Five Strategies to Grow Your Digital Marketing Agency in 2021

Long gone are the days when adverts in the TV and print media sufficed the marketing domain. Today, marketing has emerged to be more about being clever than creative and trained than educated. A plethora of tools is available out there for you and your competitors. What can help you stand out is the way you put them to use.

However, the best practice to follow is to grow your client’s business along with your own. And why not? Evolution is a necessary evil for survival. Only the fittest survive, be it in the jungle or the cut-throat business competition. Those who choose to stay in their comfort zone lose one significant success factor - scalability!

Charles Golvin, the Senior Director Analyst at Gartner for Marketers, says[1]: 

“Shifting consumer behaviours and technology innovation deprive marketers of equilibrium. Recovering that equilibrium will require organisational alacrity, a laser focus on customer needs, and a balanced embrace of automation.”

So there’s little doubt that you have to be on a roll constantly. But the real value comes from the attitude adopted towards these innovations. The future belongs to risk-takers and not the comfort seekers. So to aim for higher heights, you’ll need a strategy to scale up efficiently.

To make things easier for you, we’ve done some elbow grease and developed five areas that you must focus on to scale your digital agency. Here they are:

Learn Your Processes

The first area is more about professional introspection and actions. Get a good picture of how well you and your team are performing. Are your processes streamlined? Are they productive? Do you have all the right resources and are in the proper condition?

Besides, it would help if you also looked for the efficiency of the resources. Check out what your competitors are up to and also the latest trends in the market. Having a suitable business model can take you places.

Knowing is always better than wondering where to start. Once you get the correct answers to all the questions, you can make the right decisions. It is also essential to keep your efforts aligned with your business goals and ambitions. 

At the same time, you will also get the chance to plug any leakages of funds, time, and efforts into your processes. To this anvil, you may start with documenting your processes and systems using resources like Asana, Google Docs, etc.

It’s essential to keep a tab on all the checks and balances before proceeding further. When you know the processes that need amendments, you can plan for a better future. You may either choose to realign the strategies or outsource your ineffective operations to an external team.

Have the Right People

Apart from the capabilities, whether or not your team can handle it is the question to ponder. People are the real power behind all brands out there. A good team may make you the digital king, while an incompetent team may turn your business haywire. 

Each person has their limits, so does a team. It might not always be possible to have enough time for all the clients. In this case, outsourcing is not a bad idea. While you may be concerned about handing over the work of your prominent clients to another firm you are yet to build trust on, it’s your way out to reach great heights.

If you still doubt it, you can always choose to keep your expertise in your own hands but try outsourcing the other processes for which you haven’t tried your hands yet. For instance, if your team comprises SEO pros, why not deliver software design and development services to your clients through an outsourced staff?

Chart a strategy so that your core team has enough time to keep themselves updated with the latest trends and insights. This way, you can also expand your brand portfolio without having to hire full-time staff or resources. However, it would be best if you did not solely rely on outsourcing. Instead, use outsourcing as a tool to keep the workload in check and not as a full-fledged alternative to your core team.

Widen Your Offerings 

Most companies classify themselves as specialised or as full-service providers. But picking one over the other is a bit debatable. For this reason, companies that build a unique selling proposition for themselves find it easier to stand out. On the contrary, others view it as limiting yourself to a particular domain. 

An easy solution comes in the shape of a partnership with another reputable service provider. So while you can continue working in your niche, you’ll always have the option to deliver beyond your catalogue. Also, you’ll get access and insight into the working of another great enterprise, which can inspire you to streamline your strategies. 

So the crux is not to reconfigure your offerings but to widen its ambit. As a result, you’ll also be able to deliver a more comprehensive solution to your clients. And when you have more on your platter, your relationships are bound to go deeper and last longer. 

There’s only one point of caution, though. Ensure that whatever you deliver is tagged with features like consistency and quality. It is all about what you provide; a slight deviation in your offerings will rank down all other efforts on your part. 

Automate Operations

How you plan and execute your operations is another impactful aspect to focus on scaling your digital agency. It would help barter the time you spend conducting various functions at different business growth and expansion levels.  

With automation, you can efficiently align the less critical or time-consuming tasks to focus on more critical aspects of your business. 

If you seek assistance with the automation process, an offshore centre with the help of another agency can do wonders. They’ll not only handle the mundane tasks for you, but you’ll also have fewer headaches and more time to spend on quality tasks.

Especially if you are a small or medium digital agency, you’ll need such services ever more to beat the tough competition. Just make sure to hire the right partners for the right quality of deliverables.

Finance the Right Tasks

Learn to anticipate trends. A digital agency needs to invest in marketing efforts. If not, you are missing many big-time opportunities. It’s a myth that outsourcing will incur higher expenses. But in reality, it costs much less than occupying your onsite staff on uneventful tasks.

Also, you will always have the option to outsource only a few or all your digital agency’s tasks. At the same time, you can increase or decrease the number of jobs you wish your partners to perform. 

Finances invested in the right direction will automatically bear great fruits for your brand. Therefore, instead of investing your finances in handling tasks onsite, it’s better to hire offshore services to help you save on money. 

On the Parting Note!

Since the only constant thing is change, you’ll be better prepared to face all scenarios if you stay in the loop. So to sum it up, first, you must read through your processes and identify the less productive ones. Secondly, understand your team’s capabilities and capacities. 

Gradually, it would be best if you looked up to delivering comprehensive solutions to your clients. For this automating your operations is an active means. And then you shall have enough to spend your time, efforts and funds on tasks that lead to the growth of your brand.

What next? You will soon scale your digital agency to the one-million mark! Or perhaps higher.

Source Links:

1 Gartner.com (2019). 4 Hidden Forces That Will Shape Marketing in 2019. [online] Available at: https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/4-hidden-forces-that-will-shape-marketing-in-2019 [Accessed 9 Sep. 2019]