Try This Agency Growth Plan and Achieve More Profitability in Just 3 Months
Do you know how to market and grow your agency but keep running out of time?
Or maybe you need a solid plan for agency growth?
The whole reason why I have a job is because many agency owners spend their time doing awesome client work and don’t often have the time to grow their own agency. Or, sometimes, newer agency owners don’t know the agency growth strategies that I’ve acquired over the last 13 years.
For this post, I have two goals. The first is to show you how you can grow your agency in 3 months by spending 10 hours per week dedicated to it. The second is to show you how The Campfire Circle can help you if you don’t have the time to dedicate to the strategies I am about to outline.
If you want self-sufficiency or help from my agency, then this post is for you. Let’s dive into why you clicked on this article in the first place.
Inbound Lead Gen
Outbound lead gen is becoming less effective yet more expensive. But, when you attract leads to your agency, they convert really well.
A strategic lead magnet is crucial to attracting the right leads. A lead magnet is simply something of value housed on your website and gated with a lead capture form. Think things like eBooks, industry reports, white papers, webinars, etc.
Your lead magnet's landing page should be your “hub” for your lead gen efforts. I recommend using one lead magnet per quarter for three months of lead gen.
Obviously, your lead magnets need to be promoted to be effective. Some more traditional strategies, like email blasts and social media ads, still work here. Note that promoting an asset like a lead magnet is a better use of your budget than general ads for your agency.
Embrace a Niche and Convey Your Expertise
Data shows that brands want an agency with expertise in their industry and are willing to pay more for such an agency. This makes thought leadership to convey your agency’s expertise one of the most important things you can do to land more business.
If you haven’t already, you must embrace 1-3 niche(s). After you do this, you must create and promote thought leadership assets for the niche(s) you specialize in.
Some of the best ways to convey your agency’s expertise through thought leadership include:
Editorial features of your agency’s work in large publications
Running a strategic blog for your agency
An active social media presence
Leverage case studies
Social proof
Referral campaigns
Now, I know it’s scary to cast a smaller net and not try to appeal to all types of brands, but I’ve seen agencies become more profitable from embracing a niche thousands of times.
Earn and Leverage Social Proof
Social proof is a bit of a buzzword and consists of earning and leveraging third-party endorsements of your agency.
More than anything, brands want an example of a brand just like them that had a positive experience with your agency. Social proof is like gold, and if you have happy clients, it’s not hard to get.
Of course, social proof happens on its own, but a little nudge can go a long way. Simply email past and current happy clients and ask them for a testimonial, case study, social media shoutout, etc. Offering a $25 gift card can scale your social proof efforts.
Once you’ve earned social proof, it’s your job to ensure potential clients see it. This can be done through:
Email marketing
Having a dedicated testimonials and case studies page on your website
Featuring it on your home page
Using it for ads on social media
Utilizing it in your sales and marketing materials
Social proof is one of the most cost-effective but impactful ways to land new clients.
Editorial Features in High-Profile Publications
Just like social proof offers a third-party endorsement of your agency, so do editorial features.
Having a contributor to a large publication talk about your agency is worth its weight in gold. However, many services only offer sponsored posts, which aren’t as credible.
Here at The Campfire Circle, we spent months lining up publishers for prominent publications who can guarantee editorial features without the pesky sponsored tag. You can get in touch with us here to see our list of options.
If you’re going to go about it on your own, connections are everything. Locate authors on publications you want to be featured in and network with them before asking if they can write about your agency, and they’ll likely charge a fee. You can also monitor publications for agency features and reach out to those authors as they are showing an affinity for featuring agencies.
When working with an author or service for an editorial feature, it’s smart to have them link to your homepage and any assets you have that are gated with a lead capture form so that you’re capturing information from your audience.
Guest Post Campaigns
Guest post campaigns differ from editorial features because you get a byline, which adds a different type of credibility than an editorial feature.
Contributing to mid-level but niche publications and publishing thought leadership articles about your agency’s niche is good on the budget and establishes credibility for your agency.
First, identify publications that your target audience reads. You can do this through Google Alerts, a simple search, asking around, etc. Once you have a solid list, contact these publications and ask if they accept guest posts.
Many agencies work with a writer to ghostwrite their guest posts. Luckily, good writers are easy to find on Fiverr.
Mid-level publications may charge a small fee or not, depending on your portfolio and if they feel like your agency will promote your guest post well.
Conclusion: The Campfire Circle Grows Agencies, Can it Grow Mine?
All of the strategies I just discussed are super effective and can be implemented rather quickly. Embracing all of them is guaranteed to increase profitability at your agency in just 3 months.
If you’re like many agency owners, the problem isn’t finding the right strategies; it’s finding the time to execute them well. That’s where The Campfire Circle comes in.
With a mission to help up-and-coming agencies, we keep our fees affordable and specialize in agency growth.
Having helped agencies grow for over 13 years, we can grow any type of agency by leveraging the strategies outlined in this post. If you want to see if we can grow your agency, contact us here.
What is the strongest strategy you have used to grow your agency? We’d love to read all about it in the comments below!
