How to Grow a Digital Marketing Agency: Top 7 Strategies

If you’re wondering how to grow a digital marketing agency, then you’re far from alone. We can all agree that, in these more difficult economic times, you need to maximize your output, maintain client satisfaction, and work out how to do more with less. That’s why, here, we’ll take a look at 7 strategies that can grow a digital marketing agency. Some are quick wins. Some will take more time. All of them can work.

The 7 strategies are:

1. Invest in automations
2. Refresh and boost your SEO
3. Build up your social proof
4. Utilize ABM
5. Explore influencer marketing
6. Create free webinars
7. Refine your email strategy

1. Invest in automations

Automations cost money. But they can also make for a fantastic ROI. Take Google Tags as an example. If your agency offers Google Tag Manager implementation, then you’ll need to have someone spending days manually tagging individual pages. It takes a lot of time, is prone to errors, and often requires very technical talent, which, ultimately, costs you more money. 

By investing in automation for Google Tag Manager, that work can now be done in a fraction of the time – as little as 30 minutes. From creating a tracking plan, to QA, and debugging of tagging errors, there are tools that can do this for you. They free up time, meaning that your staff can take on more tasks, and get more done more quickly, all whilst ensuring that same high standard your agency is known for.

This is just one example of automation in action, but it is still one of the smallest investments you can make that leads to a great ROI. Automation is a no-brainer when it comes to how to grow a digital marketing agency. 

Read also: To be replaced with ‘Digital marketing agency profit margin’

2. Refresh and boost your SEO

Outbound leads will always be a vital driver of any agency’s ARR. But what about inbound? By maximizing SEO, new leads can find you more easily. Many marketing agencies have pillar pages – setting out their key terms in detailed guides. Ideally, these should be updated at least annually. 

If you haven’t updated them in longer, it’s a great place to start. You can start by checking that all the information on your pillar pages is correct, and that the keywords are still relevant and up-to-date. It’s easy and can be a quick win. The next step is to create content topic clusters or a full content library that can be built out. You’ll need to let keyword research guide you.

For best results, it’s a good idea to invest in a tool like Yoast or RankMath that tells you how SEO-friendly every page on your site is. This way, you have an idea of whether or not a page meets SEO requirements before it goes live.

3. How to grow a marketing agency: Build up your social proof

When a company looks for a marketing agency, they’re entrusting their brand to them. They need to know they’ll get their money’s worth, and that their brand will be in reliable hands. To assure them of that, you need to have social proof – both on your website and your social media. 

The brands don’t have to be household names, but they do need to be tailored to your ICPs. For example; if your marketing agency specializes in e-commerce, then having all of your social proof geared towards B2B SaaS wouldn’t be useful. 

By reaching out to customers for quotes, stories, and even short video interviews, you can start building up your social proof. An added bonus of doing this is that, by reaching out, you give your clients a chance to reflect, feed back, and solidify the existing client relationship. If you’re looking at how to grow a digital marketing agency, there’s nothing like word-of-mouth to drive your agency forward.

4. Utilize ABM

ABM (Account-Based Marketing) has become a buzzword in marketing circles in recent years; it’s not difficult to see why. If you want to maximize inbound revenue, then experimenting with an ABM strategy is a good way to go. 

Essentially, ABM targets your resources to a highly specific group of targets within a vertical. It ensures that those accounts see the full force of your marketing. In of itself, this is a great way to sell your marketing agency.

If there’s a large customer who falls within your ICPs and verticals, then ABM can be a great way to get their attention. Setting up an ABM strategy can take time. However, as with investing in automations, it’s one of the top strategies for how to grow a digital marketing agency.

Read also: To be replaced with ‘Digital marketing agency resources’

5. Explore influencer marketing

Quite often, when marketers hear the word ‘influencer’, they think of Instagram. But that isn’t always necessarily the case. Reaching out to well-known creators within your space can help you raise awareness around your agency. In fact, influencer marketing has an average return of $5,78 for every $1 spent. It needn’t be just a LinkedIn post. It could well be a coffee chat or an interview that is recorded and repurposed across multiple platforms. 

For example; if you were to interview someone who’s a major voice within your niche, then you could publish the complete interview on your site as a free webinar. But you can also repurpose. Using your ICP knowledge, you can target short clips of the interview which highlight the segments that are likely to be of most interest to each ICP, be that through LinkedIn, Facebook retargeting or built into your email sequences. 

You could even begin to build your brand on TikTok by posting a bloopers reel. Interviews are a great strategy for how to grow a digital marketing agency, both in terms of inbound leads and your brand as a whole.

6. How to grow a digital marketing agency: Create free webinars

Webinars might seem ubiquitous, but they can be vital in really getting your USPs as an agency across in a thorough, cost-effective way. Think of it this way, perhaps you want to build out a specific area of your marketing agency; say, your Google Tag Manager services. 

You could film a webinar that explains the key problems many businesses face with their tracking plans; namely, time taken and errors made in setting up. For this, you can invite current clients to participate, or even co-host, the webinar. It only needs to be a quick introduction, followed by a slide deck with narration. But in doing this, you can get across that you are the experts, and that you can be trusted to do this.

As for hosting the webinar, there are plenty of platforms to choose from, such as Zoom. Webinars can be run at scheduled times, creating the feeling of a live broadcast. You can even build in a Q&A section with pre-programed questions to add to the ‘live’ atmosphere. 

When it comes to how to grow a digital marketing agency, free webinars make for a quick, easy, and even interactive way to make your marketing even more effective.

Read also: To be replaced with ‘Google Tag Assistant’

7. Refine your email strategy 

This is probably the easiest, most efficient way to make your marketing more effective on this list, at least in terms of making the most of your existing database. It can take time to properly segment and prepare contact lists for both existing customers to upsell to, and prospects to close. But the ROI on doing so will make those efforts seem small. 

Segmenting allows you to craft highly relevant and engaging content tailored to each of your ICPs. 

Share insightful tips, best practices, and ideas for creative inspiration that showcase the expertise on offer at your digital marketing agency. Also take the time to highlight success stories with case studies that build on that social proof. 

By implementing regular newsletters for each segment, you can keep content relevant and insightful. Always remember to add a clear CTA into each email to help drive those inbound leads. If you already have a solid email database, then this is a great strategy for how to grow a digital marketing agency.

The Main Points

When you’re looking at growing your digital marketing agency, there are actions you can undertake that will produce both shorter and longer-term results – all of them, however, make for a great ROI. 

Whether it’s automating processes, such as your Google Tag Manager, creating email segments and free webinars, or starting to work with ABM, these strategies can see real growth. Forget about gating content or creating signup lists, by utilizing these strategies you can start to grow your digital marketing agency using demand generation techniques. Lead volumes come and go, but demand generation can help ensure that your agency has a bigger slice of the pie within your niche.