Digital marketing is approaching nearly $400 billion as an industry, and it’s no surprise why. As the world goes digital, marketing strategies have to change. Every successful digital marketing agency grows stronger when they stay ahead of the curve.
Starting a marketing agency has never been more accessible and available before. In 2022, you’re going to make a marketing agency, and this is what you need to know before you get started.
Keys to Starting a Successful Digital Marketing Agency
These bits of advice are in no particular order. There’s a long list of boxes that you need to check off when you start a digital marketing agency. This advice will help make the process easier.
Never Bottleneck Your Website
Not having enough storage or bandwidth on your website can severely impact your new agency. You only have so much time to capture and maintain a prospective client’s attention.
Never waste a second. Get information directly in front of your site visitors without waiting. The best way to do this is to start with quality hosting that won’t bottleneck your site during high-volume traffic.
Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for prospects to turn from a visitor into a paying customer.
Don’t Stop Selling & Hunting for Prospects
In digital marketing, the landscape changes quickly. Never stop reaching out to prospects. Sell your services as if you had zero clients.
You’ll find that digital marketing has its seasons. You have your long-term consistent clients, and you’ll have peaks and valleys where your business is either booming or very still.
Don’t worry; it’s all part of the learning process. The key to keeping your business profitable is to reach out as often as possible without sacrificing service quality.
Walk the Walk, Never Talk the Talk
Nobody wants to hear what you can promise them. Over-committing is bad because even if you have proven results, every client and every case is different.
Maybe you can rank their website in as little as three months (it’s possible). Maybe it’ll take longer. Talk to them and manage their expectations instead of promising them the moon.
Ask them what they’re expecting, and downplay the results. You can never be sure when a Google algorithm change will impact ranking times and other aspects of your digital marketing services.
Traffic doesn’t come easy. Don’t sell your services like you’re the doorman to a flood of internet traffic.
Make it Flawlessly Easy for Your Clients
Your site, sales funnel, and overall service sign-up and onboarding should be as painless as possible for the client.
Look at it this way: they’re not in your industry. Unless you’re selling white label services, every prospect you reach out to is in another industry and likely doesn’t understand digital marketing the way you do.
Explain what the benefits are, what you can (reasonably) do for them, and create a simple sign-up process. It should be as few steps as necessary to begin service: pay attention to this.
Mobile First, Desktop Second
Everyone has access to the internet in their pocket these days. More than 90 percent of all people who access the internet use a mobile device, even if it doesn’t account for all of their internet usage.
Understand the difference between a landing page or service page on mobile versus a desktop website. If it’s attractive on desktop, but it’s hard to navigate or has walls of text on mobile, you’re alienating your potential clients.
This means you need a fast and responsive website to make sure it loads up in time, otherwise they may turn tail and go to the next offer on Google’s search results.
Don’t Stick to Text-Only Solutions
Video and visual media is absolutely essential to building a successful digital marketing agency in 2022. They dominate the landscape, and there’s so much that you can do with it.
It goes beyond YouTube videos. Offering graphic design as well as video production will be imperative to exponential growth for your marketing firm.
While you should practice every medium to offer more to your clients, the next bit of advice is something you should take to heart before you jump the gun.
Master One Medium First
Do you have expertise in blogging, or are you really keen with visual graphics? There are so many ways that a digital marketing agency can offer services.
For some, it’s PPC ads. For others, it’s video advertisements. Begin with your preferred medium and master it completely before you expand.
This shows your clients that you are dedicated. People trust specialists more than they trust generalists, so if you can specialize in video and offer additional services as add-ons, so be it.
Dominate One Niche, Then Expand
What niche is underserviced? What category has the most need right now? You have to ask yourself the hard questions.
Find one niche, find out how to market it, and run with it! You’ll find that when you can offer excellent service to a particular category of clients, your marketing agency will excel (remember, it’s an almost $400 billion-dollar pie; you don’t need every single slice).
Outsource to Freelancers
As you grow, you’re going to need help. Hiring employees is a very convoluted process, and while it will be necessary for certain roles in your digital marketing agency, you don’t have to hire in-house for grunt work.
Freelancers can write, edit, video edit, design graphics, manage content management systems, and even handle customer support. You just have to find the right people for the job.
Don’t put the entire burden on your in-house staff or on your own shoulders.
It Begins With a Home Online
No successful digital marketing agency can have a presence and sell services unless they practice what they preach. Create an online hub for your marketing firm right now by starting with a website and launching your career.
Choose from one of five plans for our WordPress managed hosting, and scale as you grow your client list and revenue. It’s never been easier for digital agencies to start selling their services.
