As an agency owner, your dream is to scale your business to get new clients, expand to new sectors, and increase your revenue. Scaling up also means your agency is no longer reliant on you alone but on your entire team to get the work done. 

Beyond delegating, assigning tasks, and overseeing day-to-day business operations when scaling up, everyone must be on the same page on business goals and how things work. That’s why it’s important to identify internal issues and blockers that may cause problems so your agency can keep thriving and growing. 

What internal issues should you look for to prevent your agency’s downfall? Read below as we discuss how to detect a problem with your agency and how to fix it. 

Internal Issues With Your Agency 

As you continue to grow, internal issues can grow with you. You need to recognize them and find ways to dissolve them. Here are some common internal issues you may find in your agency. 

Being Prepared to Scale

Growth is one of the primary objectives of many business and agency owners today. You may have decided it’s time to scale and started setting things in motion. But are you preparing your agency for the growth you have planned? Every aspect of your business must be able to scale up as you plan to scale up operations.

If you once had a team of four and decided to grow, do you know how many more team members you’ll need to handle the additional workload? Does the technology you use to oversee client onboarding and project management have the ability to scale up with you as well? What will the internal hierarchy look like with these additional team members?

If changes in operations and structure aren’t taken care of, your agency can struggle to grow efficiently in areas that may not be top of mind. This can affect your business and your employees if not planned for effectively. 

Take a look at your operations and structure. What changes do you need to implement for your agency’s growth to be smooth? Make a list of what aspects of your business need attention before they can be scaled up. Start by putting those in place and grow steady until everything is complete.

Working With the Wrong Team

Hiring the wrong people can be very grave for your agency. As a small business owner just starting out, you need to hire people who can meet your expectations and help build towards your goals. This may require you to create a work environment filled with transparency and communication so everyone is on the same page. 

Transparent communication can help you build deep and meaningful relationships with your team members so that you can count on them in the future as business needs grow.

Another important internal issue regarding your team is to ensure you have team members with the skill sets needed to grow. Without addressing skill sets and skill gaps, your team members may struggle to fit into roles that aren’t part of their job description or that require skills they don’t have. 

Hiring the right team as you continue to grow will save your employees from burnout and prevent a drop in service quality. It will also give you the confidence of knowing your team can handle the growth as it happens.

Using Your Original Internal Structure

What once worked for an agency of one person may not work for a team of multiple employees. As your agency grows, the internal structure of your agency may need to change. 

If you once only managed yourself or a small team, your approach to people management may need to be adjusted as your team grows in size. Determining how to manage those different teams is very important if your agency grows into separate departments.

While you have many responsibilities as the agency owner, managing each department shouldn’t be one of them. Create a management tree or organization chart that clearly defines who each team member reports to and how the teams are separated within the agency. This will help your team know who is leading each team and who is responsible for specific business tasks.

Once you have the chart, you can then develop and implement clear workflows for different aspects of the business. For example, if you have created an accounting department, it’s essential to define how accounts payable and accounts receivable will run. These workflows will also make it easier to explain how things work when onboarding additional team members. 

Ignoring Important Issues

Each business will experience issues throughout its lifetime, and your agency is no exception. It’s vital to build a culture of tending to issues promptly before they become a huge problem. Try not to avoid the small problems that arise, as they may grow into larger issues that cost you more time and money. 

Some common issues you don’t want to avoid include poor work performance from team members, skipping important workflow steps, and missing deadlines. While these may not seem like a huge problem separately, they can grow into more significant issues like disappointed clients and missed payments if they continue to happen.

Ignoring issues can also negatively impact employee productivity, job satisfaction, and company culture and may grow into full-blown conflicts. It’s important to address issues in a timely fashion, try and get to the root of the problem when possible, and fix the issues before they become a problem for the entire agency.

How to Fix Internal Problems in Your Agency

Once you’re aware of any issues in your agency, it’s important to know how to fix them. Here are some ways to fix common problems in your agency. 

