If you wanted to start a marketing company 25 years ago, the barrier to entry was huge. With a very basic digital landscape, the cost of setting up such an operation was huge, and it was almost impossible to do without investing in it at first. On top of the start-up costs, you were limited to physical and traditional media and had a lot of trouble coming up with something that looked like ROI for your clients. Being "in the red" for a very, very long time had to happen.
People have changed over time.
It's not impossible to think that a skilled person or a small group could start a marketing company from scratch in a few months (with a little help, of course).
When companies spend so much money on digital advertising, everyone wants to get in on the fun! If you want to start an online marketing company from scratch, this guide will show you how to do it. I know because I've been there, and you can trust me.
#1: Learn the Skills You Need.
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There is a good chance you'll fail if you're a narcissistic Gen Zer who dreams of becoming Neil Patel right after graduation.
Anyone in the game can be as creative and smart as anyone else. If you don't know how to deal with the many nuances of managing accounts and client relationships, you'll be looking for a new job quickly. For some people, it could take years to learn the skills they need. For others, it could be a lot faster. I don't think you should start your own business until you have a job for a while.
Work environments are a lot more complicated than we think while we're working in them. Above the work you do, there are a lot of expectations, verbal and nonverbal communication gymnastics, and politics. When you work for a company, everything from how the company is organized to its culture, product and leadership affects how well you do your job and how long you stay there.
Before you learn how to be good at digital marketing, you need to see what it's like to work where your clients might work. This will make you a better person and a better professional. It's not going to bother you if your clients are stressed out and project that stress on you.
We have a free guide to help you grow your business. 11 Ways to Get and Keep More Clients
That said, it's important to know that your soft skills only make up half of you. It's important to get good at what you're going to be doing as "professional" work. No matter how good your sales pitch is, someone will find out that they were sold snake oil at some point. Make sure you can make things happen. If you start your career as a client manager at a big agency, I would suggest that you work on a marketing team or take on a few small clients to learn about the channels and skills you'll use to run them.
I was lucky enough to start my career on the marketing team at WordStream, where I was able to learn how to make money from ads. People who haven't been on a marketing team might not know how much work goes into it. Pressure to produce isn't the only thing you have to deal with. You also have to learn complicated systems, and if the team is small, you have to learn a lot of different skills to get the most simple campaigns started.
But this isn't the only thing.
The process of making a landing page
Ads: Making them
Creating messages and putting yourself out there
Some of the best learning systems are Marketo and HubSpot, as well as Salesforce and Salesforce.
Using tracking in the right way
When you work for hours on a promotion only to see it fail.
a lot of pressure to make something good
Many of these things are taken care of before they reach you. However, having worked on these things gives you the added benefit of being able to tell them when something they give you doesn't work. Having gone through this many times before also helps you deal with the stress of having to produce good work.
Put in the hours at a 9-5 before you start your own business. You can't sell yourself as a digital marketing expert unless you are a digital marketing expert, so you can't do that.
2. Before you start your own business, work as a contractor.
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If you work, you can have brain surgery without going into debt for the rest of your life. Many people take this for granted. When you work for yourself, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. This could be the subject of its own blog post. Making the foundation for a business before you decide to start it full time cuts down on a lot of the risk, I think it's a good idea to do some contract work on the side while you have a full-time job for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that it gives you extra money.
It lets you go out on your own without taking on a lot of risk.
When you start working on the side, you get a taste of what it's like to be a business owner. Running your own business has a lot of small but important things to deal with. Invoicing, for example, and having to set aside extra money for taxes are just two of them.
If you have a full-time job, you also need to be smart about how you spend your time. This means that you will have to work on nights and weekends when you would rather be watching Netflix.
When you work as a contractor, it can be good to build relationships with other people. This could lead to you getting more work in the future. If you can pay your bills as a contractor, then it will be easier to start a one-person business than to start from scratch.
Managing clients as a side job also helps you become more skilled at writing contracts. A proposal, then a contract, and then NDAs and other paperwork will have to be put together. You'll have to get used to this process. As part of the game, you'll want to speed things up so that onboarding new clients takes less time.
To build important relationships, you can use it
People who know each other, have worked together, or just know each other can help you get some side work. This will help build and keep good client relations.
It's another skill that many people don't learn until later on. You have to be able to negotiate the price of your service.
