There's never been a better time to start and grow a digital agency business than today.
You now have the privilege to share your ideas, solve problems, and make a ton of money in the process.
But there's a catch…..you need to be different, stand out, and be willing to reject the status quo—which to be honest, is a little difficult.
That’s why in this blog post, we’ll take you through some of the little-known—yet effective strategies you can use to grow your digital agency today and do it faster.
What we’re about to share here is a successful case study that anyone can copy, customize, and use to fulfill their dreams.
Let’s do this!
1. Create a Solid Foundation for Easy Growth In Your Marketing Agency
One problem that we have is people starting agencies without a genuine interest in solving problems in society because they saw someone else boasting a 7-figure report about their successful agency before.
Here is the truth: for you to succeed in growing your digital marketing business or agency and converting it into a dependable cash cow, you must lay the foundation.
Here are some things that you can do to get that right:
1. Pick a Niche for Your Agency
Lots of advice you’ll get out there has one thing in common: pick a niche that will earn you more money in a short time.
While that is an attractive way of looking at this, the sad truth is that with AI, this will not work anymore. Anyone can start an agency website today, pick a niche, and use AI to gain a competitive advantage over you.
The best way to get around this is to first identify a problem that most people are facing in the industry that is difficult to deal with.
Why is this important? Most agency owners out here prefer picking a solution and offering it in their digital marketing strategies to agencies rather than solving a real problem.
The difference between the two approaches is that identifying a problem and solving it is more sustainable because it allows you to stand out in the crowd.
For example, while controversial, Elon Musk's entrepreneurial ventures like SpaceX and Tesla have challenged established industries in aerospace and electric vehicles, pushing boundaries toward innovation and sustainability.
He did that because he wanted to solve a specific problem and provide effective, specialized solutions.
Picking a problem allows you to brand yourself as an expert in that industry and helps you separate from the pack.
Eventually, it opens up other opportunities (like speaking at industry-specific conferences or partnering with other industry leads for virtual events).
Here's a general framework to brainstorm potential problems you can solve in any niche for your digital marketing agency and the ideal customer:
- Are there common tasks that are time-consuming or difficult?
- What frustrations do people typically express within the niche?
- Are there aspects of the current solutions that people find lacking?
- Can you leverage new technologies to solve existing problems in a novel way?
- Are there recent changes in the niche that create new opportunities or challenges?
- What do people in this niche wish they had access to that isn't currently available?
- Are there specific subgroups within the niche with unique needs that aren't being addressed?
Remember, it’s up to you to come up with a problem or a so-called niche. Our work is to provide pointers or a few ideas that would trigger your approach.
For example, most of the SEO and marketing tools in the industry have limited capacity to manage and process SEO data that runs a business on autopilot on one platform.
As a result, SEOs have to use multiple tools to manage their SEO campaigns—which is not only expensive but inconvenient as well.
That’s why we at Legiit developed the Legiit GMSD dashboard, a tool that allows you to manage and boost your SEO campaign on one platform without putting manual work into it.
You see? Next.
You need to set clear and achievable goals. These goals will provide direction, focus, and a framework for achieving the results you want for your business and your clients.
For example, using the Legiit GMSD dashboard, we want to help businesses run their businesses on autopilot, so every day we add software that can help us do that.
Doing this will help you prevent wasteful efforts, improve client retention, keep client relationships, and get more referrals for your agency.
2. Attract First Leads Using Effective Digital Marketing Techniques
As a marketer, if you can’t promote your own business and show results, how is someone even supposed to believe you can “magically” produce results for their businesses?
Here is a bad example of failing to be the best example of what you’re "preaching.”.
Instead, the first thing to do once you’ve come up with a problem is to develop a solution that people are willing to pay for, as we illustrated in (1 above).
For example, consider building:
- AI-as-a-service
- Software-as-a-service (SaaS)
Just like the one we built and mentioned above. Then promote the product or service to target audience to get it in front of people and generate leads.
Think of doing something simple, like:
- Placing a lead magnet that provides value to your new leads on your website or social media channel and using it to capture leads and convert them into customers.
- Leverage social media marketing to maintain an active social media presence.
- Invest in paid advertising campaigns to target specific audiences.
- Host webinars or live sessions to publicly discuss the latest trends about the problem you’re solving.
- Engage in email marketing and continuously solve problems by sending regular newsletters with valuable content
- Participate in forums and online communities, and build your presence as a thought leader.
While those are the best approaches to growing your brand awareness, you also need to collaborate on other tools that make your work easier.
For example, Amit (based in India) runs a successful digital marketing agency on Legiit and he recently shared a case study on how he uses Legiit Leads (and Other Tools) to make 10k monthly.
Closing your first lead from your digital agency is sometimes the most difficult thing to do. However, once you get one, prioritize responding to it as quickly as possible.
Letting them sit and wait for you for minutes, let alone hours and days, as others do, is only a signal that you don’t need them.
Industry statistics show that when you try to contact potential customers within an hour, you are seven times more likely to close the deal than those doing it an hour later.
That’s why, at Legiit, our support team responds in a record time of under 2 minutes.
The next thing that you need to do is ensure that your potential and existing clients are satisfied with your services.
