The Agency Growth Blog - For Owners Who Want Growth

“You should start your own agency, you’re a great designer, website guy or search engine expert.” That’s probably why you started your agency, everyone encouraged you to branch out on your own and now that you’re on your own, you realize you—are on your own.

What you’ve already learned is that starting, running and then growing an agency are three distinctly different challenges. You’ve probably also learned that getting over the $1MM mark is very hard. 

If you’ve done that already heads up, there is another hurdle at the $2MM mark and then again at the $4MM mark.

They are all different in the nature of those challenges and definitely in the answers to getting past those challenges.

Inbound 17 is behind us and we’re quickly coming to the end of 2017. Now is the time to make sure your inbound marketing agency finishes the year strong. What are you doing to make sure you finish 2017 as your best year yet?

One of the differences between inbound marketing agency owners I coach and owners I don’t is that agencies in my program are proactively working to change what’s not working at their shops. While others I talk to appear to be HOPING things change. Hope is not a strategy.

Instead of hoping things change, hoping clients sign, hoping your team gets better I’m suggesting you stop hoping and start working. I know most of you are heavily involved working IN your agencies instead of ON your agencies, but you have to find time to work ON the business and not IN the business.

Carving out this time for you to drive inbound marketing agency growth has to be your top priority. Never step on this time and never sacrifice it for anything or anyone.

Over the past few months I’ve talked to a number of agency owners who have expressed concern at the level of effort required grow their inbound agencies and in two circumstances, I’ve spoken with owners who have thrown in the towel. Giving up the fight to return to something more comfortable.

I’m not judging anyone and in both cases I congratulated the owners for having the guts to admit they didn’t want to fight the good fight anymore and were going back to something that was easier. After all, we only go around this world once, you have to live the right life for you. Sometimes lifestyle businesses are just fine.

But these conversations got me thinking. For some of you trying to grow your agency might actually be the wrong move. Here are some signals that growth might be bad in your case.

If I asked 20 inbound marketing agency owners,  "what is your biggest challenge," the answers would probably all be the wrong answers.

The biggest challenge facing inbound agencies is not hiring, it’s not culture, it’s not picking the right clients, it’s not pricing and it’s not technology.

The biggest challenge facing inbound marketing agencies today is that we’re all not good enough at inbound to make it obvious why businesses should invest in inbound and hire us.

Now that you’ve settled into your comfort zone of 12 month retainers the world is going to change again. As we get better at generating leads, inbound marketing agency owners need to consider shifting their engagements to more “pay for performance.”

In 2016 clients are going to be asking more aggressively for pay per lead engagements. Meaning, you cover your costs and potentially make a small profit with a base retainer and then you get paid for every lead generated by your program.

This type of program configuration presents a whole host of challenges but as 2016 gets closer you and your agency are going to have to start getting comfortable with this approach. Clients are going to be asking for it, you’re going to have to deliver it and if you can’t or won’t—potential clients are going to look at that as an indication you’re not confident in your own lead gen abilities.

You went to Inbound15 this year and you’ve returned to your office all full of vim and vigor. You’re finally ready to do it.

You’re ready to go ALL IN on inbound and transform your entire agency into something that one day can be a Diamond Partner for HubSpot.

You wake up Monday, look in the mirror and say to yourself, “now what?” “I don’t have the faintest idea how to start taking my company from (a ___________ agency--fill in the blank) to being a full inbound agency that’s ready to compete with New Breed, Impact, Kuno and Square 2 Marketing.”

Here’s some good news. You don’t have to compete with any of these companies. You just have to get out of your own way.

For the past few weeks we’ve been talking about how to scale an inbound marketing agency. Who to hire, who to promote, whether to staff the team with internal or external resources and how to organize the agency for today and for tomorrow.

But I thought it might be interesting to share with you what an inbound agency looks like from the inside. Not what you see from the outside or what other people tell you about their inbound agency, but what goes on inside – day in and day out.

I don’t know about your agency, but ours always feels a little like a bee hive to me. Perhaps that’s why our Hive Team names became so sticky so fast.

You're in hiring mode. Great news! You’re bringing in new clients at a regular pace and you’re retaining your current clients so revenue is up month over month and you see a trend.

Now the question becomes how do you scale this business so that you make more money, grow the team and continue to keep clients happy?

This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing inbound marketing agency owners. What you need to scale up in a manageable way is a system. This system consists of two parts, the numbers and the team model. Both give you the mechanisms you’re looking for to help with the scaling process.

Let’s take two minutes to appreciate the good times we’re all enjoying right now. A rising tide floats all boats and for the most part inbound marketing agencies and creative shops in general are all doing well in today’s market.

The economy is good and businesses are investing in their own marketing. Let’s take advantage of this situation.

With that success comes growth and many of the inbound agency owners I speak with are asking who they should hire, when should they hire and into what role should this new person move into. All very valid questions. Hiring for inbound agencies is challenging but not impossible.