Apart from an agency’s craft and quality, a strong agency-client relationship can help you achieve great results as a client.

A seamless client-agency communication results in exciting and encouraging campaigns. In a digital marketing environment, it is crucial that your agency understands your needs and frequently communicates with you. They must be willing to take the initiative and produce new, innovative ideas to ensure success in this dynamic and competitive field.

When you sign a contract with a digital agency, you trust it; therefore, much depends on your relationship. So, apart from skills, which matter but are not a decisive factor in your success, other things matter more.

Maintaining a healthy long-term relationship with the agency is important. So, if there are cracks in it or your agency is not giving its 100 percent, you can be on the receiving end of the deal.

Regularly evaluate your relationship to ensure that you are getting what you need. You should also ensure that your agency is committed and dedicated to helping you achieve your business goals.

7 Ways to Spot a Great Agency-Client Relationship

Here are the seven tips for finding an agency that offers a great agency-client relationship.

1. Seek Transparency

Most businesses hire digital agencies because they don’t possess the expertise and skills required to achieve the desired results online and don’t want to expand their team size.

But, in the real world, finding a committed agency is not child’s play. Many mushrooming agencies say “yes” to every question you ask or request you make as a client. They act positively during conversations, but it can be a huge red flag. Transparent agencies don’t say yes to everything, especially the expectations that are irrational and unrealistic.

Image Source: Cascade

Pro Tip: A genuinely committed and professional agency will not say “yes” to all your demands. Instead, they will tell you upfront things that are achievable and that you shouldn’t expect in the given time frame. You can use it as a litmus test.

2. Get To Know Your Team

Professional agencies will provide you access to the entire team executing your campaign. Substandard ones will keep these things private. They can even go to the extent of introducing you to the senior team members, who will not supposedly handle your project.

They can assign your project to junior staffers or freelancers that can be incompetent.

This is not a good situation. You need to know who is handling what so that you can monitor your campaigns and provide your input wherever required to achieve the best results.

So, just after your sales meeting, ask the agency to arrange a meeting with the individuals handling your account.

Knowing the people involved with your campaigns and people you can refer to for feedback and operational details is crucial.

3. Have Flexible Processes

For better project management, your agency should have an adaptable and flexible process. You should clearly define every project’s scope of work (SOW). It should be properly mentioned in the contract, so everyone is on the same page.

You should precisely define the processes and document them for your reference.

However, it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any flexibility in the process. If you feel that something extra needs to be done urgently, you should be able to immediately change the course and do it.

Suppose you change your mind after signing the contract and want to pause a Google ads campaign for two weeks. A competent agency should be able to understand this and be able to pause the campaign without offering excuses and adhering strictly to the process.

4. Ensure That Your Needs Are Prioritized

It’s quite strange, but it is frequently observed that most agencies focus on generating as much money as possible from their clients. It’s justified if they offer value and charge for the premium services, but what makes it worse is that they aren’t willing to put that much effort and time into your project. Instead, they do as little as possible if you don’t track it regularly.

As a business owner, you should be aware that it is quite prevalent in the market, which is why businesses fail to get the best results and ROI on their campaigns. However, it does not apply to all digital marketing agencies.

Professional agencies focus on your business objectives to ensure your success because that gives them tons of business as referrals and positive reviews.

5. Ensure That You Can Communicate Smoothly and Effectively

You must ensure that you can communicate with your agency without hesitation or curbing. For a successful project, seamless communication should happen at all levels.

You should be able to communicate via email, SMS, phone calls, chatbots, or even WhatsApp messages if needed.

You should also conduct frequent meetings so everyone can sit down and get updates across teams. You should also have access to the analytics platform if they use one because that will maintain transparency.

Agency Tip: With DashClick’s white-label agency platform, an agency can offer their clients a unified dashboard through which they can track everything using the analytics software.

With the DashClicks’ Analytics software, you can change the settings and view the most crucial metrics on the homepage to instantly track the metrics that are most important for you.

6. Don’t Hire a Passive Agency

Even though it is an essential ingredient of success, few agencies are proactive and innovative. If an agency wants to add value, it must suggest new approaches and ideas to the clients to help them outsmart their competition.

A passive agency would follow the scope of the work and will do just what is needed and agreed upon initially in the contract.

Suggesting new ideas, tactics, and ways requires expertise and willingness to excel and supersede the competition. Sadly, it’s outside the DNA of every agency. So, choose the best agency that thinks out of the box and is highly innovative.

Image Source: Semrush

The most successful agencies in the world in which team members suggest new ideas and share possibilities with their clients.

It’s crucial to boosting their online presence and conversions. It is also observed that most agencies are interested in earning regular money without providing any value addition, and they consider it a success. They call it “business on autopilot.”

Brainstorming new ideas and processes takes a lot of work, and most agencies are not ready to put in that kind of effort.

Trading your expertise, following the latest trends, and sharing strategic possibilities are top signs of a reliable agency. Such agencies are always willing to research market trends and implement innovative practices.

It gives their clients an edge over others. Clients can greatly benefit from their knowledge and expertise to break barriers and achieve new heights of success.

7. Find an Agency That Is Passionate About Digital Marketing

Last but not least, you can easily assess whether your agency is passionate about digital marketing. They should love the work they are into. They shouldn’t do it just to add another income stream.

And if you feel that your agency is not working wholeheartedly, you should approach another agency. Be ready for the tough conversations because they will bring great value onboard.

Final Words

We have discussed a few red flags above to help you differentiate mediocre agencies from great ones. Use these tips to spot a great agency for your digital marketing campaigns. Make sure your agency is transparent, professional, and open for regular communication. Make sure that they use the latest tools and software and are data-driven.

Worldwide, businesses are waking up to the distinctive edge that digital marketing can provide by increasing their sales and boosting their web and social media presence.

According to a study by Bigcommerce, online stores pumped up their sales by 32% by growing their social presence compared to the other stores that neglect it.

However, selling digital marketing services is slightly different from selling other services. This article will discuss a complete sales plan for selling digital marketing services to local businesses and SMEs.

How to Sell Digital Marketing Services to Local Businesses & SMEs?

