Digital agency – web design, digital marketing and SEO – is an online business with local traits. You can start a new web design & SEO business from your home office and service clients across the world. At the same time, you can position your agency as a local business, and find clients in and around your city.
Digital marketing agency is a service business where the venture provides services such as online advertising, influencer marketing, content marketing, social media management, Google My Business management and search engine optimization.
You can start this business from your home without any office or staff. All that you need to do is find work and then hire the talent to get the job done. That’s all it takes to pocket big money.
If you want to start a new website design or SEO business, follow this comprehensive guide and create a successful web design agency.
Need help starting your own web design, SEO and digital marketing business? Let’s connect. I have been working as as freelancer as well as a boutique digital agency for over a decade now. Drop me an email at pritam [@] speckygeek.com
Why Start a Digital Agency?
Local businesses and companies need websites. Thousands of new companies and businesses are launched every day. Most small businesses need someone to build and manage their websites. That’s a huge market that you want to capitalize.
You can be the web designer or agency for these business websites.
Existing businesses need to manage their website, social media and online marketing. For this, they need SEO, social media, online advertising and digital marketing services.
You can be the digital agency that helps businesses thrive online.
Do You Need to Be an Expert to Start an Agency?
Digital agency can be started without being an expert at web design, SEO or digital marketing. With the digital marketing space comprising several skills, you cannot expect anyone to be a master of all the streams – web design, SEO, social media, paid online ads, and more.
Web design & SEO agency can be started by anyone, even without any knowledge about web design or development, SEO or digital marketing. Like any other business, the ability to bring new business matters. Anyone who can bring customers – either by herself or through employees – will find success.
Having subject knowledge and expertise is important when looking to work as a freelancer. As a digital agency, you have multiple wheels and cogs in the business. As a business owner, you need to have all the machinery in place and functioning smoothly.
If you are looking to start a digital agency, hire all the right people. You can have freelancers and other web design & SEO agencies work for you. You need to put a team that will allow you to deliver the services.
Starting a Digital Agency as a Local Business?
When the world can be your oyster, why choose a small city?
Though a web design agency can serve clients thousands of miles away, most web designers find clients from their own cities and countries.
People are more comfortable hiring a web designer with whom they can communicate easily. When the web designer is based in the same geography, there is no time zone and cultural differences. One can simply pick up the phone and speak to the designer during normal work hours. Also, you can meet up with your web designer in person.
When you are starting a web agency, it is much easier to build trust and win clients from your own city. Phone calls and in-person meetings help in building connections and reassure clients. As a local web designer, you have a better chance to get hired than someone far away.
Step 1: Pick a Niche for Your Agency
Don’t start a “We Do It All” digital agency – unless you have that kind of expertise and bandwidth to handle the work. Position yourself as an agency with some specializations in some areas: web design, UX / UI, SEO, ecommerce, social media, online advertising, etc.
Specialize within the broad work area too. Don’t just be a web designer, instead be a web designer for local businesses. Don’t say you are an SEO agency. Instead, let people know that you are an expert dental SEO agency.
People want to trust those with the right experience in the kind of help they need. Depending on your location and expertise, you should choose a niche for your digital agency.
You can choose to have your city as your niche. It could be dentist websites or local business or just anything where you expect decent work and, of course, good income.
We …………………. for …………………. in ………………….!
Fill in the blanks to get your own niche.
Here are some examples.
- We craft websites for local businesses in New York.
- We create business websites for dentists in the USA.
- We make e-commerce websites in the USA.
Having a well-defined niche helps with finding customers for your business. It also helps your potential customers discover you more easily.
When starting out, start with the location as your niche. It’s a good idea to remain flexible in the beginning, and accept all the work assignments. Let your experience help you carve out your niche.
Step 2: Package Your Services
Based on your skills and resources, you need to select the array of services you want to offer. What are the services required in your niche? What are the services offered by your competitors?
Don’t remain vague about the services you provide. Let your clients be able to pick services like a product. Don’t make it any difficult to hire. Commoditize your services in predefined packages. When you package your services, your customers have a better understanding of the services.
Most people looking for web design and SEO services are unaware of the technicalities and finer points. Simplify all the jargons and package your services so that your clients can make an informed decision without getting overwhelmed.
