which can be more cost-effective than ads.
There are a few routes to take. Of course, you want to be on general, widespread directories like Google and Yelp to start.
It’s best to focus on industry-specific online directories like marketing agency directories.
For example, most visitors come to the Digital Agency Network, while searching for the best digital agencies. So if you become one of these agencies, your chances of being found online will increase.
Use a Lead Magnet for Your Agency
Your agency needs a lead magnet, such as an eBook, cheat sheet, template, white paper, tool, and so on, to initiate a prospect’s journey.
Since the vast majority of your site users will not convert to leads unless you give them a reason to, it’s important to create a lead magnet and use it well. We suggest you use any valuable lead magnet to capture their business contact information, and then start the nurturing process until they’re ready to commit to your agency.
Develop Case Studies from Your Successful Clients
Creating case studies from your successful clients is a total goldmine for growing your digital marketing agency. Don’t just stop getting pumped about the results you’ve achieved for them.
Client case studies are like secret weapons on your website! Make a dedicated page to show off all those success stories and rave customer testimonials, as they can serve as a powerful tool for highlighting your agency’s capabilities.
For instance, The Charles, renowned as one of the top digital marketing agencies in the US, showcases its portfolio of past work to help prospective clients envision themselves as successful partners with The Charles. By putting themselves in the shoes of previous clients and empathizing with their achievements, potential clients can get a sense of the agency’s capabilities.
Let’s take a look at The Charles’ website, which is dedicated to highlighting their previous successful projects:
Become Your Own Client and Market Your Marketing Agency
This growth strategy might seem counter-intuitive, but it’s powerful if you do it the right way. Clients know that the best way to measure your expertise is through your results. It’s not according to your promises.
When you become your own client, it means you’re decisive and ready to get results for yourself. You’ll also be able to promote your business, just as you would if another business hired you.
Truth be told, you can use the results you got (maybe a ranking boost in organic search for your agency website) as proof to win over new clients. Case closed.
Neil Patel, for example, helps businesses with content marketing. Interestingly, he uses content marketing to build his brand online.
Simplify Your Project Management Processes
When your project management processes are shared with your agency, they want to know how simple your processes are.
If it’s complex and daunting, they’ll be disappointed because they’ll assume you won’t drive growth for their business.
We suggest you make sure your templates, reports, strategy, tools, and team are relatable. Clients already have a challenge with their business; that’s why they come to you. Don’t complicate it.
Rank Your Target Keywords
This is important if your digital marketing agency is focusing on SEO. How do you convince businesses that your agency is able to improve their search rankings on Google?
It’s done by showing where your agency ranks in the organic search results.
Even if you can’t rank for “digital marketing agency” because it’s competitive, try and rank a less-competitive term like “digital marketing company New York.”
Attend Virtual Events
With the digital transformation in the last few years, there are many different approaches to working and finding new clients. As we’ve already noticed, virtual events are on the rise to help marketers and agencies.
Before the pandemic, the physical location of the digital agencies was very important to the companies and brands. But in today’s post-pandemic world, companies are more open to working with digital agencies from abroad.
The only thing they need is to believe in the related sector experience the agencies have, so it’s clear that virtual events are now more important than ever.
By attending virtual events, your agency can gain many advantages. For instance, you can help improve your employee’s skills while at the same time significantly reducing agency expenses. Also, virtual events are much more affordable than location-based events, and they can help you expand your network and save a lot of time.
Collaborate and Leverage Influencers
An agency doesn’t succeed in isolation. Your digital marketing agency needs to collaborate with other agencies and influencers in your industry. But how?
Host Facebook live sessions and invite an influencer or influencers to share their expert tips. They’ll love it. Webinars are also powerful.
If you have an affiliate program, then invite influencers to promote your offers to their audience. Contribute helpful guest posts to industry blogs to reach their audience.
How to Grow a Digital Marketing Agency
Growing your business to stand out among the best digital marketing agencies requires hard work and focus on the key steps. But how can you achieve that?
Here’s the answer:
Have a Flexible Pricing Model
As an agency, avoid setting your pricing in stone. Instead, make it flexible to ensure you can offer the right value for your services, as that is what ultimately matters.
If you don’t have a flexible pricing model, you’ll either charge less or go over the top with your charges. Either way, you’ll be leaving a lot on the table. You can check out our digital marketing agency pricing guide here.
When you interact with new clients, get to know their needs, expectations, and budget (if any). Then present different pricing packages that will suit them. Let them make the choice.
Build a Repeatable & Scalable Process
You need to have a process behind everything you do as an agency. Set specific policies and procedures for scaling. These should serve as your framework for deliverables.
You can use templates or tools to automate your reporting process and get help from this list of the best tools for digital agencies.
And, if you streamline appointments and other bookings with tools like Calendly, you can save time by avoiding the need to arrange them through email. Remember, time is money.
