Will Napolini: How To Start a Digital Marketing Agency (Step by step Agency Start up Guide)
In this Article, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about starting and scaling your very own digital marketing agency and exactly what you can do today to get your very first ten paying clients and grow to 5000, 10,000, even $20,000 a month or more in the next 90 days.
I'll show you how to choose the perfect and most profitable niche for your agency and reveal the exact businesses and industries that I've had the best success with so you can just copy them.
I'll share the agents, see services that I think you should start with that will allow you to grow even faster by getting your clients even better, quicker results, making you look like a hero, having them stick around forever and tell everyone they know about just how great you are.
And I'll show you how to get your first five, then ten, then 20 new clients.
And what price to charge for your services.
And a whole bunch of other Digital Marketing agency tips and tricks and tactics and the strategies that have enabled me to build multiple profitable agencies and Work with Some Of The biggest businesses Out There, including Google, Meta, Adobe and many more.
It's a lot to cover, but in my humble but accurate opinion, starting a digital marketing agency is really one of the best businesses out there.
It's a business that allows you to genuinely help people and get paid very well in return.
You can live and work when and where you want and essentially build a life that other people only ever dream of.
Now, for obvious legal reasons, can't make any promises here, building a digital marketing agency takes real work.
But I can tell you from personal experience that building a digital marketing agency that earns you 20,000, 50,000, even $100,000 a month and more is completely doable with the right strategies in place.
So with that said, let's dive into what is probably the most important point of all, which is understanding what a client really wants when they hire you and when they consider working with your digital marketing agency.
And when you get this, when you really understand what a client is after, it allows you to immediately differentiate yourself from all of the other agencies out there and cut down on your workload by 90% or more simply by eliminating all of the things they don't want and giving them exactly and only what they do want.
If you've ever taken a look at a competitor's agency website, the odds are good that you've come across some combination of services like web design, content marketing, email, social media management, SEO, and a bunch of different advertising options like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google Ads, and the list goes on.
But let me let you in on a little secret.
If those agencies were to share their revenue reports with you, what you'd see is that only a few of the services that they're offering are driving almost all of their revenue.
I'll talk more about this in a minute when we go over the agency business models section. But for now, just know that when you're first getting started, and even as you scale to a seven figure agency and beyond, less really is more.
Most digital marketing agencies out there are making their lives way more complicated than they need to be, thinking that they need to offer absolutely every service out there to their clients.
But not only is this incredibly exhausting, overwhelming, it's also confusing to the clients. You see, whether your clients tell you this or not, they don't care about getting more likes, more clicks, more traffic, more shares, more comments, or more engagement.
The only thing they really care about is getting more sales.
Period. And the better you can be at relating your services back to helping them generate more sales, the more useful, valuable, and therefore more profitable your entire agency will be.
In other words, if you help your clients generate more sales and make more money than they're paying you in exchange for your services, they'll never leave you.
This is why the mindset of the world's best agency owners is all about client results.
So when I started my first digital marketing agency, I made the commitment to a never do or suggest anything to a business owner that I was unwilling to or had never done myself and b treat their business as if it were my own.
Of course, to do that, you're going to need to develop a certain set of necessary skills.
So let's talk about that next.
It's funny how nobody would ever just think about becoming a pilot one day and then hopping in a plane full of passengers and taking off, seeing how things go.
Hey, there. This is your captain speaking, I guess. Figured I'd just take a second to welcome you on board and let you know that this was my first flight ever.
Never even been on a plane before.
So if anybody knows how to turn this thing on, please make your way to the cockpit and help a guy out.
But I see this all the time in digital marketing and frankly, makes me cringe.
The fact is that marketing as amazing and powerful and profitable as it is and can be, and also comes with a certain level of responsibility.
After all, you're going to be working on somebody's business, which they may have put years of their blood and sweat and tears and money into.
So you've got to take it seriously.
When it comes to marketing and building a digital marketing agency, there's almost an overwhelming amount and list of different things that you could do.
