Wie man eine Agentur für digitales Marketing gründet und aufbaut, die Geld verdient
Ihr Leitfaden für den Erfolg einer Agentur
So, you’ve decided to take the plunge into the world of agency life — congrats!
As you surely already know, starting (and growing) a marketing agency can be a long, painful, exhausting — yet rewarding — process. From registering your LLC to finding your first clients, there will be many hoops to jump through.
That’s why we’ve put together this ultimate guide to help! 💪
Below, you’ll find helpful tips, advice and resources on how to successfully start and grow your marketing agency. And if you’re someone who has “been there,” let us know in the comments if you have any other wisdom to share.
Teil 1: Erste Schritte und Werbung
Die Grundlagen
Should your agency go broad or niche?
One of the first things you should consider when starting your own marketing agency is what exactly you want to offer your clients. 🤔
Ähnlich wie Produktunternehmen versuchen, einen passenden Markt für ihr Produkt zu finden, müssen Sie den passenden Markt für Ihre Dienstleistungen finden.
And while there are many full-service agencies out there who create great work across a variety of disciplines, it’s important to consider the option of being a bit more niche when first starting out.
Why? Because if you can show clients that you can do a few things really well, rather than everything only at half capacity, you’re a much more valuable asset to them. And let’s be honest: if it’s just you, or a small team, working for your agency, the last thing you want to do is stretch yourself too thin from the beginning. 👎
Are you great at SEO? Web design? Social media promotions? It’s best to sit down and list the services you’d like to offer, then really think about whether or not those services are your best assets.
Knowing your expertise early on can really help in the long run. 🙌 Plus, when work starts to pile up, it’ll give you a better idea of what tasks you can unabhängige Auftragnehmer bezahlen for. Ideally, it’s good to keep your core expertise in-house. But for other supplementary tasks, you might want to consider outsourcing.
Companies can sometimes worry about being too niche and missing out on clients, but think about it this way: if you offer a few really great services, you’re going to have clients who need those services and, in turn, you’ll be doing work you actually want to be doing (plus, it’s work that you’re great at).
“Top of the food chain” or subcontractor
Another thing to consider in the beginning is to whom you’d like to offer your services, and how.
Are you interested in working with end-clients directly, or do you want to contract out your services to other companies that want to carry out specific projects? 🤷
Deciding this early on will help cut down on confusion in where your agency stands in the “food chain,” so to speak, of the companies you work with. Plus, it helps you better prepare for the types of clients you want to look for when prospecting.
For instance, if you’re not going to be working with end clients directly, it’s better to prospect with big agencies that don’t have your specific expertise in-house.
Branding and identity
As a marketer yourself, this is probably a no-brainer: you need a brand! 😅
Aber um ehrlich zu sein, ist das manchmal leichter gesagt als getan. Vor allem am Anfang, wenn Sie sich um eine Million anderer Dinge kümmern müssen, kann Ihr Branding manchmal auf der Strecke bleiben.
It can be tempting to focus more on your clients’ branding than your own, but try to avoid this. 🙅
You’d never go to a hairdresser with bad hair or a dentist with bad teeth — so why would someone hire your marketing services if you don’t market yourself well?
It’s important to make a name for yourself in your respective field, and having a brand that is easily identifiable and tells the story you want to tell. 🤘
Column Five hat eine tolle Schritt-für-Schritt-Anleitung zur Markenidentität, um dieses Problem direkt anzugehen.
Website and social media presence
Probably another no-brainer, but equally important, is your online presence. Once you have defined a brand identity, made a great logo, and logo design it’s time to show it off! ✨
If you aren’t necessarily ready to invest in a web developer to build your website, there are a few great low-cost self-publishing options, such as Squarespace. Another good alternative is Pixpa. Sites built with Pixpa have a host of built in tools like the SEO Manager, Marketing Pop Ups, Announcement Bar, etc.
For social media, be sure to secure your usernames and, if possible, make them consistent across channels. It doesn’t make sense to have your Twitter account as @Marketing_Agency_Example if your Instagram is @example.marketingagency — you get the idea. 🤓
Außerdem ist dies eine gute Gelegenheit, sich bereits eine Anhängerschaft aufzubauen. Sobald Sie die für Sie geeigneten Kanäle festgelegt haben und Ihre Agentur einen digitalen Marketingplan erstellt hat, können Sie mit anderen Konten in Kontakt treten!
