Fluctuations in hours spent on digital marketing for a particular client are common; it is going to vary widely over time. If you feel early on that you arent cut out for it, then dont drag yourself along for any longer than you have to. Once you reach this point, your goal should be to continue building your portfolio and customer testimonials. This can be broken down into three areas: Obviously, if you want to start a digital marketing agency you need to build your digital marketing skills. There are so many things I really want to know. When building a successful agency, its key to be highly skilled at what the agency does first. Thanks for sharing. No matter how slick your sales game is, a client will discover sooner or later that theyve been sold snake oil. There are a lot of different ways to set up a digital marketing agency. I started my career by providing social media marketing services & then extended to Content marketing & SEO. If you start this business without knowing exactly what steps to take to improve a websites ranking or how to use advertising to get more customers for your clients, youll fail. Building and growing a blog should always be your top priority. From invoicing to having to put aside extra cash for taxes, the small but very important elements of running your own business come into play. Alex Chris is a digital marketing consultant, author, and instructor. Keep things simple and dont overcomplicate things. Start by hiring freelancers instead of full-time employees This will help you keep your costs low and give you more flexibility. It gives you an added layer of trust and relatability that is so often lost in this industry. Running a sustainable agency by yourself also allows you the freedom of ending the business simply and on your terms if you need to (no layoffs, no office to sublet, no 45-pound bag of coffee beans).
Some of these factors are within your control (results) but many others are not (internal decisions, seasonality, other costs). 
I appreciate what you put together here. Its a dramatic life event and you have to treat it as such. Digital marketing is a highly practical discipline and its not enough to know the basics you need to gain the necessary experience by practicing digital marketing. It may take years for some to build the skills necessary, it may take others less. Some of them specialize, but many of them dont. A lot of online and SaaS companies follow this model and its the future of business. So many options and so many needs to fill. The first step is to build the skills and self-confidence necessary to run a digital marketing agency. And by this, I mean to: Its necessary to do this now and put all pieces together even if you wont use all of them from the beginning. Confidence will help you stand out from the crowd so make sure that you equip yourself with the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience before making the big step.
The transition from being a part-time freelancer to a full-time business owner created a lot of challenges but also opportunities. If you want to get started and grow, you are going to have to make sure you can personally survive first. Thanks. Please read our Comment Policy before commenting. For a young agency like mine this is great and thorough info that helps me organize the thoughts in my head!
These websites have hundreds of job postings related to digital marketing and can be a good starting point. Blogging will help you get new clients, without paying for advertising and this can generate huge advantages for your business. You dont need to have prior experience Although having prior experience with SEO and digital marketing is definitely an advantage, you can gradually build your digital marketing skills using an online course and practice on your own websites before offering services to clients. Thanks for your comment. SAVE 80% OFF on Digital Marketing Full Course, Build your digital marketing skills and self-confidence, Decide how you plan to operate your business, PPC Services (Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, etc), Content marketing services (content writing included), As a virtual company from home and hiring remote teams, As a traditional business with an office and local employees, Register your business legal entity with the relevant authorities, An about us page that tells your story and achievements. You have to commit. A very helpful blog Alex, thanks for sharing! Currently, I am also starting my agency so this blog helps me develop my agency from scratch and it is valuable content. You can work more efficiently because youve seen the problems before and you know how to handle them. Here are 11 ways your agency can build strong client relationships that translate into better productivity, greater loyalty, and more referrals! The downside is if you decide to conduct business fully on a percentage of spend model because there are many internal factors within businesses that are going to dictate budget. Having no dependency on advertising will also help you turn your company into a profitable business faster. To give you an idea of how powerful this technique is, blogging has been the main source of leads for my agency in the last 10 years.
What might be unclear to those who have never been on a marketing team specifically is how much actually goes into it. The client knows exactly how much its going to cost them and if you meet their expectations, they will have no problem paying it. Use your current experience working with clients and spend some time creating email templates, proposal templates, custom reports, and checklists that anyone can follow to perform a specific task. You can save a lot of money by having a professional file your taxes on a quarterly basis, helping you along the way with write-offs.
A digital marketing agency is a great business to start. Employees are employees because they want security. You dont want to get into a situation where your client is spending a very small amount per month and you are only getting 10% of that with the expectation of being on calls and putting the time into it. Aside from the pressure to produce, you have to learn complex systems, and if the team is small you have to develop a variety of skills to get even the simplest campaigns off the ground. Be your own boss If you want to escape the 9:00 to 17:00 and start your own business becoming a digital marketing manager is a great choice. You have to be able to drive results. I can use this as my new agency playbook even.
Youll have to become accustomed to the process of putting a proposal together, then a contract, and then sign the necessary documentation (NDAs etc). I suggest having an agreement in your contract that guarantees that price for a period of time (on a quarterly basis, perhaps); then you can renegotiate once that time is up. The first tool youll need is a digital marketing platform like SEMRUSH, Ahrefs, Hubspot, Moz. I am looking into getting into the Digital Marketing space, but I just want to do proper research. Ive bookmarked this article and have taken notes. Here are some ideas that worked for me in the beginning. I would only suggest this model for ecommerce or clients selling things directly. Its a part of the game that youll want to streamline so that the time spent on onboarding new clients is reduced. Before we get into the specifics, let me briefly explain why a digital marketing agency is a good business to start. Thanks for your time. Thanks for all the great tips! Due to the fact that there are so many low-quality agencies out there, it provides the client with far more peace of mind when your business caters to those who are just like them.
That way you can assess how many sales you have driven and do the math that way. Everything from how the organization is structured to its culture, product, and leadership play a part in how your day to day (and career) unfolds. Once you start working with clients, your time will be limited so its better to familiarize yourself with these tools in advance. It ended up being quite the process. I just recently started with digital marketing and this blog will really help me get a proper insight into the field!