Based on our expertise, here are the five tips for selling digital marketing services to startups, local businesses, and SMEs with a high success rate.

1. Provide Clarity on Your Offer

Most people confuse SEO services with online marketing. However, that's not the truth. SEO is also a subset of digital marketing. SEO tactics are employed to optimize content to rank higher on search engines and increase your website's visibility.

According to Wrike, online marketing refers to marketing activities targeting consumers using digital channels.

Digital marketing has different streams, some of which are as follows:

• SEO
• Social media marketing
• Pay-per-click marketing
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Marketing Analytics
• Mobile Marketing
• In-Game marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Video Marketing
• Affiliate marketing

The greatest benefit of digital marketing is that it easily scales, is engaging, and is cost-effective.

Pro Tip: If you are a young digital marketing agency, you can choose one area of specialization, such as SEO or PPC, and later expand your portfolio or you can outsource your requirements.

2. Know Your Target Customers

Every industry has a different set of challenges and market trends. They have different needs, so they prefer an agency that understands their pain points, bottlenecks, and requirements. Similarly, an agency should do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis and choose its niche accordingly.

Image Source: WordStream

Also, when you understand your client's business, you can serve them better and achieve better results using specific tactics.

Pro Tip: As a young agency, focus on just one niche, and specialize in it. For example, you can promote yourself as a digital marketing agency for dentists or educational institutions. When you start getting good results for your clients, you will get numerous client referrals.

Read More: How to Do Niche Marketing For Tiny Audiences

3. Create Customer Avatars and Buyer Personas

If you are a new digital marketing agency with no experience in selling, you can start by creating your customer avatar or buyer persona, representing your ideal customer.

A customer avatar has distinct personality traits and demographic and psychographic characteristics, so you can easily target them and create a suitable marketing strategy to address their needs.

Image Source: Dubsado

Identify three major types of your potential clients and target markets and do a split test study.

The best analytics tools will reveal which client is best suitable for your agency.

It would help if you also researched their budget and their specific objectives. Most agencies have common goals, such as increased engagement & traffic, more conversions, more sales, and increased brand awareness.

In the meantime, remember that your target audience is not imaginary-they are real people with real needs.

So, gather more information about them. It will help you make better decisions and formulate better strategies.

When clients choose you, they pin their hopes on your agency for their most crucial goals.

So, the more insights you have about them and their business, the better it is for your digital marketing campaigns.

Pro Tip: Get more information about your prospects and insights into their pain points.

Ten years ago, awareness about digital marketing was minimal, but things have drastically changed. According to a study by ZDNet in 2020, 70% percent of businesses underwent a digital transformation.

The trend is continuing, and more and more SMEs and startups are undergoing digital transformation, and it is not happening just in the US but across the world. So, the business prospects are quite bright for digital marketing agencies. The only requirement to succeed is to do some due diligence before approaching their prospects or making sales calls.

4. Go to the Right Places

You should also know how to find your clients in the right places to succeed. For example, suppose you have chosen gaming as your niche, and your audience is millennials; you can find them on social platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If Instagram is your target, then build a customer base by getting some followers till you build an organic follower count.

If your target audience is the adult population, you can find them on Facebook, local directories, LinkedIn, their website, their social handles, and in-person meetings.

Image Source: BenchmarkONE

If you're selling digital marketing services, ditch old practices such as cold calling and spamming potential customers digitally.

Pro Tip: Clarity calls or chemistry calls without the right mix of coaching, strategy, and action will also not work.

Have you ever received those dubious tech support calls from scammers that tell you how horrible your antivirus protection is on your PC or laptop? Or how dangerous it can be for your banking and personal information?

Sadly, such intimidating tactics don't work in digital marketing. It would help if you sounded more helpful and empathetic in this field to win your clients. Do your homework proactively and learn about your prospects' pain points.

Image Source: Brian Tracy

Research their business, market trends, target audience, and the best ways to tap the market. Analyze their current marketing strategy and find the cracks in it.

Suggest the best solutions to address those pain points. If possible, make the entire digital marketing roadmap to meet your prospects' goals and present it using PowerPoint and videos. You can easily create your Slides using AI powerpoint generator.

This way, you will earn their trust and gain credibility.

You also make an impression that you are not after your clients' money and genuinely think about their well-being and success.

You can instantly win the contract if they are happy with your analysis and how you can help them.

If possible, go for in-person meetings. Powerful conversations happen in face-to-face meetings. It allows you to ask questions about their pain points without attempting to promote your agency.

5. Appeal to Your Prospects Passions & Emotions

Know their passions, life goals, and things that matter the most to them. Don't try to put them down. Connect to their desires. Engage in meaningful conversations and things that bother your clients the most.

Image Source: Reve Chat

This approach will bring you more business than any other thing on this planet!

Ask about their struggles and aspirations and look at the bigger picture. Recently, PR Newswire conducted an interesting study that revealed that 79% of customers buy from brands that can prove that they care about winning their business.

Customers need to be assured that the agency they hire the services from deeply understands and cares about their needs.

You must convince them that your services will make their life easier and better. This strategy alone will keep you in business and help you attract more and more clients.

6. Offer Additional Value

Competition is heating up in the digital marketing industry. On average, every business receives three to four calls weekly from a digital marketing agency in the US. In such an environment, it becomes important that you use a unique marketing strategy. For example, you can offer something different than what others are. For example, many agencies provide free audits, SEO reports, etc.

DashClicks CEO, Chad Kodary, takes an entirely different approach. If you sign up for the DashClicks platform, you will get access to a website builder tool, InstaSites which you can use for prospecting.

It allows you to build a niche-specific professional website of 30 to 40 pages for your client. It would be free of cost and content ready. All you need to do is make a cold call to your prospects and ask them to look at the website that you have created for them free of cost.

Here is the YouTube playlist where you can watch Chad Kodary explain the whole strategy -

Also, read this blog for more information on how to sell using DashClicks proven sales formula.

Blog Link: How to Use InstaSites Software to Super Charge Your Sales

During the call, please don't ask for their credit card number or anything like that. If they like the free website preview, you can seek their permission to activate the website for them.

