Starting and growing a freelance digital marketing agency from scratch can be tough but not impossible.
The process can be a little overwhelming; like any other business, you might face some challenges along the way.
But, if you are steadfast on the right path, there is nothing that can stop you from making it a reality.
In this comprehensive guide, you will know:
- What skills do you need to become a top-notch digital marketing service provider
- How to find your first client as a freelance digital marketing agency
- How to scale your business by building a team
Let’s get started by addressing a simple yet important question.
Is Freelance Digital Marketing Agency a Good Business?
Absolutely! Here is why:
Extremely High Demand: Every business needs to follow its target customers. And, there are more than 4.66 billion active internet users around the world.
This translates to 59.5 % of the total population of the planet.
Smart businesses around the world are starting to realize that they can’t grow without embracing this change.
You Can Kick-Start and Grow a Freelance Digital Marketing Agency Remotely: A major advantage of owning a freelance digital marketing company is that you can make it work from anywhere remotely.
As a freelance agency owner, you would be able to handle all the operations effectively using e-mail and Skype.
Plus, you don’t have to pay for a physical space either, which reduces your overall costs.
No Prior Experience Needed: Having prior experience in digital marketing can help a lot when you are trying to create a freelance digital marketing agency.
However, it’s not a must. There are numerous great learning resources on the internet that you can use to get started.
After you get the necessary digital marketing skills, create your own website and practice those skills on it before offering your services to clients.
Be Your Own Boss: Do you think that the 9 – 5 grind isn’t for you? Or, maybe you don’t want to be answerable to a grumpy boss?
If you said “Yes” to those questions, starting a freelance digital marketing agency is for you.
By doing that, you will only be answerable to yourself, set your own timings, and build your own team of freelancers.
It’s Scalable: Another great thing about starting a freelance digital marketing agency is that you can start from zero and grow it without bounds.
Initially, when you don’t have many resources, you can work on your tasks yourself. Then, as your client base grows, you can hire a team that can assist you to achieve more.
It’s a Low-Cost Initiative: To kick-start a freelance digital marketing agency, you don’t need to invest a lot either.
Just a few bucks for a professional website and subscriptions to a couple of tools will do.
Everything else can come into the picture later.
How to Start a Freelance Digital Marketing Agency
Now that you know starting a freelance digital marketing agency is completely worth it, let’s see how you can go about it.
Build Your Confidence and Skills
Of course, one of the first things you need to take care of is skill-building.
And, remember, skill development should never stop. And, as the digital landscape continues to evolve, you need to be a little flexible with your approach.
You can divide the skill development and confidence building part into three sub-parts:
- Digital marketing skills
- Management skills
- Self-confidence skills
Let’s take a deeper look into each one of these.
Digital Marketing Skills
This one is a no-brainer; you need to have the necessary technical skills to handle digital marketing tasks effectively.
Here is what you would need to learn (and be good at):
- What digital marketing actually is
- How it works
- How to use different digital marketing campaigns to achieve clients’ business objectives and goals
Digital marketing is a petty broad term and includes all the marketing channels and strategies that a marketer uses to promote a business online.
These include:
- Website marketing
- Search engine optimization
- Pay-per-click advertising
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Video marketing
- Content marketing
As you can see, there are a lot of components of digital marketing, but you don’t need to start learning all of them on day one.
Just start from somewhere, get good at it, and continue to expand your skillset.
That said, make sure that you have a good idea of the following as soon as possible:
- SEO
- PPC ads
- Facebook marketing
- Content marketing
- Email Marketing
You can (and you should) build a team of experts when your freelance digital marketing agency expands.
But, you won’t have that kind of resources to hire other freelancers at the beginning of the process. So, you should learn to implement the strategies yourself first.
After all, even to oversee a team of freelancers effectively, you would need to have good knowledge of these strategies.
You need to have hands-on experience with pretty much every digital marketing strategy to figure out the right ones for a business.
The right way to go about learning digital marketing is by going through the theory from the experts and practicing them as much as possible.