Create your service packages with most common requirements in mind. Add as much extra value you can within the package itself.
- Web design
- Logo & branding design
- Website maintenance
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media management
- Online advertising
- Photography and videography
- Content & blogging
- Online marketing (Paid ads)
- Google My Business management
Of course, you also want your clients to know that you provide custom solutions too.
Running a business is a full-time job. Local and small businesses want to outsource all the tasks of online presence and marketing. It allows them to spend their time on core business tasks of serving customers.
Try to provide service packages that free your clients from the burden of maintaining business websites and online marketing.
| Package # 1 | Package # 2 | Package # 3 |
| Logo & brand design Web design Photography and videography | Logo & brand design Web design SEO Managed hosting | Brochure design Banner design Business card Poster design |
For local businesses and companies that need physical marketing presence — like local advertising, brochures, business cards, banners, posters, etc. — offering a package with offline marketing materials makes you a one-stop shop.
Step 3: Set Your Brand & Goals
As a business, you need to build and grow your brand. For this, you need to define your mission and goals. How do you want people to identify you?
What is your business?
In one sentence, write an introduction for your business: what you do, who you serve and why you do it.
How do you want clients to look at you?
Brand identity and perception matter. Everyone does the same thing, but those with better connections with customers win business.
How do you want your business to be recognized?
- A freelancer
- An agency
- A business and marketing partner
Find a name for your business based on how you want customers to look at you.
Step 4: Name Your Business
Create an identity for your new venture. You need a catchy business name that reflects your values and matches the sensibilities of your target customers.
Even as a one-man business, we need to make a grand appearance. It has to reflect in our business name too. As an agency or a successful business, you will have employees and freelancers working for you. Don’t use your name as the business name.
Pick a good name that is:
- Easy to remember
- Does not create any confusion about your niche or industry
- Allows you to expand your services beyond geographies
- Where the .com domain is available
- Social media accounts are available
Consult your friends and family for feedback on potential names. Once you find the right name, register your domain name without any delay. Create a small coming soon page and register your social media accounts simultaneously.
A digital agency with the same username / handle across all prominent social media channels looks much better.
Step 5: Create Your Digital Identity
As a digital agency, you need to have an impressive digital presence. Start by creating your digital branding. Take your time to find the best identity for your own business. If you aren’t a designer yourself, take your own business branding and website as your first project.
Get the following ready for your business.
- Logo (light and dark backgrounds)
- Font pairings
- Color palette
- Image style
- Voice/personality
Having your own brand style and consistent visual presentation will help make your business stand out from the crowd of “unprofessional” providers.
Create a brand design document for future reference. It can help you streamline the work process when you have other designers and freelancers working with you.
Step 6: Build Your Business Website
Digital agencies need business websites. You cannot offer web design, SEO or digital services without having a solid online presence yourself.
If you don’t know how to create a website, learn. One of the best tools to create websites is self-hosted WordPress. Learn the basics even if you outsource the task or hire an employee.
As a minimum, your site should include:
- Your story
- Services provided
- Portfolio
- Testimonials and/or success stories
- Case studies
- Contact form
Make a website that your clients want
Business website needs to impress prospective clients. Your portfolio can take the task forward and demonstrate your skills as a web designer. Your business website is the best showcase for your skills and capabilities.
Include client testimonials
When you finish a project, ask your client for a testimonial. Prominently display testimonials on your website. It helps people take a decision or fill out the contact form.
Optimize for search
Whether you want to start a web design or SEO agency, make sure that you focus on SEO. Ranking for your business search terms (e.g: “web designer New York”, “SEO Chicago”) will bring work queries. If you are starting an SEO agency, the best way to showcase your skill is to rank your website for a business keyword. Nothing will drive home the point.
Automate prospecting
Once your website starts appearing in organic searches and you have prospects interested in working with you, you can automate part of the prospecting process.
Instead of using a basic contact form, you have a more detailed form. You can also have a separate price estimate calculator. When you need to ask more questions and offer interactive experience, you can take the prospects to an automated chat using services such as ManyChat.com. You can embed an online meeting scheduler like Calendly.com and automate the meeting scheduling.
Automation tools can also help you optimize your work process when you have a separate team for prospecting and cold-calling while the meetings are handled for others.