So it's important to first understand that you can't and shouldn't do it all.
But you should be aware of what's out there so you can decide what to do and you'll be aware of the next step that you could take if you want to grow or scale or get other support.
This is why I like to use the example of the T shaped marketer.
A T shaped marketer is someone with a broad, general understanding on a lot of things, and then a very narrow, focused, and expert level understanding on just a few things.
Digital marketing is made up of a ton of different subcategories.
These are things like content, SEO, strategy, PR or public relations, email design, development, advertising, social media, branding, video, and the list goes on.
And even as a self confessed marketing geek who spent the last ten plus years studying these things every single day, I'd still only consider myself a true expert on a handful of them.
For example, I have almost no idea how to code beyond some basic HTML.
That's okay, because that's not an area that I've chosen to focus on or master, first off, and most importantly, I'm not that interested in coding and I'm not that good at it.
But second, I found that it's more profitable and fun to focus on areas and things that I actually enjoy, like content and strategy and advertising.
The big question, though, is where should you start?
The best place to start learning and developing your skills isn't on tactics like mastering instagram reels or SEO optimizing a website, but rather on those proven marketing fundamentals, the basics, the principles that have stood the test of time and will be just as relevant ten and 21 hundred years from now as they were ten and 21 hundred years ago.
I'm talking about things like segmentation, which is about carving up your market into different segments that have similar characteristics, like age and gender and where they live or what kinds of things they're into targeting, which is finding out how to get your message and offer directly in front of these people and positioning and differentiation, which is about how to stand out from the competition and be seen as a leader and authority and the best and maybe even only option available.
The good news, though, is that even if you've never heard of these things before, there's a ton of resources available to you.
For example, right here on this YouTube channel.
So if you haven't already subscribed, now may be a good time to do so.
You can also learn through paid online courses like the Digital Marketing Academy.
So if you're looking for a faster and more streamlined way to acquire this knowledge, I'll make sure to put a link in the descriptions below this video as well.
Whatever the case, though, and as obvious as this next part is going to sound, if you want to start a digital marketing agency, you need to know how to do digital marketing.
I know, crazy idea, right? We all start somewhere.
But you do have to get started and then focus on continually upgrading your skills and learning new things.
But the best thing to do when you're first getting started is to start with your interests.
So ask yourself, are you more creative or analytical?
Do you like video, audio, or text?
Are there certain businesses or industries that you have an interest in?
Is there a platform or a channel that you find more interesting than others?
The beauty of digital marketing is that there really is something here for you, no matter what kind of person you are.
If you're analytical, you could look more into web or app development, SEO or even analytics and conversion rate optimization.
If you're more creative, you could look to create content through either video or audio or text, and then even help scheduling and posting it to social media.
If you're a huge people person, you could look into community management to help with a brand's social profiles.
Or if you're a mix of all of them, well, you could start putting the pieces together into an agency offer that maybe hasn't been done before.
And that leads me to this diagram right here that I call your agency Sweet spot.
Your agency sweet spot is where your skills, your interests, and market demand all overlap.
Your interests will light the way and show you the path towards what skills you would be most interested in developing.
And then you can match those skills up with the market demand to find an overlap between what they want and what you have.
The beauty of this is that your agency sweet spot is likely very different than mine, as your interests and your skills and maybe even changes in market demand continually evolve.
So here's some advice. Look back over the diagram for the T shaped marketer and choose a starting point.
Also, hopefully this takes a little bit of stress out of the equation, but there really is no wrong answer as where you're going to end up later is likely very different than where you're going to get started.
For example, when I first started, my agency was focused on building WordPress websites.
Then I realized nobody could find the websites that I was building, so I learned SEO.
Then social media started to become even more popular, so I figured, hey, might as well jump on that train so I can get even more traffic.
Then like all marketers, I wanted more. So I learned paid advertising like Facebook ads and Google ads.
That led me to then learning video marketing and then email marketing.