Schedule Time to Address Issues

In any business, there’s always something to do. Whether it’s a task, you need to check off on the to-do list or a project that’s nearing its deadline, the priority of each may feel like you can’t focus on anything else. 

However, finding time to address issues and find ways to fix them is imperative to the health of your business. 

Start by carving out time to have one-on-ones or weekly reviews with team members and team managers. Make sure your team is aware of this time in your schedule and communicate the importance of these discussions.

They can be used to discuss any internal issues, talk about what’s happening in the business, or mitigate any client issues that may be occurring.  These discussions can help you identify any internal issues to take care of them before they grow into larger problems. They will also help build trust across the team. 

Brainstorm and Implement Solutions 

As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to maintain order and keep things flowing. 

When your team members identify issues, no matter how small they seem, don’t ignore them. You also don’t have to fix them alone.

Work with your team to discuss some of these issues and any ideas for solutions they may have. Create action steps from these discussions so each team member knows how they can help fix the problem.

Ongoing Maintenance 

Once the proposed solutions have been implemented, circle back with your team members to ask for feedback, continue to have regular meetings, encourage team members to speak on things they consider problematic, and keep trying solutions to keep issues at bay. 

Handling Internal Issues For a Growing Agency

As you continue to grow and scale your agency, it’s vital to use your team to build you up through communication.

If you create an ongoing feedback loop, you can identify issues in their early stages before they cause significant problems. The process also helps your employees learn, which allows them to stay focused and build the mindset of moving forward and growing your agency. 

Internal problems can continue to arise no matter what size your business is. That’s why it’s crucial to work together with your team members to deal with issues as they happen to ensure your agency’s success. By keeping communication open and having a forward-thinking approach to problem-solving, you can continue to grow your business with a solid foundation. 

According to a 2019 Impact study, over 50% of companies surveyed attributed 20% of their revenue to partnerships, while 76% say that partnerships are important in achieving business revenue goals.

While marketing is great for getting leads and acquiring new clients, agency partnerships allow you to leverage other agencies’ expertise and skills for a robust client base, improved value to current clients, faster agency growth, and increased revenue.

What do you need to know before venturing into agency partnerships? We’ll answer all of your questions in this guide.

Why You Should Look into Agency Partnerships

There are many reasons why your agency should invest in partnerships:

Wider Marketing Reach

When you market on your own, your audience is limited, but a partnership opens your agency to new audiences of prospects and customers that you may not be able to access without help.

Partnerships with already established agencies amplify your marketing efforts and increase the probability of converting leads. Also, the partner agency optimizes its marketing activities to include yours, with your success in mind. If you do the same for them, then everybody wins.

Referral Business

If you manage your partnerships well, the services you offer will be complementary to that of your partner agency. As a result, they will send referrals whenever they need the services you provide for their own client projects or even send clients to you directly for new projects.

Referral business is a great way to increase business revenue without spending more time, effort, and resources on marketing activities. Plus, it’s effective. Customers trust word-of-mouth; in fact, 90% of people are likely to trust a recommended brand or product. 

Service Specialization

Positioning yourself as an expert in your industry as an agency is tough. You need to be specialized and focused on the types of services you offer. Doing that means learning and acquiring every skill related to your service offering or hiring experts to take care of them. This all takes time and resources and may stretch you thin.

However, you might be able to become an expert in your space faster by partnering with other established agencies that offer the services and have the skills you need. By expanding your service specialization, you’ll be the one-stop shop for all your clients’ needs. And when you’re able to offer them tons of options and services, you’re able to make your agency indispensable. 

Types of Partnerships Agencies Should Consider

1. Influencer Collaboration

The power of social proof and recommendations is the fuel behind influencer marketing. People trust the reviews given by people more than the ones they have to read on websites. By collaborating with an influencer in your industry, you can access their audience and followership, providing you with leads for your agency.