Folgen Sie relevanten Vordenkern in Ihrer Branche auf Twitter, treten Sie Facebook-Gruppen mit Gleichgesinnten bei, tun Sie alles, was in Ihrer Macht steht, um am Gespräch teilzunehmen. Sorgen Sie dafür, dass Ihre Website und andere Kanäle eine gute Geschwindigkeit haben. Sie können dafür Leistungssteigerungen wie VDS-Server nutzen!
Finally, don’t forget to make yourself visible to people searching. Add yourself to different, targeted listings like this one for marketing agencies in Pittsburgh.
Zeigen Sie Ihr Portfolio
Your past work can help demonstrate to prospective clients that you’re capable of creating great things.
Be sure to highlight your best work from your portfolio across your website and social media channels — though, don’t make your social media channels completely self-promotional. Conversations aren’t one-sided, and that goes for social media as well. 🗣
What works even better nowadays for agencies is to blog about their expertise and give their advice and opinions on things. It’s also perceived as less promotional — more on this in a moment.
Die nicht ganz so elementaren Grundlagen
Set SMART goals
It can be one thing to say, “I want to build a successful company,” it’s another thing entirely to say, “I will sell my marketing services to financial services clients needing help with email campaigns. I will launch in 6 weeks and have 8 clients by the end of the year…”
Ziele müssen greifbar sein, und eine Möglichkeit, dies zu gewährleisten, besteht darin, SMART-Ziele zu setzen.
SMART-Ziele sind spezifisch, messbar, erreichbar, relevant und zeitlich begrenzt.
Die Erstellung von Zielen in diesem Format ermöglicht es Ihnen, wirklich tief in das einzutauchen, was Sie mit Ihrer Agentur erreichen wollen. Es kann Ihnen auch helfen, disziplinierter mit Ihren Fristen für das Erreichen von Meilensteinen umzugehen.
Building your toolkit
There are plenty of tools out there to help you run your business in an efficient and productive way. Below are some suggestions for various SaaS tools. 🔧
Zeitplanung für soziale Medien
· Sprout — a personal favorite of mine. Schedule, plan and track all of your social posts across every channel. The reporting tool is visual, easy to use and incredibly helpful for seeing which of your posts are performing best.
· Buffer — if you’re looking for a free tool, this one is great. Schedule and plan with ease.
· Hootsuite — a longtime fan favorite, as you can have multiple feeds visible on your dashboard at once. 🦉
Buchhaltung und Rechnungsstellung
· FreshBooks — cloud-based accounting software, easy and intuitive.
· Xero — small-business accounting software that takes care of everything around invoicing, billing and accounting.
CRM
· Salesflare — surprise, surprise! Imagine loving your CRM: Salesflare is built to be the easiest-to-use sales machine of your dreams. 😍
Projektleitung
· Airtable — it works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything.
· Notion — another personal favorite. Write, plan, collaborate and get organized with one tool. 🙏
· Trello — boards, lists and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in a fun, flexible and rewarding way.
· Function Point — Manage your entire creative agency on a single software platform with functionalities that simplify project management, resource management, business intelligence, CRM & estimating, and agency financials.
· RedTrack – ad tracking & attribution tool for agencies and vendors. Track and compare the performance of your paid advertising, partner marketing, referrals, email campaigns, etc. – all in one tool for better optimization.
Chrome-Erweiterungen
Es gibt einige großartige Chrome-Erweiterungen, einige unserer Favoriten sind Grammarly und Dux-Soup.
We created a guide to the best Chrome extensions out there — check them out and see if you can implement them into your everyday work. 💪
Einen Mitgründer finden?
While not a requirement, it might be worthwhile to have a co-founder come on board. 👯
Einige der führenden Marketing- und Werbeagenturen sind aus Duos hervorgegangen. Denken Sie an: Ogilvy & Mather, Wieden+Kennedy, usw.
Sie können jemanden zur Seite haben, der mit Ihnen durch die Gräben geht und Sie und Ihr wachsendes Team weiter unterstützt und motiviert.
Nicht immer notwendig, aber immer eine Überlegung wert!