And it just continued to grow and evolve and change. All the while I was stacking skills and getting paid to learn at every stage of the game.
That said, here are three services that you can offer right now that are in incredibly high demand and that you can charge top dollar for.
And when done right, these services will allow you to get amazing results for your clients.
First, lead gen campaigns with Facebook ads.
These are the easiest for locally targeted businesses as you can literally just target the local area around a business and make a compelling offer.
But I use these internationally as well as they allow you to generate leads directly inside Facebook.
You don't need this, but if you already have a couple of clients then my advice is to use an agency specific software that allows you to create automated follow up campaigns quickly and easily.
I'll put a link to an extended free trial in the descriptions below to the software that I use with all of my agencies known as High Level.
The next service you can offer is Social Media Management, which is about creating and publishing content on these businesses social media profiles. I wouldn't suggest offering this as a standalone service typically, but when paired with generating leads, it's a useful and valuable add on.
The key here is using software to automate things so you don't spend all day logging into a million different accounts.
I'll put a special link to the software I use down in the descriptions below as well that I use to post content and will also allow you to track and present all of the results in a pretty snazzy looking report for your clients.
The third service I suggest is optimizing a Business's Google Business Profile, which will help them rank higher in the search engines.
This is more for local businesses, but it's still a powerful and valuable service to provide.
This is something you want to do.
Make sure to check out the link to High Level in the descriptions below as well as they have some tools to help you do this by optimizing the page and increasing ratings and reviews for the business.
Okay, so with that said, the next big thing that we need to do is helping you find and choose a niche.
Now, one of the most popular pieces of advice in business and in marketing is to niche down.
This essentially just means to focus exclusively on a single type or group of people or businesses, in other words, a segment of the market.
Now usually this is pretty solid advice, but there are times when not niching down so quickly would be in the best interest of you and your agency.
So here are the pros and cons of both Niching down and not niching down so fast so you can make the best decision for you first.
Niching down choosing a specific niche, whether it's an industry like auto dealerships or online coaches or even a specific service like, say, Facebook ads or SEO, typically allows you to get better results faster. It's because you're typically more focused and more concentrated on one single area rather than spread super thin trying to do a million things at once.
This approach also allows you to be seen as more of a specialist with a specific area and expertise, rather than a generalist marketing agency that does everything for anyone.
Being a specialist, probably unsurprisingly, is a significant competitive advantage.
But there are other benefits as well.
Over time, as you scale up, you're able to take on more clients in this very specific area which allows you to productize your services, essentially doing the same things over and over again with systems and SOPs which are standard operating procedures.
The flip side of that is of course working with a ton of different kinds of clients where every time you're presented with new challenges and new obstacles to overcome. Now, this might be fun and interesting, but it definitely chews up time and makes your work a little bit harder.
That said, there are disadvantages to niching down as well.
Typically the fact that you'll have to go after a larger geographic area in order to find enough clients.
This makes it a little more challenging at first because you're not able to leverage your personal network and all of your close relationships with friends and family in your area.
Also, admittedly, sometimes even once you do niche down, it's hard to stay focused on that niche when you see so many different opportunities and other people that you could serve.
So next let's talk about not having a niche when it comes to not niching down and instead choosing to go after a broader portion of the market.
There are some advantages in those early days and that you're typically able to take whatever kind of work gets thrown at you.
You'll also be able to build up a broader and more diverse set of experience and working with different kinds of clients as you're going to be working with all kinds of different businesses and industries and markets and business sizes and owners and CEOs and everything in between.
This allows you to build up a ton of experience and figure out exactly what you do enjoy doing and what you don't enjoy doing so much.
Having no niche also allows you to be more of that generalist, which means you can start more in your local area and tap into your network and existing connections.
This is incredibly powerful, especially in the early days when you don't yet have a long list of testimonials and results and things that you've done.
You can at least show up in front of someone as a real genuine human being and look them in the eye.
Plus, over time, as you build more experience and you work with more and more diverse sets of clients, well, you will be able to niche down and focus in on the ones you get the best results for that seem happiest with your work.