Below are ideas you can use to maximize influencer collaborations:

• A social media post about your agency and its services. This could be a video that compiles the influencer’s experience with using your services so followers can see the process. 
• A guest-written article by the influencer that provides a round-up of various recommended agencies based on areas of expertise (yours included). 
• A guest blog that you provide and publish on their website that discusses a hot topic your agency specializes in, with a link back to your site or services page. 

Whatever you do, make sure the influencer you choose aligns with your industry and values and that their audience aligns with your target audience. There are definite mistakes you can make with your influencer partnership, and you don’t want that to be one of them. 

2. Channel Partnerships with Software Vendors

Channel partnership is a long-term partnership strategy that involves partnering with a different kind of business (for example, a software company in your industry) and growing together. This strategy requires a channel front like a podcast or video series where content is created continuously, and strategic business partners are interviewed.

These kinds of partnerships are great because since it’s cross-channel, there’s a decreased chance of partnering with any competing forces, and you’re able to tap into your key audience with a new approach. 

3. Agency Partnerships

As explained above, agency partnership involves partnering with other agencies that offer complementary services in your industry. You can leverage their clientele, earn referrals, and grow your agency business through the partnership.

For example, let’s say your agency specializes in graphic design and marketing strategy. It would make a ton of sense for you to look to partner with an agency that specializes in media buying and ad placement. 

Tips for Agency Partnership Success

Successful partnerships are great for scaling your agency quickly and growing revenue. However, if you do not consider some important factors before getting started, your agency partnership may set you up for failure.

Below are some tips for successful agency partnerships.

1. Choose an agency with complementary services. For example, if your agency is focused on search engine optimization (SEO), a web development agency or marketing agency would make a good partner.
2. Precheck your partner’s client base to ensure they match your ideal customer’s profile.
3. Align business goals with your partner agency and streamline the referral process.
4. Create and sign a partnership agreement, as well as a non-disclosure agreement, to ensure transparency and prevent undermining and sabotage.
5. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each agency in the partnership.
6. Pre-define an exit plan that spells out how each partner should act and pull out should the partnership not work out as expected. This prevents escalations, negative situations, and blame games.

A well-executed agency partnership could propel your agency business forward more quickly than doing it all alone. Implement these tips for successful agency partnerships, and start reaping the benefits for your business today.

Given that pro bono work does not generate any revenue, it is understandable if your agency shies away from it. You may think that accepting pro bono work is a quick way to slow down revenue and eventually kill your agency. However, working for free comes with its benefits and can be profitable in the long run.

While you won’t do free work for all of your clients all of the time (because revenue is essential to keep business going), there are certain moments where pro bono work gives your agency more value.

How does pro bono work benefit your agency? Keep reading to find out.

Benefits of Pro Bono Work for your Agency

A Marketing Opportunity

Every agency is working on pursuing the next big client to put on their client list. However, going pro bono can be just what you need to book that big client. During pro bono activities, you not only provide help to the organizations or local charities you are assisting but also represent your business and put your agency on the map.

Everybody who interacts with the organization you are working with will learn about your agency via promotional materials for the pro bono you are involved in. Also, the organizations you work with pro bono will tell everybody willing to listen about your agency and the great help you provide.

Furthermore, from the perspective of getting clients, pro bono work might be a way of getting your foot in the door, which may open the doors to more opportunities (and more clients) for your agency.

Connecting and Giving Back to the Community

The world survived COVID and still has to live with it. There is rising inflation, an economic downturn, and speculations about a recession. It’s a hard time for many people, and therefore an ideal chance to show your local community that you are not just a business that cares only about money but also about the people in your community.

Doing pro bono work is one of the ways you can connect with people in your community during this trying time. It’s a way to let people know that you care and want to make positive changes in the community.

