Want to build a top-tier strategy agency? Follow this roadmap.
Dav Nash
17 min read
The task of setting up an effective digital strategy agency can feel monumental. Where the heck are you supposed to start?
Founding the average barber shop or car tyre company is straightforward because these business models are simple. But strategic marketing enterprises require brains.
To sell services, you have to understand how the industry works. Being in the right place at the right time isn’t always enough.
If you feel stuck and don’t know what to do when it comes to setting up a digital strategy agency, this guide will help. By the end, you should feel like you’re ready to take the plunge. 
First, think about why you want to start a digital strategy agency. What’s the point?
I love asking myself this question before a business venture. It tells me what I can get from it and where it might go if I put in the effort.
There are many reasons for setting up a digital agency but here are some of the most motivating:
First is the money. Digital strategy agencies can generate significant revenue streams–often more than conventional marketing outfits.
Why? Because you can’t commodify “strategy.”
Link-building and content writing are a race to the bottom. Companies try to offer them as cheaply as possible.
But becoming a mega-boffin and dominating the marketing tactics space requires genuine skill. Higher barriers push up entry requirements, preventing anyone and everyone from piling in and lowering prices.
Simultaneously, demand for strategic marketing is booming. Every business from fishing suppliers to IT services needs strategic assistance to cut their outreach costs and boost effectiveness. Clients require professionals who deliver value for money.
That’s where someone like you could come in. Offering digital strategies gives aspiring firms a path to success that might not be possible with generic search engine optimisation agencies.
Starting a digital strategy agency is also inexpensive. Most of the capital is intellectual. Once you know what works, you’re ready to go.
Founders often cut costs by using co-working spaces or hiring remote employees. They also save money with freelancers or partnering with other firms.
The bottom line: it doesn’t have to be expensive.
Finally, founding a digital strategy agency gives you the freedom to work creatively. Ultimately, you decide the approach you take with clients.
Planning comes next. Consider your niche and what you will offer. The more you can meet clients’ unmet needs, the better.
Ideally, you want to pick an area that makes your services stand out. Clients should feel confident you can help them achieve the outcomes they want in a specific area.
For example, you could offer niche services for a specific vertical, targeting an industry where you have pre-existing expertise. That could mean investing in real estate or medical sector knowledge to reach high-paying, high-margin firms. Then, once you generate positive results and reviews, you can diversify and expand.
Another option is to develop a specific method for working with clients. For example, you could build a proprietary approach to digital strategy formation and list client success stories on your website that support your approach.
After initial planning, it’s time to develop your expertise in digital marketing. Understanding it from all angles lets you deliver better services.
This part is the most challenging for many professionals, even those with experience in the industry. As a leader in this space, customers will expect you to provide in-depth insights on every topic that affects them.
Ensure you gain knowledge in the key areas, including:
Ideally, you want to get to the point where you feel confident offering a comprehensive digital strategy that covers most areas. Understanding how the pieces fit together can be useful for delivering superior services.
Technical proficiency is usually the most difficult step. You need to understand automation tools, digital platforms, and software. A working knowledge of analytics tools, ad management solutions and content management systems is critical.
Furthermore, understanding HTML code is vital for schema markup and technical SEO. Knowing how to modify a website’s code and make tailored changes gives your agency an advantage over rivals.
If you can get into data analysis, that’s even better. Understanding this will give your prospects concrete reasons to use you. Leveraging statistics is helpful whenever you want to make a point about the efficacy of your service (or give clients deeper insights).
Developing skills that bring all this together is the next step once you nail down the basics. Understanding these helps you launch a digital strategy agency like a boss. 
Start by looking into search engine marketing (SEM). Despite the popularity of SEO, ads are still critical for increasing online visibility for new companies and startups. Knowing how to implement them adds more tools to your toolbox, helping you do more for your clients.
Ideally, you want to know:
Also, learn as much as possible about strategic planning. You should be an expert in market research methods that help clients understand their industry and trends.
Knowing how to position client brands in the marketplace is a key skill. Developing this intuition can make subsequent work more effective with better outcomes.
