The Hows And Whys Of How You Need to Treat Your Agency as a Client
You’re a talented agency owner, and that’s a great start! But how much time do you have to dedicate to growing your agency?
If you’re like most agency owners, time is an issue. Between client emergencies and check-in meetings, you may be spread a little thin.
But I’ll tell you something that you probably already know. You need to dedicate at least 10 hours per week to growing your agency and treating it like one of your clients.
The Agency Owner’s Conundrum
I’ll let you in on a secret. There is a reason why The Campfire Circle is so successful.
It’s because agency owners have a problem. They spend a ton of time doing incredible client work and don’t have much time left in the day to grow their own agencies.
Agencies must revamp how they approach growth.
If you don’t have the time and resources to dedicate to growing your agency, there are people like me who can help you.
Or you can hire more talented account managers so you can take a step back and utilize your talent to grow your agency just like you grow your clients’ brands.
It’s not a matter of being capable, it’s all about capacity.
First Step: Audit Your Agency
You don’t want to promote your agency and cast a wide net blindly. You need to thoroughly research ALL of your growth strategies individually and their ROI.
Be sure to look at both online and offline initiatives. To analyze growth thus far, you must consider acquisition, activation, and retention. As agencies can’t survive without all 3 of these things.
Activation and retention are easy to figure out as you just look at the conversion rate. Acquisition is how agencies grow to reach the activation and retention phase. So acquisition should be a top priority.
The average client acquisition cost (CAC) at an agency is $141 per client landed. So, as you’re performing your audit, check your different promotion strategies and their CAC to identify which strategies to keep and which to say goodbye to.
Here are a few common growth strategies that agencies use that you should be auditing:
Email marketing
Social media marketing
SEM
Offline ads
Online ads
Content marketing
In-person events
Affiliate marketing
PR
Retention rate
Once you’ve audited the CAC for different strategies, it’s easy to get an overview of which tactics to acquire clients perform well and can scale back on the tactics with a high CAC.
5 Things You Need to Do to Grow Your Agency
Once you’ve audited your growth strategy and know you need to spend more time growing your agency, I’ve got five things you can start with that are powerful and don’t take a ton of time.
Lead Magnets
Lead magnets offer something of value that is housed on a landing page with a lead capture form. Your offer should be enticing enough for your target audience to share their email address to access your resource.
Lead magnets are often in the form of eBooks, industry reports, white papers, webinars, and worksheets.
Use your lead magnet as your “hub” for all of your lead gen. Promote your lead magnet just like you would promote any resource for a client.
Email Marketing
You generate leads through multiple avenues, but just generating leads isn’t enough.
Leverage email marketing to nurture new leads with a lead-nurturing sequence. I recommend a series of 4 thought leadership emails and the 5th email, a pitch to book a call with your agency.
Implement a campaign to re-engage cold leads. Share things like case studies with them. Some leads just need a little extra nurturing.
Once a contact is no longer in your nurturing program, be sure to stay top-of-mind by sending out your agency’s blog posts once per week.
Guest Posting
I can speak to the value of guest posting from experience. It is how I landed the first few clients at my agency.
Ideate the publications that your target audience follows and make a list. Reach out to them and ask if they take guest posts. Emphasize your experience and writing skills. You can usually find free placements. There are uber-high-profile publications that will charge you a fee. For me, the fee has always been worth it, like on Forbes. It just all depends on your budget.
To really get the most out of your guest posting strategy, from your article, link to one of your lead magnets so that you can capture the email addresses of people reading your content.
Earn and Leverage Social Proof
Social proof offers the third-party recommendations that your target audience craves. It makes sense. Brands want to see examples of how brands like theirs achieved success with your agency.
Social proof can be in the form of social media shoutouts, testimonials, case studies, and reviews. To earn it, simply reach out to your happy clients and ask. Sometimes, that nudge is all it takes. You may need to incentivize your clients for social proof, and I assure you that a $25 Amazon gift card is worth the budget to earn these valuable third-party endorsements.
Once you have social proof, share it from the mountain tops. Use it in your email marketing, on social media, feature it on your website, and use it in your sales deck.
Start a Referral Program
Successful agencies cite that their number one way to land new business is through a referral program.
Don’t rely on your happy clients to refer their connections to your agency. Build an actual program to earn referrals.
Start by making a list of all of your happy clients and put their email addresses in a list. Set up a series of emails asking them to refer other brands to your agency and offer an incentive. I do a $100 Amazon gift card if the referral books a meeting with me and a $250 Amazon gift card if the referral turns into a client.
Here is the complete guide to starting a referral program for your agency if you need more information.
Final Thoughts: Strategies to Make More Time to Grow Your Agency
It’s my hope that this post was eye-opening for you. I provided actionable strategies that I’ve used personally to grow my agency, and I’m excited for you to start leveraging them.
To achieve growth at your agency, you need to treat it like a client. If you can carve out just 10 hours per week to dedicate to growth, you’ll see some pretty impressive results.
If you’re good at delegating, adding more employees to your agency may help a ton.
If you want to grow but are still struggling with having the time actually to do it, it’s the whole reason why I started an agency for agencies. You can contact me here, and we can discuss how we can work together. I keep my rates reasonable because I love working with small agencies.
Do you feel like you do a good job treating your agency like a client? I’d love to read your insights in the comments below!
