Your clients are priority number one as an agency. Your job is to solve the problems of your clients, alleviate their pain, and reduce their anxiety.

Your digital agency must first simplify the lives of your clients. But, #2 is making money!

You are selling your expertise, but more importantly your time. You must have a set of software tools that make your work predictable, repeatable, and reliable. This will allow you to best serve your clients and grow your business.

What software should you choose? Is there anything you are missing? How can you make money with your software stack?

The software can make you money when it is used correctly

Agencies have the opportunity to sell their marketing services in Phoenix during the phases of acquiring software.

Selling your expertise over the software you use to help your clients is the best way to make money.

What expertise? Agencies are trusted by clients to:

• Software solutions can be researched, recommended, or even purchased.

• Next, set up the software and integrate it with other systems. Finally, train staff.

• They also often operate and maintain the software as part of their ongoing client services.

Each of these roles can be used to market professional services.

Software companies should be your partner

Software companies understand the importance of selling through agencies to clients and offer business models that allow them to make money selling their software, such as commissions or wholesale discounts.

Two reasons you should use the partner programs offered to you by software companies are:

You get paid for your time. You will be paid for your time and effort in keeping up with any changes to software and products, as well as any customer service that you provide for clients’ accounts.

• Development partners create themes and custom sites for clients who use development shops. You will earn 10% of Shopify Plus’ current revenue or 20% of the recurring revenues from all plans as long as you refer at least one client per year. All Shopify Plus leads must manually be registered through this form.

• Affiliate partners receive $2,000 for paid conversions into Shopify Plus or 200% for all other Shopify plans. The best software vendors will partner with agencies to help them grow.

Your software partners will be more knowledgeable the better you are.

• Refer customers to you for professional services to their software.

• Promote you as an agency partner for their marketing communications

• Offer sales and marketing support. Training, assets, and other opportunities to help you sell to clients.

How can software companies make money for agencies and clients?

The answer would be simple if software came in boxes. It’s easy to install software, buy it, then mark it up and expense it. 

Software is now available in subscriptions. It can be difficult to get between customers and software vendors.

How do you set up an account for a digital agency and share it with others? How can you buy a subscription?

The business models that work every year are improving, and it’s a good thing. Here are some ideas:

Agency purchases

• Tools for internal use. Software you may need to improve the efficiency of your agency, but not specifically for one client.

• Bundling. Bundling is the software you offer to clients at your expense because it is priced into the service packages you sold.

• Subleasing. Subleasing is when agencies buy a master account, then create sub-accounts for each client. The agency only pays aggregate fees for all accounts, but they may get a bulk discount.

Client purchases

• Recommendations. Your expertise is trusted by clients. It is as easy as telling clients what to buy.

• Referrals (aka affiliates). Referrals and affiliate programs allow you to earn a commission if you recommend software companies. Clients still need to purchase the software.

• Co-sales. You and the software vendor can work together to close complex sales that involve a combination of software and services.

Client buys agency and then sells it to them

• Reselling. You sell the software to clients, who buy it from you at a discount. You are responsible for the onboarding, success, and operations of clients, which results in more loyal customers and greater opportunities to sell professional services.

• White label. This is a special case of reselling software, where you mark the software as yours.

Managed services are the ultimate business model

You were hired by clients to solve a business problem.

Many clients will be happy that you have created a software solution for this problem.

When you do these things, you add value

• Buy the software
• Start the software
• Integrate with their other software
• Stay up to date with product updates
• Monitor your costs
• Use the software
• Training staff
• Provide first-tier support

Digital marketing in Las Vegas is a dynamic field that offers more software options to solve problems. To remain relevant as an expert, you can manage and expand software stacks to help your clients be more competitive and efficient.

This will not only make your clients more loyal, but it will also allow you to continue talking about business problems that are ongoing so you can sell more of your professional services.

Tools that make it easier to manage software clients

Okay, so we discussed how to make money. But the real problem with managing software clients is the mechanics.

How can you create an account? How can you buy a subscription?

These are the tools that a digital agency should have.

Password managers

It is as simple as sharing passwords to share logins between clients.

Please stop using Google spreadsheets, emails, or post-it notes for password sharing with clients. Client security breaches are not something you want to cause.

It is easy to share passwords with clients using excellent password managers like LastPass or OneLogin.

Let’s dive deeper into the advantages of agency tools such as these.

It’s still difficult to purchase software for clients because you are committing to tracking the subscription and expanding it for the life of the account.

Another common way to save money is to purchase annual subscriptions. However, this locks you into the same subscription level for the year. This can be a punishment for purchasing the wrong software or making it difficult to upgrade midyear.

Software companies often prefer to invoice agencies for all subscription costs. It can be costly to pay invoices manually, break down the total expense by the client, and then invoice each client separately.

You can also purchase software with your corporate card and track your expenses. Then invoice your clients. You will need to determine which clients you want to bill for each line of your credit card statement.

You must log in to each client account to update billing information and cancel your corporate credit card.

There’s a new solution on the market, AppBind. It solves all of these problems.

AppBind allows you to manage and buy software and advertising subscriptions. It automates tracking, markups, and expenses for clients so that you don’t have any worries. You can also pay all credit card subscriptions automatically with a backup card when your card is canceled.

It also allows you to update your information in one place when you get a new card.

Software tools that are user-friendly for agencies 

We’ve already covered the basics of managing software passwords and payments. What tools should you add to your digital agency software stack?

What companies are particularly interested in supporting digital agencies?