When you're just getting started, ask yourself these questions is there a certain industry that you're familiar with?
For example, if you're already working in the restaurant industry, is there a chance you could start creating simple posts or ads for other restaurants?
If you're working in retail, is there an opportunity to review and improve the website or how it's ranking in the search engines.
If you have a favorite hobby like, say, photography or music or sports or anything really, can you think of anyone that would benefit from more attention directed towards their stuff?
You see, the beauty of marketing is that every single business out there needs it.
So it's up to you to decide who you're going to help first.
So here's some advice on that when you're just getting started.
Some of the best businesses to take a look at and do marketing for are HVAC plumbing, solar companies, roofers, high end landscaping and pool services, and other companies that rely on having a steady and consistent supply of leads funneling into their business.
Then simply decide on what strategy would be best for helping to generate these leads, whether it's Facebook ads, whether it's optimizing their Google business profile, or whether it's doing good old fashioned social media marketing and generating leads organically through organic content.
The beauty here is that for any of those businesses just listed, you can set up a Facebook ad, lead gen campaign very quickly and start generating calls to the business right away, which allows you to look kind of like a hero, maybe a bit of a magician, some kind of wizard, which makes you look incredible to the business.
We'll get you a better testimonial, more referrals, and allow you to charge higher rates later down the road.
Speaking of charging higher rates next, let's talk about money and how to get you paid.
When it comes to selling your services, getting clients, and actually getting paid, you've got a number of different options available to you some good, some bad, some downright ugly.
Most importantly of all, though, you can always change this model later as your agency grows and as the demand for your services increases and exceeds the supply that you have.
So let me show you the options that you have available, and then I'll tell you exactly which option I think is best and that you should start with.
First is the business model that most professional services use, which is the hourly rate model.
This is where you bill yourself out at $50 or $100 or whatever dollars per hour. I don't like this model for a number of reasons, but mostly because it's not very scalable and you end up doing a lot of work outside of your billable hours that you don't usually get paid for.
Next is a percentage of ad spend models.
This is a pretty standard model with many advertising agencies out there where you get paid 10% or 15% or 20% or whatever you and the client agree on based on their ad spend, though the percentage typically decreases the higher the ad spend of the client is.
This can work well later down the road when you're working with clients who are spending $20,000 to $100,000 a month on ads. But it's terrible if you're just getting started and the client's only spending $300 a month on a small ad campaign.
After all, 20% of $300 is $60, which ain't a whole lot of money for what is likely going to be a decent amount of work.
There are other more advanced models that combine a retainer with a percentage of ad spend, and there are others based on equity or share of revenue increase.
But those get complicated and are typically better suited for more experienced agencies.
This is why my recommendation, and the best place to start, is with a good old fashioned marketing agency retainer model a flat monthly fee for work done.
It's nice, it's clean, it's easy to understand, and as long as you're clear about the deliverables, helps to avoid under delivering, which is going to leave the client angry and upset, or over delivering, which is going to leave you exhausted and overwhelmed and broke. As for what rates and prices to charge, here's where I suggest starting.
First off, it's important to note that I'm basing these prices off what I've seen work best in the US.
Canada, the UK, australia and across the world when a company or brand is looking to work with an agency from those countries.
So feel free to adjust these based on your own market.
Next, I believe there should be a sliding scale for pricing your services, starting low and raising them as you build up experience and credibility with each new client.
Yes, there are clients out there who will happily pay five and six figures all day long for marketing agency services, but they want proof, first experience and a history of results.
So my advice for your first one to three clients, maybe even first five clients, is to work for absolutely free.
That's because at this stage of the game, you're actually more of a risk to the business than you are an asset, because there's no real proof that you actually know what you're doing.
This is why my suggestion is to be open and honest and upfront about the fact that you're learning digital marketing and you'd love to be able to try out and use some of the strategies and the tactics that you've been learning in exchange for a testimonial and a case study and possibly even a referral if things go well.
