The digital marketing industry has undergone a significant transformation in the past couple of years. Increasing competition and the rise of social media have changed how companies advertise and interact with their customers. This shift in marketing puts pressure on companies to evaluate and pivot their marketing strategies and challenges agencies responsible for creating and managing these campaigns.

Social media is driving many changes in how people consume content, implying that agencies need to be more creative when connecting with their audiences. Not only do they have to create compelling content, but they also need to figure out how to get it in front of as many people as possible through social channels.

The challenge for digital marketing agencies is that these changes are happening so quickly that it's difficult for them to keep up with all the new trends and platforms.

The Benefits of Building a Strong Sales Pipeline

The benefits of a strong client base go beyond revenue & profits. Businesses that enjoy a pipeline of quality prospects can also test new marketing and business strategies. You should refrain from casting a net out into the air and waiting for someone to enter it. A company with a solid client base can continue to focus on its services and expertise without going overboard with its marketing strategies.

Companies using their marketing strategies to attract new clients are more likely to generate repeat business. Prospects with a strong interest in an agency's services are more likely to become paying customers and return for additional services.

Businesses that take the time to develop a solid client base are also better positioned to weather bad economic conditions or periods of slow sales. Sales may not always be consistent, but companies with a solid customer foundation can still keep their doors open. This type of resilience is key to long-term success.

However, there are a few steps agencies can take to ensure they stay relevant in this ever-changing industry.

Lastly, an agency needs to provide a good customer experience through customer service, which includes understanding their needs as well as being able to answer any questions they may have.

How to Get More Clients for Your Digital Marketing Agency?

Here are seven proven tips for finding more clients for a digital agency.

1. Use Your Website

Here are a few ways to get more clients from your website:

A. Create an Aesthetic Website

To explore how visitors behave on your website, use Google Analytics to analyze visitors' navigation paths.

To do that, first, generate the Navigation Summary report by taking the following steps.

Click Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages.

It will tell you how clients find a certain page and where they click next on your website.

Image Source: Hostinger

You can also look at the Users Flow report under the Audience menu to see a more exhaustive visualization of how visitors navigate your website.

Image Source: Hostinger

B. Pay Attention to Your Web Design and User Interface (U/I)

94% of the first impressions regarding your website are related to your design and user interface (U/I). Highlight your specialties and develop a brand identity. Align your web design with the services you offer. As an example, look how Marie Forleo attracts budding female entrepreneurs through her website.

Image Source: Marie Forleo

C. Add an "About Us" Section

An "About Us" section tells your visitors about your brand personality, mission, vision, and how you can add value to their lives. So, use this section carefully to showcase your passion and expertise. Keep it short and simple, and remove all fluff.

2. Provide an Excellent Customer Experience and Support Service

You should improve your customer experience to make your brand stand out. As per Forbes, "Customer experience is today's business benchmark."

Apart from a good transactional relationship, customers cherish a positive and delightful experience.

Consumers expect a wholesome positive experience with the brands they flock to, not just a transactional relationship. If you want to stand out from your competitors, focus on providing a 360-degree customer experience.

Image Source: SuperOffice

Here are five practical tips to improve customer experience –

• Leverage the power of chatbots, Artificial Intelligence tools, and natural language processing that allows you to understand what people mean in free-form text messages.
• Make an omnichannel strategy for a unique customer experience.
• Deliver world-class customer service.
• Train your front-end staffers effectively.
• Include self-service options on your website such as support content, walkthrough videos, case studies, etc.

3. Use Your Existing Network

Start with the people you know and let your family, friends, and colleagues find out about your business. Distribute your visiting cards and mention your business everywhere possible, especially on social occasions and events.

Here are the seven ways to grow your business network –

• Use good networking etiquette. Avoid the hard sell and focus on “soft publicity.”
• Encourage your acquaintances to promote your business to their networks as well.
• Get involved in your community.
• Utilize all social media channels relevant to your business.
• Join local business groups or chambers of commerce.
• Attend networking events.
• Get involved in civic organizations.

4. Use Online Marketing Tools

Perform all the basic online marketing tactics, such as local SEO (registering on Google My Business maps and listing your business info), online directories, and platforms in your niche. You can also use Yelp, Thumbtack, UpWork, and Fiverr.

You can also try paid advertising on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Try A/B testing and focus on one or two online channels only.

Make sure you have a strong online presence and that your marketing materials are up to date. Attend as many relevant marketing events and meetups as you can. Get active on social media and Increase your visibility through SEO and paid ads.

5. Cultivate Relationships With Potential Clients

Reward and incentivize your social media fans and followers and engage them with your promotions, special offers, and discounts. Encourage them to share their email addresses and contact details with you through google forms, newsletter sign ups, etc., and send them personalized messages like birthday and anniversary wishes through emails.

Here are nine ways to cultivate meaningful relationships with your prospects and social media followers:

• Communicate consistently and effectively.
• Prioritize timely, efficient communication and quick redressal of issues and query handling.
• Try to be as upbeat as possible in your tonality and messages.
• Treat your prospect as an individual and not just a business contact.
• Share knowledge and entertain.
• Be open-minded and ready to accept suggestions.
• Exceed expectations and deliver more than you promise.
• Gather insights about your client’s goals, values, ambitions, and pain points.
• Avoid jargon and speak your client’s language.

6. Make an Engaging Portfolio

A portfolio is a must for digital marketers and agency owners. It’s the first marketing collateral your prospect sees, so be careful, as the first impression is often the last. No two agencies are similar in approach, expertise, and processes, so use your portfolio to showcase everything that makes you stand out.

Here are a few tips to make an engaging portfolio you can use to market your services –

• Create insightful content
• Use SEO to improve the visibility of your portfolio
• Create downloadable case studies in PDF format and promote their URL online
• Display social proof on your website
• Distribute your portfolio on social media
• Include numbers and graphics to support your claims in your case studies

7. Use Webinars to Market Your Services

The popularity of webinars is steadily growing among marketers. It allows your targeted audience to access your marketing content online without physically attending an event or a training session. It also helps you generate leads, convert customers instantly, and shorten your sales funnel. Tap a broader audience using webinars as they become your content marketing assets, even if you can't attract enough attendees to your current webinar.