Your time and knowledge are worth something, no matter how well you know the person on the other end. Making sure you know how much to charge for a project or service will be very important later on.
#3: Choose the Right Business Model.
There are a lot of ways to start a digital marketing company. The services you offer and how you bill for your work become very important to how well your business is run over time.
There are a lot of different ways you can bill your clients.
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Hourly
On the other hand, many consultants choose to bill their clients on an hourly rate. A lot of their time is spent with the clients, either over the phone or in person. This is because they spend a lot of time with the clients. This billing model gets more complicated as the service is longer and more complicated.
Changing the amount of time you spend on digital marketing for a single client is very common. It will change a lot over time. It's not just about setting up new campaigns or promotions, restructuring accounts, or spending time on calls. It's also important to keep something that is working well.
It's hard to say how many hours I worked on this each week, so I'll bill you that way. They may be wary if they start to question how long certain things take each week. If you don't offer one-on-one consulting as part of your service, I don't think you should use hourly billing.
This is a flat holder.
One of the most simple ways to charge is to charge a flat retainer. You figure out how much work and time a specific client is worth, and you and the client agree on a flat fee for each month.
It also makes it easier to send out the invoice because it doesn't take as long. They know how much it's going to cost them, and if you meet their expectations, they will be happy to pay.
The downside is that if your client grows rapidly over time, it can be hard to keep up.
I think you should have a clause in your contract that says that the price will stay the same for a certain amount of time, like every three months. Then, when that time is up, you can re-negotiate. The best thing about a retainer-based model is that you can figure out how much money you'll make if your current clients stay with you for a whole year. In order to grow the business, this is very important. You can set goals and plan for setbacks, which will help you stay on track.
This also plays a big role when people need to hire or outsource work (Step 5).
People spend a lot of money.
This pricing model is very popular with agencies because it takes into account how much the client can grow and how big they can get. A lot of agencies will turn down clients who don't have a lot of money to spend.
When you're just starting out, this may not be the best choice because you'll want to expand your network. But over time, you'll see that having bigger clients is better for you for a number of reasons. Businesses have many internal factors that will affect how much money they have to spend. If you want to do business entirely on a percentage of spend model, this can be a problem. Some of these factors (results) are under your control, but many are not (internal decisions, seasonality, other costs). You don't want to get into a situation where your client spends a small amount of money each month, but you only get 10% of that because you have to be on calls and put in the time.
A flat retainer fee like the one above should be paid up front, and then as your agency grows you should add on an extra fee for how much money you make. Clients know that if they want to grow and spend more money, it's going to take more work from you to do it.
Commission-based
This is one that is often used by businesses to try to be better than their competitors.
They only get paid when their client makes money from a sale.
Because you want to build trust with a client, this sounds good at first. They often say that they paid a lot of money for nothing. The idea of hiring a gun like this can be very appealing to a client who has been scammed before.
The downside to this model is that unless you know a lot about how the client's business works, it's going to be hard to bill them. SaaS businesses and businesses with complicated sales funnels would have a hard time with this pricing model. I would only use this model for e-commerce or clients who are selling things on their own. To figure out how many sales you have made and do the math that way. Another problem with this is that it has a lot to do with the product that is being sold. If there is a lot of money to be made, then it makes sense to do it. Otherwise, you could be giving yourself a lot of headaches. This is why you should not do this.
You should always keep things simple. Last thing you want to do at the end of each month is solve math problems and not know how much money you'll make.
Some things to think about when it comes to taxes, liability, and "having a guy who can do that."
Another important thing to know about the business model is liability and taxes.
If you decide to start a business, you should set up an LLC or SCorp. In the event that something bad happens to you, this will protect your personal legal rights (lawsuits). It also gives you a lot of tax advantages. You should start an LLC or Scorp as soon as possible because it makes your business look more legitimate to both your clients and Uncle Sam.
A tax person is also important.
In this case, if you are very good at taxes, you can do them all by yourself. If you're not an expert at running your own business, it makes sense to delegate this task to someone who is. This is what your clients are doing with you! Having someone else do your taxes for you can save a lot of money because they can help you write off things as you go.
#4: Decide what you want to do.
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When you start out, it's easy to be swayed by the idea of working with any business.
