Over the past ten years of working in online marketing, I’ve had the opportunity to witness some incredible changes in the industry. From what I can see, it’s only going to keep expanding, especially with AI pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. A report from Promethean Research says that digital agencies in the U.S. have grown by 54% between 2018 and 2023.

Back then, social media was mostly about connecting with friends and strangers or just having fun. It hadn’t yet established itself as a key business tool. These days, online marketing has become the go-to for businesses to attract customers, build brand awareness, and connect with their audience in real time. Starting your own online business has never been easier — even if you’re completely new to the field.

How to Start Your Own Digital Marketing Agency

This pocket guide covers the essentials to get you started. Put these into practice, and you’ll be on your way.

1. The Planning Stage

Everyone needs to have a plan, especially when you’re starting out. Without one, it’s going to be an expensive learning experience. Imagine traveling across a vast desert with a leaking water jug. Without a map or a plan, you’ll run out of water soon enough.

So, what exactly do you need to plan? Here are the essentials:

• A Business Model – Think of this as the blueprint for how your company will make money. It outlines what products or services you’re offering, who your target customers are, and how you plan to generate revenue. In simple terms, it’s the strategy that turns your idea into a successful and profitable business.
• Your Target Market or Niche – This is just a way of defining who you want to help with your services. It’s like picking a group of people who really need or want what you’re offering. By focusing on them, you can tailor your services to meet their needs and stand out from the competition.
• Business Registrations – You don’t want the authorities knocking on your door and disrupting all your hard work. Make it official by registering your business. This means picking a name, deciding on the structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, LLC, or corporation), and securing any permits or legal documents required. This step is particularly important if you’re operating in the U.S., as it helps protect you legally, organizes your finances, and adds professionalism to your brand.
• Pricing Model – You have to figure out how much to charge people for your work. Some agencies charge by the hour, some charge a fixed price for certain services, and others offer bundles for a set price. You can also charge performance-based fees to your clients. Choose a model that aligns with your services and makes sense for your clients.
• Financial Planning – This is critical especially for your expenses and staying afloat. Knowing how much money you need and keeping track of it is key to saying in the game. Watch your spending, save a little extra from your income, and plan for times when business is slow. It helps keep everything running without surprises.
• Customer Acquisition – In short, marketing and sales. Your goal is to find and attract people who will convert into paying customers. You can do this through ads, contacting your friends, or offering something cool to make them choose you. The key is to consistently bring in new customers and retain them.
• Your Onboarding Process – A well-defined process to remove friction from the customer point-of-view and sets the tone for a great experience. It includes welcoming and guiding them step-by-step through your services, setting up expectations and ensuring they’re set up for success. A 5-star review usually starts from here. So having a CRM for your agency is critical.

2. Establishing Your Online Presence

Creating an online presence is about making sure people can find your business on the internet. This means having a website, maintaining social media pages, and posting/sharing content that tells your audience what your business does. A strong online presence helps helps people learn about you, trust you, and find what they need from your business.

• Your Website – This is the most valuable online asset to have since you have full control over it. Your 24/7 digital storefront always ready. Make sure your site is user-friendly, visually appealing, and optimized for both desktop and mobile users.
• Business Social Media pages/Accounts – Having social media accounts helps you connect with your audience. By maintaining active profiles, you can:
  • Share your contents and latest update about your company, products and services
  • Have a platform to receive customer complaints and appreciations
  • Talk to your customers, gather feedbacks to improve the quality of your products
• Directories, Review Sites and Map Listings – In my experience, getting my business listed on directories (e.g. Yelp), review sites (e.g. TrustPilot), and map listings (e.g. Google Map, Bing Maps) has really helped people find me online. Directories are like digital phone books, review sites let customers share their thoughts, and maps show exactly where I am. These platforms made it so much easier for people to discover my business and see what others are saying about it as well as increase trust and credibility.
• Search Engine Visibility – Targeting the keywords that your customers are searching is one of the most proven way to acquire new customers. Optimize your website for the right keywords, make your site and pages interactive, make it useful and make your content based on reality and experience. Although SEO requires more effort than setting up directories or social media, the payoff is significant. Popular search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, and Yandex.
• Domain Authority – This requires the most effort to achieve and should be considered as a long-term goal. You know you have domain authority when people are mentioning you on their contents and research, sometimes inviting you for an interview for their podcasts. Whenever you say something, people will listen. Being a resource person on a certain topic, customers will naturally gravitate towards you. Suddenly, increasing your sales has become much easier.

