How To Scale Your Digital Marketing Agency | In-House vs Outsource

I know that starting up a digital marketing agency is already challenging. Well, if you are going to ask me, what’s even challenging is scaling your digital marketing agency. Hiring team members, formulating business processes, and even choosing the right tools–are all not easy. In this article, I will share essential tips on how you can scale your digital marketing agency. I hope it will help prevent you from losing interest in scaling your agency, especially with the situation we are in.
Digital Marketing Agency

Starting up a digital marketing agency is really challenging, but if you are going to ask me, scaling your digital marketing agency is more challenging. Hiring team members, formulating business processes, and even choosing the right tools–are all not easy!

Being in the marketing industry, I have seen a lot of agency owners folded after a few years. I saw a lot of startups stumble with little to no growth too. In fact, I have seen a lot of them having zero satisfaction with what they are doing. It is understandable, but, I know that there can be some ways to lessen these issues.

In this article, I will share essential tips on how you can scale your digital marketing agency. I hope it will help prevent you from losing interest in scaling your digital marketing agency, especially with the situation we are in. Well, what I am going to share with you is based on the management side. Let’s say, you already have a growing list of clients, we will focus on how you should scale your digital marketing agency.

How To Scale Your Digital Marketing Agency

There are lots of ways you can scale your agency, but here are the things you should not forget:

In-House, In-Office

Digital Marketing Agency- In Office

I came from working at large B2B corporations. I had this dream of creating a giant digital marketing agency similar in structure to the places I worked at before. When I finally started growing in size, I was determined to hire in-house. I was hiring Korean team members at a minimum of $2000 per month. With a team of 4, that’s $8,000 per month already.

As someone who was new to managing a business and a team, I was not prepared to handle a team. This led to bad hires, poor performance, and being stepped on. I was unable to differentiate the business from personal and tried to become “well-liked” and a friend. This is because I’ve been an employee all my life and I know how bad bosses can be.

In-House, Remote

Digital Marketing Agency Team - Virtual Meeting

I started to find people from outside of Korea and the Philippines is a great place to find qualified, hard-working people. You should check out OnlineJobsPH to find some really talented people at reasonable rates: https://joon.info/onlinejobs

This does not solve all my problems, though. I realized that it is important that you have company manuals, systems, SOPs, and rules in place. This was a game-changer for me but it still took a whole lot of learning and burning cash. I cannot stress enough how important systems, manuals, and SOPs are.

I also hired Korean team members but in a remote environment. This also was a failure for me. In the end, one of my employees started stealing clients for the other digital marketing agency he was working for and receiving commissions. I shut everything down and started over as a team of 1 again. To avoid what I went through, I recommend you to:

Improve Delivery, Performance, and Client Relationships

One of the changes that the Covid19 pandemic brought was agency owners or heads, not being able to stay on top of every employee individually. It is because nowadays, most of the companies are operating online and employees are working remotely. On the other hand, meeting with clients face to face is not possible

To solve this problem, there are tons of time and productivity trackers you can use to check out your employees. Doing this will let you identify the challenges your employees are facing as well as the projects that are moving fast.

Well, time tracking is crucial when it comes to managing a remote team and work environment. I made the mistake of not applying time tracking because I didn’t like it when I was an employee. This ended up with many employees working 2 jobs, or not even working at all.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) workinng with Business Intelligence (BI) metrics to measure achievement and planned target.Designer hand pressing an imaginary button,holding smart phone.

You also have to make sure you have clearly defined goals and KPIs for your team under a specific objective. If you don’t have systems, monitoring, and daily/weekly goals in place for your team, more often than not, you will be paying for their time off.

Outsourcing

Businessman select Choice employee  human resource system. business, technology, internet and networking concept

I didn’t plan to outsource or white-label other service providers and deliver but being a 1-person agency, I realized this was a much easier way to grow or increase contract sizes. For example, I was specializing in social media marketing and I had many small cafe and restaurant owners. They would ask if I could come in to take some professional photos of their food, menu, and place. So, I made friends with a photography studio owner that took my family photos in the past and worked out a deal there. I did not white label these services and I let the clients know that I was bringing along a partner agency.

With this, I would definitely start expanding by hiring 1-2 remote VA’s to help with the smaller tasks that take up my time. Moreover, I would expand my services by outsourcing work to qualified and vetted partners and agencies, which would help me expand my contract sizes and bottom line. Lastly, I will reinvest this money back into the growth of my digital marketing agency (content, advertising). I am also thinking of expanding with in-house remote team members that are specialized in the specific fields that are needed most.

Other Ways To Scale Your Digital Marketing Agency

Aside from the things I have mentioned above,

Establish Your Brand

If you have a strong brand identity, you can compete with the giants even though you have just started. You have to remember, however, that establishing your brand does not happen overnight. It is not as easy as choosing the color of your logo and creating a design. Well, let me tell you, branding is not just about the logo. It is how your audience sees your brand and makes them remember you. In order for you to achieve a well-established branding, you have to think wisely and choose designers that have a well understanding of your brand. Trust me, you can never go wrong with this!

Learn more about how you can establish your brand in one of The Seismiq Growth Show Episodes–Select Your Niche and Establish Your Brand. Here, my partner–Parker Cassio and I discussed our experiences as agency owners with regards to establishing our brand and selecting our agency niches.

Clearly Define Your Buyer’s Persona

If you already defined your buyer’s personal when you were still planning to start your digital marketing agency, try to re-evaluate it when you are trying to scale your agency. When the Covid19 pandemic started, a lot of changes happen in almost every industry, and digital marketing is not an exception.

Clearly defining and re-evaluating your buyer’s persona is important because the priorities of your target audience might have changed because of the pandemic. Remember that we are all affected by the crisis and no matter how big or small your target audience is, their needs surely changed.

Provide Value Through Informational Content

One thing I have learned in this industry we are in is that it is not all about the product and the selling skills, why customers will be attracted by your brand. Sometimes it is about the value they are getting from you! With value, I meant, the essential knowledge they are getting from your content.

if you want your customers to be loyal and increase your conversions, strategize your content marketing!

Build Out Your System’s Workflow Processes

In order for you to track your agency's progress, you must build a system! Workflows that are usually being checked manually sometimes create confusion and delays to your processes. If you have a system, it will be easier as everyone in your team will know where things stand and what needs to be done next.

Additionally, you need to create and optimize the paths for the projects and data inside your agency in order to prevent task redundancy and identify the bottlenecks or areas of improvement.

Upgrade and Optimize Your SaaS Stack

In 2018, I decided to close down my offline office and go remote. This was when I was learning more and more about SaaS tools and growing to hate offline meetings.

In addition, to be able to do some of the important processes I have mentioned above, you need to choose the right tools and SaaS tools are what I recommend. These tools can support all your processes and will save you more time and energy. I am telling you this because I am a SaaS enthusiast! I have tried more than 500 SaaS tools and it was really helpful not just for me but my employees too. Click here to learn more about the must-have SaaS tools you should get for your agency!

The Key Takeaway

If I were to start all over from scratch again, I would do things differently knowing what I know and experiencing what I have experienced. I hope my experiences will serve as your guide in order to prevent falling into the pitfalls I’ve had.

I understand that what works for me may not work for you, but, there is no hard in trying. If you want to learn more tips on how you can scale your digital marketing agency, watch my video about inbound marketing vs outbound marketing for your digital marketing here:

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing for Your Digital Marketing Agency|Joon K Lee

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