The exception to working for free is if you happen to be running something like Facebook ads for them, I would have them at least pay for the ad spend, but they can get started for as little as, say, $10 a day.
To find people willing to give you this chance, you can ask friends and family and your network, and maybe even post on social media.
For the right business, this is a pretty appealing offer, so it shouldn't take long to get your first few clients so you can get those testimonials and social proof that you'll be able to leverage later into actual paying clients.
So here's some advice on that.
Whether you're working for free or you're working with a paid client, one of the best pieces of advice that I was ever given was to always use an application form, essentially requiring your new or potential client to fill out an application in order to work with you.
This is important and powerful because not only does it give you the necessary information that you're going to need in order to do marketing for them, but it also sets you as the authority and the expert, essentially having someone apply to you.
The opposite of this is basically you begging them for business, looking desperate and needy, and nobody likes that.
You can use any simple application form software out there. For example, Google Forms is completely free.
And as far as what questions to ask, I'll leave some up on the screen right now and pause for a couple of seconds so you can write them down.
Now, after you've had a chance to do some work for your new clients, now it's time to ask for a testimonial and a review that you can leverage to get more clients in the future.
Now, the best way to collect testimonials is through a video, as it gives you the most flexibility and is the most convincing to future prospects and future clients.
So if you do record it in person, don't forget to bring along a video camera.
Or you can always use some kind of online video recording software like Zoom.
As for what questions to ask, I'll put up some of my absolute favorites on screen now and let you hit pause again if you want to jot these down as well, once you have a couple testimonials, you can safely start charging for your services.
So here's what some of those pricing packages might look like and what I suggest. I suggest putting together $1,000 per month packages to start.
These could go up to one $500 per month for bigger businesses that'll require more work, and maybe even down to 750 or 500 for simple and smaller packages.
And this pricing structure works great for the services I laid out earlier, like Facebook, Legion Ads, social Media Management, and optimizing a Google Business Profile.
Do this for another five to ten clients, get more testimonials using the same process, and then you can decide whether to raise your prices again to $2,000 a month or keep them where they are at around the $1,000 mark.
The beauty of this pricing structure is that it makes calculating your revenue and what you need to achieve your goals very simple.
For example, to hit ten K a month, all you need is ten clients at $1,000 a month.
To get to need either 20 clients at $1,000 a month or ten clients at $2,000 a month. And here's an important piece of advice on pricing.
I've found that most small businesses out there doing annual revenues between one and $5 million.
There's a sweet spot for agency services that you can charge that falls around $1000 to $5,000 a month.
Too much higher than that, and they start to compare your costs against the costs of hiring a full time marketing person for the business.
Okay, next we've got to talk about some of the most important things about starting a marketing agency that I wish someone had told me in the beginning.
Now, this isn't the most exciting part of an agency, but it is incredibly important. It can save you thousands and thousands of dollars.
So we got to go over it quickly, starting with the question, what are you going to do with all this new money you'll be making?
One of the first things you're going to want to do after you get your first paying clients is having a real good sit down meeting with a qualified accountant.
By qualified accountant, I mean legitimate qualified accountant, not your brothers, dog walkers, best friends, sisters, babies, cow, washers, mother, in laws, stepbrother, though he seems like a pretty good guy, there are a lot of very serious decisions that need to be made early on in a business, whether it's starting an LLC or an S Corp.
Corporation, if you're in Canada or whatever the equivalent is, if you're in the UK or Australia or whatever country you happen to be in, most of these business structures are going to give you certain legal protections as well as a ton of tax benefits that you definitely want to be taking advantage of.
Also, make sure to look into a little something called E and O Insurance, which stands for Errors and Omissions, which is a musthave when you start working with larger clients.
The other thing you need to do right from your very first paying client is start saving around 30% of the income that you generate and putting it somewhere in a separate bank account that you can't see and can't touch, and that's for taxes.