Hi Alex Being the insert niche here Agency gives you the social proof and expertise to confidently speak to the needs of these individuals their organizations. The flat retainer is the simplest of all the pricing models. Hi Alex, This article is perfectly written. You can use the extra help when needed and on a per-project basis. Good luck with your digital marketing agency business. It becomes difficult to say I spent X amount of hours on this per week so thats how I will bill you. This pricing model is very popular with agencies because it factors in the growth potential and scalability of the client. Another downside to this is the fact that it relies heavily on the product being sold. Dont omit this step because clients will check your Facebook page and research more about your company before hiring so you need to make sure that everything looks good and professional. At LOCALiQ, we believe digital marketing doesnt have to be complex and big goals arent just for big businesses. Your goal is not to start making a profit but to build your portfolio. I love that you talk about getting a blog and how important that is in helping you become an expert. Managing the accounts yourself for a period of time allows you to not only refine these skills but it makes finding talented help a lot easier because you understand the skills and knowledge necessary for the job. During the process, I made a lot of mistakes but Ive also learned some valuable lessons that helped me improve my processes and offerings and get to a point of having a healthy and successful online marketing business. I was fortunate to start my career on the marketing team at WordStream, where I was able to develop my paid acquisition skills.
Youll need tools to help you optimize your digital marketing campaigns, create reports for the clients, invoicing, accounting, and many more. When your clients are stressed out and possibly projecting that on you, you arent going to take it personally. Its a low-cost business to start You dont have to make a big investment from the beginning. You need to have hands-on experience with the various digital marketing processes so that eventually youll figure out what works well (in terms of money and clients) and where youll need help. The contractors may decide to join you full time if things go well and they have already proven their competence to you. If you feel confident in your digital marketing skills then go for it. Taking the leap of working for yourself has a list of risks so long that it could make for separate blog post. Find out if you're making costly mistakesand how to fix them.
The benefit of managing clients is that a lot of these aspects are taken care of before they get to you. If your ideal client is already defined, you are going to build a plethora of experience working with that type of client.
The best piece of advice I have is to keep it simple. Your email address will not be published. Above the actual work you produce theres a multitude of expectations, verbal and nonverbal communication gymnastics, and politics.
Another aspect to managing clients as a side gig is that it allows you to become experienced in building contracts. Folks who have failed experiences with agencies often bring up the fact that they were paying all kind of money only to have no results or ROI. I wrote this guide to help you start your own digital marketing agency from scratch and possibly avoid the mistakes Ive made, minimize your risks, and maximize your chances of getting it right the first time. These are the key steps to follow when starting your own digital marketing agency. Once you reach a point where you have some real results, youll also have the confidence to offer your services to other people. This means you need to know what digital marketing is, how it works, and how to run campaigns for increasing your clients traffic and sales, using one or more digital marketing channels. Managing your own business has many ups and downs to it and youll have to be able to weather the storm to enjoy the benefits. Ive heard great things about up work, I just have yet to hunt for jobs on there. All you need is an Internet connection, subscriptions to a couple of tools, and a website.
Digital marketing has a lot of components and while you dont have to know everything from day one, you need to have good knowledge of the following: As your agency grows, you can build your digital marketing team and hire experts but if youre starting out now with no experience and money, it is important to know how to execute these tasks yourself. Required fields are marked *. 5 Keys to Starting Your Own Digital Marketing Agency, 11 Reasons Your Google Ads Arent Showing, 21 Facebook Advertising Tips to Try Right Now, 120 of the Best Marketing Words and Phrases, 15 Insanely Effective Sales Promotion Examples, The Comprehensive Guide to Online Advertising Costs, The Last Guide to Account Structure Youll Ever Need, 120 Best Words and Phrases for Marketing with Emotion, The Most Popular Keywords in 100+ Industries, 9 Things We Learned from Analyzing 600+ Google Ads, Always-Updated Online Advertising Benchmarks, time spent on onboarding new clients is reduced, need to stand out and create a unique selling proposition, a good decision to do business with them or not, learn the target market and how to formulate effective messaging, Spending hours on a promotion just to watch it fail. Also, you can tell that youve written this article out of your experience. Its important to do this now before you get new people on board otherwise youll lose a lot of valuable time explaining to your team how you want them to handle client work. Get your listing to rank higher and bring in (lots) more customers. More competition means more demand for digital marketing services. Since this is your first official proposal try to make it as detailed as possible with specific goals. He has more than 18 years of practical experience with SEO and digital marketing. From my experience, the services that can generate more revenue for you are the ones that provide real monetary value to clients and these are SEO and PPC services. There are many tools in the market to choose from but what you need to have in mind is to select tools that offer features youll actually use and not features that are nice to have. It helps you avoid making spelling and grammar mistakes in anything you write online (including emails, proposals, etc). This sounds enticing early on because you want to build trust with a client that you are doing everything in your power to help them be successful. The biggest upside of a retainer-based model is that it allows you to forecast your earnings and hypothetically see how much you will earn if your current clients stay on for a full 12 months. As well see below (step 9), one of the most difficult aspects of running a digital marketing agency is to find new clients. If youre not at this stage yet, then my recommendation is not to hire people now unless you have the funds to take the risk. Hiring remote employees is not easy and you may have to try a number of candidates until you find people that can work with you as a team. Hiring an employee is going to throw in an additional layer of complexity to all of that. As Ive mentioned before, there are so many people out there slingin ads and takin names. There is a long process to follow to go from nothing to having an established digital marketing business with clients and employees.