Final Words

With increasing competition, you should find innovative ways to attract leads and convert them into paying customers. We have discussed a few basic steps above that will help you outsmart your competition.

In the digital marketing industry, getting more clients is usually tough without creating a strong brand. So, focus on making a brand and providing outstanding services to your clients. Offer top-notch customer experience and help your clients achieve their goals through consistent innovation and efforts.

You can attract more clients to your agency by focusing on the best ways to stand out. It may include utilizing push notifications, sharing best practices and insights from industry leaders, or responding to client feedback on time.

Whatever route you take, ensure it leads to new customers and high retention rates for your agency. So there, you have it, happy marketing!

Ciao.

Lead generation is essential for your business. You cannot grow your agency without a constant supply of leads. Most agencies have limited budgets. Therefore, the cost of lead generation also becomes an important consideration. Your ROI is directly proportional to your investment in lead generation as it brings a lot of value to your enterprise.

If you want your organization to succeed, you need high-quality prospects. But, at the same time, you cannot afford highly expensive lead generation sources.

This guide will discuss the different aspects of lead generation costs and the factors that impact it. So it will also help you discover the most effective lead-generation strategies within your budget.

What Are the Factors That Affect the Cost of Lead Generation?

Agencies perform different activities to generate leads, and the most prominent ones include advertising on social media and creating landing pages. The effectiveness of your advertising campaigns on social media and search engines determines the success of your marketing campaigns. Your campaigns should generate leads that you can convert into customers with minimal effort.

The biggest factors that influence the cost of lead generation include media placement and distribution. It will also impact the cost of running ad campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn and hiring third parties to receive or generate lists.

However, the cumulative cost may soon shoot up if you are not careful or your budget is small.

Image Source: SmartInsights

We can divide the lead generation cost into the following elements -

A. Salaries and Fees Paid to Freelancers and Experts

These include the cost of hiring full-time employees and freelancers to run social media ads and traditional advertising campaigns. You can easily calculate ROI on this expenditure based on how many leads they generate every month.

B. Content Production, Promotion and Distribution

To run both organic and paid campaigns, you need quality content, and that comes at a cost. The content you create should offer value to your prospects and should be helpful, interesting and engaging. Agencies create blog posts, social media posts, videos, podcasts, infographics and content for webinars and ad messaging. After producing customer-centric content, you must also spend heavily on promoting and distributing it.

C. Software Programs, Apps and Tools

Agencies use different software programs and apps to succeed in today's data-driven marketing environment. These tools allow you to scale quickly and automate numerous manual tasks that are quite tedious and time-consuming.

Pro Tip: If you use a white-label platform and fulfillment services, you'll also get access to many apps and agency tools that will be extremely cost-effective for your agency.

DashClicks white-label platform offers the following apps:

• Contacts (A CRM software that helps you store and organize your people and business contacts)
• Inbound App (A lead management software that streamlines your leads and notifies your sales team about them)
• InstaSites: (A bulk website builder that can instantly build dozens of professional content-ready websites for your clients)
• InstaReports (A reporting tool that can create hundreds of digital marketing reports in a few seconds)
• Projects (A project management software that helps you track and manage your projects swiftly)

Apart from these, the platform also offers numerous other highly useful apps for digital agencies.

D. Audience

Your lead generation cost also depends on the number and types of leads you want to generate. So, if you generate bulk leads and want to target new customers, it will definitely cost more. On the other hand, if you run an up-selling campaign for your existing customers, it will cost you much less.

Types of Leads

Before we discuss various lead generation costs, let's first discuss the types of leads most businesses generate. Marketers often generate (or wish to generate) two major types of leads.

1. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

MQLs are the potential customers you're able to successfully target through your campaigns.

2. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

SQLs are the customers already engaged with your business in some way. They are also more likely to buy your products or services. They may have signed up for your newsletter, attended your webinar, downloaded an ebook, purchased your products/services before, or booked an appointment.

Image Source: Instapage

How to Calculate Cost per Lead (CPL)?

Cost per Lead, or CPL, is one of the most popular metrics to measure the performance of a digital marketing campaign. Here is the formula that marketers use to calculate CPL.

CPL = Total cost spend on a digital marketing campaign/number of leads coming from that campaign.

For example, if you spent $3,000 on a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign and converted 100 people into leads, the Cost per Lead will be: $3,000 / 100 = $30.

Image Source: Pointerpro

Types of Lead Generation Cost

Here are the different types of lead generation costs that marketers need to consider.

1. Agency, Freelancers, and Labor: Many businesses either hire an agency or commission freelancers to run their digital marketing campaigns, such as SEO and paid campaigns. The cost of hiring an agency or the freelancers' payments is included in your lead generation cost.

2. List Purchase: You can't run a telemarketing campaign without a relevant customer database. List purchase includes the cost of buying phone numbers for telemarketing and address lists for direct marketing.

3. Campaign Creation: It involves the cost of researching keyword data to target the right audience for your organic campaigns. It also includes the cost associated with the following activities:

• Developing a campaign strategy.
• Creating marketing messages, an email or SMS/text message campaign.
• Creating keyword-optimized content for search engines to target the right audience, and the cost of editing, proofreading, adding graphics and publishing.
• Testing and tweaking your ad copy and design.
• Managing the website or landing page.

You can set up a campaign for as low as $10 per month for an bulk email service provider alone. Your cost may go up to as high as $12,000 per month if you outsource it.

4. Ad Campaign Management: This is the cost you incur to set up an effective online marketing campaign, such as setting up ad placement on different paid channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google. It also involves various activities and messaging you use at other sales funnel stages to push the lead down the funnel for conversion. Focus on one product or service at a time while doing this to reduce your costs.

5. Incentive: Businesses sometimes incentivize their high-quality prospects with discounts and coupons when they exhibit buying intent.

6. Media Placement and Distribution: It is the cost of reaching your targeted audience through online campaigns.

7. Other: Apart from that, there are some additional costs of managing a campaign, such as costs incurred on influencer marketing, buying tools and apps, event participation, etc.

Most Common Lead Generation Pricing Structures

Here are some of the most popular and trending metrics you must be familiar with.

1. Cost Per Appointment

This metric ranges between $150 ā€“ $350. It involves the number of appointments you make with potential customers. It also considers the time a website visitor spends on your website. CPA is the easiest model businesses use to calculate costs without tracking every sale they make.