Here is an idea that can help you get started:
Buy a domain name and hosting, create a website, and practice your SEO and content marketing skills.
Then, as you get the hang of it, expand your practice into other areas like Facebook advertising and Email marketing.
It’s important to remember that digital marketing is a highly practical discipline. While studying the theory is crucial, it’s not enough at all.
You need to get your hands dirty with real practical experiences to get the necessary skills.
This way, you will also build a portfolio that you can showcase to the world and win your first client.
Management Skills
Since you want to kick-start a freelance digital marketing agency, there is more to learn than just technical skills.
You would need to manage different projects with multiple clients, which requires a special set of skills.
The nice thing is: You don’t need to have a business management degree; you can learn these skills on your own.
The business management skills you’d want to learn include:
- Project management
- Time management
- Contracts
- Billing and invoicing
Self-Confidence
Running and scaling an online business demands that you don’t hesitate to take risks. As an online entrepreneur, your growth depends on your ability to take risks.
And, you can’t take risks when you lack confidence.
The good thing is: Your confidence depends a lot on how skillful you are. So, building your skill set will help you get more confident.
You want to know the ins and outs of ranking a website on Google and using paid ads to attract customers for your clients.
Only then you’ll be able to move this new venture in the right direction.
This is why it’s important to have some experience under your belt. You can get that experience by practicing on your own website or working with another digital marketing agency.
But, initially, your focus shouldn’t be earning money; it should be to gain as much exposure and experience as possible.
Remember that there are a lot of digital marketing agencies out there. And, confidence is something that can help you stand out from the crowd.
The bottom line is: Equip yourself with the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience so that you can confidently grow your freelance digital marketing business.
Decide on The Services to Offer
A freelance digital marketing agency offers all kinds of services, including:
- SEO services
- Web design and development
- Pay-per-click ads
- Content marketing
- Conversion rate optimization
- Email marketing
But, as a startup, it wouldn’t be practical to offer everything under the sun.
So, start small and grow big; practice one skill that you think you are good at and become great at it.
For instance, if you are good at SEO, start with providing SEO services and when your client base grows, expand into other fields like pay-per-click ads.
Keep in mind that your focus at this stage should be to get better at one thing. Try offering everything and you will probably get lost in the process.
If you are still confused about where to get started, SEO and PPC ads are in pretty high demand right now.
Create a Plan About Operating Your Business
Next, you need to make a decision about the operations of your freelance digital marketing agency.
- Do you want to completely manage it remotely?
- Do you want an in-house team eventually?
- Or, maybe a mix of both?
Every option comes with its pros and cons, so weigh different aspects and see which one suits your start-up better.
For instance, if you intend to serve local clients only, establishing a physical office would be a good option.
But, if you don’t want any geographical boundaries, paying for an office won’t make sense and would add to your overall costs.
After all, one of the biggest advantages of running a freelance digital marketing agency is the flexibility it offers in terms of location.
Even if you want to work with a local team, collaborating with them remotely is never off the table.
That said, it all comes down to your preferences; you could run a successful freelance digital marketing agency from a dedicated home office.
All you need to make sure is that the internet connection is fast enough and stable.
Make Your Freelance Digital Marketing Agency Official
With everything else set up, it’s time to make your freelance digital marketing agency official.
Here is how you do that:
- Create a unique brandable name
- Register the domain name
- Create your logo
- Register your entity with relevant local authorities
- Create social profiles
Build Your Web Presence
Your next step should be to establish your new venture’s web presence. And, one of the first things you want to do is create a professional website.
Your agency website is the front door of your business. So, make sure that it represents your business in the right way.
Also, make sure it looks professional and offers all the information a prospective client would need to decide whether they want to work with you.
And, while it’s important to describe your business, you also want to list the benefits prospective clients would get.
Moreover, create a separate landing page for every digital marketing service and make it easy for your visitors to get in touch with you.
If they are not yet ready to invest in a digital marketing service, build your contacts list and nurture them over time.
Your goal here is to filter out the ones that have a higher chance of becoming your clients and focus on them.
