Many marketing agencies make the mistake of putting too much stock into vanity numbers such as traffic and leads generated. While getting customers in the door is part of the process, it won't matter much if your sales team is unable to close the deal.

According to studies, a staggering 80% of new leads never lead to a sale, which leads to wasted time, funds, and a frustrated sales team.

However, this is in no small part caused by the fact that countless marketing companies fail to utilize proven marketing and sales tactics that can help improve this percentage. More still never make the effort to analyze the data from their failures and improve.

Below, we're going to provide you and your team with seven steps you can follow that are guaranteed to help turn marketing leads into closed deals.

1. Know Your Buyer

Countless classes, textbooks, and webinars exist promising to convert you from a zero-sale representative into a master. The truth is that selling a product to a lead is not as complicated as you may believe. The problem is that you need to be spending far more time listening to your audience than you spend talking.

Leads come in a variety of types. Many are motivated enough to research the industry to find a reputable company and eventually make a purchase. This person already determined that your product or service could benefit their life or help solve a major problem.

Others may happen upon your business thanks to careful marketing but are not yet ready to take the leap just yet. In some cases, they may not even be aware that they are experiencing a problem that could be resolved with your services. These leads require some nurturing and follow-up.

Finally, some leads may not be interested at all, whether it's due to financial means or general lack of interest. Your team should immediately filter these types of leads out and look to refine your demographic targeting strategies.

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However, in all of these cases, you won't know your buyer until you take the time to listen to their needs. Great marketing and sales are about forging a relationship. Your customers come first, and that comes with giving them the respect of treating them as more than a potential sale.

Make the effort to gather more data from the lead and allow them to give you the ammunition you need to close the deal. What is their biggest pain point? What are they struggling with and how might your product or service benefit them? What is their budget? Instead of walking into a sales encounter with a pre-planned speech, let them tell you how you can help them.

2. Respond Immediately

According to a lead response survey courtesy of Drift, a business is ten times less likely to make contact with a lead if they wait more than five minutes to make contact. Despite this alarming statistic, most companies don't make the effort to contact their leads in even five days.

With that in mind, your team is likely losing sales daily by not enforcing a lead management system that takes advantage of lead freshness. Think of a lead that's no more than five minutes old as hot. When your lead is hot, they're motivated to learn more, they have a problem they want to solve, and they're actively looking for you to sell them on your products or services.

A lead that's even thirty minutes old or longer moved on with their day, found solutions with competitors, or simply forgot about your company altogether. If you're one of those companies waiting more than five days, you've made your task of closing a sale that much more difficult.

While your company may not have the means to respond to every lead quickly, there are alternative solutions. The same study suggests that the top-performing companies are staying on top of trends by utilizing automated software such as chatbots to handle initial communications.

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This artificial intelligence helps the lead remain engaged and can benefit you by acquiring some of the necessary information you'll need as we discussed above in step one. Companies are also switching to dedicated lead management systems that allow you to automatically assign leads to key representatives for each marketing campaign. It will also hold your reps accountable to ensure they're moving quickly to close the deal.

(Source: Drift)

3. Nurture the Right Types of Leads

While managing your leads might already be a challenge, closing sales proves more complicated as 96% of visitors that click on your ads or landing pages aren't ready to purchase. This means that your marketing team still has a long way to go after successfully obtaining that initial ad click.

The amount of time you need to spend nurturing a lead will vary greatly depending on your industry. Examples of lead nurturing can include targeted email campaigns, a friendly check-in phone call, content marketing, social media marketing, and more. Each strategy can prove effective as they allow you to target specific buyers at their stage of the buyer's journey. Continued marketing also ensures that your brand stays fresh in their mind.

Even returning customers require nurturing. Brands that make the effort to satisfy customers with engaging content and compelling incentives produce 20% more sales opportunities with those leads as opposed to non-nurtured leads. Take the time to get to know your leads, even if it takes time and multiple follow-ups.

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Nurturing the right types of leads also means identifying and releasing poor-quality leads. If leads do not respond to your nurturing efforts, then it's likely time to target new audiences. You can also experiment with creating arbitrary deadlines that create urgency and push customers to follow up with you before their opportunity expires.

(Sources: Marketo, Invespcro)

4. Analyze the Data

While losing leads to poor marketing efforts or failure to close sales isn't ideal, it also provides the most useful information you'll receive to improve your strategies.

Marketing continues to evolve rapidly and companies that stay on top of the latest advances and trends are the ones that benefit the most. Advertising platforms on Facebook, Google, YouTube, and so on provide campaign-tracking algorithms that constantly analyze marketing performance. They are also constantly gathering data from your target audience.

These tools provide your company with a significant advantage by eliminating the time-consuming tedium of sorting through the data. However, your campaign managers need to utilize this information to fine-tune your campaigns and improve the overall quality of your leads. When your marketing team supplies better leads, your sales team should have a much easier time closing the deal.

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All of the pressure is not just on your paid search and social experts. The internet provides a variety of high-quality software that can help you manage and track the performance of your sales team.