2. Retainer

This metric ranges between $3,000 ā€“ $10,000 per month. It comprises advertising and lead generation services. This cost model mainly considers lead generation while ignoring other campaign elements. It allows you to choose your budget for paid search and display ads.

3. Cost Per Lead

This metric ranges between $40 ā€“ $190 per lead. CPL reflects the cost of generating a new customer or lead. Businesses use this metric to maximize leads without investing too much time and effort.

4. CPL = Total Cost Spend / Number of Leads

For example, if you converted 50 people after spending $1,600 on an ad, your CPL would be: $1,500 / 50 = $30.

It helps you calculate your ROI and determine the types of resources you want to allocate to the activity the next time.

Conclusion

Many businesses employ robust lead generation processes and tools, and yet their quality of leads is dismal. You must invest time and money to generate quality leads and set up the right procedures to determine which tactics work best. You should also keep it within your budget, which you can easily achieve by consistently monitoring your cost of lead generation and tweaking your campaign accordingly.

Today, increasing organic search traffic is no easy feat. It demands plenty of upfront work, particularly when you have a restricted budget.

One of the most effective ways by which you can increase your overall search traffic is through the “Skyscraper Technique.”

Brian Dean of Backlinko developed this technique in the year 2015. It is a widely recognized method that helps build backlinks to your content. As you may already know, backlinks are one of Google’s top ranking factors. These links are extremely important in the SEO world because they signal to search engines that your website is high-quality, relevant and reputed.

Read on to know more about this technique and how to execute it in order to build high-quality backlinks.

What Is the Skyscraper Technique?

The Skyscraper Technique is a way to create engaging content, which will, in turn, help you earn high-quality backlinks to your content.

Here’s the technique broken down into 3 simple steps:

• Searching for link-worthy content
• Producing something better
• Sharing what you have created

In simpler terms, the technique helps you build upon the best content out there to create something even better, and then promote it to the right people.

But why is it called the “Skyscraper” technique? This is because you create the best piece of content on the internet for a particular topic. As it will be the biggest piece of content on the topic, it will stand above every other content piece (just as a skyscraper stands above every other building in a skyline!)

Image Source: Snov.io

How to Use the Skyscraper Technique to Build High-Quality Backlinks?

Now that you know what the Skyscraper Technique is and its benefits, let's discuss how to use it to get high-quality links.

1. Check What's Buzzing in Your Niche

There is no use putting effort into a content piece that no one's going to consume, right?

Hence, you need to produce content that is in some sort of demand at the moment.

We recommend that you find content that's buzzing in your niche right now. Using a tool like BuzzSumo will help you find such trending' topics. With the help of this tool, you can easily identify content with the maximum social shares. This will exactly be the kind of content you need to create your skyscraper piece on.

Another way you can find popular content topics in your niche is to check out famous online communities such as Reddit or Quora. The topics with a high number of “upvotes” will be the ones you should be writing on to create skyscraper content.

2. Search for the Topic In Google

Once you select the topic you want to build upon, type the topic into Google and hit “Search.”

Check the first two links (ignore any ads). Google finds these pieces the most relevant and hence shows them as the top two results. These are the content pieces you have to beat and build upon.

Note: When you go through the links, you will see that they are well-researched, highest-quality pieces available to your ideal audience right now. In other words, these pieces are the tallest skyscrapers right now. Now, what you need to do is build your own piece taller than them.

3. Research Your Competitors

The previous step helped you identify your competitors, now you need to research them.

Here’s what you precisely need to do:

Use the Ahrefs tool to get a list of keywords that your competitors are ranking for in organic search results.

Note: With this tool, you also get to know the amount of traffic your competitors are receiving.

Tip: You can also learn how to spy on competitors to monitor them closely.

4. Think if You Can Create Something Better

Now that you know about your competition and what you are really up against, you need to ask yourself this crucial question – “Can I create something better?”

If the answer is yes, it’s time to get going! Here are some tips on how you can create a better piece of content than the ones already out there:

A. Write Long-Form Content

You can significantly improve a content piece by diving deeper and going bigger. For instance, you search for the topic you selected for your skyscraper piece on Google, and the result shows “10 best…”

Now, how about you go bigger and longer and share “30 best..” ? (if, of course, you are able to provide quality tips throughout).

Another reason we say that you create long-form content is because it indicates that you have done in-depth research to create such a comprehensive piece. Also, when you offer people information on a particular topic in one single place, your content gets more shares and reaches more people. It even gives you a chance to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. All of this means one thing – an increased chance of gaining high-quality backlinks to your content.

Note: If you want to deliver high-quality, fully-researched content to your clients, you can think about hiring DashClicks’ white label content services.

B. Lay Special Focus on the Headline

Writing an eye-catching, compelling headline is integral to the Skyscraper Technique. Think about it, if the reader is not convinced with your headline, will they even read the rest of the content? Hence, we recommend that you put special emphasis on coming up with a headline that captures the attention of the reader and convinces them to read your piece.

Here are some tips to create catchy headlines:

• Use when, why, how, and what
• Use numbers to offer key takeaways
• Make a promise that convinces the reader to read your content
• Demonstrate what the reader will get out of reading the article with the help of a unique rationale

C. Create the Ultimate Source for the Topic at Hand

To create a skyscraper piece, you need to create the best piece of content out there for the topic at hand.

To achieve this, plan your skyscraper piece in a way that it is complete in itself. The reader shouldn’t have to leave the page in order to search for further information on that topic.

Note: To create the ultimate content piece on the web for a topic, ensure you fully research, cover all the pain points, and incorporate the latest stats and case studies if possible. Also include graphics or images that back up your content.

Your content should also be:

• In an easy-to-read format.
• Grammatically correct.
• High-quality.
• Quality-checked by a professional editor.

D. Make Your Content Stand Out Visually

A poorly-designed page doesn’t exactly appear to be link-worthy. This is because it can give the impression of a low-quality page. Hence, ensure your content looks as good as it reads and stands out visually.

Add well-designed visual assets, infographics, and videos to make your page stand out even more.

5. Share Your Content

After you are done creating your content with the tips mentioned above, it’s time to share your content in order to land links.

Now, how to go about this step?