This is what we do at Legiit that you can copy:
- Deliver your promised outcomes.
- Conduct regular check-ins, updates, and feedback sessions to understand the client’s perspective.
- Empower your clients with knowledge by hosting them in your podcasts so that they appreciate your services and stay loyal to your digital marketing agency.
- Go beyond the contract and offer extra value such as additional reporting, and complimentary services.
- Address concerns or issues promptly to demonstrate your agency’s commitment to client satisfaction.
Remember, a satisfied client is more likely to return, refer others, and provide positive feedback to other agencies, giving your referral program and your business much-needed sustainability.
That’s why we get feedback like this from our clients.
Next up. One mistake that many digital marketing agencies and agency owners make is that, as soon as a few clients land, they get satisfied and forget to track and maximize their impact.
Thorough monitoring and performance analysis are essential if you want to identify successful strategies, pinpoint areas that need improvement, and effectively allocate resources to maximize results.
This is as important to you as it is to your prospective clients too. The same metrics you want to provide to them to help them make certain decisions are important to your marketing agency.
The Legiit GMSD dashboard is big at this.
The data and marketing reports that you get from this tool are super cool if you want to run different benchmarks for your digital marketing campaigns, your digital agencies, potential clients, or your clients.
Up to that point, we’ve covered pretty much everything you need to know about starting a digital marketing agency.
In the next section, we’ll talk about growing your web design agency.
3. Build Case Studies From Successful Clients
Case studies make sense. They turn leads who haven’t converted into customers.
The best way to build your case studies is to gather customer feedback. Try as much as possible to encourage word-of-mouth from your satisfied clients.
When done properly, case studies can:
- Boost your credibility
- Social proof
- Demonstrate expertise
- Lead generation
- Build trust
If possible, document all your systems and processes, how they generate desired results, and repurpose them into different content marketing and social media management formats.
When pushing them out, try to package them in a way that even a layman will understand what you do and how that can help their businesses.
Here is a sample of case studies we publish from our freelancers on Legiit.
Awesome.
4. Consider Strategic Partnerships for Agency Growth
Let’s start with this famous quote.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
It is only when you make efforts together that you can make it big. As a digital marketing agency owner, you need to realize that you might face a lot of situations along the way, but partnering with another team or person will eventually be able to crack it big.
That’s why our founder in this video explains why you need to become a Growth Partner.
Just like this.
If you don’t know how to get started, the business analysis feature on the Legiit GMSD dashboard can help you identify such strategies.
That makes sense, right?
The point we’re trying to make here is that partnering up with other developers, innovators, full-service agencies, digital marketing agencies, and agency owners offers you an awesome chance to break into other markets and audiences and may complement your marketing objectives.
5. Expand Your Services
Technology is changing so fast. As a result, you need to continue innovating new business solutions and processes that your agency would benefit from.
Diversifying service offerings of your services will ultimately attract more clients. This makes you a one-stop shop and opens up new revenue streams that will make you resilient to changes in the industry.
The first step to expanding your services to new clients is to conduct market research to understand which in-demand services align with your agency’s expertise.
Secondly, partnering with other successful agencies, as we mentioned above, makes this whole sales process seamless.
Finally, before you launch, test out the new services or different segments of your services with a small group of clients—known as agile marketing.
This will allow you to work out potential issues and gather feedback for improvement.
6. Develop a Positive Company Culture
Last but not least, you need to have a unique culture in your agency.
If you have a team, ensure that they have the right training and experience to handle growth and, especially, the ability to deliver the promised outcomes to your clients.
Try as much as possible to empower your marketing professionals to make the right decisions and minimize mistakes that could be a letdown for your business during the client onboarding process.
But as an agency owner, you have to lead by example. “A leader must inspire, or his team will expire.”
Here is an ideal context that ties together strategy, digital marketing services, and leadership, which results in a positive company culture.
Between 1929 and 1940, the President of 3M, William McKnight, formulated a set of management principles that could be remarkably applicable to any company, business model, or agency today.
The William McKnight Principle of Culture and Leadership states that:
- Delegate responsibility to stimulate individual initiative;
- Tolerate mistakes to avoid dampening the spark of creativity;
- Allocate free time in the working week for people to pursue their interests;
- Establish platforms so that great ideas can be shared across the organization.
If you don’t have a team, outsourcing talent from Legiit should be your go-to. If you use the Legiit GMSD to run your business, then that shouldn’t be a biggie because the Legiit dashboard recommends you offer digital marketing services to professionals who can help you run your digital marketing agency.
The final part of defining your digital marketing industry culture is to start a community behind your digital and project management software marketing agency. This community can be that of your team or clients.
We created a guide a while ago that can help you start a community on social media groups like our Legiit Official Facebook Group and Superstar SEO.
Final Thoughts
There you go!
We’ve formatted all these tactics into an actionable growth strategy, and now it’s your turn to do the necessary.
Use the tools we suggested, implement the marketing strategy that we showed you in this guide, and make money in the process.
As always, do not stay behind news and digital marketing trends; they hold the key to resilience and success when running corporate marketing training or a digital marketing agency.
All the best.
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