This can be the starting point of a long-term relationship with your client. Make another courtesy call after a week and ask if they liked the website. If they are happy with the website, you can offer additional services such as SEO or PPC.

Since this approach is based purely on good intentions, you're more likely to win the contract. You can use this strategy to win more and more digital marketing clients every month, and you will never have to look back.

7. Use the Terms That Your Clients Understand

Assess the expertise level of your clients and use the language accordingly. Don't use industry jargon if they are beginners, and be very cautious if they are experts in this area. Don't make any false claims, and keep your conversation logical.

8. Learn More About Selling Digital Marketing Services

You should constantly update yourself and keep abreast of the latest market trends, tools, and technologies. Regularly attend webinars, seminars, and events related to the digital marketing industry and participate in professional sales training workshops.

Read More: How to Get Clients for Digital Marketing: 7 Steps to Building a Strong Sales Pipeline for Your Agency

Final Words

If you follow these tips, you are more likely to win new sales contracts and retain your clients for the long term. The key is to be honest and offer value. Try the DashClicks proven sales formula. It is a valuable proposition proven by hundreds of agencies worldwide. It minimizes your prospecting efforts and raises your success rate, As the approach differentiates you from others and gives you an edge over your competition.

Growth hacking is a concept that's rapidly gaining traction among business owners and marketers.

Inspired by the inefficiencies of traditional practices, creative entrepreneurs are seeking out ways to scale quickly and intelligently. Thought leaders are creating and implementing new growth tactics that can help new agencies reach their sales goals faster.

However, not everyone is in love with the idea of “hacking.”

In this article, we'll clear up any misconceptions you may have about growth hacking. We'll show you some examples of hacks in action, and teach you some proven strategies that can help you reach your agency goals this coming year.

What Is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is the practice of utilizing carefully selected, cost-effective marketing techniques to achieve scalability and growth quickly.

Businesses and marketers have set expectations of what needs to be done to maintain the status quo. You need to publish content to your site, optimize for SEO, run paid campaigns, and get on social media.

However, every online business is practicing the same exact tried-and-true techniques to boost its discoverability and sales. As a result, the digital marketing landscape is aggressively competitive and it can take longer than desired to achieve growth. No matter how you cut it, maintaining a successful brand requires patience and determination.

Forward-thinking business leaders aren't satisfied with current progress. They're now leveraging resources to uncover new ways that might lead to more rapid growth. However, they need to do so without neglecting daily responsibilities or placing a financial burden on the agency.

This effectively describes a growth hacker's mindset.

Image Source: FourWeekMBA

A growth hacker is interested in testing new methods of digital marketing. They're aiming to disrupt the normal flow and reach new customers quickly while using minimal expenses and resources. Safe and effective growth stems from selling more while spending as little as possible to do so.

Growth Hacker vs Growth Marketer

If you research the growth hackerspace, you're going to come across the term growth marketer.

Both are effectively the same idea.

The reason for the name difference is the inherent stigma that comes with the term “hacker.” “Hacking” is a loaded term that leads people to think of:

• Taking shortcuts
• Cheating the system
• Taking advantage of others
• Stealing success without providing value

Thus, growth hacking becomes a misnomer for many. Instead, they opt for the term growth marketer to veer away from negative connotations and emphasize the importance of their work.

The truth is that there is no way to cheat the system. Marketers have certainly tried, which is why there are a variety of black hat techniques like link selling, cloaking, or PBNs. Eventually, Google catches on and blacklists the genuine “hackers” to maintain fair, competitive results.

Calling yourself a growth hacker versus a growth marketer amounts to preference. Neither are abusing any systems. Instead, they're exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable marketers and salespeople that aren't afraid to risks and experiment with standard marketing practices. They demonstrate a deep understanding of the product and the audience in order to expedite results.

Image Source: Grow with Ward

Growth Hacking Benefits

Since most traditional marketing techniques require patience before you see their results, growth hacking tactics help you scale intelligently sooner.

Growth hacking techniques like paid advertising on social media channels like TikTok help you improve your cash flow. You can use this additional revenue to further boost your business.

The greatest benefit of implementing such tactics is that they help you overcome initial business costs and the investment required to implement traditional marketing methods.

Discovering and implementing new cost-effective solutions before others provides you an edge over your competition.

Growth Hacking Examples

To demonstrate the viability of growth hacking, let's take a look at some examples from brands you may know.

Growth Hacking Example 1 - Constant Contact's Free Trial

Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing automation platforms available. They help other brands like yours boost their engagement and sales by enabling you to deliver smart email marketing campaigns.

Their growth hack is to let your agency in on the action at zero cost.

The free trial is fairly standard practice. Most companies offer seven to thirty days depending on the nature of the service. Constant Contact saw room to beat those offers and provides two full months of nearly-complete access.

This is a substantial amount of time to allow prospects to get integrated. They're not investing any expense, so there's zero risk as they experiment with the various features. By the end of the trial period, they are likely to invest a lot of effort into the platform to get the most out of the offer.

Getting people familiar with your service is essential for growth. But, allowing those users to fall in love with the product is one of the best ways to build a larger community. But, what do you do after the offer ends?

Constant Contact allows users to keep their progress for the low cost of $10. Not only is this relatively affordable for almost anyone, but it's also a no-brainer investment for an agency. It's easier to keep working within the platform you've been using to upend your business and move it elsewhere after two months.

Bear in mind that this company can do this because of its existing scale and revenue. The decision isn't as simple as giving it away for free. Their accountants ran a cost-benefit analysis of providing such a benefit and presumably predicted furthered growth and sales as a result.

When curating your free trial, think about what you want to provide versus what you can afford. Smart scaling must minimize expenses while reaching as many new consumers as possible.

Growth Hacking Example 2 - MeUndies Ongoing Referral Program

If you follow channels online or listen to podcasts, you've heard of MeUndies.

This trendy underwear and clothing brand became a household name thanks to its catchy name, product quality, and reach. Much of that brand awareness comes from influencer marketing, which we'll get to later in this article.

For this growth hacking example, we're focusing on retention. MeUndies retains customers by offering them a strong referral program.