3. Business Operations, establishing your SOPs

Its easy to get lost in the chaos when running your agency which often leads to burnout. To avoid that from happening you have to have a well-defined Standard Operating Procedures or Handbooks within your company. Especially for newly onboarded employees, it takes them quite a while to get the hang of things and sometimes no one is training them for it.

Here’s a list of key handbooks your agency should have to operate smoothly:

1. New Employees Handbook Guide – a comprehensive guide that introduces new hires to your company values, culture, policies, roles and tasks.
2. Onboarding Clients – This is key to make it seamless when bringing new clients to your agency. It sets the expectations, communications, documents ensuring a great experience for them.
3. Processing Payments, Invoices and Refunds – Shows your financial procedures, transparency, consistency in every transaction.
4. Service Implementation Handbook/s – You have one or more for each service that you offer. Includes timelines, deliverables and best practices.

4. Setting up your tools and automations you need at your arsenal

Smart entrepreneurs know that being efficient means creating results without spending too much time doing it. And that’s where software and automation come in, to make you more productive in a short amount of time so you can use the remaining hours in other parts of your business. And right now, there are hundreds of tools out there to choose from to help you out. There are existing businesses that operate only with one employee, the founder/owner.

If you haven’t heard about workflow automations, you are missing on an essential part of your business. It lets you run parts of your business within having to assign it to your employees. Saving them time to do other important tasks for you.

Some well-known brands that you can use are Hierarch.io, Zapier and Make.com

5. Acquiring customers

Marketing and sales are definitely essential, even if you have the best product or service in the market. There has to be a way for people outside of your current network to see and know what you can offer. I believe in “no compromise”, meaning you need to have the best in every aspect of your business. The best product, best marketing strategy, ace employees, world class working environment. I have seen these in companies that have grown exponentially.

Marketing

Its the art of attracting buyers and customer to your business. Either by brand awareness, virality, usefulness/helpfulness or just by being present in places where people often visit. Having domain authority can also help your marketing efforts, you become another “channel” for your clients to gather and take a peek at what you offer. Some of the effective marketing tactics include:

• Social media marketing (SMM)
• Search engine optimization (SEO) / Search engine marketing (SEM)
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) / Media buying / Ad placement
• Video Marketing / Podcasting

Sales

While marketing is for the inward flow of people to your products, sales is the outbound process of acquiring new customers. You need to be proactive in seeking new clients, getting to know them, understanding their needs and convincing them that your services/products is the solution to their problems. Key sales tactics include:

• Lead Generation
• Inbound / Outbound Sales Calling
• Networking

6. Recruiting and onboarding your employees

At some point in your journey, your company will experience steady growth and its revenue expands. But alongside this, you will feel that either there is a barrier to achieve the next revenue milestone or you feel that you are outnumbered or you need an extra limb, or even that you are not being productive enough. These are some of the signs that tells you, you need additional hands on deck your ship. You can start by hiring and onboarding your employees, and assigning them roles and tasks particularly your most repetitive tasks.

And according to Misty Akers and other veteran entrepreneurs, “hire slow, fire fast”. Its important to find and onboard your rockstar employees. But the moment you figure out that they are not the right fit for the task, start offboarding them. Keep an eye out for employees who may seem productive but has no impact, what they’re doing is essentially fake work. On the other hand, reward your top performing employees, let them in on your vision of the future and they’ll stick around for a long time.

7. Running your business as smooth as possible

This ain’t true. The idea of a “worry-free” business is a myth.

Every successful agency out there have experienced a significant amount of challenges before they reached where they are right now. If you’re aiming for an easy, carefree entrepreneurial life, running a business might not be for you. It will take years of hard work and resilience in order to take your business to where you want it to be.

I hope this piece provides some valuable insights to help you start your journey. We will be publishing additional contents to take you deeper into some of the things that we discussed. Look forward to it.

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Posted in Agency Business, General

Tags agencies, how to, marketing agency