Next, create your business pages on all social media platforms. Make sure to not miss any as it’s important for establishing your brand identity online.
Having a solid social media presence is important these days as many clients check out a business’s social accounts before getting in touch.
You can also build your credibility and authenticity by registering your business with websites like Crunchbase.
Present Your Skills and Experience
As a freelance digital marketing agency, one of the trickiest parts would be to convince prospective clients to trust you with their marketing budget.
The right way to go about it is by demonstrating how you can help their business move in the right direction.
The best way to do that is by showing your past work and expertise.
This can mean:
- A dedicated page on your site that tells your achievements
- Case studies
- Academic credentials
- Companies you’ve worked with
- Client testimonials
- Professional certifications
- And, maybe more
But, as a startup, you won’t probably have all of that under your belt, and that’s okay. Just make sure you make a to-do list and keep checking those boxes over time.
For instance, you could help a friend market their website and get a review for your services. Or, get a few certifications in relevant fields from reputable companies like HubSpot or Google.
Plus, work on your own website and showcase the results as a case study on your website.
Lastly, be honest about your credentials, certifications, experience, and expertise. Don’t use fake reviews just to attract clients; it’s not the right way to start a business relationship.
Get the Right Digital Marketing Tools
To grow your freelance digital marketing agency, you’ll eventually need to invest in a bunch of tools.
Depending on the services you will offer, you might need these tools for:
- Email automation
- Social media automation
- Invoicing and accounting
- Project management
- Report creation for clients
- And, more
But, of course, you only want to have the tools or features that you actually need.
It’s not uncommon for businesses to continue spending their marketing dollars on tools that aren’t helpful.
Some marketing tools come with a full package, which can be tempting (and costly), so choose carefully.
Here are some tools that you might need to help your clients as an agency:
- Ahrefs (SEO and content marketing)
- HubSpot (Sales and marketing)
- SEMRUSH (SEO and content marketing)
- Later (Social media marketing)
- Constant Contact (Email marketing)
Other helpful tools include:
Canva: To design social media graphics, presentations, infographics, logos, and more.
Grammarly: To make sure your content is free of grammatical and spelling mistakes.
And, who can afford to not use Google’s own free and effective online tools? These include:
- Google Keyword Planner (Keyword research)
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Google Docs
- Google Slides
- Google Forms
Here is something important: Get yourself familiar with the free tools first and then see if you need to invest in paid ones.
Only go for the ones that you need at that particular point in time; you can upgrade these tools as your freelance digital marketing agency grows.
Define Your Model
Next, you need to define how you want to charge your clients. There are essentially three business models in this industry.
- Per hour
- Per month
- Per project
Per hour: In a per hour model, as the name suggests, you charge someone based on an hourly rate.
The charges can vary from $30 to above $100 depending on the location of the client, type of services, and your experience.
Per month: The monthly subscription fee is most common in services that require consistent input from your side.
For instance, managing and growing social media account, running pay-per-click campaigns and taking care of a website’s SEO.
The per month model is generally the most profitable one.
Per Project: In a per-project business model, you create a one-time contract with a client for completing a job.
It can be tricky as you have to make a wholesome estimate of the charges of a project.
As a new freelance digital marketing agency, it’s a good idea to start with the hourly rate. You can then also include other business models as your agency grows.
Get Your First Client
You’ve set up your online presence, equipped yourself with the right skills, and decided on your business model.
Now would be the time to actually go for the hunt.
Getting your first client is one of the most overwhelming parts of starting an online business, but it doesn’t have to be.
Follow the guidelines below to make sure you land your first client quickly.
Start with Friends and Family
At the beginning of your journey, your friends and family can provide you with the push your business needs.
See if anyone from the people that are close to you has a business and could use your digital marketing services.
If you find someone with a business that you can help, reach out to them with a plan. Have a look at their website and social media accounts and find ways to help them attract more clients.
Create a detailed proposal outlining everything that you can help them with.
If they don’t have a solid online presence, you might have to make them realize that they are missing out on huge growth potential.
