Businesses know better than to downplay the value of digital marketing to the bottom line. Even veteran brands need to establish an online presence somehow. This is due to the fact that consumers today spend a great deal of their time online where they can find the products and services they can’t find within their own communities. Not being able to tap into this new arena within the business landscape stalls the growth of businesses.
Digital marketing makes total sense if your main goal is to grow your business and improve your bottom line. However, it’s still something you wouldn’t want to do a bad job at. And although it’s cost-effective relative to other audience engagement approaches, digital marketing is still just as complex a tool as any other.
This would explain why there are thousands of active digital marketing agencies that cater to various industries. As far as digital transformation goes, there has been a spike in the demand for social media management, blogging, podcast creation, and ad placement services in recent years. Spending for these services has also gone up as more and more businesses realize the value of digital marketing activities to their revenue. According to a report by Reuters, digital marketing spend has hit a global value of $100 billion in 2018.
For tech-savvy entrepreneurs, this spells a whole world of opportunity for offering a range of online marketing services that businesses will find helpful on their end. Still, building a digital marketing agency from the ground up isn’t easy. Considering that the industry itself is growing, you will need to make sure that what you’re building is highly sustainable.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when you want to make it big in the world of digital marketing:
- Set up an effective business plan
Every good thing starts with a plan, and when your main thrust is longevity, you will need to build your agency based on a realistic business plan. This plan should include your objectives, financing, operational processes, and everything else that can help guide you towards building a highly competitive business.
Ultimately, the core of your business plan should be a well-defined target audience. This will influence how you will be promoting your business to clients who might want to use your products or services. Start by determining the industry you want to serve. Along these lines, it’s always best to start with a market you’re already familiar with. This will spare you a lot of time trying to understand the type of content you want to produce in order to get the right results.
- Start financing your business
Contrary to what other people say, building a digital marketing agency from the ground up will cost you a lot in terms of time, effort, and, of course, money. The financial aspect of your digital marketing agency is one thing you might not want to downplay. You need the resources to start your business. You need the tools and the manpower before launching your agency. For sure, this is the part where a lot of startup owners stumble, especially those who haven’t experienced managing a business before.
But you simply can’t avoid financing for the same reason that an SSL certificate is a crucial component for most modern websites. Sure enough, it’s raising the much-needed cash that puts startup owners at a great disadvantage. They always start by asking, “Where the heck am I going to get the money I need for my digital marketing service?” There are tons of ways you can do so, such as getting your friends to pool all your resources together or asking for seed money from angel investors or venture capitalists.
- Create or “rent” a stellar team
Aside from having the right amount of resources, you also need to build a team who can help you fulfill your agency’s vision and mission. Technological innovation is inevitable, and in order for businesses to grow, they need to hire agencies with top-notch skills that align with today’s standards.
For sure, this is another aspect that startups struggle with. And this is because the best talents in the industry are absorbed by agencies that have already made a name for themselves in the world of online marketing. For startups like yourself that struggle with limited resources, you might want to augment your manpower by hiring someone else to share the workload.
For instance, if you need help with your link-building activities for a client, you can hire a White Label SEO company reselling digital marketing services to agencies like yours. Given your limitations at the moment, you might as well take the more practical route and outsource some of your operations to experienced service providers.
- Walk your talk
Considering the fact that you already have the capacity for launching and maintaining digital campaigns for clients, this capacity should show in how you promote the agency itself. That said, you need to carefully draft out an effective content marketing strategy for your business. A multi-channel approach should work here. You can simply create blogs and infographics that are educational and engaging at the same time.
Aside from that, you also need to come up with an impressive social media presence. A good mix of visual and text content tied up with highly enticing calls-to-action should do the trick. Email marketing is also a top channel for engaging potential customers. Newsletters, in particular, are a great way to provide your audience with information that can help them decide on purchasing the specific types of services they need.
Another great way to attract new clients for your agency is to produce videos that add value to what your business is all about. Tutorials and informational videos are particularly potent when it comes to engaging business owners who might be interested in what you can do for them.
Building a digital marketing agency shouldn’t take you long. It shouldn’t leave you with a ton of work to handle either. You just have to focus on the crucial aspects of your business and make sure you’re investing in a self-sustaining business.