Morale Boosting

Investing in causes that you are passionate about motivates you to do more and boosts your morale. Whether there are only a few employees in your agency or several departments with many team members, your employees will enjoy supporting and getting involved with charitable activities outside of work.

Naturally, you and your team members will feel good about your efforts. This will translate to improved productivity, better work attitudes, and ultimately a healthier bottom line for your agency.

For best results, allow your staff members to choose causes they are passionate about and want to work with for free. Doing this may well improve their job satisfaction, which will help you with employee retention.

Learning, Creativity, and Innovation

It’s easy to quickly fall into a set routine in business since there is a system for how tasks are completed. Structure can often be helpful, but it can also become monotonous and repetitive. Pro bono work, on the other hand, tasks you to think outside of the box and get your creative juices flowing. This not only improves creativity and innovative thinking, but employees also get to express themselves in an environment that challenges them differently from the workspace.

You can learn and experiment with ideas in response to urgent and current issues. In the long run, you and your team members could apply these learnings to your work processes, improving the quality of work and output.

Bulk-Up Your Portfolio

One of the good things about pro bono work is the experience and the fact that you can add it to your portfolio. Displaying pro bono work in your portfolio shows potential clients that you are true to your brand values and that you care about people and not just business alone. It’s not the only reason to do pro bono work, but it could just give you a competitive edge.

Pro Bono work is fast becoming a norm and not an exception. It offers you the opportunity to engage in meaningful pursuits that make you fulfilled as an individual who cares about others and also benefits your agency long-term. Make sure you consider adding some pro bono work to your 2022 and 2023 portfolio. 

Every marketing agency wants to be successful. Signing a ton of clients means more billings and more revenue, but it isn’t easy. There are a lot of digital advertising agencies out there to compete with, and with a looming recession, businesses are scaling back instead of hiring additional help and expertise. 

However, with some creativity and proactive tactics, your agency can expand its business successfully, even in hard times. Here are some tips for getting your agency seen and finding clients that will want to partner with your marketing agency. 

1. Business Review: Know What’s Working

Before introducing something new, it is important to review current strategies to identify what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs improvement.

• Do you need to focus on creating more content?
• Do you need to spend more time on lead generation activities?
• Do you need to improve your onboarding process?

Asking these questions will put you on track to identify the things that most urgently need your attention. Then, you can either focus on fixing the things that aren’t working or strike them and put your attention elsewhere.

2. Set Business Goals and Milestones

Without concrete business goals, your agency is directionless. With business goals, you create a sense of purpose for your agency and a definite direction of where you want your agency to be within a specific time frame.

Beyond providing direction for your business, spelling out your agency’s business goals impacts how you, your team, and others perceive your business.

Start by ensuring your agency’s business goals and milestones are SMART.

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

3. Shift The Focus: Create Unique Value Propositions

Defining your unique value proposition is an important aspect of your agency’s sales and marketing activities. Your unique value proposition clearly shows prospects why they should use your services instead of doing business with your competitors.

Shifting the focus away from pricing to your unique value proposition helps clients see the value in what you’re offering and how that benefits their businesses. With the right value proposition, you set your agency apart from its competitors, help clients understand what you’re offering, and attract the most relevant prospects.

4. Apply Proven Sales Closing Tips

Your marketing activities will ultimately lead you to the all-important sales close. You must learn and apply proven sales closing tips and teach them to your sales team to get more business for your agency.

There are many ways to close a sale, but the following traditional and modern sales closing methods have proven to be the best:

• Now or never closes – create an offer with a unique benefit and a sense of urgency to encourage prospects to act quickly 
• Summary closes – Reiterate prospect’s agreed-upon points into one package
• Sharp angle closes – catch your prospects by surprise by agreeing to their add-on requests or reductions and introducing the close at the same time.
• Question closes – a win-win approach that addresses the prospect’s objections while pushing the sale.
• Assumption closes – assume good intent from the start of the sales process, which lends authority and credibility to how you interact with the prospect.
• Take-away closes – remove a feature from your offer to provide would-be clients with discounted prices. This is best for people who love your offering but are concerned about cost.
• Soft closes – state the benefits of your offering and give the prospect the room to learn more which also allows you to learn more about their business.

