5 Simple Steps to Starting Your Best Digital Marketing Agency

Do you want to start your best digital marketing agency but don’t have proper guidance? Or are you unaware of the resources you might require to kick start your agency?

If you have all such questions in your mind then you don’t have to worry at all. This blog will help you in determining the resources and skills you need to start your agency.

Starting your best digital marketing agency was quite a hassle 20 years ago because of a few major entry barriers. Also, starting an agency that time requires a lot of initial investment.

With higher startup cost, you were limited to only traditional ways of marketing during that time.

And as we all know how difficult it was to satisfy clients with the ROI from such traditional marketing tactics. Back then starting once own best digital marketing agency was quite a hassle.

However, today the times have changed.

Now you just need to type a marketing agency near me on google and there you have the list of best digital marketing companies in USA.

On the other hand, today even skilled individuals or small teams can start their best digital marketing agency with minimum investment.

This has now become easier because companies have understood the importance of online businesses. Now companies want to streamline their operations by focusing on their core products and services.

Therefore, they don’t have time to work on their digital marketing activities.

This has given some major opportunities to people having the right marketing skills to showcase their talents.

Now in this blog, I will go through five key steps that will guide you about how you can start your best digital marketing agency from scratch in 2020.

Now, these five key steps to starting your agency are as follows:

1. Develop Your Digital Marketing Skills

If you think of becoming Neil Patel after starting your best digital marketing agency after a few months then you might need to think again. Coming with a college degree and thinking of becoming successful in a few months is nothing more than imagination.

Such fantasies don’t exist in real life.

No matter how intelligent or creative you are, if you don’t have the right marketing skills then you might have to look for a new business idea after some time.

You must be profound in your digital marketing skills to continue your agency operations in the long run. Having great marketing skills also helps you in satisfying your clients.

Good digital marketing skills help you in getting better results for your clients. This way you can build good relationships with your clients in the long run.

To become a good digital marketer you need to place yourself in the client’s shoes. This way you will get a better idea of what your clients expect from you.

Plus you will also understand the persona of customers your clients want to achieve from digital campaigns.

Understanding your clients will make you more professional in your field and will help you in building a good rapport with them.

Now you also need to know one thing that building soft skills will only help you 50% in getting your clients. You will need to master your digital marketing skills to retain and offer better results.

In today’s digital world the access to information has now become so easy for us.

You can make the most of the digital technologies these days and learn your desired marketing skills online.

You can learn digital marketing skills for free from YouTube videos, eBooks, courses and infographics. Once you have learned these skills now it’s time to test them.

You can build your website with a little investment in the domain and hosting plans. Then with the help of free website builders like WordPress you can easily create your website.

Once you have your website now you can implement the skills you have learned on your website. These digital marketing skills can be search engine optimization, pay per click marketing, social media marketing, content marketing and more.

This way you will learn to master your skills and the pressure to get better results every month. Now once you have the right portfolio of your work then you can simply reach out to your clients.

2. Learn to Become a Contractor before a Founder

Before you dive into your own agency business you must have a strong foundation of your business. You cannot build the base of your business overnight.

This process takes a lot of time and in some cases, it takes a month.

But after all this should you stop thinking about starting your agency? No, you just need to start small initially to build the foundation of your business slowly and gradually.

Before working on your best digital marketing company full time you need to build yourself as a contractor first.

This helps you in building your soft skills and ultimately this nourishes your professional self. Moreover, becoming a contractor before a founder can help you in the following ways:

It makes you independent with less risk

This helps you in stepping your entrepreneurial life with the minimum risk and build yourself professionally. Becoming a contractor is even better when you are doing it with a full-time job.

This allows you to improve yourself and time management skills and sometimes you might need to work late at night and even on weekends.

Becoming a contract will also help you in building profitable relationships with your clients. This can turn out to be some great business referrals when you start your agency.

As a contractor, you will also learn about

• How to approach your clients
• How to convince them over a deal
• And how to close the deal with final documentation.

3. Build an Effective Business Model

There are multiple ways of setting up your best digital marketing agency. The services you offer and the ways you charge your clients are some of the most major aspects of your business.

Some of the best ways to charge your clients for your work is explained in this infographics created by wordstream.

Hourly

Many digital marketers choose to charge their clients on an hourly basis. Whenever they consult their clients on the phone or face to face they charge them based on the consultation time.

However, this method is not viable when you are offering more complex services.

