How to Market a Digital Agency – Small Markets Big Clients

I don’t know about you but I love the promotional side of building a digital marketing agency.

Some people gravitate towards sales, some towards fulfillment, but the fact of the matter is, those things wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for promotion.

All big agencies know this. The more effective your marketing is, the more sales leads you get, the pickier you can be on sales calls, the better clients you’ll work with, and the more profitable your agency will be.

Although large agencies have eaten up a large portion of the promotional pie there are still huge gaps in the market… gaps where the Goliaths refuse to tread.

This guide is for the davids out there (small agencies) looking to tread uncharted promotional paths.

This article will cover how to market a digital agency by covering 7 key promotional strategies still untapped by the big name brands.

Third Party Sites

Your “competition” has already done the heavy lifting when it comes to building highly targeted streams of traffic.

Sites like Upwork and Fiverr get MILLIONS of visitors a month looking for digital marketing related services. You can syphon some of this traffic to your own business.

I know, I know, you’re probably thinking this isn’t going to attract the types of clients you want and you can’t afford to split profits with these third party sites.

The first one may or may not be true but the second one can definitely be circumvented.

Optimize profiles on these websites and make a habit of outreaching to job postings. The initial outreach starts on the platform (they did make the connection after all) but this doesn’t mean the conversation has to reside on the platform.

Use these sites as a foot-in-the-door to start conversations and work towards moving clients to

Skype, email, and or phone calls as soon as possible. You’ll find that most clients are more than willing to work out custom deals between just you and them (specially when you’ve proven your value).

Contracting on the Backend

Another viable strategy, especially for those heavily resistant to sales, is to contract on the backend of shoulder agencies.

Let’s say you specialize in offering SEO services to local businesses. You can find shoulder agencies offering services that go hand-and-hand with SEO to upset their current and future client-base. This could look like teaming up with a web design firm.

With this strategy, you aren’t just limited to shoulder agencies but may even be able to make the pitch to competing organizations.

The benefit of this approach is you get immediate access to the agency’s resources (sales team & customers). This access eliminates the need for customer management, allowing you and your team to focus solely on implementation.

The downside to white-label contracting is that you don’t own the customer, which is the true asset in any business. Second, your margins will be cut since the agency you’re working with will also want a piece of the pie.

Video Audits

Third, we have a strategy that leverages cold outreach with an indirect pitch. The goal of each initial contact, in this case, is to send a video audit to the client via email.

The idea is to begin with a cold email or call that scans prospects for interest. Ask the prospect if they would like you to send them a video audit you made of their current digital marketing efforts.

Then, create a 4-8 minute video digital marketing audit in which you’ll embed and send to the lead through email.

Make sure to treat the landing page as you would any other; add trust signals, process information, background, case studies, testimonials, and a call to action for the prospect to schedule a call with your team.

Ultimately, this strategy produces much warmer leads for phone calls since they have already gone through a funnel that scans for interest and adds massive value upfront.

Create Content on Social Media

Social platforms are still highly neglected by most businesses. It turns out, big agencies aren’t an exception.

One of the biggest untapped prospecting strategies is leveraging social content.

Content is quickly becoming king and businesses are craving actual information. No one wants to see, ‘# tips to ___’ style articles anymore…

Figure out what your audience needs help with and provide that for them. Secondly, release this in video format since the organic reach of video on social platforms is enhanced compared to written articles.

One simple strategy you can leverage today is leveraging interviews of your past/future clients.

Reach out to your existing client-base and see if anyone is interested in doing an interview to dig into some of their business processes. Then, record the conversation and use this as social content.

You can do the same thing with prospecting instead of going directly for a sale or as a downsell for leads that don’t buy. Side note, this is a great way to remarked and stay in front of lost leads.

Blog Content

Ranking in Google for searches like, marketing agency [city], requires a lot of resources to accomplish. The first page of Google has increasingly become a saturated space that most marketers tend to stay away from unless they have large budgets.

This doesn’t have to be the case though!

Your target audience is searching for solutions to their problems every single day. Yes, finding a marketing agency may be one of them but, there are other types of searches they are making earlier on in their buying cycles.

Look for long-tail questions and how to style keywords that your audience is searching for. These searches don’t even have to be marketing related as long as they get your audience to your website.

As mentioned, these visitors are earlier on in their buying cycle so you’ll have to take a more creative approach with marketing. This begins with creating and promoting a lead magnet that gets the visitor into your email funnel for future promotions.

Second, you’ll want to tag each of these visitors and follow them around the web to get the best ROI on your efforts. Make sure to create custom audiences in Google and Facebook Ads for everyone who has visited your blog and didn’t opt-in.

Networking Strategy

Networking is still one of the most effective ways to get in contact with the big guns.

The contact information for most decision makers in larger organizations are not usually overtly displayed online. In this case, the only way to get in contact with these people is to physically go straight to them.

Where do these individuals exist?

Industry events and business meetups. Conference organizations have already done the heavy lifting and congregated masses of your best clients all in one place. All you have to do is join the party!

Search Google for “conference/event” “your niche” and you’ll get a huge list of upcoming events.

Additionally, you can also join your local chamber of commerce which generally will have monthly meetings with local business owners from around your area.

Conclusion

These are only some of the strategies small agencies can get big clients. There are plenty of approaches you can/should invest in such as high intent SEO, advertising, and cold calling but what we have presented will help you differentiate from the crowd.

Hopefully you found something new in this article that you can implement right away.

Let us know how these work for you in the comment section below and make sure to check out our complete guide on getting digital marketing clients for your agency.

Cheers,

Clicks Geek