I remember the first year that my agency made a lot of money, and I was hit with a tax bill at the end of it that I was totally not prepared for.
Okay, next, let's go over operations and some things that you want to consider in the day to day running of your marketing agency.
One of the best things about starting a digital marketing agency is that you can build it as big or keep it as small as you want.
You can run it as a solopreneur from your laptop or hire a team of employees or contractors to help you scale it and bring on even more clients.
But whatever the case, you're going to need a few simple tools and pieces of software to run your agency.
As a marketing agency, this is non negotiable.
Good news is that you really don't need. Anything fancy.
So a simple home page, maybe your services and about page, some contact details, and basically somewhere to put all those fancy new testimonials that you're going to be collecting is just fine.
Get a custom domain name as well.
So either yourname.com or whatever name you're going to name your agency.com
Email is another important piece of the puzzle here and it's very important to make sure that you've got a branded email address, not just your [email protected].
Basically, using a personal email looks like amateur hour and it screams that you don't know what you're doing to potential clients.
Next, you need a Way to accept Payments PayPal can work in a pinch, but your best bet is to set up a proper business account with Stripe that allows you to accept credit card payments.
The beauty of Stripe is that it also allows you to create receipts and send invoices something that your clients are going to want and need.
You'll also need some kind of project management and CRM software to keep track of your clients and services.
There's a lot out there including Asana and Trello and HubSpot and Monday and Basecamp, and any and all of them are just fine.
So I'll make sure to link up my current suggestion in the descriptions below the video.
If you're serious about building and scaling a digital marketing agency, there is some amazing software available that's not only going to help you run your own agency, but also make getting results for your clients that much easier and more effective too.
Now, I've already talked about high level, so I'll make sure to link it up in the descriptions below with a link to get you an extended free trial.
This is the software that I use with all of my agencies and I recommend at least checking it out. Okay?
Next, let me share with you some of my best marketing agency hacks and secrets that'll help you get started and get going even faster.
Also, don't be afraid to go back and rewatch this video with a pen and paper as it'll make sure that you don't miss any important points that are going to save you a ton of time and money and energy.
And I know I've said it already, but if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, now would be a very good time to make sure that you don't miss out on any future marketing tips.
Okay, let's dive in, starting with Agency growth hack number 150 50 Run and Grow a successful marketing agency 50% of your time should be on getting new clients and marketing yourself and having conversations and networking.
The other 50% of your time should be spent in service of the clients that you already have in order to get better results and get better testimonials and more referrals.
Next logos and Branding when you're first getting started, don't waste too much time on a fancy logo and fancy branding.
Go for the MVP, the minimum viable product, and just get something out there that looks okay.
You can and we'll make it better in the future. But nobody really cares as much about your logo and your branding as you do.
What clients care about is results.
People like doing business with people, not businesses.
So make sure to leverage the fact that you're a real human being and not a faceless giant megacorporation.
Make sure that you've got your name and your image clearly labeled on your website and on social media.
Don't hide behind a brand new and pretentious brand.
Don't try to make yourself look bigger than you are as your small size and your hunger and your drive and your motivation are actually competitive advantages in these early stages. Next. Make stuff.
When you're just getting started.
Before you have those testimonials, before you have the case studies, before you have the results.
The only way that a client is going to be able to tell whether you're good or whether you're not is based on the content that you produce and publish and put out there.
Post videos, answer questions, write blog posts, social media posts, anything that allows you to prove your knowledge and expertise and shows that you know what you're doing.
Even if you're just getting started and just learning about marketing and about digital marketing and dreaming of owning your very own digital marketing agency one day, the odds are good that you know more about certain areas of marketing than most people out there.
Best marketers are always looking for an edge that'll give them that competitive advantage.
And that's why I've linked up a video right here with some of my absolute best marketing strategies and tips and tricks.
So make sure to check it out now and I'll see you in the next video.
The solution is, again, you've got to put push through.
You've got to move up here and this is the sweet spot.
This is where you're going to find sort of the saturation of your.