An example of this includes call-tracking software such as CallRail, which you can seamlessly integrate into your website or ad campaigns. You'll be able to listen in on sales calls, understand how your team can improve, and implement that feedback into future negotiations. Utilizing the same CRM software across the entire company will also ensure that each team member is on the same page.

Utilizing the information provided and joining your sales and marketing efforts could lead to a 38% higher likelihood of closing sales.

(Source: Sujan Patel)

5. Differentiate from the Competitor

An issue you may be facing now is the fact that virtually all of your competitors are reading tips like these and doing their best to implement them into daily strategy. When competing companies are vying for the same leads with the same tactics, what can you do to differentiate from the competitor?

According to some of the top sales experts, it largely comes down to customer focus. Consider how many sales interactions you partake in without receiving as much as simple eye contact or a personable greeting. It's a common feeling for the customer to feel like they're just part of another sales and marketing machine.

While this step is similar to the ones mentioned above, it is necessary to stress how important it is to avoid an overly sales-y' approach and ask questions that cut to the core issues. Some of the most successful sales representatives frequently make contact with leads long before broaching the subject of the sale. All the while, they're making the customer feel heard, valued, and important.

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Additionally, the best salespeople not only know their industry but know how to use it effectively with customers. They identify with the customer's experiences and essentially visualize themselves as someone on their team. When both parties are on the same side of an issue, it becomes us versus the objective, not a company peddling an item that may or may not work.

While other strategies can help you differentiate your company such as discounts or free incentives, going the extra mile to forge relationships is all you truly need to jump to the front of the line. Customers will recognize it, and not only will they buy, but they'll also stay loyal to you for it.

(Source: SalesEngine)

6. Provide Incentives

This step encourages you to turn the focus inward and find ways to motivate your sales team. Many companies will utilize traditional incentive programs such as providing rewards to each months' top earner. However, newer companies are creating specific incentives that work to get the best out of each of your sales representatives.

One of the best motivators for an employee will always be cash. It's one of the biggest reasons why many sales companies still rely on commission to pay or supplement the pay for their teams. Companies that can provide unlimited commissions can motivate individuals that are driven to earn as much as possible each workday.

However, additional incentives such as paid time off, travel on the company budget, or a meal for the family can provide temporary motivational boosts. While your team is pursuing these incentives, they'll be taking the initiative to improve their skills on their own. With enough time, study, and hard work, your sales team will improve overall for all future interactions long after the incentive expires.

7. Ask to Close the Sale

While all of the previous steps focus on listening, observing, and establishing a relationship with the customer, it's important to know when it's time to stick the landing. Not every lead operates the same way, and many require that final push to recognize that it's time to commit to the deal. Still, many sales reps will lose countless leads every month by not completing this simple step.

If you're concerned as to whether or not it's time to ask, go down this list and ask yourself if you've satisfied the lead's needs. If you made prompt contact, made the effort to follow up, explained how your company can help with their objectives, and explained the deal, they will know if they intend to purchase.

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While a “yes” answer is ideal, a “no” does not mean the deal is over. Use this opportunity to ask more follow-up questions to determine if there are any concerns left for you to alleviate. If you ultimately lose the deal, thank them for their time, and promise to check back in at a later date to see if they were able to find a better solution. You may lose out on this deal, but maintaining the relationship can sow seeds for an opportunity down the line.

Starting Turning Your Marketing Leads into Sales!

With these steps in mind, your team knows what it needs to do to improve your marketing and sales processes. You can't win every deal, but listening to your audience and investing the time in the relationship will differentiate your company, bestow value to the individual and to what you're selling, and create loyal, returning customers for long-term success.

Follow these steps with every lead, and always continue to make the effort to analyze your efforts and improve with each sales interaction.

Businesses these days are spending a lot on marketing and advertising to generate leads. It is painful to see when those leads are not converted into sales despite the best efforts from your sales team.

Here are some of the problems salespeople face. According to a survey, 48% of salespeople complain that they feel threatened by the low price competitors, and it's a big issue while closing a sale.

The average closing rate is less than 50%, even for the best salespeople.

Furthermore, the closing rate has been incessantly undergoing a sharp drop for the previous six years due to increasing competition.

So, is there a formula that the most successful salespeople across the world use to increase conversion?

It is also true that 20% of the best people close 80% of overall sales deals. Would you like to know the secret of their success? According to experts, your sales pitch plays a crucial part while closing the sale. So how should you write your sales pitch?

In this article, you'll find three essential tips and an eight-step process to write a winning sales pitch that will change the game for you forever.

A. Make It More Conversation-Oriented

Traditional sales pitches don't work anymore. You can see smart salespeople in formal suits making sales presentations. Still, the percentage of salespeople hitting their sales targets has dropped from 63% to 53% since 2015. So, it is more about meaningful conversations in the reversed situation than making pitches more like a one-way street.

It's no wonder that only 13% of executive buyers believe that salespeople genuinely understand their business issues while demonstrating a way to solve them. Most salespeople are so obsessed with their products and brands that they completely forget who they are talking to and their struggles. So, initiate conversations and discuss the problems your prospects are facing.