Having to say no to someone can cause a lot of cognitive dissonance when your job is at stake. When you think about it this way, there are a lot of digital marketing agencies and consultants out there. A few of them specialize, but many of them don't at the same time.
If you don't get a lot of referrals like the salmon of Capistrano, you're going to have to stand out and come up with a unique selling point when you meet new people.
If you want to make money, you should focus your services on a specific group of people or businesses. Here are some of the most important:
It makes it easier for people to get on board.
When you work with someone, there are so many things you need to think about before you decide if it's a good idea to work with them or not. When you know who your ideal customer is, this process gets easier because you know what kinds of questions and information you need to ask them. You also have an idea of how these businesses work inside and how much you would charge them on average, so you can help them.
It makes you a lot better at everything you do.
If you are good at digital marketing (paid), you can run ads for almost any business. However, you need to know who your target market is and how to write effective messages in order to do this. This can take a lot of time if the business is different from what you are used to working with, which can cause problems early on if things aren't going well.
As soon as you figure out who your ideal client is, you will have a lot of experience working with that type of person. This helps you build the muscle memory and intuition you need to know what to do and when to do it. Because you've seen the problems before and you know how to deal with them, you can work more quickly. It also makes you better at figuring out who you don't want to do business with.
It gives you an advantage in the market.
Ads and names are being sold all over the place, as I've said before.
The internet has made it possible for even the most shady hacks to work. Because there are so many low-quality agencies out there, the client has a lot more peace of mind when your business caters to people like them. A company that specializes in this field gives you social proof and expertise to speak confidently about the needs of these people and their businesses, making you more likely to get the job. It gives you an extra level of trust and relatability that is often lost in this field.
No. 5: Decide How You'll Scale It
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It makes sense to people when you say that you're going to run your own agency or consulting firm. They think that you're going to rent an office space and hire a lot of people. Often, that is the worst thing you can do. People like you are likely to have debts that need to be paid if they're like 99.999% of the people in the world. If you want to start and grow, you have to make sure you can live on your own first.
When you start an agency, it's important to be very good at what the agency does first. You can improve your skills by managing the accounts for a while. This also makes it easier to find good help because you know what skills and knowledge are needed for the job.
You also need to know how much money that help will cost you. Client churn rate: The average customer life value? Is there a way you can get more clients? Adding an employee to the mix will make things even more complicated.
When you try to get someone to work for you, it's a whole different thing. Employees work because they want to be safe. So unless you can offer them benefits and pay them well, they won't want to do the job. The cost-effective way to deal with this problem is simple: Look for contractors.
There are a lot of talented people out there who are willing and able to help you on a contract. Because these people don't get benefits, you don't have to pay them, and you can write them off when you file your taxes. When you're trying to start a business, it's great to be able to outsource tasks that are boring or take a long time to someone you trust. When you use this method, you can grow to a point where full-time employees make more sense. You might want to hire them full time if things go well and they have already shown you how good they are.
Start your own business, and you'll get all of this advice from that Is it better to do it with a partner or two? It changes a lot. There will be a split in the profits. You will have to charge more money or take on more clients to make it work out for everyone. Keep this in mind:
People think that when a business grows quickly, it's a sign that it's going to be a success. In the end, there's a lot of pressure when it comes to taking on more clients. You might find that a certain number of great clients can make you financially happy, though. Your business may not grow quickly enough for you to be happy with it. Otherwise, the chance to live a financially stable (or even better) life on your own terms may be more appealing to you.
Working for yourself also gives you the freedom to close down your business quickly and on your terms if you need to (no layoffs, no office to sublet, no 45-pound bag of coffee beans). Having an agency may also not be something that you want to do for the rest of your life. Investing in other business models that you are more excited about but take a long time to build can be done with this money.
Having your own business for a while will give you a lot of valuable business experience and help you build important relationships that you can rely on when you need them.
Make a choice
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A lot of people who read these posts have gone on their own or are thinking about it. People should always make a decision and follow through with it.
As the owner of your own business, you'll have a lot of ups and downs. You'll have to be able to weather the storm to enjoy the benefits. I think it's important to treat it like a big life event. Feel free to let go early on if you don't think you can do it. Don't drag yourself along any longer than you have to. In order to fail, you have to make a decision and not believe in it. It's up to you to do it. Once you do that, you might find out how much fun it is to run your own digital marketing agency.