Inbound- vs. Outbound-Marketing
I’m not going to get into the difference between inbound and outbound, because if you’re starting an agency, let’s assume you already know this stuff… 😉
But in any case, it’s important to plan how you want to go about bringing clients in at the beginning (and further down the line).
The best thing you can probably do is a mix of both — but definitely more inbound than outbound. Though, at the beginning, you will probably find yourself doing much more outbound.
Regardless, you don’t want to be too pushy to prospects, and you should want future clients to find you on their own or through word of mouth.
Throughout part two of this guide, you’ll see various examples of using both inbound and outbound marketing to build your business.
Part 2: Time to grow
Now that you’ve started your marketing agency, you need some clients so you can start to grow! 📈
In diesem Abschnitt werden einige der verschiedenen Möglichkeiten der Geschäftsanbahnung vorgestellt und Ratschläge gegeben, wie man ein gesundes und nachhaltiges Geschäftsmodell kultivieren kann.
Finding your future clients
Utilizing your current network
Even if your network isn’t huge, it’s important to talk to friends, family and peers to get an idea of some of the pain points their companies have with marketing.
Invite them to coffee or lunch, and ask them about marketing at their company and some of the things that they feel stuck or frustrated with. 😤
Versuchen Sie nicht, Ihre Dienste sofort zu verkaufen. Hören Sie zu. Und verstehen Sie zuerst.
Even if they aren’t looking to hire a marketing agency at the moment, you can gain incredible insights and be top-of-mind for them whenever they do feel they need some extra help with marketing — and they might know of other people who could use your services.
Ausgehende E-Mail-Kampagnen
There are several outbound emailing tools out there, from Mailshake to MixMax to Autoklose. Or just send email workflows/sequences straight from your CRM, Salesflare. 📬
Suchen Sie sich eine aus, die für Sie am besten geeignet ist, und lesen Sie dann unseren Leitfaden zur E-Mail-Automatisierung wie ein Profi.
Do some basic SEO research
Schlüsselwörter der Forschung that you want to associate with your agency — what kind of companies show up in the results? What are their pain points? Are they a good fit as prospects?
Even if you aren’t an SEO whiz, you can learn as you go along, and eventually apply your knowledge to future clients’ projects! 😄
And even outside of looking for clients, while you don’t need to be an SEO master to start a marketing agency, understanding the basics and why certain things drive certain results can go a long way.
Join groups — both online and IRL
Finding groups with common interests is not only a great way to make friends, but it can also be a great way to make potential business contacts. 🤝
This can apply to several things — Facebook Groups, Quora and Product Hunt are a few that immediately come to mind for online networking. 😻
Es gibt sogar einige Agenturen, die Gruppen für ihre Nische gegründet haben, wie Badass Marketers & Founders (BAMF), SaaS Growth Hacks und andere.
When it comes to networking IRL, check out local groups on Meetup or see if there are any interesting events coming up on Eventbrite. You never know what you might find — or who you might end up meeting!
Industry conferences can also be a great place to prospect. You’ll have to do a bit of research and legwork to ensure the companies attending are a good fit as potential clients, but this can be incredibly rewarding if done right.
If you’re looking for leads, LinkedIn is the place to be. It’s easily the biggest and most up-to-date list of leads in the world.
We actually created a super-helpful playbook all about how to find customers on LinkedIn — so be sure to check it out! Because, trust me, this can be a treasure trove of potential new clients. 💎
Bloggen
Einen Blog starten for your company can be the most valuable inbound marketing you can create — if done well. 😎
And if you need further convincing, here’s the deal: companies that blog have, on average, 97% more inbound links than those that don’t. Which means more search engine traffic and more opportunities for future clients to find you online.
But there’s more: 60% of consumers feel positive about a company after reading its blog and 70% of consumers learn about a company through its blog versus ads.
So, why wouldn’t you blog? 😱
Denken Sie an Themen und Probleme, die Sie bei Ihren Kunden ansprechen wollen. Erstellen Sie Pfeilerseiten, geben Sie Ratschläge, stellen Sie Ressourcen zur Verfügung, zeigen Sie potenziellen Kunden, dass Sie ein Vordenker in diesem Bereich sind und dass sie Ihnen vertrauen können.