Reverse-engineering the sales pitch may dramatically change the game for you.

One major drawback with a traditional sales pitch is that it leaves you with just two options - a "yes" or "no." It is not aimed at building relationships. And it would help if you had a dialogue to build strong relationships rather than a monologue.

B. Reverse Engineer the Game, Put Buyers First

Now that you have moved away from pitching, you need to start a need-based conversation with the buyer. When conversations happen, you build trust and establish effective communication. Since every buyer is different in terms of personality, situation, buying capacity, and needs, you need to assess their needs first. During the sales meeting, you can discuss in detail how your product or service will meet their needs and address their pain points. It will also help you to display a need for them to buy the product.

It will also help you know whether your customer is a right-brain thinker or a left-brain thinker. The left-brain thinker thinks and decides based on logic and facts, whereas the right-brain thinker is more creative and emotional.

C. Don't Keep It Dry and Formal; Use Storytelling to Connect

Storytelling is extremely helpful in sales because it allows you to connect with your customer. It helps them relate to your brand on a personal level and gives them a reason to buy your products or services. Storytelling is scientifically proven to impact the human mind, especially the subconscious mind, and it aids in training, education, marketing, and sales.

It also helps in boosting sales as all humans perform 99% of their activities using the subconscious mind and only 1% with the conscious brain. So try to engage your buyers with storytelling as it will help you close the deal and generate revenue quickly.

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Your sales pitch is indispensable to maintaining your company's cash flow and revenues. It is imperative, therefore, to pay attention to your sales pitch and make it right.

The Eight-Step Process to Writing an Effective Sales Pitch

Here is the eight-step process to writing an effective sales pitch that you can use to improve your sales numbers:

1. Identify the Buyer Personas for Your Business

It's essential first to create detailed buyer personas for your business to write an effective sales pitch. Here is a simple way to do that:

A. Describe your offer and how it can help people or businesses solve their problems.

B. List all the features of your product and then write down the corresponding benefits. While writing benefits, you need to be highly creative. Go beyond the general benefits and think about benefits to a wide range of people and customer segments.

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C. Now brainstorm the buyer personas of the customers who are likely to buy your product. You can also dig into your CRM database and customer profiles to get deeper insights into the buyer personas you can target using your sales pitch.

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The idea is to use a different pitch for each buyer persona to make it even more effective.

2. Create Attention-Grabbing Headlines and Email Subject Lines

According to Copyblogger, 80% of people will read your headline, and only 20% will read the rest. Readers' attention span is decreasing sharply with increasing content on the web, so you need attention-grabbing headlines to hook them. The same is true for email subject lines.

With a flood of emails in users' inboxes, it becomes highly critical to choose the subject lines that can instantly attract the user. A slightly dull subject line can reduce the open rate significantly. Again defining buyer personas will be extremely helpful here as it will help you craft the headlines and email subject lines according to the interest of your audience.

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Here are a few tips for writing better headlines:

A. Use emotions in your headlines because it increases the engagement manifold. The articles with emotionally charged headlines perform better than articles with straightforward headlines.

B. Don’t keep your headlines short. A study by CoSchedule reveals that headlines between 16 and 18 words produce the most engagement.

C. Still, as mobile users are growing exponentially, it is advisable to use short and sweet headlines so people can read them on their tiny screens without being distracted by the wordiness.

D. Use power words such as “horror stories,” “never again,” “price break,” “Frenzy.” and “Frugal,” to boost conversions.

However, consistent testing of your headlines is recommended as it will help you figure out the types of headlines that grab your audience’s attention and lead to increased response.

3. Support Your Claims With Data

People love to read the data that is reliable and is backed by authentic references. According to a study by Dimension Research, 90% of respondents confirmed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions in a big way. Because online reviews are taken as proof of your claims, your pitch needs to be full of facts and stats.

Since you are making a serious claim that you can solve a problem for your buyer, it would help you support your claims with case studies, stats, survey results, and references from authentic sources.

4. Ask for Sales

In the previous points, you learned how to use a sales pitch to address your customers' pain points and tell them how your product solves their problems. You also learned how to use facts and data to support your claims. The next step is highly crucial, and most people skip that. 85% of the meeting sessions between sales guys and their prospects end up without the sales representatives ever asking for the sale and it's a considerable number.

The above stats also explain the reason why most of the sales pitches fail. Now that you have convinced your prospect that your product has excellent features and can solve their burning issues, it's time to tell them what to do next. Otherwise, it will fade away from their memory, just like a Netflix show or an Instagram post.

The call to action may include asking them to click a website link or dial a phone number to close the sale. Make sure that all your efforts may go to waste in this noisy world if you don't use a pre-decided call to action.

5. Refine Your PitchĀ

A few last-minute tweaks can completely change your pitch and make it more professional and feeling. So, run a spell check and a grammar check, look for missing information, broken sentences, and missing words and phrases.

A rushed or hastily written pitch can throw a negative impression, so polish it before clicking the “send” or “publish” button. And don’t forget to add the touch of personalization in the end as it might make it much more effective.