Existing customers get their own referral code. They share this with others to bring attention to the brand and to bring them more sales. The reward for doing this is a $20 credit every time a person makes a purchase of $12 or more.

That credit is effectively the cost of pair of underwear or a couple of pairs of socks. The savings incentive is huge when asking your audience to spread the word.

However, MeUndies knows its capabilities with this program. The stipulation of requiring a minimum spend ensures that the program remains profitable and worthwhile. They may be giving you a strong discount, but they're hacking their way to more customers and sales with each new referral.

Growth Hacking Example 3 - Google Drive's Free Storage

Google is a household name. Countless users under their umbrella make use of their office products by making them free to use. Among these is Google Drive, an online storage space to compete with the likes of DropBox or OneDrive.

Google makes use of a common hacking strategy by giving away its product for free - with limitations. It costs nothing for users to create a Google account and gain access to 15 GB of free storage space.

For comparison, the two aforementioned competitors offer 2 GB and 5 GB respectively. Google's size and recognition grant it the ability to provide a much stronger incentive to become a part of its ecosystem. You're then able to easily store and share files from other Google office programs like Sheets, Docs, and Slides.

While 15 GB for free is generous, Google makes it easy for businesses to get their entire team on board by offering a plan for just $12. They recognize how powerful their offer is and carefully planned this upgrade point knowing that this hacking strategy will work.

Growth Hacking Strategies

Growing an agency quickly is possible, but you need to know how to make it happen.

There are several key components of digital marketing that agencies must make careful use of to improve key performance indicators. Keep your current growth strategies in mind when checking out these seven crucial growth hacking tactics.

1. Reinvent Your Content Strategy

Content is the cornerstone of every message you send to your audience online.

Content touches upon all of the following areas, making them inextricably connected:

• Organic Search (SEO)
• Website copy
• Blogs
• PPC Campaigns
• Email Marketing
• Video Marketing

This is why it's baffling to see so many brands put little effort or care into their content creation or delivery strategies. Thousands of brands are vying for your attention online daily, and you only have a few seconds to capture their attention. Your agency is no different in this struggle.

There are tactics you can implement to get more mileage out of your content. Try introducing these to your content team and start measuring your results.

A. Repurpose High-Converting Content

When you make more than you spend on creating something, it's considered a great investment.

High-converting content should be treated no differently.

We focus particularly on your content that is already creating sales as it's an established success. Instead of snuffing out that flame, consider the ways you can repurpose that content for other channels.

For example, your agency creates a video for a paid ad campaign that generated great returns. The video is filled with valuable, actionable information that the general audience can benefit from.

Now that you've gotten the mileage out of your paid campaign, repurpose that video for other social channels. You can upload it to YouTube. You can edit our specific segments to create Instagram Reels or TikToks. We know that the content is valuable, so we just need to optimize it for an audience on a different platform.

This gets a better return on your content efforts both by way of conversions and consumer feedback. You can use those insights to guide future content creation and craft the right material for each marketing channel.

B. Go to Your Community

This seems obvious, right?

If you're a company selling homeowner's insurance, then why would you try to market to renters? They're not interested in what you have to say, and you're wasting resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

The same principle applies to marketing online. Your agency needs to understand its target audience so that you can find out where to reach them.

A great way to do this is by building out your buyer persona. Understand important details like the ideal age range, location, occupation, income level, and any other detail that's of relevance. Then, check out the existing to determine where those demographics spend their time most online.

C. Make It Into Roundups

The Roundup article is an amazing tool for helping brands build their backlink profile.

An important part of your organic search strategy is to earn links and recommendations from other established brands. Ideally, you're looking to forge connections with others in your industry that share similar values, ideas, and expertise. When a site with SEO value links back to your site, it can help boost rankings and help more users discover your agency.

Achieving this takes work. You'll need to work on building your brand recognition, preferably by creating some valuable and thought-leading content. Once more of the community begins to get familiar with your name, they'll be more willing to collaborate with you on projects. It's a business transaction just like any other.

D. Experiment With Alternate Content Styles

Content marketing is never static. What works well today will likely change by this time next year. For this reason, you shouldn't keep repeating the same formula and expect your results to improve for scalability.

What we're not suggesting is for you to go completely off-brand. Your future content still should adhere to your company voice, values, and ideas. Instead, start split-testing different variations of content to see what resonates more with your audience.

Also, be vigilant with current trends. Studies show that more than 90% of teenagers and adults consume videos regularly online. As we see more platforms place a greater focus on video formats (Facebook Stories, Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts), we can identify how audiences prefer to consume content.

What type of content you create and how to deliver it will vary depending on your core audience. By taking the time to research and gain an understanding of the consumer, you'll naturally learn what type of content to create and where you should upload it.

E. Create Intent-Based Content

The days of boosting your discoverability online with keyword stuffing are long gone.

The content that earns the highest rankings and the most traffic is content created with clear intention. Google's algorithm now understands how well your content answers the demands and needs of its users.

You need to pay close attention to the intention behind the keywords you choose. Different words or phrases come loaded with assumed or additional meanings that we call semantics. When you understand the semantics of a keyword, you're better equipped to create content that converts.

For example, when someone searches “smartphone comparison,” we can understand two things:

• The person is looking for a clear breakdown of similarities and differences between brands and their product.
• Because they’re looking for the best product, they’re likely closer to making a purchase on their buyer’s journey.

We give those users exactly what they need. By understanding the intention, you now know to create a killer comparison page that highlights what makes your brand superior to any competition. You're not trying to make the hard sell. You're allowing your audience to review the facts and make smart decisions for themselves. When the facts are on your side, you come out the clear winner.

Keep intention in mind anytime you choose a topic or keyword to tackle. Respect your audience's needs and the results will follow.

2. Try Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has changed the game for marketers and growth hackers in recent years. It's highly effective regardless of what business goals a brand has set. Here are some of the reasons you should try influencer marketing.

A. An Exploding Marketing Channel

Influencer marketing has exploded in the past five to seven years, especially in the past decade. Hundreds of thousands of marketing campaigns have been successfully executed with the help of influencers since 2018. Influencer marketing has become an integral part of the marketing mix for most brands, and they are benefiting from it in different ways.