A strategy you can follow is to contact popular blogs in your niche with the intention of earning a backlink from them. Here are the exact steps to follow –

Step 1 – Open Google, search for “industry + blog” (for e.g. SEO + blog).

Step 2 – The search results will show all the famous blogs in your niche. Now, write them a polite email asking for a backlink. Here’s a sample email you can send:

Hi [name]!

I came across your blog while searching for information on [topic]. I really liked your insights! I also saw that you linked to this blog post: [your competitor]. I have also written a piece similar to this, which is more up-to-date and possesses additional information. Feel free to use this in your blog if you think your audience may find it interesting.

Thanks!

[Your name]

6. Measure Your Backlinks

After you create your skyscraper piece and start earning backlinks, your job isn’t quite done yet. You also need to know where the backlinks are coming from in order to fully leverage the skyscraper technique.

We recommend that you use a tool to access your backlink profile. The tool will show all the backlinks to your site which will help in monitoring.

Note: Make sure you also monitor metrics such as Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Spam Score of every backlink you are earning. Keeping a track of these metrics helps you build amazing backlinks that work in the favor of your website and business!

Offer Top-Notch SEO Services to Your Clients

Are you a digital marketing agency that wants to offer SEO as a service to your clients? If yes, you can think about hiring white label SEO services.

At DashClicks, we offer best-in-class SEO services to help your clients get on top of the search engine results. When you opt for these services, your client’s site will be regularly updated and optimized. This includes link-building as well.

The team at DashClicks even disavows links at its end to disassociate your client’s website from toxic backlinks.

Note: You can also consider using DashClicks’ InstaReports App, a digital marketing audit tool which includes your client’s backlinks data.

Conclusion

As you already know, backlinks are important to your SEO efforts. The Skyscraper Technique is a powerful link building tactic that helps you build backlinks from awesome content, giving you the chance to boost your website rankings and organic traffic.

Ensure you diligently follow all the steps we discussed that talk about how to use and execute the skyscraper technique, with the main steps being:

• Finding link-worthy content
• Creating something better than it
• And lastly, sharing what you have created

All the best!

If you want to know more about link building, here's a link building guide for beginners.

Most agencies really have a hard time finding the right set of keywords they should use for their SEO and PPC campaigns. Needless to say that PPC keywords won't necessarily work for the organic SEO ranking of your client's website.

This article will discuss different types of keywords that you should be familiar with as a marketing agency for maximum impact and to achieve astounding results for your clients.

Why Are Keywords Important?

Google is evolving and has been testing different algorithms to provide the best search results for its users. So, choosing the right cluster of keywords for your content marketing and SEO has become more important than ever.

There are many types of keywords prevalent to rank your website on top. From short queries to lengthy sentence-long search phrases, you can use a mix of different keywords to be an SEO superstar.

So, carefully choose your target keywords because they determine your page's visibility on search engines.

We can divide these keywords into the following categories.

• SEO Keywords By Length
• Short Tail Keywords
• Long Tail Keywords
• Mid-Tail Keywords
• SEO Keywords By Buyer Intent
• Informational Keywords
• Navigational Keywords
• Commercial Keywords
• Transactional Keywords
• Targeting Keywords For Specific Industry
• Market Segment Keywords
• Customer-Defining Keywords
• Product & Brand-Based Keywords
• Geo-Targeted Keywords

SEO Keywords By Length

As is evident from the name, these keywords vary by their length. Length is the primary consideration for this subset of keywords. It reflects the customer's intent regarding the information they are looking for.

What's more, you can also get to know the specific stage of a prospect in their buyer's journey through these keywords. These keywords are of the following tree types.

1. Short-Tail Keywords

People who used most of the search terms in the early stages of the Internet were short-tail keywords. These keywords are still highly popular and have a high search volume. From weather and news updates to celebrity searches, basic information and educational searches fall into this category.

We also refer to them as focus keywords. These are the top keywords, which you can further expand based on the need and search intent of the user.

Since these types of keywords contain broader and highly popular search terms, they have high competition. Single-word keywords are not necessarily precise and don't exactly reflect what a user is looking for.

Image Source: Sherpa Marketing

For example, "restaurants near me" has a much higher search volume than "restaurants" and "restaurant" because it is unclear what the users are looking for when they use the latter two keywords.

To make the search meaningful, we need to narrow the search using ancillary words.

Image Source: AHREFs

Here is the search demand curve based on the length of the keywords. So, technically, very short-tail keywords don't necessarily have a high demand except for informational keywords such as Amazon, Apple, iPhone, & Barack Obama.

Image Source: AHREFs

2. Long-Tail Keywords

These keywords comprise more than two or three words and are peculiar and highly useful for marketers as they are highly specific regarding search intent. Some examples of long-tail keywords are as follows.

• Best free digital marketing tools
• Can meditation make your smarter
• Free games download for PC

Despite their low search volume, these keywords have a high potential to boost your page's search engine rankings and visibility. Since these are highly intent-based search terms, their conversion rates are pretty high. They attract your target audience more precisely than any other type of keywords.

Image Source: Sherpa Marketing

3. Mid-Tail Keywords

The subset that falls between the short and long-tail keywords is referred to as mid-tail keywords. They have moderate search volumes.

In the previous example, you can see a long tail keyword ā Free games download for PC. "Free Games" is a medium-length keyword here.

SEO Keywords by Buyer Intent

Buyer intent is a powerful signal for search engines to filter searches for users. It is further divided into four categories.

4. Informational Keywords

People use informational keywords to learn about an object, fact, product, or service. Most of these search terms begin with interrogative words such as 'how,' 'what,' and 'where,' etc.

5. Navigational Keywords

People use navigational keywords to get more information about a product and brand. In that case, people are generally aware of the product and store but need additional information.

6. Commercial Keywords

This is typically related to the consideration stage of the buyer's journey. These searches are mostly about price or product comparisons with similar market items.

7. Transactional Keywords

These keywords are related to the final stage in the buyer's journey, which is the decision stage.

People use transactional keywords when they have already searched online and compared different features and prices. They are happy and satisfied with the product and are ready to make a purchase.

SEO Keywords For Specific Industries

These search terms are industry specific and can vary from one industry to another.

