Starting a digital marketing company from scratch can be an uphill struggle but with tips and obviously with your work, you can enter the exciting world of digital marketing.
We, 9OM is a digital marketing agency in Delhi expertise in celebrity PR, Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization. From working as full time employees to now, as business-owners, we have gained experience as well as turned many challenges into opportunities.
Starting is always easy but keeping you consistent is difficult. So, this blog provides every information you can use while starting your digital marketing agency from scratch.
What’s the first thing that pops when you think about how to start a digital marketing agency? And many of you’ve guessed - the Money!
But actually, money is not that important!
What I meant here is that both ways i.e. with or without money you can start your marketing agency.
If you’ve money or funds, you can quickly hire people or resources who are going to build a business for you and focus on their own strengths and simultaneously you can focus on your own strengths. For example, if a person is good in content marketing and social media marketing, then his/her team can focus on other fields that they are good at. They can work in client servicing, design and strategies. This way you and your team both work in their respective field and excel in them.
But if you are without money, then you’ll need to wear multiple hats to run the business and deliver the results to your clients and satisfy them with your inputs. But, this helps to grow and learn at the same time. A difficult start but surely going to be worth every second.
According to E-Marketer in 2021, there has been a spend of 491.70 billion dollars on digital ads. And we are sure, it's going to boom in the coming years.
Key points to focus on:
Build your Digital Marketing Skills
From content marketing to e-mail marketing, you should have digital marketing skills. This means you need to understand how it works, what are its key components, how to run campaigns to achieve the client's objective (brand awareness, engagement or reach or sales) using one or more marketing channels.
As your agency grows, you can hire people in their expertise and get the work done. But at the initial stage, you should play and execute different skills as to cut the cost and also the dependency on the people.
Focus on getting a niche expertise
Businesses that are paid by the client on a recurring basis or at least high-ticket product or services. They typically focus on one thing? Is it e-commerce or are you doing marketing for B2B?
Pick one specific thing.
Client Acquisition
When you want clients for your agency, go and focus on businesses that are focused on growth and investing. People who are spending money on Google Ads or Social Ads such as Facebook etc. You can check the Facebook Library if they are running any ads. Tools such as Spyfu, Ubersuggest help to show such data.
Reach out to your friends and family members who own businesses and work for companies that need digital marketing services.
Explain to them why they need to put money to improve their website, why they need to have dynamic social media pages, how they can profit from Google promotions, the botching opportunities from not utilizing email marketing, and whatever else is expected to persuade them to recruit you as their digital marketing expert.
Ensure that your price at this stage is appealing to them. Your objective isn't to begin creating a profit yet to construct your portfolio.
Delivering amazing services and results
The amazing services you provide to your clients, the better is your word-of-mouth strategy. If you are not good at your job, you’re not really going to grow. Whatever activities or campaigns you’re doing for your client, focus on results. Build a result-based portfolio so that people can refer you to their friends and acquaintances.
Remember: Business owners know more business owners.
Documenting process
Start at a high level and then go more in depth. And don’t worry about perfection. Process changes over time.
Self-Management
Self Management is the key to achieve one’s personal, professional or social goals. And if you’re someone who has started a marketing agency you should just not be great at managing other people’s time but your own time as well. You should be super organized. Working with a team requires you to be systematic and especially if the team is not on the same page with tasks, schedules or strategies, it creates a tussle for all. To pass on such challenges, you should be highly communicable and planned with your day to keep a check on your agency’s growth.
Hiring and Staffing
The more clients you get, the more people you’re going to need. You should learn how to delegate those low value tasks so that you can set your mind on those things that are generating you ROI (return of investment).
Now, you’ll be recruiting people to help your business but before you do, you'll have to set up your process.
By processes, we mean to have a bunch of standard operating procedures. to report all the means you require to play out a particular task. This incorporates the client onboarding process and to all the services you offer.
It's vital to do this now before you get new team members on board. If not you'll lose a ton of important time clearing up for your team members how you need them to deal with client work.
Utilize your present experience working with clients and invest some energy making email formats, proposal templates, custom reports, and checklists that anybody can follow to perform a particular task.
Keep things straightforward and don't overcomplicate things. You can make your process simple by utilizing Google docs and Gmail and putting them together in folders.
Starting a digital marketing agency in India might need to fulfill some legal formalities as well. Research before enrolling into any government program and build your web presence through website and social media to increase awareness.
In conclusion, remember the saying 'the client is always right'. Offer your clients enough consideration and transform them into repeat clients. This way you'll limit the expense of gaining new clients, increment your benefit and scale your business quicker.
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