Hoe je een digitaal marketingbureau start en opbouwt dat geld oplevert
Uw gids voor het succes van een agentschap
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.
Deel 1: Aan de slag & promotie
De basis
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. 🤔
Net zoals productbedrijven een geschikte markt voor hun product proberen te vinden, moet jij de geschikte markt voor je diensten vinden.
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 onafhankelijke aannemers betalen 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! 😅
Maar om eerlijk te zijn is dit soms makkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. Vooral in het begin, wanneer je een miljoen andere dingen aan je hoofd hebt met je bedrijf, kan je branding soms op de achtergrond raken.
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 heeft een geweldige stap-voor-stap handleiding over merkidentiteit om dit frontaal aan te pakken.
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. 🤓
Dit is ook een geweldige kans om al een volger op te bouwen. Zodra je hebt bepaald welke kanalen geschikt zijn voor jou en je bureau een digitaal marketingplan heeft gemaakt, begin dan de interactie met andere accounts!
Volg relevante thought leaders in je branche op Twitter, sluit je aan bij Facebookgroepen met gelijkgestemden, doe alles wat je kunt om deel uit te maken van het gesprek. Zorg ervoor dat je website en andere kanalen een goede snelheid hebben, je kunt daarvoor performance boosters gebruiken zoals VDS servers!
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.
Laat je portfolio zien
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.
De niet-zo-basics
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…”
Doelen moeten tastbaar zijn en één manier om dit te garanderen is door SMART doelen te stellen.
SMART doelen zijn Specifiek, Meetbaar, Haalbaar, Relevant en Tijdgebonden.
Door doelen in deze indeling te maken, kun je echt diep duiken in wat je wilt bereiken met je agentschap. Het kan je ook helpen om gedisciplineerder te worden met je deadlines voor het halen van mijlpalen.
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. 🔧
Sociale media plannen
· 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. 🦉
Boekhouding & facturering
· 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. 😍
Projectbeheer
· 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-extensies
Er zijn een aantal geweldige Chrome extensies beschikbaar, een aantal van onze favorieten zijn Grammarly en 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. 💪
Een medeoprichter vinden?
While not a requirement, it might be worthwhile to have a co-founder come on board. 👯
Sommige van de beste marketing- en reclamebureaus zijn voortgekomen uit duo's. Denk aan: Ogilvy & Mather, Wieden+Kennedy, enz.
Je kunt iemand hebben die samen met jou door de loopgraven gaat en die jou en je groeiende team verder kan helpen en motiveren.
Niet altijd nodig, maar altijd het overwegen waard!
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 dit gedeelte worden enkele van de verschillende manieren om zaken te doen besproken, evenals advies over hoe je een gezond en duurzaam bedrijfsmodel kunt ontwikkelen.
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. 😤
Probeer je diensten niet meteen te verkopen. Luister. En begrijp het eerst.
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.
Uitgaande e-mailcampagnes
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. 📬
Kies er een die voor jou het beste werkt en check onze gids voor het omgaan met e-mailautomatisering als een pro.
Do some basic SEO research
Trefwoorden voor onderzoek 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. 😻
Er zijn zelfs bureaus die groepen hebben gemaakt voor hun niche, zoals Badass Marketers & Founders (BAMF), SaaS Growth Hacks en meer.
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
Een blog beginnen 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? 😱
Denk na over onderwerpen en pijnpunten die je probeert aan te pakken bij je klanten. Maak pijlerpagina's, geef advies, geef bronnen, laat prospects zien dat je een thought leader bent in deze ruimte en dat ze je kunnen vertrouwen.
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. 🔥
En je kunt het eenvoudig houden: misschien hebben ze een geweldige post op LinkedIn waar je commentaar op geeft, of je retweet iets van hun account met wat inzichtelijk commentaar.
Nog beter: je ontmoet ze op een evenement en volgt ze kort daarna op. Of je bekijkt vacatures en kijkt of ze op zoek zijn naar specifieke marketinghulp.
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. ☹️
Bespreek in plaats daarvan enkele pijnpunten die ze misschien voelen en vraag of je er verder over kunt praten. Laat ze over zichzelf praten in plaats van overmatig over je bedrijf.
Cultivating a healthy business model
Making your agency profitable and defining your rates
Er zijn talloze manieren om je winst als marketingbureau te maximaliseren, en deze goede gids van Marketing Agency Insider is een goede plek om te beginnen voor inspiratie.
In wezen komt het erop neer wat je prioriteit is en hoe je je bedrijf wilt structureren. Elk bureau is anders, maar sommige bedrijfsmodellen werken beter dan andere.
Tip: een ideale manier om winst te maximaliseren is op waarde gebaseerde prijzen, waarbij je klanten factureert op basis van de waarde van de diensten in plaats van de hoeveelheid tijd die aan een project wordt besteed.
Understanding your rates and the value you add to clients can help you greatly in the long run. Always know your worth! 🤑
Facturering beheren
Blijf op de hoogte van uw factureringscycli — 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. 📊
Inkomstendoelen
Het bepalen van de juiste omzetdoelen voor je bedrijf kan een lastig proces zijn.
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.
Factureerbaarheid
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.
Hoe dan ook, als je goed in de gaten houdt hoe je bedrijf niet-factureerbare tijd besteedt, kun je ervoor zorgen dat jij en je team zo efficiënt mogelijk werken. Je kunt een beter idee krijgen van wat er in de loop van de dag tijd in beslag neemt en of er ruimte is voor verbetering van de processen die je hebt ingevoerd.
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 zoals Timely zijn geweldig om je tijd bij te houden en je beter inzicht te geven in waar jij en je team tijd aan besteden.
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. ⏱
Aanbiedingen
Het opzetten van een gemeenschappelijke offertestructuur is een goede manier om ervoor te zorgen dat je bedrijf consistent is in zijn prijsstelling. Agentschappen prijsstructuren kunnen worden onderverdeeld in twee hoofdcategorieën: projectgebaseerd werk en werk op basis van een vaste vergoeding.
Voor projectmatig werk zijn er, afhankelijk van hoeveel nettowinst je wilt behalen, een paar factoren om rekening mee te houden, zoals de uurkosten van werknemers, geschatte factureerbare uren en onverwachte kosten (of scope creep).
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.
Een voorbeeld van een jaarlijkse prijsstructuur zou zijn:
- Oprichtingsfase, eerste 2 maanden: $20.000
- Lopende fase, de overige 10 maanden: $28.000
- Totaal: $48.000
- Afgeschreven in maandelijkse betalingen: $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.
Onderhandelingen
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.
Laatste gedachten
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. 👊
En ik weet dat ik zojuist een heleboel informatie naar je heb gegooid, en dat is precies waarom ik alle gidsen, bronnen en tools waarnaar in deze post wordt verwezen, heb samengevoegd in één handige lijst.
Ta-da! Je vindt alles hier! ✨
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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