B. Helps Build Trust and ROI

Influencer marketing builds a high level of trust, which is why brands are investing more in influencer marketing. It's also influenced by the increasing ROI from influencer marketing spend. The 2015 Tomoson study reported that marketers generated an ROI of $6.50 from every dollar spent on influencers. It was ridiculously high compared to other marketing channels, and you'll be pleased to learn that it's increasing yearly.

The influencer market grew from $9.7 billion in 2020 to $13.8 billion in 2021. It's projected to soar to a whopping $16.4 billion in 2022.

C. Helps in Increasing Brand Exposure

Influencer marketing is a proven method to boost brand awareness, a crucial factor in pipeline building and consistently increasing sales and revenue in the long run.

Pro Tip: Collaborate with well-known influencers on social media to reach a wider audience. Look for influencers having over 50,000+ followers, as they are the most impactful.

3. Implement Rewarding Retention Tactics

Returning customers can easily convert, and the best way to bring them back is to introduce rewards, offers, and discounts. You should also use personalization. Customers want to be treated like individuals, and you can do it by personalizing recommendations.

You must create a program to reward your loyal customers. According to research, an average person enjoys roughly 15 loyalty programs. Here are some of the loyalty programs you can try, but you should do your homework before implementing any of these loyalty programs.

• Tiered Loyalty Program
• Spend Programs
• Points Loyalty Program
• Fee-Based Loyalty Program
• Cash Back Loyalty Program
• Punch Program

Try sending newsletters with exclusive content offers. You can also introduce member-only discounts and bonus features to reward loyal customers.

4. Test and Optimize Your Paid Ad Campaigns

Refrain from sticking to safe formulas when running paid ad campaigns. It would help if you tried A/B testing etc. You can also test different ad creatives with split-testing and allow these insights to guide you when designing ad creatives and crafting marketing messages.

It shouldn't be a one-time activity. People want something new and exciting every time. So, you should consistently fine-tune your efforts.

Last but not least, make it easy to convert. If it's a form that your prospects need to fill out, make it instantly available and keep it short. Don't make them fill out lengthy forms spread over multiple pages. People may soon bounce off with such annoying stuff.

5.Create Brand Partnerships

As a growth hacker, you should try innovative tactics. Find other companies with audiences that can mutually benefit each other. Attend live events to meet industry figures and well-known personalities. Networking brings amazing rewards for startups.

Use personality as a strength. People become aware of your brand and products when you network with other brands and register your presence in your neighborhood by participating in industry events and community service programs.

Image Source: ResoluteB2B

6. Get Direct Feedback

According to Entrepreneur magazine, great marketing starts with understanding and empathizing with your customer. Asking for direct feedback helps you improve your services and brings you closer to your customers. For most customers, asking for feedback means a lot. You can use it to inform your biggest messaging decisions and data enrichment. You can also use customer feedback to surprise and delight your customers.

Customers feel empowered and become loyal to the brand that asks for feedback. Content marketers use it to create attention-getting, lead-generating content.

You can also use it as a mechanism to match your customers' expectations and work on addressing the complaint. Besides that, customer feedback also helps in pricing and packaging decisions.

7. Give Something Away for Free

People love free stuff. You can offer the following as a free gift as an agency.

A. InstaReports:InstaReports is a DashClicks app that generates instant performance reports for different campaigns. As an agency, you can offer it to your clients as a gift. It comes with DashClicks' white-label platform.

B. InstaSites:InstaSites is a DashClicks app that helps you develop high-quality content-ready websites. The tool makes creating bulk websites a breeze. It solves a big issue your customers face, so they will love this gift.

C. Storage Space: Storage space is another gift that businesses need and love. Enterprises have limited storage, and any such offering will be more than welcome.

D. Limited Account Access: Limited account access allows customers to try your product or platform. When they experience its benefits and get used to it, they ask for more and usually convert.

E. Free Samples: It’s a very old tactic product marketers practice. Providing free samples is the best way to make your prospects try your product without buying it. Once they experience it and find it good, they shop for it at the market.

Conclusion

Growth is an increasing challenge for agencies. Creative marketing campaigns are not conducted regularly; hence, these are highly unpredictable as the audiences are unfamiliar with them.

Amid such stiff competition, growth hacking strategies become the only solution. You can't resolve all of your customer's pain points, so you shouldn't wait to implement strategies that yield higher returns than traditional marketing practices.

The digital marketing industry is rapidly growing, but agencies are still striving hard to survive, retain their clients and expand. There can be numerous reasons behind that.

Digital agencies in the US registered the highest revenue growth in 2021 since 2000. Among the many challenges, the major ones include a shrinking team size trend and more and more businesses switching to in-house marketing.

To counter this, many agencies are opting for automation. With effective automation processes, you can easily overcome the negative impacts of a shrinking workforce.

The Current Trends in the Digital Marketing Industry

Agencies are also experiencing an increased demand for more specialized services, and to meet these demands, they need the right tools to grow and offer a variety of services to their clients.

As an agency, you can't afford to shoot in the dark, as precision, data-driven marketing, and automation have become the industry watchwords.

Social listening becomes an extremely important strategy in the scenario.

Brands have been using social media to market their products and services for a long time because of a spurt in social media usage around the globe. Many brands use social media listening tools to get insights about market trends.

Social media listening tools are also used to formulate content strategy, conduct a comparative analysis, monitor campaigns, boost brand growth and find influencers.

With social listening, agencies can add value to their deliverables and get powerful insights to attract new clients.

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In generic terms, social media listening has revolutionized the industry by focusing on customer-generated media across different social platforms. Businesses are doing it to forecast market trends and improve their marketing campaigns based on what customers are saying about their brands and products.

It has emerged as a wonderful strategy to analyze social media sentiment and design a robust strategy.

How to Use Social Listening to Grow a Digital Marketing Agency?

As an agency, you can support your existing clients with social listening. You can minimize their efforts and tell them what to do. An in-depth, comprehensive social listening analysis can open the floodgates of valuable data businesses can use to boost their sales and branding.