There are also amazing tools out there that can make your content marketing workflow even better, such as StoryChief. It helps you plan, schedule and distribute multi-channel with one click. 👍
Warm (and maybe a few cold) emails
If at all possible, try to warm up to contacting prospects directly. 🔥
Und Sie können es ganz einfach halten: Vielleicht haben sie einen tollen Beitrag auf LinkedIn, den Sie kommentieren, oder Sie retweeten etwas von ihrem Konto mit einem aufschlussreichen Kommentar.
Noch besser: Sie treffen sie auf einer Veranstaltung und melden sich kurz darauf. Oder Sie schauen in Stellenausschreibungen nach, ob sie Unterstützung im Marketingbereich suchen.
However you decide to approach this, do it in a thoughtful and strategic way. If you’re just mass-emailing every company you want to work with, that’s not a great use of your time, and you probably won’t get any responses. 👎
You’re trying to build a relationship with these companies, so approach it in the same way you would want to be approached — in a more organic, thoughtful way. 💛
Cold emails don’t have to be bad or annoying, it can certainly be done well, but be sure to not send them an email saying how great you are and how much they should want to work with you.
Ew, no one wants that. ☹️
Sprechen Sie stattdessen über die Probleme, die sie möglicherweise haben, und fragen Sie, ob Sie diese weiter besprechen können. Bringen Sie sie dazu, über sich selbst zu sprechen, anstatt zu viel über Ihr Unternehmen zu erzählen.
Cultivating a healthy business model
Making your agency profitable and defining your rates
Es gibt zahlreiche Möglichkeiten, wie Sie als Marketingagentur Ihre Gewinne maximieren können, und dieser große Leitfaden von Marketing Agency Insider ist ein guter Ausgangspunkt für Anregungen.
Im Grunde genommen kommt es darauf an, welche Prioritäten Sie setzen wollen und wie Sie Ihr Unternehmen strukturieren wollen. Jede Agentur ist anders, aber es gibt einige Geschäftsmodelle, die besser funktionieren als andere.
Tipp: Ein idealer Weg zur Gewinnmaximierung ist eine wertorientierte Preisgestaltung, bei der Sie Ihren Kunden den Wert der Dienstleistungen und nicht den Zeitaufwand für ein Projekt in Rechnung stellen.
Understanding your rates and the value you add to clients can help you greatly in the long run. Always know your worth! 🤑
Verwaltung der Rechnungsstellung
Behalten Sie den Überblick über Ihre Abrechnungszyklen — and make sure your clients pay you when they should be paying you. 💸
Seems obvious, yes, but when you’re hard at work trying to make clients happy, the weeks can fly by and you’re left forgetting whether or not you got paid — and 99% of the time, your clients won’t remind you about it, either.
A CRM is a great way to track won and billed projects, but for invoicing, accounting, etc., be sure to have a tool like FreshBooks or Xero in place to keep everything in order. It’s important to be able to have a snapshot of how your company is performing financially. 📊
Ziele für die Einnahmen
Die Festlegung der richtigen Umsatzziele für Ihr Unternehmen kann ein schwieriger Prozess sein.
Thankfully, there is a helpful guide over at SOMAmetrics that lays out how you can set effective revenue targets for your agency and beyond. 🎯
Getting this right early on can help an agency grow sustainably and profitably — and you can set these targets in a CRM, such as Salesflare, to track it more effectively.
Abrechenbarkeit
Be sure to track your time per client. But equally important: track your non-billable hours as well. ⏳
Things such as new business pitches, writing proposals, networking, admin work, meetings and client research are crucial in keeping your business alive — even though they aren’t directly generating revenue.
In jedem Fall kann eine genaue Beobachtung, wie Ihr Unternehmen die nicht fakturierbare Zeit verbringt, sicherstellen, dass Sie und Ihr Team so effizient wie möglich arbeiten. Sie können sich ein besseres Bild davon machen, was Ihre Zeit während des Tages in Anspruch nimmt und ob es Raum für Verbesserungen bei den von Ihnen eingesetzten Verfahren gibt.
Plus, it can also help you discover and identify any unprofitable clients and find more billable hours in areas that you need more work in. 👩💻
Tools wie Timely eignen sich hervorragend für die Zeiterfassung und geben Ihnen einen besseren Einblick in die Aufgaben, mit denen Sie und Ihr Team Zeit verbringen.
