- As a digital marketing agency owner,
I know all about the pains and frustrations
of wanting to grow your agency
but just not knowing the best way to do it,
which is why in this video,
I want to cover my top seven strategies
that I've used over the years to massively grow
my revenue, my profit, my customer base
and build the agency of my dreams
so you can do the same.
Alright, let's get to it.
(lively music)
Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart,
modern marketing strategist,
and welcome to The Modern Marketing Show
where we help you make marketing that matters.
So, if you're interested in learning
about the latest and greatest marketing strategies,
tools, tips, tricks, and tactics,
well, you may want to consider subscribing
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Alright, so, if you're here now,
it's because you want to grow your digital marketing agency
which I first have to commend you on
because wanting to grow your agency is a very noble pursuit.
The more you grow,
the more people you're going to be able to serve,
and the more people you serve well,
the more they're going to be able to serve in turn.
And thus, we fuel the business,
we fuel capitalism,
and we make the world a better place.
Now before we dive into the tips,
real quick on my history just so you know who I am
and why I'm qualified to talk about this,
I've had a digital marketing agency for years,
I started way back in the day by offering things
like web design and social media.
Over the years,
that evolved into SEO and a lot of search engine marketing
and then that evolved even further to where we are now
which really focuses on online advertising
like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube ads,
and Google ads.
And that essentially is where we're at now.
Now, when I first started the business years ago
it was a very, very sketchy start,
as I'm sure you can remember
when you first started your agency.
In fact, for the first few months,
I was making almost no revenue
and it was only when I put my foot in the ground?
Flag in the ground?
Foot in the sand?
Drew a line in the sand? Whatever.
It was only when I drew a line in the sand
and said this is the point where I'm going to make it
or I'm essentially going to quit, give up,
and go back and get a job again,
well that's when things really took off
because I was willing to do the things
that I'd been previously unwilling to do
and that's really what we're really gonna be focusing
on here is essentially leveraging the things
that most of your competitors aren't willing to do,
which is gonna give you a leg up
and allow you to really just blast them out of the water.
So with that said,
this first tip is gonna sound a little counterintuitive.
After all, if your goal is to grow and scale your agency,
why would you want to do the unscalable?
Well, essentially the unscalable things are often the ones
that have the most traction,
especially when you're trying to grow
and really hit that next level.
After all, there's no substitute
for face to face conversation.
Now, this is a mistake that I made a few years ago.
As my agency started to explode,
I started to move further and further away
from those personal relationships
and those face to face conversations.
In turn, the business kind of ended up plateauing,
and it was only when I started to recommit myself
as the agency owner to doing those unscalable things
like meeting clients in person, following up,
doing a lot of really personal interaction.
Well, that's when things took off again
because my clients started to really understand
that I truly, genuinely cared about them
and about their success and I was willing to do the things
that others were not.
This next tip, I'm sure you've heard before,
but it's the 80/20 rule or Pareto principle,
and we need to apply the 80/20 principle
to your entire business.
Now, if you're not familiar with the Pareto principle,
really quick, it essentially states that 80%
of your results are gonna come from 20% of your efforts.
And again, 80% of your revenue,
probably gonna come from around 20% of your clients.
If you offer multiple services,
80% of those are gonna account for only 20% of your revenue
and 20% of those services are gonna account
for 80% of your overall revenue.
So, again, looking at things holistically,
when you map everything out,
let's say you're offering five different services,
odds are pretty good it's gonna be one or two
that are providing the most bang for your buck.
Again, when you line out all of your clients,
it's probably going to be those top 20%, top 30%,
that are going to account for most of your revenue.
So what does this mean?
Well, when you look at all these things,
it's going to allow you to identify those services
that are actually profitable
and really driving your business forward
and the ones that you can probably let go of.
Same things with your clients.
When you really look at them,
it's going to allow you to pinpoint the ones
that are providing the most revenue,
so you can not only do a better job for them,
but you can find the traits that are similar
between them all and go out
and get more clients just like them.
This next tip is one I've fallen victim to
countless times before
and essentially what you want to do here
is give them what they want, not what you want.
Even though you are the digital marketing expert,
you know the business inside and out,
you know what's probably best for them,
they may come to you looking for something
completely different.