A mere half an hour of social listening can provide you with so much marketing data that you can gather a lot of input to formulate a robust marketing strategy for your clients. They would be happy to see the quality and relevance of this data.

The Scout Agency's director of social media, Britanny Fryman, says they have registered triple digits growth year after year just by practicing social media listening.

Here are some useful tips for using social listening to grow your digital marketing agency:-

1. Embrace Changes With Dynamic Strategies

The pandemic has shown us how to survive by being agile and flexible.

The market dynamics are constantly changing, and so are the customers' needs. As an agency, you can ensure your success by proactively uncovering those changing needs for your clients through social listening.

It had become even more pronounced during the pandemic when people changed their priorities, and their social conversations provided deep insights into what they were thinking.

To stay ahead of the competition, you should constantly eavesdrop on social media.

L'Oreal, the famous cosmetics company, uses social listening to fuel its product development cycle, according to its senior VP of global open digital innovation and business development, Esohe Omoruyi.

In 2011, L'Oreal needed clarification on which hair product to develop next. The three obvious options were ombre, splat, and tie-dye. They used social media listening to know the most promising trends. Their modus operandi was simple. They performed comprehensive research on YouTube and gathered user-generated content to understand what customers thought about these products.

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They also invited influencers to help them decide which product to focus on. Finally, with the help of social media listening, and analysis of Google Trends, they went with the Ombre Hair Oil trend. The result was the development of the product L'Oreal Feria Wild Ombre, which became a massive success and is still popular.

Ingredient, the famous food marketing agency, uses social media listening to know what customers are talking about, to stay ahead of the competition, and for lead nurturing.

2. Expand Your Capabilities

Businesses worldwide are using social media listening to get deep insights about their audience and boost their product marketing strategies.

The trend is quite popular in the food and beverages, cosmetic, electronics, and apparel industries.

Pro Tip: You can use DashClicks' white-label fulfillment services to expand your capabilities without hiring an additional workforce. For example, if you specialize in SEO, you can offer content marketing, paid advertising, and social media account management services and diversify your portfolio.

Please watch this video to know more -

3. Create High-Quality Content That Resonates

Since content marketing is extremely effective and the lifeline of marketing campaigns for various businesses, it is crucial to create content that resonates.

Most companies fail at content marketing because they cannot produce high-quality content that their audience loves. 51% of customers are likely to unfollow a brand if it provides irrelevant content.

It has become even more important post-pandemic because people have very less attention span online. Social listening goes one step ahead in addition to your clients' owned channels. It helps you closely monitor your customers' trends and the hashtags they use.

You also know their pain points and how they relate to your brand. It provides a wholesome understanding of how an audience perceives a brand and what they expect. Brands also track mentions of their clients, so they can get accurate data to build their content strategy.

High-quality content is educational and entertaining, and it makes life easy for your target audience by adding value to help them achieve their objectives.

4. Do Performance Tracking of Marketing Campaigns

The success of a marketing campaign is crucial to the satisfaction and retention of clients and, ultimately, an agency's growth. Shallow metrics like engagements and impressions may not be enough to understand what your audience loves.

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Many businesses have started investing in social listening to improve their campaigns because it provides rich information about their campaign performance and helps them track conversations online.

Social Listening is a boon, especially for large and massive campaigns where tracking becomes almost impossible.

5. Stay Ahead of the Competition Through Social Listening

You can use social listening for various objectives, including product innovation and avoiding potential crises. With the help of social listening, you can identify market trends early on and prevent a possible disaster. It gives you an edge over your competitors.

You can use social listening to monitor brand sentiment to avoid any potential disaster and negative market trends. You can also reduce the impact of negative rumors that can hurt your brand by proactively crafting marketing messages to your clients.

Tips to Grow Your Digital Marketing Agency Using Social Listening

Here are a few tips for growing your agency with social listening:-

• Use social listening consistently and religiously.
• Identify patterns and be ready to go deeper.
• Choose a mix of small and big sample sizes.
• Educate your clients about the effectiveness of social listening and convince them to embrace it, even if it is against their existing views
• Expand social listening to different categories and brands
• Capture the keywords your audience is using.
• Practice transparency with your clients
• Include the trivial things as well in your reports

Final Words

With increasing competition and the fast pace at which market trends change, agencies face multiple challenges. To stay successful and expand your client base, you must evolve your marketing strategies to grow your business against all odds. Use automation wherever necessary, given the shrinking workforce. You can use DashClicks' white-label automation tools for that. Social listening is a powerful practice that every brand should embrace. It can do wonders for your business if you're using the right tools and processes.

Your agency's success largely depends on your ability to effectively upsell clients.

Upselling happens everywhere. So, from pizza and burger outlets to retail stores and from the auto industry to electronics, everyone attempts to upsell. For example, a diner orders a coffee in a restaurant, but the waiter offers to add flavors such as French Vanilla, Hazelnut, Caramel, or Mocha for a nominal price.

But, with digital agencies, the offerings can be a bit more complex. Before upselling as an agency, you must take into consideration the customers' needs. The agency owners face cutthroat competition, so their objective should be to boost cash flow by offering value to their clients.

A study by Marketing Metrics reveals that the probability of selling something to a prospect is only about 5-20%, while the chance of selling something to an existing customer is 60-70%.

In such a scenario, upselling becomes crucial for the agencies.

What Is Upselling?

Upselling is part of the sales process when a brand offers an upgrade or premium version of the product or services they are selling.

It also includes selling Add-ons that boost the functionality of the existing product.

The objective of upselling is to serve the customers better and meet their pressing needs while boosting revenue for the agency. It should be in alignment with the customer's goals and hopes.

Upselling is mostly relationship-based, and it helps you make loyal customers. It's a two-way process. When a brand is committed to serving the needs and goals of its clients, they offer products and services with additional functionality and premium features.

These premium products, in turn, save time and money for the customers.

How to Upsell a Client?

Here are the seven upselling strategies to expand your accounts and increase revenue.