In terms of the agency’s billable utilization, this can vary, though a healthy target is around 70–80% — meaning only 20–30% of you and your team’s time is spent on non-billable tasks. The latter, of course, can be much lower as time goes on, but having a goal or framework in mind is helpful.
Looking for a way to calculate billable hours? Like Timely, Toggl is another great tool for this, as you can assign different rates for different team members or clients. ⏱
Angebote
Die Festlegung einer gemeinsamen Angebotsstruktur ist eine gute Möglichkeit, um sicherzustellen, dass Ihr Unternehmen eine einheitliche Preisgestaltung praktiziert. Die Honorarstrukturen von Agenturen lassen sich in zwei Hauptkategorien unterteilen: projektbezogene und auftragsbezogene Arbeit.
Bei projektbezogener Arbeit gibt es je nachdem, wie viel Nettogewinn Sie erzielen wollen, einige Faktoren zu berücksichtigen, z. B. die Stundensätze der Mitarbeiter, die geschätzten abrechenbaren Stunden und unerwartete Kosten (oder Umfangsvergrößerung).
The key here is to calculate those unknown factors and to determine profit margins on services that makes sense for your company — and don’t forget your LLC cost and administrative costs when calculating this! ⚠️
Retainer-based work is a bit trickier to calculate, as there is a lot of front-loaded work associated with it. That’s why you should be sure to have provisions in place in your contracts, such as termination clauses that protect the setup phase and ensure that if the client terminates the contract early, you are compensated correctly.
Ein Beispiel für die Aufschlüsselung einer jährlichen Preisstruktur wäre:
- Aufbauphase, erste 2 Monate: $20.000
- Laufende Phase, die anderen 10 Monate: $28,000
- Insgesamt: $48,000
- Amortisiert in monatlichen Zahlungen: $4,000
So here, your monthly retainer for this client would be $4,000 — this should cover specific, itemized deliverables. And if your client wants more outside of these deliverables, then that would be the time that you negotiate some à la carte price points for their needs.
A good place to start with proposals is Better Proposals’ list of free proposal templates, which you can find here (they integrate with Salesflare, too). 🤘 Another online tool to create business proposals you can check out is this one from Qwilr.
Verhandlungen
Negotiations can be tricky and a bit awkward when first starting out with your agency. However, that shouldn’t stop you from entering a negotiation with confidence and an open mind.
When it comes to dealing with enterprises, expect at least 5% discounts asked — this is quite common. But never agree to a contract that you don’t feel you can deliver on or you don’t feel confident about. 🤝
It’s all about compromise between you and your future client, but that doesn’t mean you should hand over work for free, either. This is when knowing your worth is crucial — and can help you get to an agreement that both parties can be happy about. 😁
If you feel a future client is trying to nickel and dime you to the point that the contract wouldn’t make sense, try to politely come to a middle ground, and if that isn’t possible, it might be worth reconsidering the agreement.
Leveraging the press
Building a PR campaign can be a great way to get your name out there, and this can be done in a variety of ways. 🗞
For example: you just signed on a major client — great! This can be announced via a press release (it’s even better if it’s a joint press release from their comms team, as it can give the announcement more weight).
Or, you can use the press as a way to position yourself as a thought leader in your field. Pitching story or column ideas to publications can be a great avenue to free promotion for your company — and it puts you in the spotlight as someone people can trust on certain topics.
A press strategy can take an entire life of its own — and requires a lot of time, resources and relationship building. But if this is something you are interested in pursuing as your agency continues to grow, this guide by Quick Sprout is a good way to get started.
Abschließende Überlegungen
Everyone’s path to success in marketing agency life is different, but if you utilize this guide and apply it to your own company, I think you’ll be headed in the right direction. 👊
Ich weiß, dass ich Sie gerade mit Tausenden von Informationen überschüttet habe, und genau deshalb habe ich alle in diesem Beitrag erwähnten Leitfäden, Ressourcen und Tools in einer praktischen Liste zusammengefasst.
Ta-da! Hier finden Sie alles, was Sie brauchen! ✨
Have any questions or do you think there’s something else we should include in this guide? Let us know in the comments!
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