8. Market Segment Keywords

This set of keywords is generic and belongs to a specific industry or its verticals. You can use the keywords that best represent your products and can be understood by your target audience.

For example, a clothing brand can use 'suits' as a keyword.

9. Customer-Defining Keywords

These are customer-specific keywords. Businesses use them to target customers with common traits or demographic or psychographic features such as gender, age, etc.

For example, in the previous example, you can use 'suits for men', 'apparel for teens,' etc. You can easily notice that these keywords come with a context.

10. Product & Brand-Based Keywords

When keywords come with brand names in them, conversion rates become higher. These keywords are generally used to target brand-loyal customers.

Image Source: PPCexpo

11. Geo-Targeted Keywords

Marketers use location-specific keywords to attract traffic for local businesses. A HubSpot survey reveals that 46% of Google searches are about local businesses and information.

Search queries like 'where can I buy liquor in Texas' fall into this category.

Final Words

You can grasp a basic understanding of the different types of keywords used in content marketing and SEO here. It would help you in keyword selection to achieve high rankings for your web page on Search Engine Research Pages (SERPs.) Local keywords hold immense power.

As a marketer, you should know how to use keywords to attract traffic and high rankings. Ideally, it would help if you used a mix of short-tail, mid-tail, and long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are highly conversion oriented and help you quickly rank on SERPs compared to short-tail and mid-tail keywords.

Similarly, intent-based keywords, industry-specific keywords, and keywords with demographic and psychographic context are highly useful in inbound and content marketing and help you gain high rankings and attract loads of traffic in much less time.

Growth hacking is a concept that's rapidly gaining traction among business owners and marketers.

Inspired by the inefficiencies of traditional practices, creative entrepreneurs are seeking out ways to scale quickly and intelligently. Thought leaders are creating and implementing new growth tactics that can help new agencies reach their sales goals faster.

However, not everyone is in love with the idea of “hacking.”

In this article, we'll clear up any misconceptions you may have about growth hacking. We'll show you some examples of hacks in action, and teach you some proven strategies that can help you reach your agency goals this coming year.

What Is Growth Hacking?

Growth hacking is the practice of utilizing carefully selected, cost-effective marketing techniques to achieve scalability and growth quickly.

Businesses and marketers have set expectations of what needs to be done to maintain the status quo. You need to publish content to your site, optimize for SEO, run paid campaigns, and get on social media.

However, every online business is practicing the same exact tried-and-true techniques to boost its discoverability and sales. As a result, the digital marketing landscape is aggressively competitive and it can take longer than desired to achieve growth. No matter how you cut it, maintaining a successful brand requires patience and determination.

Forward-thinking business leaders aren't satisfied with current progress. They're now leveraging resources to uncover new ways that might lead to more rapid growth. However, they need to do so without neglecting daily responsibilities or placing a financial burden on the agency.

This effectively describes a growth hacker's mindset.

Image Source: FourWeekMBA

A growth hacker is interested in testing new methods of digital marketing. They're aiming to disrupt the normal flow and reach new customers quickly while using minimal expenses and resources. Safe and effective growth stems from selling more while spending as little as possible to do so.

Growth Hacker vs Growth Marketer

If you research the growth hackerspace, you're going to come across the term growth marketer.

Both are effectively the same idea.

The reason for the name difference is the inherent stigma that comes with the term “hacker.” “Hacking” is a loaded term that leads people to think of:

• Taking shortcuts
• Cheating the system
• Taking advantage of others
• Stealing success without providing value

Thus, growth hacking becomes a misnomer for many. Instead, they opt for the term growth marketer to veer away from negative connotations and emphasize the importance of their work.

The truth is that there is no way to cheat the system. Marketers have certainly tried, which is why there are a variety of black hat techniques like link selling, cloaking, or PBNs. Eventually, Google catches on and blacklists the genuine “hackers” to maintain fair, competitive results.

Calling yourself a growth hacker versus a growth marketer amounts to preference. Neither are abusing any systems. Instead, they're exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable marketers and salespeople that aren't afraid to risks and experiment with standard marketing practices. They demonstrate a deep understanding of the product and the audience in order to expedite results.

Image Source: Grow with Ward

Growth Hacking Benefits

Since most traditional marketing techniques require patience before you see their results, growth hacking tactics help you scale intelligently sooner.

Growth hacking techniques like paid advertising on social media channels like TikTok help you improve your cash flow. You can use this additional revenue to further boost your business.

The greatest benefit of implementing such tactics is that they help you overcome initial business costs and the investment required to implement traditional marketing methods.

Discovering and implementing new cost-effective solutions before others provides you an edge over your competition.

Growth Hacking Examples

To demonstrate the viability of growth hacking, let's take a look at some examples from brands you may know.

Growth Hacking Example 1 - Constant Contact's Free Trial

Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing automation platforms available. They help other brands like yours boost their engagement and sales by enabling you to deliver smart email marketing campaigns.

Their growth hack is to let your agency in on the action at zero cost.

The free trial is fairly standard practice. Most companies offer seven to thirty days depending on the nature of the service. Constant Contact saw room to beat those offers and provides two full months of nearly-complete access.

This is a substantial amount of time to allow prospects to get integrated. They're not investing any expense, so there's zero risk as they experiment with the various features. By the end of the trial period, they are likely to invest a lot of effort into the platform to get the most out of the offer.

Getting people familiar with your service is essential for growth. But, allowing those users to fall in love with the product is one of the best ways to build a larger community. But, what do you do after the offer ends?

Constant Contact allows users to keep their progress for the low cost of $10. Not only is this relatively affordable for almost anyone, but it's also a no-brainer investment for an agency. It's easier to keep working within the platform you've been using to upend your business and move it elsewhere after two months.

Bear in mind that this company can do this because of its existing scale and revenue. The decision isn't as simple as giving it away for free. Their accountants ran a cost-benefit analysis of providing such a benefit and presumably predicted furthered growth and sales as a result.

When curating your free trial, think about what you want to provide versus what you can afford. Smart scaling must minimize expenses while reaching as many new consumers as possible.

Growth Hacking Example 2 - MeUndies Ongoing Referral Program

If you follow channels online or listen to podcasts, you've heard of MeUndies.

This trendy underwear and clothing brand became a household name thanks to its catchy name, product quality, and reach. Much of that brand awareness comes from influencer marketing, which we'll get to later in this article.