6. Write a Follow-up Message

Even the best pitch written by an expert will not work if you don't have a follow-up schedule. There is a 21 percent chance that your follow-up email will get answered even if your first email is not responded to. After several follow-ups, the possibility that the recipient will respond increases by up to 30%.

For sales pitch examples on how to write sales emails and follow-ups, refer to these templates.

7. Be Consistent and Systematic

Even the best pitches and follow-ups aren't going to work if you aren't consistent and lack a systematic approach. Decide how many pitches you have to send in a week and follow-ups with the clients you have already approached. If you are consistent, the conversion will keep on happening, and it will keep your business afloat.

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To be consistent, you can do the following:

1. Decide the number of pitches to be made every week.
2. Decide the number of appointments to be made every week.
3. Spend some time on improving your pitches to achieve better performance and results.

With this kind of planning, you will maintain consistency despite your busy schedule, meetings, and other obligations.

8. Keeping on Experimenting and Tweaking Your PitchĀ

Like other marketing strategies, you should keep experimenting and tweaking your sales pitch to figure out what kind of messages are most effective. It will help you write beautiful sales pitches that produce the best results.

Conclusion

With the above steps, you can consistently improve your pitching and keep on adding clients successfully. You will also be able to write your sales pitch within 10 minutes.

So before you approach your prospective customer the next time, use the tips given above and see the results for yourself.

Remember, traditional pitches are no more effective in sales because these are more about your brand, products, and features. Your customers might not be interested in who you are and what you do. They are more interested in how you can solve their problems. Keep the customers' requirements before everything else and tailor your pitch accordingly.

Contents

Introduction

1. Outsource from Reliable Vendors with a Proven Track Record
2. Discuss the Long Term Costs with Your Vendor — Both the Current Estimates and Surprise Elements If Any
3. Choose the Outsourcing Partner Based on Their Core Competence
4. Make Sure There Are No Communication Issues or Language Barriers
5. Make Sure They Can Handle Emergencies and Challenges Quickly and Efficiently
6. Have Face-to-Face Conversations When You Outsource Critical Services
7. Discuss a Clear Scope of Work
8. Communicate the Budget in as Much Detail as Possible
9. Ensure the Safety of Your Data and Intellectual Property
10. Make Sure Your Partner Uses Agile Methodologies
11. Check Their Infrastructure and Technologies
12. Make Sure Your Outsourcing Partner Provides Post Development Support
13. Outsource with a Proper Plan
14. Conclusion

There are always two options for digital marketing agencies: Set up your in-house operations or outsource your projects. Outsourcing is considered an intelligent business strategy these days. It is practiced worldwide where businesses delegate their tasks and projects to someone else for a price that is agreed upon in the contract.

It can be highly advantageous for both startups and well-established companies alike if used strategically. So it's essential to have a plan before you outsource. It allows you to focus on your core competence and helps you reduce costs. It can be a lifesaver for growing businesses struggling with their day-to-day challenges. In addition to that, it allows you to maintain operational control at the same time.

However, the common challenges include handling it properly and choosing the right outsourcing partner for your agency.

Here you will find 13 no-nonsense tips to choose the right outsourcing partner for your agency:

1. Outsource from Reliable Vendors with a Proven Track Record

Outsourcing from a novice and lesser-known company can be the biggest mistake of your life. Royal Bank of Scotland wanted to upgrade its banking system in 2012. So, it signed a contract with a lesser-known IT vendor.

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However, it proved to be a significant mistake on the part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The glitches in the software left millions of customers disgruntled as they could not access their accounts, check balances or perform even basic banking transactions. The glitch was so severe that millions of accounts lost visibility.

As a result, many customers lost faith in the bank's ability to manage their accounts and moved to other banks. It is a lesson that the Royal Bank of Scotland will never forget.

You can check customer reviews on the following review sites:

1. Google
2. G2
3. Capterra
4. Cuspera
5. CrozDesk
6. Serchen
7. SaasWorthy

Google Reviews of DashClicks

DashClicks Reviews on G2

Key Takeaway: Outsourcing has become inevitable in modern times, but it also has downsides if not handled carefully. It might ruin your branding and adversely affect your reputation and customer loyalty if your outsourcing partner cannot manage critical functions and eventually commits a grave error.

2. Discuss the Long Term Costs with Your Vendor ā Both the Current Estimates and Surprise Elements (If any)

Failure to understand the project in its entirety can be disastrous for your business. A similar payroll system outsourcing disaster happened in Queensland Health Department in Australia in 2010. The contract was awarded to IBM in 2007, and they made the same mistake when they miserably failed to estimate the long-term cost of the project.

We know that very few people can doubt the capabilities of IBM. Yet, it became the most spectacular technology failure on the planet. As estimated by IBM, the project's initial cost was AU$6 million, but soon it realized that it was far more extensive and challenging than they had initially imagined.

They announced in the middle of 2008 that the project cost was more than AU$27 million. So after several years of struggle and no success, the Queensland Health Department finally asked IBM to take its finger out. But by then, the project cost was already touching 16000% more than the original estimate.

