If you’re reading this article, you most probably know what digital marketing is and how its basics generally work. Nevertheless, let me take a slight step back and introduce some of the fundamental concepts and principles to the newcomers.
Basically, any marketing campaign which appears on your laptop, cell phone, PC, tablet, or any other device can be related to digital marketing. It may include not only a bunch of emails you receive daily, online videos, paid social media posts you notice all over the Internet but any other form of web-based advertising. In a word, all of them can be considered as digital modern substitutions of traditional marketing billboards, newspapers, and postal advertisements. There is no reason for going deeper into the causes of such changes – they should be seemed rather obvious. Let me mention a quick but elucidative fact which speaks for itself: more than 85% of all United States citizens go online on a daily basis, while more than half of them do that more than once a day.
Let us move to digital marketing agencies themselves. The primary purpose of such firms is to help their clients (businesses) achieve all their short-term and long-term goals related to marketing and sales. Obviously, that was a very superficial explanation of marketing agency organizations – they are much more complex in their structure, b2b relationships and numerous services provision. However, that’s not the topic of today’s discussion. The subject matter of this article is ‘How to start a digital marketing agency in 2021?’
I would start with some sort of filtering out and eliminating a few people reading this ‘guide’ by mentioning who a digital marketing agency is not for. This is not for anybody who is looking forward to making money easily and quickly. This is absolutely not easy money and not some ‘get rich quick’ type of scheme. There are tons of little ways to make money all over the Internet, which are connected with online marketing in some ways but they’re more about quick schemes and tricks in order to raise money in short-term. Digital marketing strategy, on the other hand, is a real ongoing, stable, and foundational business.
I hope you’re not a person with the goals mentioned above. Instead, you should be aiming at the challenging processes and willing to work hard towards your big worthy purpose. At the initial stage of an agency setup, there is certainly no reason to go deeply into specific aspects of digital marketing such as technical features in website creation, internal organizational structure, or staff hierarchy. Besides, such features tend to vary from one business to another and can be not applicable to the size of the company.
On the other hand, we have many fundamental areas that every digital marketing agency owner faces and is obliged to deal with. Thus, there are three underlying parts of any related firm we’re going to go over further in the article. So, let’s jump right in.
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How to Specialize Your Digital Marketing Agency
If you have decided to run a digital marketing agency, you should spend some time choosing the speciality of your fledgling business. The vast majority of beginners tend to underestimate this aspect. However, the specialization profile of your agency is a crucial factor at the preliminary stage we are talking about. There are too many people trying to set up their marketing agencies everywhere. However, they don’t have enough expertise. As a result, most of such businesses are shut down already or have completely stuck.
If you already have faced such issues, you can feel how difficult the process of niche selection may be. There is an effective 4-step formula that should help you with this process. At first, analyze skills you already have and your passions and interests. The second step is the evaluation of the current market of your possible areas. Then, you should narrow your selection down as much as possible to avoid vagueness and be specialized. Finally, learn your potential market competitors and test the niche. In this case, “test” implies cautious steps towards entering the market with insignificant investments.
So, don’t rush and take your time to find your favorite type of client and specialize your agency. Then build a website all around that specific niche. I can’t stress that enough. The good news is that there are some fantastic tools available today to assist you in developing your agency. For example, digital marketing software for agencies developed by Adplorer can help your team to work more professionally. They help your salespeople sell, your search analysts analyze, and your managers manage. You obtain professional partners by using this software, allowing employees to work better and faster.
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How to get a Bigger Number of Digital Marketing Clients
Actually, this part of any business, not only digital marketing, is the most deliberate and the most negotiable. You can easily make sure of this: try to search any business-related articles, check relevant YouTube channels, have a look at a list of online business courses. More than 80% of them will have the following headings: ‘How to sell more and quicker’, ‘How to get more clients in the short-term’, ‘Sell like crazy’ and so on. You can continue indefinitely – this area definitely is rather controversial and in an extremely high demand.
So, let’s get back to the idea. From a digital marketing agency’s perspective, there is one uncomplicated, but extremely helpful principle in terms of sales: “Be an expert”. What could that mean? In fact, it means that you need to sell people something that you are really good at. This expression mostly relates to the knowledge of the sphere, market, and clients’ needs in order to sell your services. However, there is one more important step before that – selling skills.
Unfortunately, it is the most common mistake for beginners – a lot of
people try to start a digital marketing agency when they don’t know the basics – they don’t know how to sell. Most of them took some courses full of theory and a few case study examples. This mistakenly makes them assume that they already have strong sales skills, but they still haven’t actually done any real deals. Lack of expertise in the selling process usually results in keeping back and lying to your potential clients, while most clients believe in open, honest and transparent marketing.
Therefore, spare no time, money, and efforts on upgrading your fundamental number-one skill. Specifically, spend some hours on learning how to improve this, try to build a mock website by yourself, try to make little conversion things, and don’t be afraid of putting yourself in any unknown circumstances at the initial stages.
Moreover, there is always an opportunity to hire qualified high-skilled employees which may help you to deal with issues at the initial stages of and agency set up. Whatever the troublesome position is – sales manager, junior marketing assistant, or senior e-commerce director – you can quickly close it up by using well-known international sources. On the other hand, if you have experience in different spheres of marketing and would like to apply them in the leading companies from the industry first, try to search for a job here.
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How to Establish Effective Outsourcing
One more modern and essential feature of the digital marketing industry is outsourcing. Generally, ‘outsource’ implies the usage of a third party’s skills or services to benefit own company. The reason why such process of obtaining services (sometimes goods) from an outsider supplier company became an important part of any large and even medium-sized organizations is rather clear. It may help you to improve your efficiency and effectiveness indicators.
As I have already mentioned above, there is quite a lot of people who are trying to set up themselves in a digital marketing sphere nowadays. And the majority of them express the following idea in regards to the outsourcing process: “I’m just going to get an SEO client and outsource it, so I don’t have to do any of the work”. Usually, they give the following reasons: “you save your time for doing something you are better at” or “the more outsourcing is used – the more growth opportunities exist”. To be honest, both of these arguments at least have their places to exist. However, it’s not that simple. The real point is that outsourcing is going to eat up a ton of your profits. That is why outsourcing is a good chance to grow even bigger for well-established corporations, while it’s not the best match for the initial stages of a small-sized agency that is on setting upstage.
Some of you may consider the tips and guidelines mentioned above as relatively unimportant, vague, or obvious. That’s exactly what most people do – ignoring fundamental rules but focusing on less important specific parts of the process. In conclusion, I would stress that you are at the very beginning of a challenging and demanding but rather exciting and fruitful path. Always stick to your plan, don’t be afraid of experiments, and work hard towards your big purpose!
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