Step 7: Set Your Prices
Arrive at a competitive price for your services. Don’t allow your rates to be low. From day 1, you need to have a realistic pricing. Don’t let your clients beat down your prices.
- Market research: Find what your competitors are charging for the same services. Note down the highest and lowest price you can find, and also take note of the average price based on all your competitors. Break the prices down into hourly rates based on estimated hours of work involved. We are going to use the highest hourly rate as the reference.
- Business expenses: Calculate your monthly business expenses. How many hours a week will you be working? A full-time job roughly translates into 40 hours a week, or 160 hours a month. Break down your business expenses into hourly rates.
- Income target: What is the minimum monthly income that you need? Convert this into hourly rate by dividing the total monthly income by the number of work hours. US web designers generally change $50-150 per hour.
- Your price: To arrive at your hourly price, add your hourly business expenses and your desired income hourly rate. Now, multiply the hourly rate arrived with 2-4. The hourly figure thus arrived is what you want to charge your clients.
Don’t forget that you are not getting paid for all your available work hours. Instead, clients pay for hours they actually have your working. This means you might end up with unemployed hours. Hence, you must charge based on 25-50% employed work hours.
You need to fine tune your prices even further.
Take a modest estimate on the number of clients you can source and easily manage within 1-3 months. Anything between one to three (1-3) is a good number to start. You should be able to earn your monthly income with these 1-3 clients. If your earlier calculation doesn’t work, then go back and redraw your pricing.
Consider the value that your work brings to your clients. If your clients are going to make $25,000 per month using the website you built, you can easily get $5,000 for the website. Similarly, if your SEO work is going to drive thousands of dollars in revenue, your client won’t mind paying a few thousand each month.
Your final price should factor your agency niche and competitors’ rates.
Discounting strategy
When just starting out, you need to be competitive with your prices. Discount and freebie offers can help onboard new customers. However, the discount should not undervalue your service. Make sure that the discount is for a short period and you start charging normal rates after this.
Here are some example offers.
- Web design: Free 1-year web hosting and domain registration with web design.
- Web design: Free content for five pages and 1 blog post each month for 6 months.
- SEO package: 4th, 8th and 12th month FREE when new clients sign up for full year.
Note that all the offers provide additional service or extra free month without reducing the price.
It helps in providing discounts without hurting our future rates. Your client will be paying a higher rate from the next tenure even though the monthly rate remains unchanged. If you reduce your rates when onboarding a client, your clients will expect lower rates when renewing your services.
Step 8: Get The Business Entity
When you start a business, you can work as a freelancer or an agency. Though the client might not find it any different, it does have a big impact on how you set up and start your business.
Individual freelancers can start working and get paid without any new business setup (or very minimal) in terms of legal compliance.
Starting an agency with a separate business name, you will have to get the business registered as a proprietorship, LLC or any legal business entity. Spend some time on choosing the right business entity.
Starting a business in the US requires owners to obtain a business registration, file for a Fictitious Business Name or Doing Business As, and other possible steps to get their business off the ground. Generally, a business is required to be licensed if it is subject to health or safety regulations.
Your choice of legal structure will affect your income taxes and personal liability. Most businesses start as a Sole Proprietorship or a General Partnership, and are generally the least complicated.
Limited Partnerships, Limited Liability Partnerships, Corporations and Limited Liability Companies must register with the Secretary of State or the authority concerned. You should consult your accountant or attorney for advice and assistance in determining the best legal structure for you and your business.
Individual Vs Business Entity
Let’s have a look at conducting business as an individual and as an incorporated entity.
Individual or Proprietorship: If you are just starting out and you want to avoid tonnes of paperwork, you should start working as an individual.
When you work as an individual, you are a proprietor and the business is a proprietorship business. You conduct your business solely as an individual person. All your invoices and bills will have your name. Any income and expense on account of your web design business will have to be included in your personal income for tax purposes. A separate business name can be registered for ease of business.
In the US, you can register a Fictitious Business Name, with business identified to be conducted by an individual. The process is fairly simple and straightforward. You can visit your town hall and submit the fictitious business name application.
In other countries, you can get a business name by registering as a business, getting a trade registration or tax registration. In India, one can start working as a proprietor with a business name by registering a Permanent Account Number (PAN) with tax department.