When the application was being implemented, it led to over 35,000 payroll mistakes in the aging system. As a result, most of its 85,000 employees and healthcare professionals were either incorrectly paid or not paid at all. In addition, the minister of health had to resign because the facility was a public sector undertaking.

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Even after spending AU$1.2 billion, the software application was not working correctly. IBM failed to understand the scale of the project and proposed a cost that was too good to be true, but IBM was awarded the contract because of its global reputation. Later on, it dawned upon them that they had committed a historical blunder, and the project cost was beyond their wildest imagination.

Key Takeaway: The job of project estimation should be given to experts familiar with the destination country, the nature and size of the project, and the complications involved. Your outsourcing partner must understand the intricacies and challenges of the project, and if they don't, you should convey it to them. It's better to include surprise elements, if any. Please don't fall for the lowest quote. It may lead to disaster.

3. Choose the Outsourcing Partner Based on Their Core Competence

Apart from the Queensland debacle, IBM faced another fiasco in 2004 when JP Morgan fired them from one of their megaprojects worth $5 billion. It was a seven-year IT contract when JP Morgan suddenly changed their mind, fired IBM, and employed its own in-house IT team. But this time, it was not IBM's mistake.

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It was the wrong decision of the bank and their failure to assess their core competence that led to the disaster. It caused millions of dollars to the bank with abysmal results when they reemployed their in-house team. Choosing the right outsourcing partner is crucial to your success, especially if you don't have the core competence in a particular field.

For example, many agencies in the US have core competence in SEO or web designing, so when their clients ask them to run Google or Facebook ads for them, they approach a professional white-label agency like DashClicks and outsource these services. It saves them a lot of time, hassle, and money.

DashClicks has large teams dedicated to providing best-in-class digital marketing services such as White Label SEO, White Label PPC, White Label Facebook Ads, White Label Social Media Posting, White Label Content Marketing, and InstaSites.

Ref: White Label Reselling vs. Doing It All Yourself‍

Ref: 11 Benefits of Using White Label Digital Marketing Services

Key Takeaway: If somebody tells you that outsourcing is terrible and you should try to do everything in-house, itā€™s best to ignore their rants. The fact is: outsourcing exists for a reason, and people go for it as it helps them achieve their business goals and scale their operations, especially when they can't afford to hire expensive in-house employees.

4. Make Sure There Are No Communication Issues or Language Barriers

Hiring the wrong outsourcing partner can be pretty expensive for you. Here is a firsthand account shared by Jonathan Long, a business consultant. One of his clients outsourced SEO Services from an overseas company that agreed to sign the contract for less than $500 per month.

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When they started running the campaign, they circulated a press release. Unfortunately, its outsourcing partner mentioned in the press release that the products caused health issues. Obviously, they didn't mean to say that, but the communication issues led to misunderstanding and seriously damaged the brand.

Key Takeaway: Ensure that the SEO reseller or the white label services you hire are competent enough. To minimize communication errors, they should preferably be native English speakers or non-natives with proficiency in the English language.

5. Make Sure They Can Handle Emergencies and Challenges Quickly and Efficiently

Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic outsourced check-in and boarding software and airline booking services to Navitaire, a software development company. Software failure is the last thing airline passengers can anticipate, but it happened twice in three months, and every time, it took more than 24 hours to get back on track. As a result, many flights were canceled, and thousands of customers were thrown into panic.

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Key Takeaway: The ultimate test of your outsourcing partner's proficiency is how quickly they can fix things if an emergency strikes and shuts down operations wholly or partially.

6. Have Face-to-Face Conversations When You Outsource Critical Services

HR is a critical function in small and medium-sized companies, but they outsource it to cut costs and save time. However, its execution is much more complicated.

When a third party is assigned to recruit and manage people, there can be a massive discrepancy regarding the new hires' skill-sets, attitude, and work culture. It can be detrimental to your organization's interests and prospects.

Key Takeaway: When you decide to outsource HR functions, have face-to-face conversations with your outsourcing partner and communicate with them your exact requirements along with your Agency's vision and work culture.

7. Discuss a Clear Scope of Work

It would be best if you had a clear and well-documented scope of work before you even think of approaching an outsourcing partner. It's imperative to have a clear vision of your business goals. You must also have a crystal clear understanding of your needs and how you can meet them to achieve the desired results.

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Sometimes agencies are not able to clearly define their scope of work because of the technicalities involved. In that case, you can jot down a few questions and start answering them:

• What exactly are you looking for?
• What could be the most feasible solution for this problem?

Brainstorming these questions may help you crack the code of writing a clear scope of work given the issues faced by your organization. When you can identify the core problems, you can prepare a blueprint to solve each one of them with a minimum spend.

Outsourcing shouldn't be considered a plug-and-play type of arrangement where you can automatically anticipate the desired outcomes. The only person who knows everything about your business is you. It takes time for the 3rd person to understand your business and breed familiarity, which breaks down barriers and ensures the desired results.