5. Introduce a Sales Enablement Framework

Sales enablement fuels content tailored to your prospects’ needs, thoughts, feelings, and pain points using insights gathered from previous sales. With sales enablement, the focus is on content that helps the sales team prime and nurture prospects throughout the sales cycle. You could think of it as a fusion of your sales and marketing activities.

With sales enablement, you can close business deals faster, improve the sales process, and improve your agency’s interactions with prospects and buyers.

6. Promote Yourself

Get a profile on websites like Clarity.fm, where you can be easily discovered by others looking for the service you provide. The only downside is that these websites can be crowded. If you really want to stand out, consider giving away some free advice to build some trust and rapport. 

Alternatively, you can create a free or paid course on a site like Udemy, similar to Gary Vaynerchuk’s. This will boost your visibility and build brand awareness, allowing prospects to see your expertise and seek out your services.

7. Network Like The Pros

Professional networkers understand that getting clients is a game, one which they’re determined to win. In addition, they know that they are in it for the long run, so they play their cards right.

Real networking isn’t about a quick win. It’s about building a long-lasting relationship. First, you establish a connection, and then you look for ways to help your new connection. Don’t try to sell right away; that will just appear selfish. 

Here are additional tips from the experts that you should adopt:

• Research your target client, and then personalize your follow-up with them.
• Be mindful of your attitude. Positivity and tone can come through in emails, so take care to pay attention to them.
• Take a genuine interest in those you are trying to network with.
• Listen carefully when people speak and then try to add value to their lives before asking for their business (e.g., by connecting them with someone who could assist them with a problem they might be facing).

And speaking of connecting with people…

8. Partner Up – Even with the Competition

Partnerships are a great way to gain new clients. As a marketing or advertising agency, you can partner up with non-competing companies and organizations that are complementary to your business and whose target audiences are similar to your own.

You can even partner with other agencies. An agency that’s much bigger than you can refer clients with small projects that are below their usual scope and vice-versa.

9. Prospect Strategically, with The Power Of Referrals

When prospecting for new clients, it’s good to remember that there are three markets.

•  Cold market: people you don’t know
• Warm market: people you know already
• Neutral market: people your contacts know

The first market tends to have the lowest conversion rate while the highest conversion rate will come from the warm market. No surprises there, right? But what about the neutral market? Tapping into this is a great way to expand your client base.

By asking people you know for referrals, they’ve broken the ice for you. What’s more, 92% of people trust referrals from people they know. A prospect is more likely to do business with you after you’ve been introduced by a mutual friend. 

10. Don’t Give Lost Clients the Cold Shoulder

Another simple way to get a quick boost in new business is to simply re-approach lost clients, especially when you have good news or something exciting to share.

Don’t just come over with a request for a new business. Look into why they left in the first place, and then treat them like a fresh lead. The reality is that if someone has done business with you in the past, they’re highly likely to do so again (as long as you’ve found a way to address their previous issues). 

11. Build More than Campaigns – Build a Product

“Engineering as Marketing” is a term coined by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares in their book Traction. It involves building a free product to help your customers in order to generate leads.

QuickSprout is a great example. QuickSprout has a tool that analyzes a company’s site traffic and pinpoints bugs and issues. It’s a win-win – companies get the advice they need for free, and QuickSprout has a new prospect in their conversion funnel.

12. Fill Out RFPs

It’s great to spend time networking at marketing industry conventions, meetups, and conferences, but there’s another marketing channel you may be missing out on: RFPs.

Consider the fact that the average RFP win rate is 44%. This means that for every 10 RFPs you fill out, you stand to receive a positive response from four companies. 