Here is a list of software tools that we recommend.

Crazy Egg

Optimizing conversion rates is the bread and butter of a digital agency in Los Angeles. Crazy Egg allows you to easily analyze your customer journey, track user sessions, create visual reports and heatmaps, and perform A/B split testing.

WordPress has been the most used blogging and CMS platform in the world. It is a popular open-source platform. However, it also offers a hosted option at WordPress.com.

The Affiliate Program offers 20% recurring commissions for a lifetime.

Also included are sales of WooCommerce, their eCommerce platform, and the JetPack security plugin through the same program.

Wix

Wix, the most popular web hosting platform, is great for small businesses. Wix offers two programs for agency partners:

• The affiliate program offers $100 per paid signup. This is very generous. You must generate at least $300 in commission fees (i.e. 3 sales) a month.

• Wix Arena is a listing of agencies that can design or build Wix sites. Mark yourself as available for projects in your Wix account and submit client projects to be listed in the arena.

Shopify

Shopify’s enterprise-ready shopping platform includes an agency program.

They are still growing the program slowly but carefully. They maintain a carefully vetted list of agency partners. Their application for new agency partners has been closed since April 2019.

Their Affiliate Program is still available in many flavors.

• An affiliate program that offers 200% off the first monthly payment of the customer or $1,500 for enterprise customers.

• An agency program that offers more. This includes sales training and co-selling. They also offer a referral network that includes their directory.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce, a top shopping cart platform, has made significant investments in digital agency partnership programs.

BigCommerce offers partnership opportunities including:

Client sub-accounts allow you to create one Sprout Social account with unlimited users, and a separate account for each client. You can be listed in the partner directory.

Referring clients directly to sign up can help you earn 20% of the account’s lifetime value, provided that you register them in their partner portal.

GetResponse

This email marketing product is simple and easy for small businesses. It offers a simple affiliate program, which provides $100 for each account that pays or 33% recurring over its lifetime.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a powerful email and social media marketing tool that can be used by agencies to resell.

• Affiliate Partners Earn from 20% to 30% when you increase your recurring revenue for all the accounts you refer.

• Reseller partners can use active campaign’s reseller portal for creating sub-accounts for their clients. Wholesale discounts are greater for clients with more clients. Resellable at any price

• When you need to pass on expenses to your clients, they recommend using AppBind.

Hubspot

Hubspot is the most popular marketing automation tool digital agencies in New York can support and resell. This has taught them the importance of investing in their agency environment. More than 40% of their revenue is generated in partnership with their agency partners.

You can also be listed as a partner in the agency directory.

• Hubspot affiliate partners can earn $250-$1000 per referred Hubspot sale, depending on the purchase level.

• Sales implementation partners. Refer clients through the Sales Partner Program to earn 20% of their first year’s revenue. You must purchase Hubspot Sales at least once per month for $50.

• Marketing agency partners. Refer clients through the Agency Partner Program to earn 20% of their first year’s revenue. You also get a dedicated Channel Account Manager who will support you and a Channel Consultant who will teach you how you can sell more retainers. You must buy one Hubspot Marketing Hub subscription for at least $800/month.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a popular social media management tool that digital agencies use. They are focused on digital agencies.

Their agency partners get dedicated customer support and white-labeled content to position themselves as experts. They also receive sales training.

• Client sub-accounts allow you to create one Sprout Social account with unlimited users, and a separate account for each client. You can be listed in the partner directory.

• Referring clients directly to sign up can help you earn 20% of the account’s lifetime value, provided that you register them in their partner portal.

Instapage

A fast and easy way to create landing pages is essential for any digital marketing agency in Miami. Instapage is a landing page maker that supports digital agencies with extensive agency programs.

• Affiliate partners receive a 50% revenue share for the first payment and a 30% revenue share for overall self-serve plans (not including enterprise plans).

• Referred partners receive special training from Instapage and white glove support. You also get revenue sharing of 40% of the initial payment and 10% recurring thereafter if you close the sale as a reseller.

• Fulfillment partners design landing pages for Instapage advertising customers. Instapage will help you find clients and include you in their directory.

HelloBar

HelloBar is a popular tool for converting website visitors to leads and customers. It captures emails, notifies customers of sales and discount codes, and displays other calls to action in pop-ups or widgets.

They offer white-glove support for digital agencies. Contact them.

UserTesting

UserTesting offers a robust platform for customer experience called Human Insights. It collects data from customers across all digital experiences (websites as well as apps).

They do offer a partner program to agencies but they carefully choose which agencies they will work with.

Register an opportunity to see if they’re open to partnering with your company.

Monetate

Monetate, a powerful personalization and customer experience platform designed for large ecommerce websites, is available. It uses visitor behavior analysis to improve the website experience and push them to take the most profitable paths to conversion.

Although they have many programs available for partners, they are selective about which partners can join. Here are the details.

There are endless opportunities for growth

We have only shown you a small selection of digital agency tools available on the market.

It should make you believe that software companies do invest in your support partners, and it should also give you a glimpse of the many business models being explored by the market.

You know the best. As the first contact for your client, it is your responsibility to decide how to buy, manage and sell a software stack that meets their needs.

You will find the right business model for you.

It’s worth it to add managed services to your practice, given the variety of business models offered by software companies and the powerful tools such as LastPass and AppBind, which allow you to manage and buy any online service you wish.

Agencies that take care of clients’ problems are highly valued by them. Increase your revenue. Your agency can grow by improving the work that you already do.