It is a huge accomplishment to launch your digital agency. After you have filled out your client list and executed one successful month, you will need a plan for the next level.
How can you make your agency more successful and capitalize on your momentum?
Let’s take a look at scaling your services to grow your agency.
What does it mean to scale your agency?
Many social media agency owners want to scale their businesses, but that is not the same thing as scaling.
Before you can expand your agency, it is important to understand the terms and distinguish between the different types.
- Growth is about increasing revenue and resources simultaneously. Hire another social media marketer, for example, would allow your agency to take on more clients. While you would generate more revenue, your expenses will be higher.
- Scaling allows your agency to generate significant revenue while not spending too much. This would increase productivity and generate greater revenue without additional expenses.
When should you scale your agency’s services?
You must know when to move on to the next step to build your agency.
These are signs it is time to scale up your agency.
- Your agency is making a profit. Your agency has a solid foundation to build on, and you can use what is working to increase your profits exponentially.
- Your agency is working at its maximum capacity. You can’t take on additional clients without burning out. You can increase revenue and decrease your resource output by scaling up your operations.
- You are overwhelmed with leads. Until you recalculate profit margins, hiring new employees may seem like a good idea. You can scale up your agency to service more clients and increase revenue, rather than spending more resources.
Scaling Your Services for Growth
Are you ready for your agency to expand exponentially?
Here are 10 ways you can scale your services.
1. Define your ideal client and target them
Your agency could spend a lot of time trying to manage clients with different needs if it doesn’t have a target client in mind. You may need to invest additional resources in research, application, and processes.
You can effectively market to your ideal customer and onboard quickly to meet your needs.
Research their industry, location, and service requirements. Also, look at their budget. Social monitoring is an important tool in your research. You can monitor online conversations by using a social monitoring tool such as Agorapulse. This allows you to listen in on the conversations within your space, your industry, your clients, your competitors, and your industry.
Use your knowledge to create compelling marketing copy and more efficient processes.
2. Perfect Your Lead Generation Strategy
Do not leave client acquisition up to chance.
You can depend on your lead generation strategy to maintain your client pipeline fuller if you improve your agency’s lead generation strategies quickly.
For consistent lead generation, you should use highly targeted, repeatable tactics such as:
- Google Ads is an example of a pay-per-click (PPC), ad that uses Pay-per-Click (PPC).
- SEO (search engine optimization) is a way to increase organic website traffic
- Use content marketing to educate potential clients
- Use email marketing to nurture warm leads
- Posts on social media and ads, like Facebook or LinkedIn ads
3. Retainers and recurring services are available
One-off campaigns can be very lucrative. If your team is always chasing after one-off projects you could be wasting a lot of money and creating big gaps in your schedule.
Retainers or recurring services can be a great way to supplement large projects. You might offer social media management services on a rolling basis, for example.
You can concentrate on great work and not repeat sales pitches if you set up client contracts that auto-renew every month.
4. Identify Your Unicorns
Examine your agency’s internal analytics to identify outliers. Are you offering a service with a high-profit margin? Do certain segments of customers generate significantly more revenue than others?
Next, create a plan for how to leverage this segment or service.
How would your agency and profit look if you concentrated on the most profitable clients or high-value services?
To find the perfect balance between diversity and specialization, calculate a few scenarios.
5. Analyze the Client Flow
Do clients seem to be waiting for you to get things done? To identify and improve your efficiency, take a look at the client flow.
- How do you find clients? You can group them based on their point of entry.
- What is your onboarding process? Is there a process that is different for each group or does it follow the same workflow?
- What number of touchpoints does your client receive on average? Is it possible to establish a common workflow for each group?
Use your knowledge to create consistent onboarding, acquisition, and renewal procedures for different client types.
6. Create repeatable processes
Management clients do not have to be difficult or time-consuming as you might imagine. You can cut down on time and effort by creating processes for client onboarding, daily tasks, and reporting.
Next, document your steps and technology. Then share this information with your team. You can also use an app such as Process Street to streamline the process. This allows you to create reusable checklists, and work together on workflows.
7. Use specialized and integrated tools
It’s tempting, even though they aren’t designed for your purpose, to save money by using free tools. It’s important to use tools that are compatible with one another to scale your agency. While some tools may require additional investments, they can save you time and increase productivity. These platforms are standard for digital agencies in Miami:
- Management tools for social media
- Social media analytics
- Tools for managing reputation
- Monitoring tools for social media
- Hashtag research tools
- Content management tools
- Image and video management tools
- Collaboration tools for clients and team members
8. Quality Assurance is a priority
It can be hard to keep the same level of supervision as your client list and your team grows. You’ll be able to produce better work the first time and spend less time editing later.
High-quality work is more attractive to clients who are familiar with your agency’s capabilities.
Quality assurance is a priority, even if it takes you longer to review each deliverable.
These rules will help you keep your quality high no matter how large you are.
- Your agency’s quality standards will be met if you train your employees.
- Establish a process for approval with clients and internal teams.
- Your company culture should reflect a high standard of quality.
9. Create Complementary Partnerships
Partner with an agency that has a similar strong lead generation strategy to fill your client pipeline. Find an agency that offers services that complement yours.
To complement your social media agency, you could partner with a PPC agency or website design agency.
Referring clients to your partner agency is a way to help them. This setup allows you to create strong referral networks and meet more clients without providing additional services.
10. Consider the benefits of outsourcing
No one says that your entire team must handle everything internally. Select tasks and processes can be outsourced to increase productivity, and improve performance. It frees up your team to take on high-level projects or revenue-generating strategies.
You can outsource certain tasks to relieve the pressure on your team:
- Accounting is one example of internal processes
- Sales processes and client acquisition
Outsourcing additional services can be a great way to increase your agency’s offerings and keep the resource output low. You might consider hiring contractors or other agencies for white-labeling client processes such as:
- Social media scheduling
- Content production
- Management of the community
- Customer service