Now, it is obviously going to be wise
and ethical and honorable and authentic
to end up giving them what they need in the end,
but at the beginning,
if they say they need just social media management,
you're best to approach that conversation and the client
that way and then pitch them on the other things
that they really should be doing after that.
So, it's really hard to sell someone something
that they don't want or don't think they need.
It's a lot easier to give them what they want
and then convince them afterwards by showing them
what you've done for them but how it could be so much better
and really that's the way that you want
to approach this direction.
When it comes to running a digital marketing agency,
there's a number of different things that go into it.
There's obviously the sales, there's the marketing,
there's the fulfillment or the operations
of the client work,
there's the finance side,
and then there's all of the other areas that go into it
like the mindset and the team building
and the leadership and the management,
all that other stuff.
Well, you as the digital marketing agency owner,
you've got a very unique skillset
and essentially you want to stay operating
in your zone of genius.
Maybe this is actually doing fulfillment for clients
or maybe it's getting on the phone and signing up clients
or maybe it's just designing all the marketing
behind the scenes and letting someone else
handle the sales and operations of the business.
Whatever it is, the better that you're able to identify
and really articulate what you do best,
the better you're gonna be able to get everything else
off your plate which means you're gonna have less stress,
you're gonna have more time,
and your client results are gonna skyrocket
because you're gonna be doing what you're doing best
and other people are going to be able to focus
on doing what they do best.
Win-win, all around.
The next tip that we have to cover if you want
to grow your digital marketing agency is that
you do in fact need to niche down.
I know you've heard this before,
so before you skip the video and completely write it off,
there is some merit to this,
but I want to put in a few caveats.
I know you've heard that you need to niche down
and niche down again and niche down again.
Well, this can in fact work
and if you're just getting started, it's great advice,
but as you scale up, it's harder and harder to do
because eventually you're going to run out of market cap
of a super micro niche,
so you're gonna need to expand a little more.
So what does this mean?
Well, when it comes to going out there
and acquiring new clients,
you do want to be niche-specific but there's no reason
that you can't target multiple niches at a time
or subsequently or one after another or whatever it is.
When I'm talking about niches,
I'm talking about not only the industry of, say, dentists,
or chiropractors, or legal firms,
or financial investment advisors or whatever it is,
but also the services that you offer,
whether it's web design or SEO or online ads
or whatever it is.
Essentially, you can choose either the industry
or the service that you're offering
and really focus on that for the time being.
Once you've built that up to the level that you want,
then you can move on to the next one.
So, yes, you do need to niche down,
but you are able to have multiple different niches
that you're targeting with multiple different
marketing campaigns in your own business.
The next tip is one of my absolute favorites
and is largely responsible for massive growth
in the very early years of my business
and this is the willingness to outspend your competition.
So what do I mean by that?
Well, if you're operating in say, a local area,
all you have to do is take a look at
what other local advertising agencies or marketing agencies
are doing in your area, and then do more of that.
Fortunately, in most cases,
it's not too hard to run a few more Facebook ads
or allocate a few more dollars towards your SEO
or put out a little more content than the competition.
All you really need to do is continue to outspend them
and eventually, over time, that gap becomes so large
that they really will never be able to catch you
and never be able to take over the market share
that you've established.
Now, the easiest way to kind of ease your way into this
is really to start small and just allocate an extra five
or 10% of your revenue to your internal marketing budget.
Over time, as your revenue grows,
that budget is going to grow along with it
and it becomes a lot easier to essentially
take over the market with content and value and more ads
and staying top of mind among your target market.
You know, basically all the things you're trying to do
for your clients.
Alright, so this final tip should come as no surprise,
but if you want to grow your agency,
you're going to need to get more clients.
Fortunately, I've got a video I'll link up
right down below here you'll want to check out
which is all about how to get more clients.
Alright so thanks so much for watching,
and I hope you enjoyed the episode.
Make sure you check out that video down below
on how to get more clients.
If you enjoyed the video,
make sure to give it a thumbs up,
subscribe to the channel,
and say hello in the comments section below.
Alright so thanks so much for watching
and I'll catch you next time on The Modern Marketing Show.