Key Takeaway: Vague requirements don't work with outsourcing partners, so for the best results, try to be as specific as you can when it comes to sharing your scope of work.

8. Communicate the Budget in as Much Detail as Possible

The cost of the project is the most ignored but highly crucial part of your outsourcing contract. It impacts everything from your relationship with the vendor to the quality of services. Both these factors are critical to the success of your overall project. Don't expect to receive superior services at highly discounted prices.

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So before you discuss the precise scope of work, you should also figure out the exact amount you will invest in the project and communicate it very clearly to your outsourcing partner. If possible, make sure that it gets mentioned in the contract. Many a time, it happens that the outsourcing agencies or businesses agree to a budget in a rushed meeting, and soon, the costs start snowballing quickly due to incorrect estimates.

Key Takeaway: Don't rush when it comes to preparing and communicating the budget. You should do it very carefully and every minute detail should be taken into consideration to avoid surprises later on.

9. Ensure the Safety of Your Data and Intellectual Property

In the digital age, data security and privacy are among the two most prominent business concerns. Handling sensitive information of your customers is crucial to the survival of your business as your customers have exhibited a lot of trust in your enterprise. When you outsource business processes, you also end up sharing sensitive customer data with your vendor. Therefore, it is imperative to manage data with a high degree of safety and security and sign a nondisclosure agreement with them.

Key Takeaway: Outsource with a vendor who has the best systems, tools, and practices in place to ensure data security and intellectual property rights. They should also have a proven track record in it. If possible, hire a local service provider who can regularly conduct network and security audits at the premises of your outsourcing partner to make sure that they are taking the required precautions to ensure the safety of your client's sensitive data.

10. Make Sure Your Partner Uses Agile Methodologies

In this fast-paced business world, customer requirements and demands are changing rapidly. If you are not an agile business, you may soon lose your client base. New companies might take you over if you don't use Agile methodologies to satisfy your customers' specific and ever-changing requirements.

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Key Takeaway: To use agile methodologies, your outsourcing vendor should have a high degree of collaboration among their teams. They should have people with leadership qualities and problem solvers to understand and respond to new requirements immediately.

11. Check Their Infrastructure and Technologies

Before you finalize your contract with your outsourcing partner, try to make sure they have the infrastructure and technologies required for your project. If they are located outside your country, make sure that you visit their premises in their home country.

Key Takeaway: Unscrupulous businesses worldwide offer the best prices to win outsourcing contracts, but either they don't have sufficient infrastructure or depend on the infrastructure of others with no infrastructure of their own. The same goes for the technologies they use. So before you sign the contract, make sure they have the proper infrastructure to run your project.

12. Make Sure Your Outsourcing Partner Provides Post Development Support

Post-development support is crucial to the success of any project. There can be several things or issues after the project is completed where you might need the help of your outsourcing partner. Ensure that your outsourcing partner provides this, or else you would have to pay for it additionally and waste a lot of time and money.

Key Takeaway: To avoid hidden charges and unnecessary inconvenience related to the lack of post-development support, make sure that you read lengthy contractual agreements along with all the fine prints.

13. Outsource with a Proper Plan

Outsourcing is not a bad idea as long as you have an outsourcing plan in place. It helps you scale when you don't have sufficient infrastructure. It is also one of the most innovative strategies that a startup can implement. In the light of the above examples, you should have a proper plan before deciding to outsource so that you can avoid the apparent mistakes a startup can make.

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Ref: Exact Steps To Building, Growing & Scaling A 7-Figure Digital Marketing Agency

Conclusion

In a rapidly changing business world, where business requirements change frequently, outsourcing can boost your efficiency and allow you to focus on your core competence without losing any of your clients, thereby propelling the growth of your agency.

There are lots of companies that have scaled through outsourcing in the previous two decades. It's a long list that includes HP, Intuit, Microsoft, Apple, Citi, Procter & Gamble, Orange, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Nestle, Dell, GE, AT&T, Verizon, American Express (Amex), Facebook, Fidelity, and IBM to name a few. It is your turn now! Follow these tips and choose the right outsourcing partner for your agency's growth.

Bringing in new customers is not easy for a digital agency, startup, or eCommerce company, but generating revenue from existing customers is not a cakewalk. With such biting competition, most companies offer the same value, so it becomes crucial to differentiate your business from others.

How to Increase Revenue for Your Agency?

The trust factor has become a watchword in the business world as it decides customer loyalty for a lifetime. If you have grown your brand to the extent that people trust you blindly and can buy from you without thinking twice, you are already on the road to success.

So if you want to know how to maximize repeat business and generate more revenue from existing customers, here are 11 killer strategies you can implement.

1. Create a Loyalty Program

Do you know what happens to customers who don't feel appreciated?

They leave.

When customers feel valued, they are easier to sell to. If you want to see more repeat customers, offer a reward for choosing your brand. A loyalty program is invented for the same purpose rewarding customers for repeat purchases. Companies distribute cards or use apps to track customer purchases and rewards.

The program works on a point system, giving points to the customers each time they buy your product or services. A certain number of points is required to win a reward: a free item or a discount. The program is designed to pull the customer back to your company instead of letting them go to the competitors.