Learning integrated campaign techniques is also worthwhile. These allow you to attack digital visibility problems from multiple angles. Combining social media with other channels can be highly effective.
Tying everything together also requires building your client management and communication skills. Understanding these helps retain customers and encourages word-of-mouth marketing (to gain even more clients).
Start by learning project management tools to meet deadlines, like Asana, Trello or Monday.com. These give you more oversight over your business and how it is performing.
Proper project management can help you and your team stay on track and serve customers better. They also allow multiple reps to manage a single client account, enhancing efficiency.
Working on soft skills can improve client management further. Being nice, friendly, and responding to customers the way they want can turn your agency into a celebrated brand.
Don’t forget to focus on negotiation skills. Understanding how to “work” clients can be highly effective when settling on pricing.
Lastly, it is worth developing a system for updating your digital strategy skills. Given the changing digital marketing landscape, keeping them relevant is critical.
Here’s our quick advice:
Building a strong online presence is the next step in developing a world-beating digital strategy agency. The more you can get the word out, the better.
Remember, a strong digital presence proves you have skills. Marketing agencies that are top spot for keywords give clients confidence they can do the same for them.
You can build a strong online presence by:
Naturally, as a startup, you won’t have much of a presence to start. It may feel like you’re screaming into the void!
But building this quickly is essential. You need to prove you have skills.
If you are finding this tricky, use external services. Find link-building agencies and SEO gurus who can tease out clever ways to help you rank better. Don’t leave any stone unturned (if you can’t do it by yourself).
When partnering with others, learn from what they do. Pay attention to their tactics and how you could apply them to your clients. Picking up tips and tricks is sneaky but all part of the game. 
Using paid advertising is okay, just make sure you target it correctly. Then, use statistics from your campaigns to market what you could achieve for your clients. If your ROI is 10:1, tell them!
After gathering knowledge and building an online presence, it’s time to start offering services.
Remember, though, you don’t want to commodify what you sell. Instead, offer tailored marketing solutions to clients that reflect clients’ specific requirements. Always look for ways to offer bespoke services.
The best way to do this is to learn as much as you can about what your customers do and their goals. Collecting this information helps you align your techniques with their requirements.
Spend as much time as you can asking questions. Try to find out as much as possible about their business and expectations. Learn about the types of sales funnels they want you to construct and how they intend to present their brand.
It’s okay to get a little chummy with your clients–after all, most of them want rapport! This approach lets you discover even more about them.
I think conducting a digital marketing “audit” at this stage is an excellent idea. These let you probe companies, including what they sell, how their current marketing efforts are performing, and how they could improve.
You can also delve into the weeds, looking for problems with their existing strategies. Sometimes, firms don’t understand the best approach, or they copy strategies from dissimilar firms, believing that a cut-and-paste job will suffice. Usually, it won’t.
When tailoring your services to client requirements, ensure that you:
Also, point out to clients when you are meeting their stated needs. This tactic can set you apart from the competition by creating a straight line between what they want and what you provide. Don’t assume they will understand automatically.
Unless you plan on remaining a boutique agency, you should also make your strategy agency processes scalable. Naturally, that’s easier said than done since so much of what you do is bespoke. But, it is possible.
Here’s what to do:
Start by developing your SOPs. Create documents describing what professionals should do whenever they work with a new client.
The best guidelines get people to follow the same processes but allow for innovation for the client. For example, you might have processes that follow the same steps, like client onboarding, but can adapt to their specific requirements.
You should also use templates where possible. These are helpful for:
You can combine SOPs with automation tools for even greater scalability. These reduce grunt work and keep your team happy. 
I suggest using marketing automation tools, like ActiveCampaign or HubSpot. These take the stress out of growing email lists and streamline the whole thing.
Social media scheduling tools are also helpful. These let you send out messages to prospective clients without having to sit around, waiting to push the “Post” button.
You can also use reporting and analytics tools. These automate data collection, allowing you to make better decisions about where you spend digital marketing budgets.
Lastly, making your team flexible can help you scale effectively. Outsourcing specific services, like content writing, can help you adjust output up or down as required.
