The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

After taking a few weeks off from this blog to recharge and refresh, let's get back to working together to grow our agency. Today's post is about on of the biggest challenges facing digital agency owners in 2021 and beyond. 

The writing is on the wall. The digital agency is quickly evolving and the roles you thought you needed last year might not be the roles you need this year.

Clients are asking for different help in new areas and you can respond with new skills, new services and new expertise or you can defer this business to other agencies who have built out teams to deliver on your clients requirements.

There are a couple of sayings that I tend to lean on when times are tough. These have gotten me through some challenging times in the past. I’ve shared these life lessons with my children and they seem to be doing pretty well, even reminding me of these sayings from time to time.

“Be bold and mighty forces will follow.” William Benjamin Basil King (1859–1928) was a Canadian clergyman who became a writer.

“It’s ALL about the recovery.”Pat Croce, entrepreneur, sports team executive and owner, author, and TV personality. He served as team president of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Philadelphia 76ers from 1996 to 2001. He also built and sold a physical therapy business, NovaCare.

“If you’re not remarkable, you’re invisible.”Seth Godin. If you don’t know Seth Godin, he’s probably the father of inbound marketing. Yes, he’s the actual father. His book, Permission Based Marketing laid the groundwork for inbound marketing. His books Purple Cow and Free PrizeInside are must read.

It seems like these quotes are even more relevant this year and going into next year than perhaps in other years.

In my travels, I’ve met two kinds of owners: those who love sales and hate taking care of clients, and those that hate sales and love taking care of clients. When I force owners to choose one over the other, they always laugh and honestly pick the one that they enjoy the most.

It’s extremely hard to do both jobs at once. You generally end up doing both jobs in an average way, instead of one in an amazing way.

To fix that you really have to pick one or the other. Today’s article focuses on those of you who are opting to take care of clients because that means you’ll need to hire someone into a sales role or move one of your current team members into that sales role.

I try to give agency owners a lot of practical advice. I know many of you are technically capable of doing what you need to grow, but there are just forks in the road, potholes, unforeseen challenges and decisions that seem to slow down your growth.

One of the biggest challenges is simply working IN the business, instead of working ON the business. If there was a single piece of advice I could share with agency owners it would be to carve out at least 2 hours every month to stop working in the business and work on it.

This would allow you to consider how you differentiate, how you can add a few new tech partners, how you can improve your delivery, what new services you can offer, and how you can help your client services team be better consultants.

It’s Hard To Hear, But You Are All Pretty Neglectful Of Your Own Agency Marketing

I just spent the last few weeks talking to agency owners and it's painfully obvious that most of you aren’t investing enough time, money and energy to your own marketing. Yes, it's true. The cobbler’s kids don’t have any shoes.

However, in 2020 and 2021 that’s no longer acceptable.

Your prospects are looking for you to lead, not follow or make excuses. Worse, you’ll never be able to grow your agencies if you don’t have a steady stream of inbound leads. Finally, how can any client feel like you’re able to help them when you can’t even help yourself?

If you really want to grow, you have to run one of the biggest marketing programs in your agency—for your own agency.

I Bet Most Of You Have Similar Questions, Challenges and Issues

A few weeks ago, I posted an offer to the HubSpot Solutions Partners Group on Facebook. I offered 30 minutes to any agency owner who wanted to pick my brain and talk about their challenges.

Over the past few weeks, I've chatted with 30 owners just like you. I took some notes and was surprised to hear they ALL have very similar issues.

Here are the top five challenges as identified by the people I’ve chatted with and the advice I gave them so you all can benefit from our conversations.

Enjoy!

It’s Not Easy, But Growth Is Definitely Possible If You Have These Ingredients In This Mix

I’ve been running and growing a digital agency for the past 18 years. We started in 2003, before Facebook was even a company. We’ve had our ups and downs like every business. We’ve had some great years and some tough years. We’ve managed through the financial crisis, a major recession, and now a pandemic.

We’ve partnered with technology companies, redefined how we deliver services, doubled down on strategy, acquired six other agencies, and reorganized our team more times than I can remember. This is all because we wanted to be better.

I have to admit, this week feels a little weird. Last year we were at Inbound and there were meetings, dinners, parties, get togethers, sessions, high fives, handshakes, and a ton of wows!

This year, not so much.

But Inbound is happening anyway and yes, I’m attending and yes, I’m speaking, and yes, I’m looking forward to what the team at HubSpot has put together for their annual conference.

This Might Not Be As Easy As You Think

I’ve had a few less than stellar service experiences over the past month that has me looking introspectively at the team at Square 2. Are we doing everything we should be doing to give our clients the remarkable experience we aspire to deliver?

This effort triggered me to consider sharing some of the insights and efforts with all of you.

Because I think now more than ever, the people we have on our teams are going to make or break our efforts not only this month but for many months and years into the future.

Now more than ever, how we take care of clients is going to be the difference between success and failure.

All The Signals Are There, If You Stop Long Enough To Notice Them

Running a digital agency over the past few years has been challenging but running one in 2020 is extremely challenging. Who would have thought we would be dealing with a global pandemic, recession, political uncertainty, and protests in the streets?

Having run and grown a successful agency over the past 17 years has taught me a couple of very valuable lessons. The biggest is being able to notice signals and make adjustments to our agency based on those signals.

It helped us get through the financial crisis in 2008. It helped us get through the explosion of inbound agencies and it’s helping us navigate uncharted waters today.