1. Ditch Phone and Email; Meet In-Person

Most agencies limit their interaction with clients to phone and email due to time constraints and other reasons. However, in such demanding times, it isn't fruitful for your business relationships. Meeting in person has several advantages.

First, people feel uncomfortable discussing many things on phone calls and emails. Later, these things may snowball into bigger issues and lead to customer churn. So, meeting once a month is a healthy practice that promotes customer loyalty. It fosters customer loyalty, which makes upselling easier.

According to a Temkin Group report, loyal customers are five times as likely to repurchase and forgive and seven times as likely to try a new offering.

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2. Proactively Explore Clients' Needs

Frequently meeting your clients in person has many advantages. It allows you to have a deeper interaction with your clients, helping you better understand their needs. There can be many services they need, and you can provide them. Sometimes, people are so busy managing their daily tasks that they hardly have the time and inclination to realize their business needs. But agency owners can easily identify these needs if they're focused on their clients' concerns. Try to identify your client's needs before they proactively realize them.

And sometimes, even the clients need to be aware of the variety of services you offer once you mention them. It's, therefore, necessary to keep an eye on their problems, growth, and business goals. A greater understanding of your client's businesses will tremendously help you upsell. During in-person meetings, your clients might disclose more than you can imagine.

3. Start Your Relationship With a Smaller Project

Experts recommend you refrain from selling high-ticket items in the beginning. It can be overwhelming for the customers. The best way to start your relationship is to choose smaller projects and gradually move up the value ladder as the trust builds.

Here is the step-by-step sales formula Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, recommends succeeding as a digital agency.

Step-by-Step Formula to Sell Your Digital Agency Services

Here are the four steps to sell your digital marketing services, beginning with offering DashClicks' InstaSites software that builds professional websites within seconds.

Prepare a list of the local businesses, service providers, and shops you want to target. Create professional websites using DashClicks’ InstaSites app for your target audience, and start your sales outreach. Follow these steps:-

1. Set up a small call center comprising 5-10 sales executives using advanced software (such as VoIP for call center).
2. Ask your sales reps to offer custom websites built by InstaSites free of charge to your prospects.
3. Tempt your prospects with preview links to the websites.
4. After three days, call up again to know their feedback about the website preview.
5. Ask their permission to activate the site if they are happy with the preview.
6. After one week, call them again to get their input on the website and offer local listings on some major listing networks.
7. Get these services fulfilled through DashClicks’ white-label fulfillment center.
8. After two weeks, offer SEO or Google Ads services and get them fulfilled through DashClicks.
9. After six weeks, provide social media account management and posting services and fulfill them through DashClicks.

To know more, read the following article:- How to Develop an Irresistible Offer Selling Websites That Takes Seconds to Create?

4. Focus On Complementary Services

You can think of dozens of complementary services. Here is a scenario. You're running Facebook ads for a client, and the analytics revealed that if the web page layout is changed, you can easily increase the conversion rate by 3%. You can offer your complimentary web design services to fix this.

You can pitch for content marketing services if you think your current SEO strategies aren't yielding the desired results. It can be because of the need for good pillar content on the website and external channels such as blog posts, social media channels, popular sites from the same industry, forums, and question-answer sites.

Similarly, if you offer SEO services, you can also offer local SEO, backlink building, SEM, website design & development, and social media services.

These are the best opportunities you can use to increase your revenue.

5. Offer Top-Notch Customer Experience

CX or Customer experience is a big driving factor for repeat purchases. According to Zendex, 51% of B2B companies switch vendors after poor customer service experience.

The same source also reveals that 66% of B2B customers stopped buying after a bad customer service experience. So, if you want to kickstart upselling, ensure that you offer the best customer experience in your niche.

If you strive to achieve a high customer lifetime value (CLV), upselling wouldn't be difficult. All you need to do is consistently show value throughout the post-purchase retention & advocacy stages.

No wonder 45% of companies cite content and experience management as their number one priority, according to Econsultancy's Digital Trends 2018 report.

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6. Set and Measure Customer Expectations

According to Chris Boeckelman, VP of Marketing (Vice President) at Getfeedback Inc., happy customers are your agency's lifeline; to keep them happy, you must set and meet customer expectations. You should fully train your sales and service teams to meet customer expectations.

You can use customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores as a metric to measure it. Though CSAT is a primary metric in the broader customer journey, it is best practice in the beginning.

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It has one more advantage. When you start tracking your CSAT score, the focus of your entire team shifts to customer experience, and each customer interaction gets increased visibility.

7. Involve Your Team Members

Don't restrict upselling to your sales or business development team. Anyone who works on the project should be involved, even if they don't talk directly with the client. Such team members can share their ideas and insights through the accounts manager.

For example, a design guy feels we can improve the user interface to boost engagement and conversion on the website. In that case, they can immediately share it with the accounts manager and suggest their inputs through graphics and illustrations.

Upselling clients is a team effort.

How to Upsell?

The following videos guide you through the art of upselling.

Here is a short video by Chad Kodary in which he shows you how to secure the upsell:-

It's the obvious and natural approach, and it shouldn't sound obnoxious to the customers. The idea is to refrain from charging aggressively. Still, you make decent money through a one-time fee (OTF) and monthly recurring charges.

Here is the five-video series that explains the entire process of upselling digital agency products using InstaSites software:-

Read this article for more tips on upselling:- How I Would Do $100K in Sales in 12 Months if I Had to Start All Over From Scratch

Final Words

As explained above, the primary objective of upselling should be to add value to the services you provide to your clients. Increasing revenue for the agency is secondary. So, upselling should involve offering an irresistible product that addresses your client's pain points and help them faster achieve their business goals. Agencies should learn this valuable skill and use it as a win-win strategy. You boost your income while your clients grow and improve their efficiencies.

Are you ready for upselling?

The 2008-2009 mega recession left invisible scars on numerous industries and turned the course of life for many. But this was not the last recession to happen. Post-pandemic, we are yet again heading towards a major recession, which is not as severe as the 2008 downturn but big enough to jolt the economies across the globe.

Negative Impacts of an Economic Downturn

A downward recessionary spiral can crush everything. With decreased incomes and less money to spend, retail sales tumble down, impacting the entire economy.