Now how much you can charge you, clients, hourly varies from project to project. Digital marketers charge their clients hourly when

• They consult clients on call
• Create new campaigns
• Restructure old campaigns

Flat Retainer

This is the most simplest and effective way of charging your clients. You can discuss the flat fee of your services at the beginning of any project with the clients.

This way you can get a better idea of how much money you will be made from a single client over time. Similarly, clients can easily understand the effort and time of any marketer in putting in their work.

Percentage of Spend

Another method to charge clients is the percentage of spend on their digital ads.

Now how much you charge your clients depends on the amount the client is willing to spend on their ad campaigns. Then you can charge a certain percentage of their spending on their campaigns.

Although this method is only limited to inorganic or paid marketing strategies.

If you are an SEO expert then you cannot rely on this method for charging your client.

Commission Based

Most of the marketers charge clients on a commission basis. The commission-based fees depend on the sales a client makes from a digital campaign set up by the marketer.

Then marketers charge their clients a commission on the sale of promoted products.

This method sounds great for those who want to gain the trust of their clients. And if a sale is made from their campaign the client pays them a commission.

Thus this is a good strategy for building trust and rapport with new clients.

4. Define Your Niche

There are many digital marketing agencies already working in this industry. Few of them are specialized in a certain field while others are not.

Being specialized in one field can help you in building your core competencies which will attract your clients. While focusing on one niche you can come up with a unique selling proposition which then becomes your competitive advantage.

Therefore new agencies need to identify their niche so that they can offer their core services to their clients.

Having a clear niche in your mind can help you in the following ways:

It attracts your clients

When you promote yourself as a specialist in one field rather than going for all the fields, you will get a better response from clients.

Undoubtedly clients are attracted to digital marketing agencies that specialize in a certain niche and have the right portfolio of that niche.

This way they have better trust in these agencies and desire to work with them.

It nourishes your skills

If you are an expert in paid ad campaigns but don’t know which niche to go after then you might face issues in setting up the right target market and ad messages in your campaign.

However, if you have determined your niche and only running paid ads in that niche then it becomes a lot easier for you to create campaigns with better conversion rates.

Thus if you can come up with better conversion ratios the clients become highly satisfied with your services.

5. Decide How You Wish To Scale

The greatest mistake people make in the early days of launching their agency is that they set up their own office and hire a bunch of employees.

Now the founders of these agencies are liable to pay the rent, utility bills and the salaries of their employees.

In this situation, a wise marketer would initially focus on starting his agency solely. This way he learns to personally survive in the industry with the minimum cost incurred.

Initially, the founder of the agency must be aware of this expertise and work solely on getting new clients on board. Once he starts giving effective results to his clients then he can focus on growing his business.

If you are getting more clients now and you cannot manage them all by yourself then this is the right time to build your dream team.

Before hiring a team you need to understand all the costs associated with your agency. Some of the major costs include:

• How much money will you charge your clients?
• What is your average customer lifetime value?
• How can you acquire new clients and retain old ones?

Now with all these the cost of hiring employees increases the complexity in all of these costs.

Hiring employees for business requires you to make compensation plans which can attract employees. But in the initial stage, your business cannot afford high employee salaries.

So what can you do now?

Instead of looking for employees who can work for you on a salary basis, hire contractors.

These contractors will work for you on a contractual basis and will cost less than a permanents employee.

Once you have made enough with your business that you can now afford to hire employees. Even then you must offer these contractors to work for you permanently.

In this way, you will be able to run and establish your best digital marketing agency over time.

Since you will be starting your agency from scratch you will learn a lot in terms of your professional experience and maintaining relationships with clients.

And going through all these experiences will have a major impact on your future.

Final Words

Now I will just wrap up all the key steps once again that we have discussed in this blog. The 5 major steps to starting your best digital marketing agency were:

1. Develop your skills
2. Become a contractor before becoming a founder
3. Build an effective business model
4. Define your niche
5. Decide how you wish to scale

If you can think about all these steps before starting your agency that you can minimize most of the risks associated with starting a new agency.

In the end, you must remember that with a lot of skills, passion and creativity you need a bit of commitment, consistency and discipline to make things work for you.

Now please let me know in the comment section below if I have missed anything in covering this topic or any ideas you want to share with me.

You can also ask me anything about starting your digital agency in 2020 in the comments section.

Moreover, if you are a business owner or a digital marketing agency looking to get more leads or sales then visit hire me page now.

Fill out a form on that page and click on the submit button so that I can connect with you.

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