Hiring specialists helps with this, too. These individuals can often take charge of entire teams, allowing them to train more people in-house when the time comes.
While working from home might hamper productivity for some firms, it tends to work well for digital marketing agencies. Freelancers usually prefer peace and quiet at home.
Next, ensure you focus your services on driving business growth for clients. Don’t fall into the trap of concentrating solely on service delivery. Clients want you to do more than fulfil a contract.
The most successful digital strategy agencies see themselves as partners for their clients. They work alongside them as if they were an in-house marketing team, focusing on conversions and revenue generation.
Ultimately, the goal is to generate long-term value. The strategy involves playing your cards right at the start to win at the end.
How you drive business growth for your clients depends on their needs. However, strategies could include:
If you successfully drive business growth at a client firm, record your achievements. List your wins on your website, showcasing how your work can help brands achieve tangible results.
Adding reviews of clients quoting success statistics on your homepage is even better. Prospects benefit from social proof immediately.
Setting up an effective digital strategy agency also requires making your results measurable. Don’t be a wallflower! Share your success.
The best agencies do this by producing weekly or monthly reports. These show the impact of strategy implementation (whatever form it happens to take) on outcomes that matter to clients.
For example, reports might include the effects of paid-for actions on:
Therefore, develop a reporting strategy that can include these endpoints. Add all of them (unless your clients specify otherwise) and put them into a reporting template you can populate for specific customers and campaigns.
If you want to be really smart, you can compare trends before and after your interventions. These give clients a clearer picture of what working with you achieves (and how you are making good use of their money).
Here’s what to do in a nutshell:
While moving through this process, keep an eye on your client’s competitors. Measure how they are evolving their tactics and look for insights from their marketing operations. If something is working for them, it may also help your customer.
Throughout this process, don’t forget to talk to your client regularly. Provide them with weekly updates, showing them what happened during the previous few days. While it sounds simple, it can go a long way to building trust and keeping them happy.
Crafting a world-beating digital strategy agency also requires building a team of experts. You need professionals who can support your clients across every aspect of digital marketing.
The best agencies build their teams in-house. They cultivate and train talented individuals (avoiding the challenges and stress of poaching people from elsewhere).
But who should you hire? If I was building a dream team, here’s who I would pick:
Learning digital strategy skills yourself could be useful (at least at the start). Building this knowledge puts you in a strong leadership position, allowing you to make better hiring choices.
However, you can also outsource some of these services to freelancers. Just ensure you work with reliable people. Otherwise, you’ll be pulling your hair out by the end of the week!
Embracing new technologies is also critical for anyone looking to develop an effective digital strategy agency. Staying up-to-date can give you an important edge over rivals.
Recent innovations include:
If you can implement these methods, you may be able to generate more results for clients.
Some niches benefit from specific innovations more than others, offering opportunities to agencies that get there first. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for ideas.
Finally, developing an effective digital strategy agency requires building strong relationships with customers. Getting on with clients is often the best way to ensure they continue paying you every month for your services.
I like to start by being as transparent as possible. Clients hate it when they think you are hiding things from them. Checking in with them regularly to discuss feedback and address concerns can go a long way.
You can also give them behind-the-scenes access to your operations. Inviting them to your offices to see what your team does can convince them that you are the real deal (and not cutting corners).
If a mistake does occur, admit fault promptly. Try to deal with an issue and sort it out before things turn nasty. Being open like this can paradoxically help you build closer relationships with clients and get them to trust you more.
When running a digital strategy agency, building emotional connections is critical. Showing clients empathy and understanding their pressures can go a long way. When customers can see you know what’s irking them, they are more likely to trust you.
If you are successful, celebrate your successes together. Make the point that you only made these incredible achievements by working as a team.
To build stronger client relationships, you can also:
Reading this, you should know how to build an effective digital strategy agency. Prioritising client requirements is essential when working with growing or established businesses.
The key to success in this niche is to ensure you cover all bases. You need to be at the forefront of the industry and stay up-to-date to produce the best results.