For this growth hacking example, we're focusing on retention. MeUndies retains customers by offering them a strong referral program.

Existing customers get their own referral code. They share this with others to bring attention to the brand and to bring them more sales. The reward for doing this is a $20 credit every time a person makes a purchase of $12 or more.

That credit is effectively the cost of pair of underwear or a couple of pairs of socks. The savings incentive is huge when asking your audience to spread the word.

However, MeUndies knows its capabilities with this program. The stipulation of requiring a minimum spend ensures that the program remains profitable and worthwhile. They may be giving you a strong discount, but they're hacking their way to more customers and sales with each new referral.

Growth Hacking Example 3 - Google Drive's Free Storage

Google is a household name. Countless users under their umbrella make use of their office products by making them free to use. Among these is Google Drive, an online storage space to compete with the likes of DropBox or OneDrive.

Google makes use of a common hacking strategy by giving away its product for free - with limitations. It costs nothing for users to create a Google account and gain access to 15 GB of free storage space.

For comparison, the two aforementioned competitors offer 2 GB and 5 GB respectively. Google's size and recognition grant it the ability to provide a much stronger incentive to become a part of its ecosystem. You're then able to easily store and share files from other Google office programs like Sheets, Docs, and Slides.

While 15 GB for free is generous, Google makes it easy for businesses to get their entire team on board by offering a plan for just $12. They recognize how powerful their offer is and carefully planned this upgrade point knowing that this hacking strategy will work.

Growth Hacking Strategies

Growing an agency quickly is possible, but you need to know how to make it happen.

There are several key components of digital marketing that agencies must make careful use of to improve key performance indicators. Keep your current growth strategies in mind when checking out these seven crucial growth hacking tactics.

1. Reinvent Your Content Strategy

Content is the cornerstone of every message you send to your audience online.

Content touches upon all of the following areas, making them inextricably connected:

• Organic Search (SEO)
• Website copy
• Blogs
• PPC Campaigns
• Email Marketing
• Video Marketing

This is why it's baffling to see so many brands put little effort or care into their content creation or delivery strategies. Thousands of brands are vying for your attention online daily, and you only have a few seconds to capture their attention. Your agency is no different in this struggle.

There are tactics you can implement to get more mileage out of your content. Try introducing these to your content team and start measuring your results.

A. Repurpose High-Converting Content

When you make more than you spend on creating something, it's considered a great investment.

High-converting content should be treated no differently.

We focus particularly on your content that is already creating sales as it's an established success. Instead of snuffing out that flame, consider the ways you can repurpose that content for other channels.

For example, your agency creates a video for a paid ad campaign that generated great returns. The video is filled with valuable, actionable information that the general audience can benefit from.

Now that you've gotten the mileage out of your paid campaign, repurpose that video for other social channels. You can upload it to YouTube. You can edit our specific segments to create Instagram Reels or TikToks. We know that the content is valuable, so we just need to optimize it for an audience on a different platform.

This gets a better return on your content efforts both by way of conversions and consumer feedback. You can use those insights to guide future content creation and craft the right material for each marketing channel.

B. Go to Your Community

This seems obvious, right?

If you're a company selling homeowner's insurance, then why would you try to market to renters? They're not interested in what you have to say, and you're wasting resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

The same principle applies to marketing online. Your agency needs to understand its target audience so that you can find out where to reach them.

A great way to do this is by building out your buyer persona. Understand important details like the ideal age range, location, occupation, income level, and any other detail that's of relevance. Then, check out the existing to determine where those demographics spend their time most online.

C. Make It Into Roundups

The Roundup article is an amazing tool for helping brands build their backlink profile.

An important part of your organic search strategy is to earn links and recommendations from other established brands. Ideally, you're looking to forge connections with others in your industry that share similar values, ideas, and expertise. When a site with SEO value links back to your site, it can help boost rankings and help more users discover your agency.

Achieving this takes work. You'll need to work on building your brand recognition, preferably by creating some valuable and thought-leading content. Once more of the community begins to get familiar with your name, they'll be more willing to collaborate with you on projects. It's a business transaction just like any other.

D. Experiment With Alternate Content Styles

Content marketing is never static. What works well today will likely change by this time next year. For this reason, you shouldn't keep repeating the same formula and expect your results to improve for scalability.

What we're not suggesting is for you to go completely off-brand. Your future content still should adhere to your company voice, values, and ideas. Instead, start split-testing different variations of content to see what resonates more with your audience.

Also, be vigilant with current trends. Studies show that more than 90% of teenagers and adults consume videos regularly online. As we see more platforms place a greater focus on video formats (Facebook Stories, Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts), we can identify how audiences prefer to consume content.

What type of content you create and how to deliver it will vary depending on your core audience. By taking the time to research and gain an understanding of the consumer, you'll naturally learn what type of content to create and where you should upload it.

E. Create Intent-Based Content

The days of boosting your discoverability online with keyword stuffing are long gone.

The content that earns the highest rankings and the most traffic is content created with clear intention. Google's algorithm now understands how well your content answers the demands and needs of its users.

You need to pay close attention to the intention behind the keywords you choose. Different words or phrases come loaded with assumed or additional meanings that we call semantics. When you understand the semantics of a keyword, you're better equipped to create content that converts.

For example, when someone searches “smartphone comparison,” we can understand two things:

• The person is looking for a clear breakdown of similarities and differences between brands and their product.
• Because they’re looking for the best product, they’re likely closer to making a purchase on their buyer’s journey.

We give those users exactly what they need. By understanding the intention, you now know to create a killer comparison page that highlights what makes your brand superior to any competition. You're not trying to make the hard sell. You're allowing your audience to review the facts and make smart decisions for themselves. When the facts are on your side, you come out the clear winner.

Keep intention in mind anytime you choose a topic or keyword to tackle. Respect your audience's needs and the results will follow.

2. Try Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has changed the game for marketers and growth hackers in recent years. It's highly effective regardless of what business goals a brand has set. Here are some of the reasons you should try influencer marketing.

A. An Exploding Marketing Channel

Influencer marketing has exploded in the past five to seven years, especially in the past decade. Hundreds of thousands of marketing campaigns have been successfully executed with the help of influencers since 2018. Influencer marketing has become an integral part of the marketing mix for most brands, and they are benefiting from it in different ways.