Once you have a business name, open a separate bank account with your business name. Banks have current bank accounts for proprietorship businesses. Depending on your country and state, you may also require to register for taxes and other legal requirements.
Business Incorporation: Business entity such as LLC and corporation is a more formal way of conducting business. When you are looking to start a business with employees and office, you might want to register as a business entity.
An incorporated business entity is a legal entity in itself, like an individual. All incorporated entities have to comply with legal and statutory requirements such as maintaining ledger / books, filing taxes and securing licenses. When you conduct as business with an incorporated business entity, your personal finances are not linked with the business. All liabilities are limited to the extent permitted by law to the business entity.
However, in terms of compliance, running a business with a separate business entity requires more paperwork and legal compliance. You may need to get legal or para-legal assistance for incorporating a business.
Fictitious Business Name
A Fictitious Business Name is a business name that does not include the surname of the individual owner, and each of the partners or the nature of the business is not clearly evident by the name. Even an incorporated business entity can have a fictitious business name and operate under a business name other than its legal name.
If you are operating your business with your name in the business name, no fictitious business name is required. You don’t need a fictitious business name registration if your business name includes your surname followed by one-word business description. For example, “Sarah Jones Design” does not require a registration if Sarah Jones is the owner of the business. Here, the owner (Sarah Jones) is conducting business under her legal name.
Doing business under a name like “Sanchez & Yandall Associates” or “Sanchez & Sons” will require a fictitious business name as the name suggests that all owners are not mentioned in the business name. In the case of a corporation, a Fictitious Business Name is ANY name OTHER than the EXACT corporate name as stated in the articles of incorporation.
Check the Legal Stuff
Depending on your country and state, check for the legal requirements. What licenses and registrations do you need to start your agency?
In the United States, for instance, you have to deal with things like:
- Getting business registration and licenses
- Registering with and filing local and state taxes
- Business insurances for liabilities
Irrespective of your country and location, you will need sample contracts drawn for all your services. When taking up any new work, you want an iron-clad contract agreement signed with your client to avoid any future issues with payments and liabilities.
For agencies, you also need to take care of employee and contractor-related matters, such as salaries, taxes, benefits, etc.
Always maintain your business accounts diligently. Each penny earned and spent should be recorded. If possible, use a separate account for your business. Bookkeeping is important.
Starting and registering a business entity may require legal assistance. In some cases, you can register your business for a lower cost using services that help setting up businesses.
Step 9: Getting Discovered Online
Digital agencies – whatever aspects they handle – need to have a solid footprint on the Internet. You have to maximize the chances of getting your business in front of prospective clients. Even before you start actively looking for clients, set up your business profiles across various platforms.
Google My Business: Google My Business (GMB) is absolutely free and drives customer queries if you rank in the top three, or map pack in search. Set it up properly and optimize it for ranking. Nothing drives free business queries like GMB.
Yelp: If your country has Yelp, get your business listed there. It makes sense to get listed in one of the most prominent business directories.
Social Media: If you don’t have social media accounts created, get them for the prominent channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Make your business profile look good. Also, keep your profile pages updated.
Step 10: Find Clients
Once you have your business ready to roll, start looking for clients. You can start with cold outreach marketing, networking with your friends and business contacts, and online advertising.
- Spread the word about your business.
- Ask your family, friends and acquaintances for referrals.
- Join social media groups on Facebook & LinkedIn.
- Start adding informational content on your website.
- Check for job boards such as Indeed, LinkedIn and Craigslist.
- Cold calling prospective clients in your niche help.
- Advertise. Spend on online advertising to your target clients.
Advertising your business online can help acquire clients quickly. Most popular advertising platforms are Google Ads and Facebook. There are other platforms for online advertising too. You can start with Facebook ads as it allows more fine-tuned targeting. Google Ads, in contrast, helps you reach in-market clients.
Cold calling is a great idea. Look at the company and its website. Can you help them improve their business or website in any manner? If yes, create a rough plan to improve their website, and pick up the phone.
Don’t email. It’s not as effective. People are inundated with spam emails. Don’t become a part of the spam emails that are delivered directly to junk. Your are less likely to get results from emails.
