How To Start Your Own Successful Marketing Agency

I discuss the mindset you need to get into in order to run a successful marketing agency.

A weary business owner is your biggest competition. Understanding what this is can help you make more sales and land more clients.

Finding the right kind of clients you want to work with is one of the keys to long term success.  Good clients can make it a joy to work with while bad clients can sap all of your energy and enthusiasm. 

This is an important question that you will need to address at some point.  Offer specialized services to a specific niche has its advantages but so does generalizing.

Every industry has it's pros and cons but you will need to decide what types of businesses you will want to target with your services.

There are lots of different services you can offer for your marketing agency. You will need to decide which ones you want to offer first as offering too many to start can be detrimental to your business.

No, you should not worry about competition as they will have no bearing on your success or failure as an agency owner.

How well you can communicate with potential clients, clients and contractors will determine how successful you are as an agency owner.

This is the key to long term client retention, becoming an essential part of their business.

I explain from my experience what clients want from their marketing agency partner.

How to set up the business structure of your marketing agency.  This is important since it will have legal and financial ramifications for your business.

Your value proposition is critical to your agency as it literally your statement on what value you can deliver for your clients.

Do you need a business plan?  Yes, you do but not really a business plan in the traditional sense.

How to set up your identity package and branding for your business.

Things to think about when it comes to hiring employees or contractors and which route is best for you.

I go over some important tools and software you will need for your agency.  We also go into each in more detail later on in the course.

Creating systems for your agency will save you lots of time and money in the long run and is something to start thinking about early in the agency set up.

Email is critical as you will need it to communicate with clients and to also acquire new clients.  Make sure you have a good email system set up for your agency.

A good CRM will hep you stay organized and save you a lot of time and money when it comes to managing potential clients as well as current clients.

This is very important software to have.  You need to get paid by clients and get paid on time in order to keep revenue flowing.

Your marketing agency will need a website to represent your and your agency.  Make sure you are using the right software and have the right look and feel that will represent you properly online.

Acquiring new clients requires writing proposals.  While not necessary, proposal software will save you a lot of time and headaches when it comes to creating proposals for potential clients.

When delivering marketing services you need to be able to show your value and results to clients.  Good reporting software will help you present your value in a professional way.

What marketing software you need will depend on what specific services you will be offering.  SEO and Local SEO require specific software while other service offerings will require other specialized software.

One of the first things you should do is to sign up as a Google Partner where you will get lots of marketing resources and support from Google to help get your marketing agency off the ground.

If you will be offering Facebook Advertising or even social media services, you will need to have a a Facebook Business Manager account so you can link to your client accounts and manage them all in a single dashboard.

A list of resources of tools and software to help you get started. This covers software reviewed in this section of the course as well as additional software you may need, depending on your service offerings.

Make sure you think about the various factors and expenses you will incur when delivering your service.  Not just now but in the future.

I explain the different pricing models and variables to consider when creating your pricing strategy.

You may or may not want to have binding contracts with clients but make sure you at the very least have an agreement of understanding that both of you read and sign/acknowledge.

Yes, it's a bad idea to offer discounts unless you do it the right way.

Lots of advantages and disadvantages of offering pre-packages pricing and productizing your service.  I discuss them here.

They both have advantages and disadvantages but contractors will give you the most flexibility in the beginning.

I discuss the pros of hiring virtual contractors and tips on how to do it successfully.

I discuss tips for understanding what roles you need to hire for.

A tutorial n how to use Upwork to find the best contractors for your agency.

Getting your first paying client is really important in validating yourself as a business and marketing agency.

II go over the checklist and some tips on getting your first sale.

In this video I discuss what lead magnets are and how to use them to build your email list and generate leads online.

In this video i discuss the importance of creating a sales funnel and how to set one up.

In this video I discuss the proposal process and how to create a successful one.  Not my favorite thing to do but they are important.

You will need to formulate a marketing plan for your agency in order to find new clients.

I discuss what types of businesses to look for when prospecting.

One of my favorite tactics to acquire new clients. 

I show you how to prospect online for potential clients for your agency using Google.

One of the best and easiest ways to get started with acquiring new clients.  Also serves as a great learning and research experience for your agency.

A fast way to get your message in front of your ideal client. But you need to know what you are doing or else it can get expensive.

My blog and Youtube Channel produce more leads than any other marketing activity I do.  But it takes time, effort and focus to get this marketing channel right.

A great channel if you are ready to put in the time to use social media properly to find clients.

I discuss services you can offer and why you should only concentrate on a few when getting started.

Web design is a great foot in the door service to that often leads to additional service offerings for a client.

A great service and profitable one of you can do it right.  High demand service that can bring big results for clients.

One of the best services you can offer when starting out.  It is easy to learn and lots of potential clients.

Great service to offer as it's easy to sell and you can learn to do it fairly quickly, though it takes a long time to get really good at it.

Learning to do proper audits will make you a better marketer.  Audits are a great way to introduce your services at a lower cost/risk and you can also do them for free as a lead generation tool.

Consulting can be a rewarding and profitable service, though you need to have experience and expertise to deliver it effectively.

You can easily run an entire agency just with social media services and many do.  Lots of potential if you are good with social media.

An underrated but high impact marketing activity. You can get much more complex with email marketing beyond a simple monthly newsletter.

A little known but great program form Google.  Not a fit for everyone but if you like photography and video this is a perfect service for you.

Even if you don't have a lot of experience right now, if you have a learning mindset you will be successful!

A big thank you and a reminder that I am here to answer questions when you need it!