Running an agency? These tips separate the rookies from the pros.
Dav Nash
14 min read
There’s a lot of work out there for digital marketing agencies.
But that doesn’t always mean that finding clients is as easy as it could be.
After all, no matter how specialised your agency may be, it’s just a fact that you’ll have to contend with a lot of competition. So if you’re going to win yourself as many clients as possible, then you’ll need to go out there and get them.
You’ll need to be just as serious about your agency’s own digital marketing success as you are about your client’s. That means utilising smart digital marketing agency tips that ensure as many prospective clients as possible know about your agency, understand what you can do for them, and ultimately get in contact.
You already know that digital marketing can be a powerful tool that can be a game-changer for your clients. In this post, we’ll show you how your agency can unleash the power of the web for your own benefit.
How are your potential clients going to find you?
Some will come your way via referrals.
But most will begin their journey towards becoming your client in the same way that everyone does everything these days: by looking online.
If you have a low profile online, then you can’t be too disappointed if your email inbox is empty.
Your online presence is, first and foremost, a way to get your name out there. Nothing can happen if your potential clients don’t know that you exist! By investing the time to boost your online presence, you’ll be making it as easy as possible for potential clients to come across your agency, and not one of your competitors.
Your online presence will also show your potential clients who you are, what you can do, and why they should hire you.
There are a million ways to boost your online presence. We’ll outline the most effective strategies later in this article, but just to give you an idea of the key components:
If you have all those pieces in place, then eventually your target audience will come across your agency.
Keep in mind that these approaches aren’t just recommended for new agencies. Digital marketing agency tips can be just as effective for established agencies, too.
In some cases, even more so. You might have invested time into your SEO, social media, and content marketing several years ago, but keep in mind that the effects of those efforts won’t last forever. Unless you’re continually investing to uphold your digital presence, then eventually you’ll begin to slide down the SERPs and you’ll be overtaken by newer, ambitious agencies who are going above and beyond to get their voices heard.
If you’re noticing that your number of website visitors is dwindling, then taking a proactive approach to your online presence isn’t just recommended: it’s essential.
OK, so that’s the importance of having a robust online presence out the way. Now let’s take a more detailed look at how to achieve it.
There’s no better way to understand the importance of social media than by looking at the numbers behind it.
Social media marketing isn’t just a useful marketing strategy. In this day and age, it’s absolutely essential.
After all, your potential clients aren’t just on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Facebook. They’re spending a huge chunk of their day on those sites.
By investing in your social media channels, you’ll help to build greater awareness of your brand and show your potential clients who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.
Finding success with your social media profiles won’t happen overnight. It’ll take time for your content to get the attention it deserves. After all, there’s a lot of content on social media!
But if you take a disciplined, focused approach to building your social media channels, then eventually it’ll pay off. So, how do you do it? Let’s take a look at some handy digital marketing agency tips for getting your brand noticed on social media.
Remember above, when we said that there were 4.8 billion people on social media?
That might be true, but the number of social media users who are interested in your brand will be much smaller. Much, much smaller.
And they’re the only ones who you want to attract with your social media posts. It might be nice if someone randomly decides that they enjoy your videos, but that’s probably not going to translate into paid work.
Key to your social media success will be creating content that your target audience will be interested in. Ultimately, it’s all for them!
People won’t engage with your social media accounts just because they’re there. You need to give them a reason to.
And that reason will be: that you’re offering them something valuable! Your content should be created with their needs in mind.
Creating such content isn’t rocket science. It’s all about figuring out their pain points and then creating content that outlines how your digital marketing services will help them.
For example, short videos explaining SEO changes brands should be aware of, common email marketing mistakes, why content is King, things like that.
Remember that different forms of content will be needed depending on the social media site. Short, fun videos will do well on TikTok and Instagram, whereas more serious, ‘thought leadership’ type posts will work well on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Putting together one great piece of social media content is all good and well, but it probably won’t have much effect.
Why? Because success with social media marketing is dependent on posting great content consistently. You’ll need to post around 3 – 5 times a week to stay at the forefront of your clients’ minds.
It sometimes feels that email marketing is still underrated, even among digital marketing experts. It’s repeatedly shown itself to be one of the most effective marketing strategies out there, yet for some reason, many brands put it lower on the priority list.
Just take a look at some of the many benefits that it offers:
Read those again. Can you really be leaving those advantages on the table? Not in this day and age, when competition for digital marketing clients couldn’t be higher.
Of course, those benefits won’t automatically come your way. You’ll need to earn them. Let’s take a look at a few key strategies for ensuring that your email marketing campaigns get results.
A well-written, engaging email won’t be effective if no one reads it!
And while you can’t make someone open up your email, you’ll have a better chance of success if it’s landing in as many people’s inboxes as possible. The more email subscribers you have, the easier it’ll be to achieve the kinds of results you’re looking for.
It takes time to earn yourself subscribers, but if you take the right steps, then the list will grow. Some easy ways to get people to sign up include:
Wasting your potential client’s time with low-quality, non-valuable emails is a surefire way to lose their interest.
You’ve got to be respectful of their time, and that means putting together emails that are genuinely useful and informative.
You might fall upon a winning email marketing strategy from your very first email. In all likelihood, it’ll take a little bit of time until you land upon a recipe for success.
The bottom line? Don’t sleep on email marketing. It takes time and effort, yes, but it can be a real game-changer — after all, there aren’t many marketing strategies that can offer an ROI as high as 4,400%!
Having a well-designed, informative website that outlines who you are and what you do is a good starting point.
But it’s only a starting point.
Once you’ve got your website, you’ll need to begin the busy work of getting people to visit your site.
