After years of working for other people, it’s time to start your own business. You have a great idea, and you know that you can make it successful with the right marketing strategy. But how do you get started? How do you build an agency from scratch without any experience?
In this article, you will find all the information necessary to launch your new venture. So let’s get started.
Starting a Digital Marketing Agency with Zero Experience
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.
It’s a business that you can start 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.
The business model of an agency like 12SM Digital Marketing is simple. You get paid for the work you do and the results delivered, not the time you put in or how many meetings it takes to close a deal. That’s why having an agency is such an attractive business opportunity. There are no limits to success, and your income potential can be unlimited if you do things right.
Step 1: Set Your Business Goals
The key to a successful agency is setting the right business goals. You need to define your target client, determine what channels you’re going to use and how much money it will cost you monthly. Once these three things are set in stone, it’s time for step two.
Step 2: Choose Your Niche
In order for your agency to survive and grow, choose a niche that has been proven profitable through other agencies in the past. There are hundreds of niches in digital marketing, from social media management services to content writing, so finding one shouldn’t be difficult, even if this isn’t your expertise or passion area. Make sure you do some market research before making an important decision like this one though.
Step 3: Define Your Target Audience
Once you’ve picked your niche, it’s time to define your target audience. Who is going to be using your services? What social media site are they active on the most? Where do they get their online news from? It would help if you had all of this information for your agency to start growing. Make sure that whatever strategies you come up with will work well with what you already know about them, so there won’t be any misunderstandings later down the road when things haven’t been performing as expected.
Step 4: Craft Your Brand Identity
At this stage, you need to 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.
Is the domain name (yourbusinessname.com) available fore registration? If no, look for a different name. In the digital business, you really need to own the domain name of your business name.
Make sure that your business name is available as social media handles. You don’t want ugly usernames such as mysocila864 or my_social1. If not, do you have good alternatives to use as your social media handles?
Once you have the business name, register the domains and create social media accounts immediately.
Now, you need to create the brand identity – both how your business will be positioned in terms of business ethos / values and the visual branding such as logo and colors for your business.
Step 5: Build Your Online Presence
Now that you’ve picked your niche and defined your target audience and created your brand identity, it’s time to get online. The first thing you need is a website where potential clients can learn more about what you do and how they can benefit from hiring you. You’ll also want an email address, so people know who to contact for inquiries regarding the services offered by yours indeed. It’s best if this domain name has something to do with your business because it will be easier for them to remember in the long run, which makes marketing much easier as well since there won’t be any confusion or misunderstandings along the way, which could lead some of them away from signing up with your agency.
Step 6: Define Your Growth Plan
As a startup, you’ll need to invest time and money in promoting your digital marketing agency. You can start with cold outreach marketing, networking with your friends and business contacts, and online advertising.
Here are some of the most important channels that you should look into:
Paid Social Media: Social media platforms such as Facebook & Instagram have been around for years now, but its potential is still being discovered by more and more people every day. As long as your target audience spends time on Facebook or any other popular social network site, this channel will be one of your best bets at increasing website traffic, leading to sales down the road. The same goes with paid ads; if someone is searching for something related to what you offer (i.e., ‘marketing agency’), they might end up clicking on one of the top ads instead compared to the organic results at the bottom.
Search & Display Ads: When you search something in Google or Bing, you must have seen ads that show up at the top. Similarly, you have display ads that you find on websites. You can target right search keywords to show up when your target audience search using Google Ads or Bing.
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. Content marketing and SEO take time to deliver results, but when they do show up, there’s no stopping you. On top of that, people are starting to realize how important content is, which means more traffic for your agency!
Email Marketing: Though I have little experience with email marketing, it has been delivering results. Email spam is a testimony to its success. Businesses already have an established list built over the years with hundreds or thousands of potential customers on their lists ready to purchase things whenever they get a chance. If you want them to buy something from your website instead, though, make sure you use opt-in forms on your website to get their emails in the first place (since people usually give away their email addresses when they sign up for things instead of just leaving them with you).
Step 7: 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.
PS: If you need help with any web design, SEO, social media or other digital marketing projects, why not outsource your work to us? Let our boutique marketing agency XtraPunch.com (owned by Specky Geek) be your team. We can be your white-label digital marketing solutions provider.
Step 8: Start Pitching Clients & Winning Deals
Once everything has been decided, it’s time to start searching for clients through cold pitching, sending hundreds of emails every day. But don’t worry; there are software solutions that can make this process easier and more efficient by automatically finding the right leads for you.
Want to learn even more about how to start your digital marketing /SEO agency?
Building a digital marketing agency isn’t complicated! How does a digital agency work? You find work and then hire great people to complete the projects. It’s like being a contractor. You can start this venture with a hundred dollar. Pull up your boots and get started.