Example of a Customer Loyalty Program

Designer Shoe Warehouse (or DSW) runs a loyalty program. It uses points to reward each purchase. Customers can unlock the different tiers of rewards as they spend more.

How it works

DSW uses a seamless online system to register the points rather than any punch card. However, customers need to remember the loyalty program to make the system work. If they forget about the scheme, the scheme will no longer entice them to spend. So, DSW regularly updates their customers about the points they have accumulated and what they could earn by spending more at their store. This way, they keep their customers engaged. They also send emails occasionally to inform their customers about the status of their points. Personalization is the key to success here.

DSW conducted an email reward campaign recently, in which they shared with their customers exactly how many reward points they needed for a $10 certificate. They also updated them about other deals their customers were eligible for.

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DSW won't stop here; they go beyond reward updates and share a snapshot of customers' interactions with the brand over the past 24 months.

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DSW Email Campaign Results

It was a highly engaging and customer-centered story, which the brand used in a personalized email with rich visual elements. DSW saw the following results at the end of the campaign:

• Email open rate went up by 64%
• CTR went up by 13%
• 59% of recipients who opened the email read it for over 15 seconds

Welcoming the Returning Customer the Lucy and Yak Wayā

Lucy and Yak, a dungarees brand, has a unique customer loyalty platform that they call Yak points.ā  It's also used to encourage returning customers to their website. The imagery is used to showcase how the customers can earn points.

They use a high degree of personalization. For example, you can look at the following loyalty program example and notice the values or mood of your business.

The message says, Welcome back, Mollie, nice to see you again. You have 150 Yak points.ā  Such statements immediately invoke customer loyalty and encourage them to buy more.

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2. Unlock Growth with the Right Pricing Strategy

You can adjust the price if needed, but it should align with the market situation and competition. At times, it seems that increasing prices is one of the best ways to increase revenue, but you shouldn't do it at the cost of losing your customers or sales. You should do a market survey and see how your competitors are pricing their products to take a position about your products.

Consider increasing your prices gradually in bits rather than a sudden, sharp increase. A slight increase in prices may not sound significant, but overall, it may substantially increase the profit margins.

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3. Creatively Package Products or Services

Combining your products and services into pre-configured packages is a brilliant way to increase revenue from existing customers. It boosts the individual sales value, improving profit margins.

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Bundling of High-End Products

Treat your customer with a bundle of high-end products to entice them to switch to a better and more exclusive package.ā

A Tip for B2B Companies & Digital Marketing Agencies

You can offer retainer-based packages to eliminate common frustrations that clients face. For example, if you provide digital marketing and guest posting services, consider offering a retainer that checks and confirms that all the backlinks made through guest blogs are intact.

If any of these links are removed or the site gets penalized by Google, you will create another backlink on a site with similar domain authority for free. By doing so, your clients will trust you more and continue to use your services while boosting your cash flow.

4. Use Effective Marketing Strategies

Running data-driven marketing campaigns is another way to improve sales and boost revenue. It's a 2-step process:

1. Analyze data around consumer behavior and product preferences
2. Develop targeted data-driven campaigns for specific customer segments using ad messages and offers

You can use the following channels for marketing and promotion:

• Website
• Social media
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Remarketing (Google Ads)
• Email marketing
• Public relations
• Content marketing
• Traditional marketing through flyers, banners, billboards, newspaper ads, and word of mouth

Try Remarketing

Remarketing is a proven and highly effective way to boost conversion. Visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert on the website. Furthermore, a retargeted ad's click-through rate (CTR) is 10x higher than the CTR of a typical Google display ad. So, it would help if you also tried remarketing ads to boost conversion and generate more revenue.

5. Stay in Touch with Your Customers

There are two ways to stay in touch with your customers ā- Social media and email marketing.

Social Media

Social media pages and accounts are used to stay in touch with your fanbase. You can also use email for this purpose. Most companies have at least one social media account that updates regularly and informs and engages their customers. It's crucial to know what your audience wants from you and build a community around it.

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Newsletters

Various companies use email marketing to remind their customers about their products and services regularly.

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Mobile App

You can always stay in touch with your customers by utilizing push notifications on your mobile app. It is one of the most effective ways to remind your brand since you can convey your message, promotions, brand news, etc. directly to your customers' phones.

You can use the following channels to stay in touch with your customers:

A. Text messages

B. Phone calls

C. Video chat

D. Other Chat Apps like WhatsApp

E. Live Streams (Q&A sessions, demos, announcements)

F. Comments on online posts

G. Live Chat on your website

H. Respond to online reviews

I. Host webinars or other virtual events

6. Offer Great Customer Support

Customer support is the backbone of any business. Yet, according to the Annual Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, 89% of shoppers have stopped buying from online stores after they've experienced poor customer service.

So, make sure that you offer excellent customer service as a business. According to the same study, 86% of U.S. adults will pay more for a better customer experience.

So, better customer service will lead to enhanced client satisfaction, retention, revenue, and extended business contracts.