To write a compelling and professional RFP that could land you new work, remember to:

• Introduce your marketing agency briefly and succinctly
• Outline your capabilities 
• Explain how you plan to complete the project, including milestones and deadlines
• Demonstrate how your agency meets the selection criteria
• Include examples of past work that aligns with the demands of this potential new client

13. Influence Prospects with Awards

Does winning awards in the industry really matter? And can it help you land more clients?

In short, yes, it matters, and it can definitely assist you in securing quality leads.

Awards can help to cement a marketing agency’s credibility, especially if the firm is relatively young. They provide free publicity, boost brand awareness, and promote the agency.

To get started, scroll through usagencyawards.com for a comprehensive list of agency awards your business may be eligible for, but note that some of these awards have specific requirements. For example, some awarding bodies require marketing agency nominations to be submitted by third parties, while other awards allow the marketing agency to apply directly.

14. Revive PR to Build Inbound Links and Brand Awareness

By using tools like pr.co or HARO, you can easily connect with journalists and pitch them your feature or simply contribute to the article they’re writing with a quote or statistic. This is, of course, if your agency has valuable proprietary data, a compelling brand story, or industry news to offer.

Alternatively, you can pitch major publications to republish some of your best content, just as James Clear describes in his interesting article on the topic.

These efforts are great when you’re looking to build your links, increase your SEO, and rank higher in search results—all help to put your agency out there in front of an online audience looking for solutions. By being easily found online, your audience is able to know more about you, access your website, and start to consider using you for their needs. 

15. Warm Up to Cold Sales

Cold selling is yet another tactic you may want to consider. Some of the recently available tools, such as Overloop, make it much easier to build clientele this way.

As Steve Jobs famously said in a 1994 interview: “Most people never pick up the phone and call; most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act.”

It’s rare for an agency to reach out to prospective customers cold, but there may be local customers who need your services and would rather work with someone in their community. We all know that cold calling can be a nightmare, but there are ways to do it right.

16. Diversify Spend with Offline Ads

Direct marketing and offline advertising are considered obsolete, but they can work. Also, it’s cheaper than you’d expect and allows your agency to stand out in the crowd. Why not separate yourself from all of the internet noise with a billboard or radio ad in your target market?

Be smart about it. Set out a small budget and experiment. Track your results and see where the business is and what works and what doesn’t.

17. Uncover Opportunity with Twitter Search

Twitter offers some powerful search features that you can use to find people looking for help and referrals.

You can use Warble to automate your searches and create alerts that get delivered to your inbox each day.

18. Tap Into Social Capital

Social media influencers have an engaged and trusting audience. By partnering with them to promote your agency, you can get some incredible brand exposure. 

Using tools like BuzzSumo, Brandwatch, and Twitonomy will help you identify people with reach and influence. Connect with them using a tool like Traackr and start building a relationship. Instead of pitching your service, think about the ways you can offer some mutual value. However, when partnering with an influencer, keep in mind their audience and the specific area of influence they operate in. It needs to be a match for your agency in order for the partnership to work. 

19. Flex Your Creativity with a Publicity Stunt

Richard Branson has built a billion-dollar empire on the back of his publicity stunts. Who says you can’t do the same? Stirring a controversy or launching a hilarious campaign can get you some valuable exposure and boost your business.

For example, a couple of years ago, Viceroy Creative launched a controversial campaign that got them featured in many of the major marketing media.

20. Consider an Unconference

Apart from landing slots at relevant conferences, consider finding some relevant meetups on meetup.com and becoming a speaker. Many of these events are constantly looking for speakers and offer some exciting audiences.

Alternatively, you can sponsor some or even launch your own meetups and events. For example, a London SEO agency runs what is now one of the leading industry events called SearchLove. 

Don’t let a recession get your agency down. Hit the ground running with these 15 amazing tactics, and you’re sure to sign some new business before the end of the quarter. Best of luck!