Whether you are specialising in web design, SEO or content marketing, running a brand new agency start-up, a mid-tier firm or a full-service agency, building a client base and attracting new clients for your company may be a daunting task. To help you stand out from the crowd, here are seven ideas on how you can get more clients and grow your agency.
Find A Niche For Your Agency
One way for making your agency stand out is to specialise in a particular industry or niche instead of delivering your services to a huge number of clients. This means that your company is targeting a very small, specific audience and focuses on being the perfect agency with all the contacts and needed niche skills. While it might seem counterintuitive to narrow your niche when you are trying to stay ahead of the competition. But in reality, a more focused niche can help you stand out even more among the clients you are trying to target.
You can focus on just a few industries and show that you can serve those areas better than others. Or you might decide to reduce the number of your current offerings and become an expert in a small number of very high-quality services. However, in a particularly saturated space, consider narrowing down your offerings and the industries in which you work. If you narrow your scope properly, you can actually attract more clients to your agency.
Use Events To Promote Your Agency
Different agencies operate on a national or international level. However, many business owners want to work with agencies in their neighbourhoods, which often means face-to-face meetings and the opportunity to forge closer business relationships.
Events are a great way to connect with various local companies and business owners. Beyond standard networking, showcasing your agency at local events can help stand out your agency as a local expert, which will help you grow your business.
So, the next time you are leading or being part of the event, make sure you talk with some other attendees, introduce yourself, showcase some of your interests and expertise and exchange business cards to market your agency. There are also numerous ways to promote your agency at a local event. You can become a sponsor at the event, speak at the conference or get a superstar from your agency to perform at the event, be a part of industry-specific awards or give away your branded items and merchandise.
Develop Strategic Partnerships With Other Agency Owners
Despite the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of other agencies, many of them do completely different things. However, in most cases, clients are looking for additional services that many companies do not offer. Developing partnerships with other agency owners ensure that clients and customers get all the services they need – without compromising any business.
Consider finding other agency owners in your area that have services that complement yours. For example, a design agency might work with a printer or packaging company, or a marketing agency can partner with a financial services business.
With strategic partners, you can refer their business to your clients, create a joint package with special prices and bring new and innovative ways to reach new clients. You can also use these partnerships to create content that both teams will display and share. For example, creating podcasts or webinars together can help you promote your services and spread awareness of both of your brands. Furthermore, maintain these ongoing partnerships by promoting them at different events, driving traffic to their services from your social media and website and actively working to boost valuable business referrals – and they can do the same for you! Either way, it’s a win-win!
Add New Services
One of the easiest methods to do business differently and justify a higher fee is to simply add a new service. Start by breaking down all of the services your agency is currently offering into separate line items. For instance, if you run a content marketing agency that offers “Website content” as one of your offerings, try to be more specific. Are you creating blog content, post-click landing pages or product pages? These are services that you could potentially market separately.
Or, instead of offering “Email marketing,” you provide a certain number of drip campaigns or email newsletters that you send out to your list of subscribers every month. Therefore, try to break down your agency’s offerings into as much detail as possible, and then do your best to re-organise and strengthen your services to set you apart from your competition.
Use Pricing To Stand Out
When all else fails, consider using pricing to set yourself apart from the competition. However, this requires you to research your competitors to find out what services they offer and for what price. And you don’t have to be a lot cheaper; you just need to differentiate your agency.
Consider offering services as personalised bundles or package deals for a discounted price if there are things your clients often pay for together. You can also incorporate performance-based pricing, offer a money-back guarantee or simply be completely transparent about your prices by posting them on your social media platforms, your website and on any print materials. You would be surprised how many companies don’t share pricing information until you agree to meet with them
Build & Improve Your Relationships With Clients
A successful agency would be nothing without its client base, so make sure to treat your clients as crucial stakeholders they are. From the very beginning, put the spotlight on building a strong, lasting relationship with clients that will happily come back to you in the future rather than provide a quick sale that might not be repeated.
Aim to take care of your clients, lead them through every stage of the campaign and exceed their expectations whenever possible. Over time, these clients can become one of the most important parts of your agency’s growth and can even pave the way for high-quality referrals and new potential clients.
Combat Cash Flow Issues
Finally, even if you can put some of the ideas above into practice, you will likely need additional funds for the growth strategy of your agency. Whether you need to retain key employees or hire new staff, renovate existing space or open new locations, upgrade technologies or add new offerings or perhaps launch marketing and advertising campaigns, additional funding can help your agency make needed investments that will accelerate the company’s growth and generate significant revenue.
At times when your business growth is constrained by slow payment of invoices, you can use invoice finance, which involves selling your invoices to a third party for a percentage of their value, giving you an instant injection of cash into the business.
