Outside-the-Box Ways to Scale and Grow Your Agency
In my experience, there are two reasons why agencies struggle with growth. One is that a lot of agency owners spend time doing awesome client work and don’t have the time to grow their agency. The second is that some agencies are still hung up on archaic ways to promote themselves and need to refresh how they tackle growth.
Because both of these growth stoppers can harm an agency, agencies like The Campfire Circle specialize in growing and scaling agencies.
When it comes to growth at your agency, do you know which steps you need to take to increase profitability? After reading this post, I am sure that a few of these growth strategies will resonate.
For this post, I’ve listed ways to grow agencies that you may not have considered before. Are you ready to dive in and transform your agency!?
Ditch Cold Outreach
The thing about cold outreach, whether through email or phone calls, is that these companies may not have heard of your agency and tend to get annoyed by being contacted out of the blue. As agency owners, we are victims of cold outreach every day, and I don’t know about you, but it bugs me.
Another thing about cold outreach is that when you contact businesses out of the blue, you first have to educate them about the strategies you’re selling and if they bite, you then have to sell your agency. This leads to a long sales cycle compared to organic inbound leads.
When a company needs an agency, they like to do their own research. And if they find your agency on their own, the level of credibility they associate with your agency goes up.
You’re probably wondering what to do instead of cold outreach, and lucky for you, I have a list.
Check-in on your SEO and consider hiring a professional for an audit
Create lead magnets so that you earn the email addresses of potential prospects in a more organic fashion
Hone in on your thought leadership strategy to promote your expertise
Guest post on like-minded publications linking back to your agency
Go to in-person events and be your charming self to take advantage of some good old-fashioned face time
Join online groups such as LinkedIn Groups
Leverage HARO
There are two ways agencies can leverage HARO:
To Increase Brand Awareness
Three times per day, HARO sends out queries from journalists. Respond to all the ones that make sense for your agency. When responding to a journalist, provide your full name and how you want them to link to your agency. You’ll get some SEO value as well as brand awareness.
Uncover Qualified Leads
Agencies don’t just need to respond to queries on HARO; they can also put out their own. If your agency is strategic about it, you can gain some excellent quotes for a content piece and introduce them to your agency. All you have to do is choose a topic your target audience would like to weigh in on and when you respond to tell the potential client you are using your tip, introduce yourself and your agency. Just don’t be tacky about it.
Consider Low-Risk Outsourcing
Did you know that 80% of agencies outsource talent?
They must do it for a reason, and I can tell you why. Hiring an employee full-time is expensive as you have to factor in salary, benefits, insurance, etc. Not to mention, you need consistent full-time work for them, or you're wasting your money.
Determine pieces of your business that you can outsource. The three most common areas agencies outsource help are:
Copywriting as it is a great way to keep your agency’s voice fresh
Lead gen via agencies like The Campfire Circle
Accounting as it requires a dedicated but not necessarily full time person
How does this help you land more clients? It frees up time for you or a hiree to grow your agency with strategies like the ones I list in this post.
Tap Into Get Prospects
There are plenty of lists to subscribe to in which you can promote your agency to. My favorite is Get Prospects because every month they release a list of new startup companies with funding and new companies often don’t have an agency partner.
Be strategic in the email marketing campaign that you put these new businesses in. Send thought leadership emails with a slight CTA at the end for things like a free brainstorming session to build credibility and turn these prospects into a client.
Try Snail Mail
Traditional mail isn’t dead! I would know, the post office keeps holding my mail on their site because my mailbox gets too full.
When mail is combined with digital engagement strategies, people take notice. Consider sending a small gift or swag with a personalized note introducing your agency and include one way you can help the company grow.
You also need to interact with these businesses online too for multiple touch points so utilize things like email, social media, commenting on their posts, and text messaging.
Partner With Complimentary Agencies
I’m all about agencies owning a niche. With that, sometimes agencies only focus on key services. So, partnering with agencies complimenting your work can lead to more business.
For example, an agency that just does SEO should partner with an agency that just does content, as these two services complement each other rather than compete.
Search Freelance Sites
Websites like UpWork and Fiverr may just give you access to the clients you want to land.
One thing to note is that when businesses utilize these sites, a lot of times (not always) they don’t have a huge budget. But, I can promise you that if you submit proposals for your agency, your client roster will grow.
I recommend surfing these sites daily. To streamline the time involved, create a canned pitch that you can reuse. I don’t mind sharing my secret sauce so here is the message I put together when I am trolling UpWork:
I hope my message finds you well!
I am submitting a proposal for your agency as I run an agency for agencies. I’ve been scaling and growing agencies for over a decade. I find that many agency owners spend a ton of time on their clients but don’t have enough time to promote their agency. You can view my website here: https://www.thecampfirecircle.com/
If you want to scale your agency strategically, I’d love to help!
I also offer white-labeled services such as email marketing, social media marketing, content creation, influencer marketing, and more so that I can assist you with client-facing tasks if needed. I’ve done so much B2B and B2C marketing at agencies that I can be an asset.
I’d love to answer any questions you have, and I’d be more than happy to hop on a call to discuss how I can grow your agency.
Cheers!
Kristen
Re-Approach Leads That Went Dark
I’ve worked at agencies where I would do lead gen and then after a year or more, the leads eventually converted after consistent nurturing.
Consider creating an email marketing sequence for leads that have been in your list for longer than your average sales cycle. Get their interest by offering something free like a brainstorming call and you can even send personalized emails to really bring this strategy to life.
Get to Know Your Target Audience’s Target Audience
It’s likely that your agency embraces a niche. Instead of spending time with your own agency’s buyer personas, find commonalities about the audience that your target audience is targeting.
Creating industry reports and helpful content about your target audience’s target audience as your future clients are more interested in how THEIR target audience has an audience that can be leveraged.
Final Thoughts: Which Strategies Are You Excited to Try?
I don’t know about you, but exploring ways to grow my own agency is super fulfilling. Like chocolate and coconut.
I’ve outlined a bunch of solid strategies to go about growing your agency. However, if you’re like many agency owners, you spend a lot of time doing great work for your clients and don’t have a ton of time to spend growing your agency. Don’t worry, that is exactly why I created The Campfire Circle, an agency that grows agencies.
I recommend trying each of the strategies that resonate with you one at a time so that you can analyze the data correctly and scale based on what you see bringing in leads and new clients for your agency. And if you ever need a sanity check, I don’t charge for brainstorming or strategy calls so I mean it when I say email me if you need my help at kristen@thecampfirecircle.com.
Which strategy that I’ve outlined are you most excited to try? I’d love to read all about your thoughts on the matter in the comments below!
