Following a career spanning decades in building, running and selling online businesses and agencies, I have now decided to turn my focus as a digital business expert to helping the multitude of small and medium niche agencies struggling in this over competitive industry.
The only way to survive in this market is to stand out way above the rest. You have to be the lighthouse at the beach. Here are the top five business tips I have come up with from my vast experience in this business for digital agencies that are struggling to set themselves apart from their competition.
How can you shine above the rest?
1. Don’t be afraid to try new things
With your lead generation, don’t forget that it is ok to look beyond your specific marketing expertise: start experimenting with client acquisitions strategies outside your core skillset and endeavour to have ten profitable new lead generation strategies working for you within 12 months.
This is a big one for digital marketers (especially SEO agencies) who find it ego-difficult to acquire clients outside their specific marketing niche, feeling it shows a weakness in their value proposition.
2. Network with your industry as well as your prospects
Digital marketers are brilliant at sitting in the opposite corners of a networking breakfast and staring daggers across the room.
It’s amazing the business you can build in partnership with a competitor who has a really similar offering to you, often the closer you compete the better the partnership and opportunities you can create.
3. Know your time and money numbers
This is a big one for the smaller agencies out there, so many of which just do not spend time looking at where they are spending their money and their time.
Invest the time crunching your data so you understand what is profitably building your business and making your money, look at both your money budget and your time budget.
4. Remember what brought you to this industry
Remember your passion, write them up and post it on your office wall, then put this passion into everything you do as this is what sets you apart from every other agency you are competing with and is also where you add real value to your clients.
Often the everyday grind of business can make us lose sight of our passion, which leads to a lower quality of output to clients and less personal satisfaction in ourselves.
5. Don’t be the mechanic who doesn’t service his own car
Go through all your online collateral and make sure it 100 per cent represents you and your business in exactly the way you want to be represented.
In digital marketing you have one opportunity to show your prospects just how good you are and that is often before you are talking to them, it is when they are checking you out online.
Don’t lose this opportunity to sell yourself and show your prospects the quality of service they are likely to get when using your services.
Damian Papworth, a digital marketing specialist with 15 years experience, is the CEO at SEO Resellers Australia WHICH sells wholesale white-labeled SEO packages to Australian graphic design, marketing and digital agencies. SEO Resellers Australia provides cost-effective solutions for agencies to help build their clients’ businesses in a very competitive online business environment.