And the best way to do that is to invest in your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). It’s your SEO that’ll be responsible for ensuring that your potential clients can find you through Google (and other search engines).
After all, most digital journeys begin with a simple search. Your website’s SEO is what’ll ensure that your clients see your website and not one of your competitors.
It can take some time for your SEO magic to take effect, but it’s a worthy investment. Brands that appear on the first page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) receive many, many more visitors than ones that appear further down.
Remember: the more visitors you have, the more likely it is that you’ll earn clients.
You can take a methodical approach to improving your SEO. We’ll list some of the areas to focus on below. Make sure you’re ticking all these boxes, and you will move higher up the results pages.
Conducting keyword research is essential for having your website appear on the right kinds of searches.
For example: let’s say that your digital marketing agency specialises in helping dental clinics. Your keyword research may show you that the keywords you need to be hitting are ‘digital marketing for dentists,’ dentist digital marketing agency,’ and ‘SEO dental marketing.’
By implementing those keywords into your website copy, you’ll ensure that your website will be shown to potential clients searching for exactly those terms.
Google will reward you with a higher search engine ranking if your website meets the criteria that its crawlers and bots look for. For example:
Google wants to show its users the best possible results. And one way they determine what those results are is by looking at the quality of the content that’s hosted on the website.
If your content is authoritative, expert, and useful, then Google will pay attention.
For digital marketing agencies, that may involve writing articles that outline useful marketing tips (for example, ‘10 Ways For Dentists to Get Noticed Online.’).
Note that hosting this content on your website does more than just help with your Google ranking. It’ll also demonstrate your expertise to your visitors, increasing the chances that they choose you for their digital marketing needs.
You can improve your Google ranking with off-site SEO tactics, too.
Remember that your SEO efforts should be ongoing, and it’s something that will benefit existing agencies just as much as new agencies!
Working to optimise your website for search engine success is a long-term strategy. You’ll eventually work your way up the SERPs, but it’ll take time.
While you wait for those effects to take place, you can nudge your potential clients your way using PPC — Pay-Per-Click — campaigns. It’s an effective way to quickly drive potential clients to your website.
PPC campaigns also offer higher degrees of control, ensuring that your ad is seen by the precise people you’re trying to attract.
PPC campaigns cost money, yes, but provided you’ve taken a considered approach to your campaign, then it’ll be worth it. After all, spending some cash on PPC advertising will be worth it if it results in ten new long-term clients.
Let’s take a look at some handy tips that’ll help increase the chances that your PPC campaigns are successful.
Focus on the Right Keywords
It’s your keyword research that’ll ensure your PPC advertisements are seen by the right people.
A user won’t click a PPC link just because it’s there. You’ll need to give them a reason to do so. For instance, outlining your specialities, awards you’ve won, or the kinds of results you’ve been getting for your clients; a user will be much more likely to click an ad if you’re promising them a 1000% increase in number of website visitors.
The landing page (the page on your website the ad links to) should be in line with the message of the ad. It’s best to avoid simply linking to your website; if you’ve built an ad around SEO, then link to an SEO-focused page that expands upon the message of the ad.
You’ll have a wealth of data that details the performance of your PPC campaigns. Use it! If an element of your PPC campaigns isn’t working, then make an adjustment.
Content has been King for a long time, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.
Google loves it, for starters. But most importantly, your potential clients love it, too.
Having informative, educational marketing content on your website is an effective way to demonstrate your expertise to potential clients.
After all, while you might know that you and your team are marketing wizards, your first-time websites will not — unless you show them.
Now, having a website filled with attention-grabbing content doesn’t come easy. You’ll need to put together a plan, and also be patient. As with SEO, your content marketing strategies are unlikely to lead to overnight success.
But if you can offer value to your users, then eventually it’ll pay off. If you’re struggling to come up with content ideas, then focus on your clients’ problem areas — for example, blog posts that outline how to achieve maximum ROI from email marketing, or overlooked ways to expand organic reach.
Having these types of content on your website will move you up the SERPs and tell your potential clients that you know what you’re talking about. And once they’re on your website, they’ll be just a click away from getting in touch and hiring your agency.
The tips we’ve outlined above should help to increase brand awareness and ultimately help you to win more clients.
But you don’t have to simply put these steps in motion and hope for the best. You can actively track the results of your efforts. This will show you if you’re on the right track, and can highly areas for improvement if required.
Let’s take a look at some handy tips for doing just that.
You’ll find it much easier to get positive results from your marketing efforts if you know what you’re trying to achieve. After all, ‘success’ will look different to each agency. Having a clear idea of your objectives can influence your strategic decision-making processes.
Some examples of digital marketing goals you can choose include:
You’ll have a wealth of data at your disposal, so use it! Tracking the ongoing performance of your PPC and social media campaigns can provide encouragement that you’re on the right track or indicate that you need to make some adjustments.
Over time, you’ll get a good sense of what’s working for your agency and what isn’t.
Finally, remember that while working on improving your agency’s marketing is recommended, keep in mind that it’s not the only thing that will influence the long-term term success of the agency.
What really counts is ensuring that your clients are satisfied. After all, while it’s great to earn yourself another client, what really counts is keeping those clients on board. By getting feedback from your clients, you can make improvements to your services that increase client satisfaction. If your client retention rate is high, then your agency will be in good shape.
You’ll have a host of skills and experience that can help your clients to get noticed online.
But you’ll also need to use those skills for your own benefit, too. While demand for digital marketing services is higher than ever, there are also more agencies than ever before, too.
And that means that even experienced agencies can struggle to get their voices heard. By taking the tips we’ve outlined above, you can significantly expand your online reach, helping you to get your agency seen by more people, ultimately increasing the chances of earning more clients.
