The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

We’ve been on a mission to move our entire agency to agile during 2016. We accepted that this was a long term move, one that would take us months to master. We started testing various components of agile marketing with different teams back in late 2015 and then made the decision, based on the results of our testing, to go all in this year.

In January, we moved project management systems, we reassigned resources, we trained our team on Scrum, we hired an agile consultant and started managing all our client engagements with Scrum as the core methodologies.

Here’s what our inbound marketing agency learned after two full months.

You know I like to answer common questions with this blog and you also know that I like to use those questions as a basis for content strategy. One question that I almost never get but I know you all want to ask is “How do you get leads for your clients?”

If you’ve spoken to me personally and asked me this question, you also know that most of the time my answer is, “You already know what to do, the tactics are all the same, we all do exactly the same thing, we just do it in a different way.” So after all those vague and side stepped answers, I’ve decided to lay it all out for you, step by step. I hope you’re not disappointed.

I love it when a good plan comes together. Last week we were wrapping up our strategy engagement with a new client and as part of the recommendations we provided three program levels with increasing levels of investment. As I’m sure you can all relate, the first response from the client was, “Can we do something for less?”

On the outside, I was positive and upbeat, but on the inside I was disappointed. We just spent 2 months working up the perfect inbound marketing plan to take the client from $10 million in annual revenue to $12.5 million in annual revenue in one year. The plan was brilliant and the investment levels were commensurate with a 20% growth goal.

Look up agile marketing on the web and you get so few listings it’s hard to believe. Most of the listings don’t even refer to the application of Agile and Scrum as it relates to ongoing marketing operations. They talk about being flexible and adopting a less rigid approach to marketing or using data to decide what to work on—all good ideas, but not really Agile Marketing as I see it.

Not all digital or creative agencies need to work in an agile way, but for the inbound marketing agency, it’s critical in my opinion. When you start researching the Agile or when you read the book, How To Deliver Twice The Work In Half The Time by Jeff Sutherland, the first phrase you hear is how great agile is for complex and creative tasks. Yes, this was meant to describe software development efforts but when I think about inbound marketing engagements, complex and creative are two words at the top of the list.

I get asked this question a lot. What financial numbers should we expect from my inbound marketing agency?

What net profit percentage is correct? What gross profit percentage should we be shooting for? What client load should a team be responsible for? How much should we be investing in our own inbound marketing?  How much revenue per employee is right?

There are a lot of financially oriented metrics you need to have your finger on.

The major challenge with these numbers is what’s normal? What’s average for our industry? What are the best agencies doing? What about the worst? 

One of the reasons I like blogging for Agencies 2 Inbound and Square 2 Marketing is I feel connected to my community. One of the many advantages of that connection is being able to answer questions for many people with a single article. If you’ve been following me, you know that from time to time I take common questions and answer them for everyone.

The question represented in the title of this article is not one that I get asked directly, but one that I think other agency owners want to ask but perhaps are afraid to hear the answer. You know this type of question, it’s a little like, “Am I saving enough money?” You know the answer is no, so why even bother asking it.

How long does it take to get good at inbound marketing?

I guess that last line is what I’d like to say…not what I normally say.

I actually hope this doesn’t sound familiar but it was very familiar to me. So familiar that we decided to add Inbound Sales Services to the services we provide clients. Despite that fact that we were never hired to close leads, nor was this ever discussed as an issue, we’re getting pulled into conversations like this on a regular basis and you will too.

SPECIAL REPORT: How To Get Your Project Clients To Be Inbound Agency Clients In Just 30 Minutes

My work with inbound marketing agency owners has given me tremendous insight into the major challenges facing owners today and by far the biggest challenge is moving away from your legacy project clients and towards more stable inbound retainer clients.

The challenges are real and sometimes seem insurmountable. How do you walk away from revenue? How do you turn down business? How do you afford your team if you’re not doing projects? Where will new retainer clients come from if we don’t do projects? If I tell clients no, who’ll hire us? I get it. There are a lot of questions.

In this Special Report, I’ll help you work through all these issues so you successful manage a full transition from commoditized project shop to unique inbound agency.

Every business has magic numbers that help leaders gain insight into the performance of the organization. Inbound agencies are no different but they are unique in that there are very few existing models from which to benchmark your agency against other similar agencies.

Once you create a dashboard of KPIs (key performance indicators) you’re going to see your entire agency responding differently to those numbers. There are gobs of data that prove people do what you measure. So as you work your way up the inbound marketing agency growth tree you need to set numeric goals for your crew.

Here are some of the numbers you want to consider when setting up your KPI dashboard.

I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to juggle all the balls associated with running an inbound marketing agency. Hiring, training, selling, working with clients and more go into a typical day for an inbound agency owner.

Many agency owners ask me the very simple question, “Mike, where do I start? You’ve given me so many things to think about what’s the most important thing to do first?” So while the new infographic growth chart we published early in the month gives you the broad brush steps to inbound agency growth, you still need to prioritize activities on a day to day basis.

Today’s article gives you tips on how to prioritize and focus your energy and the energy of your team so your company moves up the growth chart.