Businesses are forced to shrink their workforce and cut overall operating expenses to prevent a possible shutdown. Mass layoffs lead to high unemployment, lower wages, fall in GDP, and missed opportunities.

Slow and uneven recovery and social consequences further compound the problem, as we saw in the Great Recession of 2008. Student debt, lower fertility rates, increasing mental health issues & suicide rates, breaking families, and social unrest brutally hurt economies and markets for many years.

How to Keep Your Business Afloat During a Recession?

Even the best businesses struggle to survive during the recession because their expenses supersede their incomes. Here are 15 tips on how to market and survive during a recession.

1. Discover or Create New Revenue Streams

Follow the market trend during tough times and seize potential opportunities. You have numerous options to find alternative methods of creating new revenue streams.

Take stock of your abilities. You can create new products and services by utilizing your existing capabilities. These products and services may save your agency when there is a slump in demand for your current services.

Strategic partnerships will help you during the tough times to expand into the markets you previously couldn't tap.

You can sublet it and add your rental income if you have extra office space.

2. Sell Online Courses

As the eLearning market is booming, you can launch your online education business. Online courses are selling like a hotcake these days. Create online classes on your areas of expertise and sell them aggressively.

You need the following items to start with –

• A good HD Camera and a tripod
• A whiteboard, projector, and lights
• Proper Software to edit
• A well-written script

Buy a software program such as Teachable or WordPress’s LearnDash to make life easy.

Teachable is a popular software for creating online courses, which makes creating online courses a cakewalk. You can start with a fully functional free plan.

LearnDash is the best WordPress online course creation software with the best features to win your heart. Yet, it's quite affordable.

3. Implement an Evolving Business Model

Purge the static business models and replace them with evolving models, so you can easily withstand the tough times. To achieve this, you must pay attention to the changing customer needs. Keep your business model flexible to stretch and change your offerings.

4. Cut Your Pricing to Beat Your Competition

Premium pricing can knock you out of the market, especially during a downturn. So, to stay afloat, get out of your comfort zone and cut your pricing. Remember, customers, act as a lifeline for your agency. Keep them happy, and they will keep you in business.

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5. Innovate and Deliver Value

Innovation acts as a game-changer for businesses. Automate your operations. It saves time and money. Agencies can use the DashClicks white label platform and enjoy its amazing automation tools and apps that make report generation, analytics, and building websites a breeze.

Improve the quality of your product and services and improve your processes through DashClicks Deals and Project Management apps.

6. Position Your Agency Strategically and Find New Niches

If you are a PPC agency and notice that your clients have drastically cut their ad spending following a demand slump, try positioning yourself as a social media or SEO company. It can be a great survival move. You can also target new niches such as TikTok marketing etc.

7. Plan Proactively Ahead of an Economic Meltdown

If you foresee a downturn ahead, plan proactively to deal with it. Revamp your marketing strategies, migrate from manual to automated processes, and cut your costs. You can also consider downsizing your agency.

8. Hire Business Coaches and Mentors

Mentors and business consultants bring a lot of experience and new ideas on board and can help you survive a recession. Recessions wouldn't last forever, but the value that business coaches bring would elevate your agency to new heights, even after the slowdown.

Hiring a business coach can infuse life into dying agencies when many businesses get wiped out, and only the fittest survive. DashClicks offer business consulting services to digital agencies to make them recession-proof.

A business coach can help you maneuver through times of uncertainty. You need to take a plunge and undertake risks to pick up low-hanging fruits during the recession and reap unmatched rewards when the market recovers.

9. Offer Discounts, Incentives, and Rewards to Your Customers

Rewards and incentives hit the "temptation zone" and instantly help promote sales. It becomes even more important during tough times. Leverage discounts and rewards to romp ahead of the looming competition.

10. Reduce Your Operating Cost

Perform a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Study all costs of a project or decision vs. the total projected benefits. Of course, it also involves assigning a monetary value to those benefits. This way, you'll get to know if a particular expense makes sense or not. Slice off all the unnecessary expenses and drastically reduce your operating cost to stay lean and agile.

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11. Increase Your Marketing Budget

Contrary to conventional wisdom, some marketing gurus advise businesses to increase their marketing budget instead of reducing it during a recession. It has logical reasons behind it.

At a time when a small gesture of kindness may catapult your agency to newer heights, increasing your marketing budget may put the oxygen to your business and make it top of mind.

12. Monitor Your Cash Flow

Study your accounts and pay attention to patterns such as clients' payment cycles. Make sure your income supports your expenses, such as staff salaries, rent, payment to vendors, EMIs, and other bills, on time.

Improve your cash flow by cutting costs, getting customers to pay faster, and getting cash for your assets. You can also apply for credit lines and business credit cards if needed. Make sure your invoices are paid on time. You can also consider delaying payments to vendors.

13. Go International

If you see a slump in demand in the domestic market, you can think of expanding into global markets. Every country has a unique supply and demand pattern, and you may easily find clients overseas if you invest in international marketing.

According to an Americal Enterprise Institute study, Procter and Gamble (58%), Chevron (57%), Oracle (53%), Alphabet (52.7%), IBM (52%), and Pfizer (50.5%) generate more than 50% of their sales in overseas markets.

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14. Postpone Big-Ticket Items

If you plan to buy big-ticket items, postpone them until the market recovers. Shelve your plans to purchase premium furniture or invest in machinery or equipment. Freeze recruitment unless warranted to keep the wheel moving.

15. Fix Your Credit Lines

Identify the credit cards that might be bleeding your budget dry. Immediately pay down high-interest credit card balances. Switch to fixed interest rates from variable ones.

Final Words

In short, a recession would mean you and your client will spend less on marketing and advertising. Even the strongest brands need to pull punches to survive the tornado. But you can still spend on marketing because it has numerous rewards in store for you.

Some marketing gurus even recommend increasing your marketing spending during a recession. It will take you miles ahead of your competition, who risk disappearing from the public eye when they need them the most. Make sure your cuts in spending don't hurt your agency's momentum. The best way to survive a recession is to 10X your marketing and customer service.