Some digital agency owners are eager to scale operations, boost sales, and maximise their marketing ROIs. Others are looking for ways to exit their agencies.
Sound familiar?
Regardless of which side of the spectrum you fall on, there are a few best practices you should be using to take your agency in your goal direction.
In this guide, we’ll share our favourite how-tos and insights into improving your sales and marketing success, growing your business, and preparing to exit it in a professional and stable way.
How to Increase My Sales
Your sales figures are one of the best indicators of your digital agency’s growth and sustainability. These numbers also directly dictate your profits, and of course, profitability is another key indicator of how successfully your agency is operating.
There are plenty of ways to increase your sales figures and achieve long-term, sustainable growth for your business. We recommend:
- Developing a sales plan that helps you to generate new leads and shape your marketing strategy around their primary business drivers – that is, the challenges that drive them to seek out services like yours. Research these challenges and promote your agency in a way that explains how it is uniquely capable of solving your leads’ problems.
- Paying attention to your clients’ needs and expectations with an attitude of being eager to help meet their needs.
- Keeping your marketing strategy consistent and using the right channels for your audience, including social media platforms, video-sharing platforms, and blogs.
- Using methods like bundling, promotions, and exclusive deals increases the value of every sale your agency makes. This also keeps your loyal customers coming back, ensuring repeat revenue streams.
- Reaching out regularly to existing clients to check up on what they need and add as much value to your services as possible.
- Upselling additional services. For instance, clients that are looking for content creation services may benefit from digital marketing, social media management, and SEO services to complement their strategies. If you can offer them, you can generate significantly more income per client.
How to Create a Marketing Strategy
The right marketing strategy is critical for reaching your target audiences, allocating resources for your marketing efforts, and keeping your marketing consistent and measurable.
Your agency’s marketing strategy needs to be based on its current goals and aligned with your brand identity, unique selling point, messages, and mission.
Most marketing strategies include:
- An executive summary
- Company goals and vision
- Market and competitor analyses
- Target audience profiles
- Messaging and branding guides
- Marketing channels based on data
Many agency leaders create their marketing strategies using industry-specific templates, which is a great way to ensure that no important details get left out. When drawing up your own document, start with your agency’s goals in mind, do plenty of market research, and know your customers, resources, and services well to get the best results.
Remember to identify metrics that you can use to measure your agency’s marketing progress against your goals and strategies as well!
How to Grow My Agency
Once you have established your digital agency, promoting its growth will be your next objective. We recommend:
- Allowing your agency’s team to grow with it. Giving your employees the freedom to seek out new, more efficient ways of doing things can supercharge your growth rates and expand your collective skill set.
- Requesting referrals from your loyal clients. Positive testimonials about your services and the results your customers have achieved can be a powerful motivator for new leads. They also help to establish your agency as a leader and expert in its field, which will enhance your brand recognition.
- Adding value for your clients. You can do this by recommending improvements to their processes, upskilling their team members, and sharing useful information through your blog posts and digital sharing platforms.
- Taking care of your existing clients. Retaining current customers is usually more cost-effective than securing new leads, and your existing clients can be transformed into loyal supporters with regular communication and excellent customer experiences.
- Keeping your agency’s processes scalable. This will allow you to define a clear growth trajectory and assign specialised jobs to the right people. Plus, you can create goals and measure your progress towards them, and keep your daily operations coordinated to maximise productivity.
How to Exit My Agency
If you feel that it’s time to move on from your digital agency, it’s important to note that the process of wrapping up can’t be done overnight. You can’t just ninja out and never look back. You need to carefully plan and prepare for your exit, especially if you want your agency to continue successfully without you.
First thing on the list of things to consider is how many clients rely on your services, skills, and guidance – or those of another person leaving the agency. If the majority of your clients rely on a certain person, it could spell bad news for the agency if they leave. You will need to stabilise your business model before exiting by ensuring that there are professionals in place to take over the management of your most important client relationships. The takeover should be planned in advance to make sure that it goes smoothly with minimal churn.
Next, there’s profitability to consider.
If your agency isn’t making enough money to be viable, you could battle to find a buyer who will pay a reasonable price for it. In light of this, you need to bear client profitability in mind before you depart. Identify your most and least profitable clients and use this data to consider increasing your rates or cutting back on low-profit clients to give your profitability a boost.
You also need to have a capable team in place to keep your agency running optimally in your absence. Ensure that your team members are motivated to give their best. Ideally, roughly 20% of your agency’s equity should be left for your most talented staff to handle before you exit. Not only does this incentivise teams, but it also makes an agency attractive to potential buyers.
Lastly, don’t be overly reactive when it comes to leaving your agency. Consider why you want to exit, and what you plan to achieve when you do it. Be sure that this is the right decision for you, and time it carefully so that you get the best possible price for your sale, and that your agency can function effectively after that sale.
All In Or All Out?
Using the right strategies can help you to streamline every step of your digital agency’s journey, from growth to sale, and beyond.
Take advantage of our insights to enhance your sales figures, improve your marketing strategies and achieve your growth goals, and exit your agency at the right time—for the right reasons