Tell them how their business can benefit from a professional SEO-friendly website, email marketing, and pay-per-click ads.
Make them realize that their business needs a solid social media presence for brand awareness and trust-building.
But, here is something to keep in mind: Your goal at this stage isn’t to make a lot of money. You need experience, portfolio, exposure, and positive client testimonials.
So, try to help them generate results that can help you win new and bigger clients in the future.
But, let’s say you don’t want to work for a friend or relative, or you couldn’t find anyone.
Create a Digital Marketing Blog
Blogging is arguably the best way to generate high-quality leads for a digital marketing agency.
It helps you attract the right kind of people organically to your website.
The best thing is: It’s a long-term strategy that brings in leads on autopilot.
Plus, it lets you address your target audience’s pain points and position yourself as an expert in your industry.
For instance, let’s say you create a blog post about how to leverage pay-per-click ads to generate more e-commerce sales.
Given that the piece of content provides great value, someone reading it won’t have a hard time believing that you can help them achieve exactly that.
So, you will be in a better position to convert that visitor into a lead and eventually into a long-term client.
But, you can only attract your dream clients when you target the right keywords in your blog posts.
Keyword research is arguably the most important part of blogging. Of course, high-quality content should be one of your top priorities, too.
Find the keywords that your future clients are searching for and produce exceptional content around them.
By approaching blogging the right way, you’ll be doing your freelance digital marketing agency a huge favor.
The bottom line is: While it might take some time to show results, blogging can be your main source of leads for years to come.
Build Your Portfolio
You start building your portfolio as soon as you sign your first client. Remember we talked about how you should charge lower than the market price initially?
Well, here is another benefit of doing that: You get to collect positive customer testimonials.
But, of course, you need to help them achieve their marketing goals in order to get great reviews.
Your portfolio and positive client testimonials are your tickets to better and bigger clients. So, don’t take them lightly.
The process can be a little time-consuming, so you need to be a little patient. Just focus on one client at a time and deliver your best work.
Create Your Processes
As your freelance digital marketing agency grows, you’ll start getting more work, which will make things hard for you to handle effectively.
At this point, you might need to consider working with other freelancers and building a team.
But, before you do that, it’s important that you have a standard operating procedure (SOP) in place.
This will help you document all the steps that you take while performing a specific task.
It’s important before building a team because you don’t want to waste your time and energy explaining every little detail to your team members.
What you can do is, use your experience to create email and proposal templates. You could also create checklists that you and your team can easily follow in the future.
The point is: You want to streamline your work as much as possible. Keep it simple and effective.
Build a Team
At this point, you:
- Have a number of clients
- Are generating a consistent stream of income from your freelance digital marketing gigs
- Have your processes in place
The only thing missing is a team of freelancers. A team that can help you execute your strategies efficiently.
But, make sure you only hire freelancers when you have enough funds to take the risk.
Having others perform the tasks that you’ve been doing effectively can be tricky. A lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time trusting others with their clients’ work.
Here are a few tips that can help you with the team-building process:
Start small: Initially, only outsource the tasks that are easy to execute. Create your processes and tell your team members what you expect from them.
Avoid full-time employees: There is a reason why you should be working with freelancers instead of full-time employees: Generally, they are more cost-effective.
Get them to work on a pilot project: To make sure your team of freelancers know what they are doing, give them a pilot project to work on.
This will help you avoid wasting your funds on the wrong people.
Final Thoughts
By now, you would know how to kick-start and grow a freelance digital marketing agency.
A freelance digital marketing agency can be an incredibly lucrative business if you can manage to follow the right strategies.
It lets you:
- Be your own boss
- Set your own goals
- Grow your profits infinitely
- Work from anywhere you want
Plus, digital marketing is pretty high in demand right now.
Existing businesses are expanding and shifting their operations online. New businesses can’t afford to ignore the importance of a solid digital presence as well.
And, as the e-commerce industry continues to grow, digital marketing is only going to be more relevant in the coming years.
So, if you think you can help people grow their business online, now would be the time to get started.
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