Work with the Right Team for a Digital Marketing Agency’s Growth
Successful agencies don’t make the mistake of handling every aspect of their service. In fact, they outsource a lot of work to freelancers in addition to hiring the right team in-house.
With so many tasks that need to be executed each day, don’t try to carry the burden alone. If you get too busy with fulfillment, you can’t grow your digital agency.
Additionally, you can outsource and delegate tasks that are not in your area of expertise. From keyword research to link building to social media management, you can find the right people to handle it.
Streamline Your Onboarding Process
The thin line that separates an agency that generates consistent leads from another that struggles may be the onboarding process. Is yours seamless?
Process St uses a simple 3-step onboarding process for employees. But you can use a similar approach for new clients.
If your onboarding process is complex, you’ll send a negative message to potential clients that your solutions will be the same. A simple and effective onboarding process is your first step in retaining the client. If you mess it up, clients will switch to your competitors. One effective way to streamline it is by having fewer (not more than two) form fields on the lead capture page.
All you’ll ever need to contact a client is their business name, first name, and email address. Any other information will be provided once they’re in your marketing funnel.
Master Upselling and Cross-Selling to Maximize Your Profit
Finding a new client for your digital marketing agency should be your main objective; that’s how you’ll guarantee your business’ consistent growth in the future.
Hence, it’s important to upsell to clients who are already familiar with your brand. You don’t want the clients to leave after a one-off project experience.
You’d open new revenue streams if you upsold your clients the right way. No, don’t be pushy or desperate, but recommend complementary offers that provide additional value.
Source: TapClicks
For instance, if you’re a Google Ads PPC agency and that’s exactly why the client came, you could upsell a Facebook Ads solution to help your client maximize their reach on both platforms.
The same rule applies when cross-selling to clients. Always offer additional value at a fraction of the cost, if clients were to buy it individually or from other agencies.
Offer Live Video Packages
No matter your area of specialization, make sure your agency is using video to enhance clients’ experiences. Aside from providing relevant information, videos can captivate your audience and tell your stories better.
In a poll conducted by Livestream and New York Magazine, 80% of the users surveyed preferred to watch a brand’s video instead of reading a blog post, while 54% would rather see video content from a brand they support.
And the average hours of online video watched per week have been increasing drastically:
Source: Hubspot
This is why you should offer video packages with your solutions. If you’re a PPC agency, then you can incorporate videos into your campaign packages to generate more interest and engagement.
Optimize Your Agency Website
Your digital marketing agency’s website is your online billboard. That’s what defines your identity and what your agency stands for. Unfortunately, a lot of digital marketing companies don’t invest in their web design.
That’s an opportunity for you. Start by strengthening your website’s design, as well as on-page and off-page SEO.
In other words, make sure your website structure is properly laid out, create useful content, interlink relevant pages on your site, and get out there to network with other websites.
This will result in high-quality links to your website. Don’t be overly concerned about improving your client’s business and neglect your own website.
If anything, your agency website should be irresistible, ideal, and valuable to your clients even before they sign the contract.
Focus on a Specific Market
Specialization is the key to growing your digital marketing agency in this competitive marketing environment. Don’t try to do everything or solve every need that your client presents.
Your digital marketing agency’s growth would be stunted because you’re spreading your tentacles so wide. If a prospective client lands on your website today, what will they know about your agency?
Are you a full-service or specialized agency?
Both models work. But it’s a lot harder to break even when you’re handling every aspect of digital marketing. Specialization could be the missing piece in your success puzzle. It can be about your services or your digital marketing niche, which you are focusing on.
In a survey, over 32% of respondents identified themselves as “full-service” or “digital marketing” agencies.
On the flip side, the same survey shows that effective and successful agencies are always focused on one vertical.
They don’t like to serve clients with half-baked strategies. If they’re known for offering one service, you can bet they’re SO good at it.
Let’s take a closer look:
● Content Marketing Up focuses on content creation,
● Hanapin Marketing focuses on PPC,
● SingleGrain focuses on startup growth,
● ShoeString Videos focuses on video marketing.
The ultimate goal of your agency is to laser-focus on a specific market, then go all out to serve businesses in that market.
Benefit from the Best Tools for a Digital Marketing Agency’s Growth
A marketing agency can provide many digital tools to its customers. When you want to work with an SEO agency in New York, they should own the most popular SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Majestic.
Especially a small business can’t afford to get many digital marketing tools to improve their business. You can promote yourself with the tools you use and how the client can benefit from them.
There you have it, the 16 effective tips to help take your digital marketing agency to the next level. You need to be a master at marketing a digital agency for steady growth.
Bear in mind, though, that growth doesn’t happen overnight. So, it takes time to market and grow your digital marketing agency.
Keep it up, and always strive to understand your target audience better. Because, at the end of the day, that’s where every marketing tactic begins.