B. Helps Build Trust and ROI

Influencer marketing builds a high level of trust, which is why brands are investing more in influencer marketing. It's also influenced by the increasing ROI from influencer marketing spend. The 2015 Tomoson study reported that marketers generated an ROI of $6.50 from every dollar spent on influencers. It was ridiculously high compared to other marketing channels, and you'll be pleased to learn that it's increasing yearly.

The influencer market grew from $9.7 billion in 2020 to $13.8 billion in 2021. It's projected to soar to a whopping $16.4 billion in 2022.

C. Helps in Increasing Brand Exposure

Influencer marketing is a proven method to boost brand awareness, a crucial factor in pipeline building and consistently increasing sales and revenue in the long run.

Pro Tip: Collaborate with well-known influencers on social media to reach a wider audience. Look for influencers having over 50,000+ followers, as they are the most impactful.

3. Implement Rewarding Retention Tactics

Returning customers can easily convert, and the best way to bring them back is to introduce rewards, offers, and discounts. You should also use personalization. Customers want to be treated like individuals, and you can do it by personalizing recommendations.

You must create a program to reward your loyal customers. According to research, an average person enjoys roughly 15 loyalty programs. Here are some of the loyalty programs you can try, but you should do your homework before implementing any of these loyalty programs.

• Tiered Loyalty Program
• Spend Programs
• Points Loyalty Program
• Fee-Based Loyalty Program
• Cash Back Loyalty Program
• Punch Program

Try sending newsletters with exclusive content offers. You can also introduce member-only discounts and bonus features to reward loyal customers.

4. Test and Optimize Your Paid Ad Campaigns

Refrain from sticking to safe formulas when running paid ad campaigns. It would help if you tried A/B testing etc. You can also test different ad creatives with split-testing and allow these insights to guide you when designing ad creatives and crafting marketing messages.

It shouldn't be a one-time activity. People want something new and exciting every time. So, you should consistently fine-tune your efforts.

Last but not least, make it easy to convert. If it's a form that your prospects need to fill out, make it instantly available and keep it short. Don't make them fill out lengthy forms spread over multiple pages. People may soon bounce off with such annoying stuff.

5.Create Brand Partnerships

As a growth hacker, you should try innovative tactics. Find other companies with audiences that can mutually benefit each other. Attend live events to meet industry figures and well-known personalities. Networking brings amazing rewards for startups.

Use personality as a strength. People become aware of your brand and products when you network with other brands and register your presence in your neighborhood by participating in industry events and community service programs.

Image Source: ResoluteB2B

6. Get Direct Feedback

According to Entrepreneur magazine, great marketing starts with understanding and empathizing with your customer. Asking for direct feedback helps you improve your services and brings you closer to your customers. For most customers, asking for feedback means a lot. You can use it to inform your biggest messaging decisions and data enrichment. You can also use customer feedback to surprise and delight your customers.

Customers feel empowered and become loyal to the brand that asks for feedback. Content marketers use it to create attention-getting, lead-generating content.

You can also use it as a mechanism to match your customers' expectations and work on addressing the complaint. Besides that, customer feedback also helps in pricing and packaging decisions.

7. Give Something Away for Free

People love free stuff. You can offer the following as a free gift as an agency.

A. InstaReports:InstaReports is a DashClicks app that generates instant performance reports for different campaigns. As an agency, you can offer it to your clients as a gift. It comes with DashClicks' white-label platform.

B. InstaSites:InstaSites is a DashClicks app that helps you develop high-quality content-ready websites. The tool makes creating bulk websites a breeze. It solves a big issue your customers face, so they will love this gift.

C. Storage Space: Storage space is another gift that businesses need and love. Enterprises have limited storage, and any such offering will be more than welcome.

D. Limited Account Access: Limited account access allows customers to try your product or platform. When they experience its benefits and get used to it, they ask for more and usually convert.

E. Free Samples: It’s a very old tactic product marketers practice. Providing free samples is the best way to make your prospects try your product without buying it. Once they experience it and find it good, they shop for it at the market.

Conclusion

Growth is an increasing challenge for agencies. Creative marketing campaigns are not conducted regularly; hence, these are highly unpredictable as the audiences are unfamiliar with them.

Amid such stiff competition, growth hacking strategies become the only solution. You can't resolve all of your customer's pain points, so you shouldn't wait to implement strategies that yield higher returns than traditional marketing practices.

Time is gold; you can directly translate it into money by strategically spending it on campaigns and agency growth. But, as an agency owner, you'll be familiar with situations where undesired activities chew up all your time and leave you shocked to see your productivity at the EOD.

In this article, you'll learn to identify and eliminate all those wasteful activities that eat up your valuable & productive hours and hamper your growth and profitability.

Identifying Your Agency's Biggest Time Wasters

Agency owners often have to juggle managing their clients and the agency. It results in splitting their attention into multiple things, such as strategy making, client servicing, and day-to-day handling operations.

It can lead to them not being able to fully focus on either of these tasks. To resolve this, businesses should invest in dedicated teams to take care of the day-to-day tasks, focus on strategy, and interact with clients.

Some of the time wasters are as follows -

• Unexpected revisions on a project
• Content/idea rejection by the clients
• Delay in approvals
• Lack of clear goals
• Repetition of tasks
• Lack of proper tools
• Lack of proper processes
• Lack of automation
• Absence of time blocking
• Unnecessary meetings

You can control and eliminate many of these factors using automation and agency management tools such as the DashClicks. However, there are a few factors you have little or no control over, such as eccentric clients and delays in approvals from their end.

Unexpected rejections and revisions take up a lot of time and resources for the agency and are among the significant reasons for missed deadlines with other clients.

Not having a clear goal or strategy can lead to agencies spending more time on things that don't really matter in the long term.

Not setting boundaries when it comes to working hours is another common issue among agencies. It leads to burnout among employees and frustration among clients who expect timely responses from their agencies.

The 10 Wasters That Are Costing You Time and Money in Your Agency

Here are ten common time wasters that might cost your agency valuable time and money.

1. Working on the Wrong Tasks and Repetition of Tasks

Poor planning and delegation might lead to your team members working on the wrong tasks. So, tasks are repeated by different team members many times over. To work around this issue, you should use robust task management software. Using a project or task management system has the following advantages.