Calling a local business in your city is much more effective. It helps you connect with your prospective client in a more personal way, and you have full attention. Not many people call. Hence, you stand apart from the crowd. And, the business owner has the assurance of working with a local service provider. If you don’t like calling, send letters and postcards to local businesses and prospects.
Paid Social Media: Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn & Instagram can help you reach your target customers. The social network platforms popular among your prospective customers is the place to create content for FREE organic traffic and also for paid advertising.
Search & Display Ads: When you search something in Google or Bing, ads show up at the top. Similarly, you have display ads that you find on websites. You can target right search keywords for search engine marketing.
Content Marketing & SEO: You can bring customers with your articles, videos and other content. It is one of the best channels you can invest. Irrespective of your niche, you can start a blog and create videos that will interest your target customers. You should also consider your social media content as part of the marketing strategy.
Email Marketing: Though I have little experience with email marketing, it has been delivering results for others.
Step 11: Build A Team Of Talented Individuals
In order to have a successful agency, you need professionals that can deliver quality results. This is why you need to build a fantastic team of freelancers and employees from the very beginning. You also want them to be passionate about the industry, so their commitment level will be high enough even if they don’t get paid as much as they would at larger agencies.
Step 12: Proposal & Contract Templates
As a digital agency, you need to send work proposals to clients. Once your client accepts the proposal, you need to enter into a formal contract with a signed agreement. Get templates ready for your proposals and work agreements.
Proposals are a comprehensive and detailed document for a client’s work. When you send a great proposal, it helps your client understand your business, your capabilities and how you provide the best value for money proposition. It’s the perfect tool to impress your potential client and bag the work.
Create a professional template document ready for creating proposals. All the aspects of your business will remain the same for all clients. You only need to add work-related proposals for each prospective client. Make sure that you deliver your proposals in impressive PDF documents. Take your time to craft a proposal template visually based on your brand identity.
Contracts or legal agreements help in defining the scope of work and payments. It’s a legal tool to ensure smooth functioning and relationship between the client and the agency.
You should create draft contracts for your agency. Here are a few things that your draft contract / agreement must address.
- Clearly specify the scope of work
- Define your payment and related terms
- Client and agency roles, including actions, confidentiality, and consequences thereof
- Clarifying who owns the work after delivery
- Explaining post-delivery activities, in terms of changes, warranties and liabilities.
- Consideration for common “what if this happens” scenarios
- Handling unforeseen events and exceptions – “force majeure”
- Price escalations for renewals
- Scope for termination of contract by either parties
You don’t need an attorney to draft your agreement. You can find a free web design / SEO contract template, and customize it to your business requirement.
Step 13: Managing Your Business
Organize Process
Keep yourself organized even if you work as an individual.
- Keep track of your projects and clients. Maintain your work assignments, to-dos, calendars and meetings properly in a calendar. As a small team, maintaining tasks and projects can be done with Google Calendar and Google Docs’ – Spreadsheet. Properly format a spreadsheet to track the work and tasks, both to do and completed.
- Maintain all your commonly sent emails as ready-to-use templates.
- Assign a web disk on your own hosting or Google Drive disk for sharing files.
- Maintain backups of all the work done and documentation. Do it without fail.
- Organize your work in folders on your local computer or network drive. Maintain a specific structure for ease of use.
Contract/Proposal Software
Unless you act smart, you will end with many heart aches – late payments, refusal to pay, unresponsive / missing clients, and more.
Always keep your website proposals and contract in ship shape. Start working on a project after the terms are mutually agreed and an agreement on the scope of work and the terms of the relationship signed. You can have e-signatures for contracts when you cannot close the deal in person.
Make sure that you have an advance before you start working. Clearly define the scenarios for refund or forfeiture of the advance money. If no advance, break the project into multiple milestones. Get paid as soon as possible.
Accounting & Bookkeeping
When operating a business, you need to keep a complete record of your accounts – both expenses and income. Maintaining an Excel spreadsheet with income and expense entries can be a good start. Create a new sheet for each month, and log the entries with date, details and amount.
Many online accounting tools help invoicing, payment processing, and bookkeeping. Some of these are FreshBooks and QuickBooks.
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Let’s connect. Need help starting your digital agency (web design, SEO & marketing) business? Drop me an email at pritam [@] speckygeek.com