• Keep tasks in one place
• Save time and stay on schedule by delegating and tracking tasks
• Prioritize your work
• Improve collaboration
• Track team progress
• Put project work at your fingertips
• Set due dates and never miss deadlines

Pro Tip: DashClicks' dashboard and project management app enables you to manage and streamline tasks like never before. The platform also allows you to track your tasks and monitor project progress.

2. Tracking the Wrong Metrics

Sometimes your team members might be tracking the wrong metrics, leading to inaccurate results and a waste of time. It would help if you used data analytics and metrics tracking to prevent this thing from happening.

Data Analytics is extremely useful in digital marketing as it allows you to leverage the power of customer data to curate a better product & marketing strategy.

Digital analytics allows you to pinpoint the information that marketers would otherwise miss. It allows you to process massive packets of information sourced from multiple channels to quickly spot the patterns. It enables an agency to get actionable insights.

Data analytics will also help you improve your focus on customer experience and leverage social media marketing.

Image Source: TechTarget

3. Having No Systems in Place to Manage Projects

Do you have too many projects and insufficient time or resources to complete them? This is a common problem faced by many agencies. So what can you do to manage the situation?

A few things can help digital marketing agencies avoid this problem in the future. Learn how to prioritize projects and focus on tasks that will have the biggest impact. Give yourselves room for error and include more slack time in your project schedule for potential delays.

Set up systems to stay on track with your deadlines, like setting up reminders and alerts for critical tasks or even hiring someone to help you stay on top of your projects.

Pro Tip: DashClicks' project management app enables you to manage your projects by effectively setting up reminders and alerts and delegating tasks to team members. The white-label project management software also allows you to track your campaign's progress.

4. Working With Poor or Unreliable Resources

Working with poor or unreliable resources is always challenging, but there are a few ways to make the process easier. For example, if you're working with someone difficult to get a hold of, it's best to set clear expectations and deadlines. If you're working with someone unreliable, it's best to have them sign an agreement outlining what they will be responsible for and your expectations of them.

Pro Tip: If you are tired of working with virtual assistant services or freelancers, use DashClicks' white label fulfillment services and stay committed to your deadlines. This way, you can keep your clients happy and satisfied.

5. Improperly Managing Client Expectations and Requirements

Lack of communication is the biggest evil responsible for improper client expectations and requirements management.

Here are some tips to better manage client expectations and requirements -

• Set expectations from the outset
• Invest in good communication software
• Be transparent about processes
• Clearly define goals
• Create official records of the smallest deals
• Keep the client in the loop throughout the process
• Rely on the right tool to keep track of all the stages of a project
• Learn how to say no with dignity when necessary

Pro Tip: You can use DashClicks' Contacts App, a CRM tool for enhanced client communication. It allows you to inform your clients by sending them via SMS and emails about the latest project updates.

6. Lack of Proper Tools

Today's business environment is about using the latest tools, software, and platforms. It minimizes your team's workload and enables them to deliver results in a fraction of the time with a high degree of accuracy. Without these tools, you can hardly manage multiple campaigns and perform day-to-day operations such as conducting analytics and sending performance reports to your clients.

Pro Tip: DashClicks' white label platform offers numerous automation tools to make life easy for agency owners. These tools include a sales CRM tool like the Contacts app, instant report generation tools such as InstaReports, bulk website building tools such as InstaSites, and lead management software such as the Inbound app. Apart from that, you will also get project management software to manage your projects and apps like forms to manage your online forms.

Without such automation tools, your agency will heavily rely on time-consuming and tedious manual processes. For example, manual report generation alone can consume dozens of productive hours. On the flip side, you can generate reports in a few seconds with InstaReports.

7. Unnecessary Meetings

Tesla chief Elon Musk sees meetings as a timewaster. He once said in an email, "excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time."

He has clearly instructed his employees not to conduct frequent meetings unless it is highly urgent. So, big meetings are a big no-no in his companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2.

8. Not Practicing Time-Blocking

Time-blocking, also known as time chunking, is a time management technique that is used by famous enterprises, business leaders, and innovators such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates to great success. It enables you to make the most of any amount of time.

The time-blocking technique involves working on one task at a time broadly. It allows you to acquire the flow state by entering deep focus. It's linked with massive productivity and enables you to complete tasks faster and easier.

Here are the steps to use time-blocking for maximum productivity -

Step 1: Identify the tasks that you need to accomplish

Step 2: Estimate the time required to complete each task

Step 3: Decide how much flexible time you can afford as per your schedule

Step 4: Review your plan

Step 5: Implement time-blocking using your favorite calendar app

9. Lack of Proper Processes

Business process management is directly linked with cost benefits and a high level of productivity. Well-defined and accurate processes allow you to communicate and apply consistent standards and practices within the business.

Proper business processes help you in many ways, some of which are as follows -

• Gather information to resolve issues and quickly reduce downtime
• Know what each team member needs to do
• Easily onboard new employees
• Comply with norms, standard practices, and certifications
• Improve product quality
• Ensure that everyone is on the same page
• Reduce risk & improve security
• Analyze and enhance tasks in a dynamic manner

10. Lack of Clear Goals

Do you know why projects fail miserably despite using the best processes and tools? The major reasons are the lack of direction and vague goals. It is, therefore, important to sit down with your client and discuss the objective. Sometimes, all a client wants is maximizing inbound leads, whereas an agency might be wasting time and precious resources on brand building through social media.

Setting and prioritizing your goals, therefore, becomes extremely crucial. Take time to communicate these goals to your team members so everybody is on the same page. Understanding the client's goals helps the team members accomplish projects.

Image Source: Hypercontext

Here are some of the disadvantages of having no goals -

• Your team lacks focus
• You live by the flow rather than control it
• You have confusing priorities
• Distractions might hit you

Final Words

Time is the most precious asset; unfortunately, we all have limited time at our disposal. As an agency, you only work a limited number of hours a week, and you are supposed to meet your business goals and increase the number of clients within that period. So, you can't afford any type of time wasters.

Go through the above tips to steer clear of time wasters and save your agency time with automated reporting tools, project management software, and utilizing white label fulfillment services.