7. Make Their First Purchase Special

The first impression is the last, and it's essential to make an excellent first impression on the business. Here are a few ways to make a customer's first purchase a pleasant and unforgettable experience:

A. Send a welcome email

Send a welcome email as soon as the customer registers on your website. Tell them why it's beneficial to do business with you and how important your customers are for you.

B. Offer discounts and freebies

Everybody wants to be treated as someone special, and your customers are no different. So offer them a discount or a gift, so they remember you for a long time and return to you for the next purchase.

C. Mind what you say

An email should be personalized and not very formal. As an effective communication tool between you and your customer, keep it free from unnecessary jargon and practices such as "Do Not Reply" emails.

8. Find the Unmet Needs of Your Customers

In this age of ruthless competition, it's essential to figure out a product or a service that meets people's expectations.

To fill up the gap in the market and differentiate your product or service, you need to find your customers' unmet needs.

If you don't want your product to be ignored, you need to discover what your customer is looking for. Here are a few ways to identify the unmet needs of your customers to find better business opportunities.

A. Map Your Customer Journey

Identify your customers' pain points, frustrations, and struggles and create a customer journey map. It will help you visualize different processes that a customer goes through before buying a product or service.

It also lets you know the touchpoints at various stages in the process that you can use to influence their buying decision and convert them into loyal customers. By mapping a buyer's journey, you can also identify the problem areas in the process where a customer can get out of the funnel and becomes a lost opportunity.

Here is an infographic that explains the customer journey map:

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This infographic will help you know where exactly your customer is stuck and how you can fix this issue to push him to the next stage in the sales funnel.

B. Use Existing Customer Data

Getting first-hand customer data is not very difficult. You can compile the questions and concerns they raise about your product or services to get a host of valuable insights about that user. Look into their calls and chat logs, reviews, purchase history, and social media conversations using social monitoring tools. It will help you know the product features and services they must be looking for.

C. Listen to the Voice of the Customer (VoC)

Voice of the customer (VoC) is an important metric used by BPOs, call centers, and customer support departments in various companies. You can also know the VoC through surveys to get real-time feedback and insights into your customers' thoughts and feelings about your products and services. Voice of the customer. VOCtrade helps you design a better product or service, increase customer satisfaction and generate more revenue.

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D. Perform Competitive Analysis

Getting familiar with your competitors and their products and strategies will also help you stay relevant to your audiences. Your competitors will not only help you with the product ideas and market segments to target,Ā  but they will also assist you with the market trends, new features to be introduced,Ā  and new market strategies to adopt.

9. Find Opportunities for Cross-Selling or Up-Selling

You can find so many cross-selling and upselling opportunities if you are ready to do some deep thinking. Then, you can communicate these ideas to your sales teams and train them to grab such opportunities without fail.

You can run targeted upsell campaigns. Apart from that, you can also run targeted promotions to existing customers. You can find your best sellers and add their variants and complementary products to them. If any of your products are selling well, combine them with other related products.

A Complete Roadmap to Earn $10k a Month Through Upselling

Here is a video tutorial by Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, the prominent white label services. Chad presents the roadmap to earn $10K a month to digital marketing agencies in this video. He also explains how to generate sales online using proven and repeatable techniques.

You can upsell several related services to your clients, beginning with a website you can create within five minutes using InstaSites, a white-label tool offered by DashClicks. The services you can upsell to your existing clients can be SEO, paid to advertise, Facebook marketing, social media postings, directory listings, and website designing.

Source: YouTube Video Tutorial: How to Make 10k a Month: Step 5-Upselling

10. Make Your Sales Channel Appealing

Infuse some energy into your sales channel to generate enthusiasm among your audiences and offer them a reason to buy. Create attractive sales collateral using bright and vibrant colors, typography, and excellent graphics. Convey a sense of urgency through your marketing messages and incentivize your sales partners and employees to make them work passionately.

11. Give Your Customers a Reason to Come Back

You should always have proof to back up your claims about your products and services. Customers need evidence and not plain claims. This proof can be customer testimonials, reviews, case studies, experts' reviews and opinions, and endorsements by influencers and celebrities. What people say on social platforms can also be used as social proof.

Show a Demo Video

A great demo of how your product works and its features can be one of the best revenue generation strategies. Create videos for various uses of your products and services and distribute them on different social platforms.

Conclusion

Your business can potentially grow,Ā  survive or fail.Ā  A wrong step and everything can go with the wind. Apart from the above strategies, it's essential to listen to your customers' demands and feedback. Your ability to listen to your customers and interact with them will differentiate you from the crowd and help you become a successful business.

With these insights, you can easily modify your products and sales strategies.Ā  These insights will also help you revamp your processes for better quality and productivity. You can also try the latest tools such as chatbots to interact with your website visitors and address their concerns.

The perks of being an agency owner are many.

Besides giving you freedom, it also offers you satisfaction, higher income, and greater financial security. However, it would help if you tread with caution while launching your dream venture, as even minor mistakes can damage your prospects of becoming a successful agency owner. Unfortunately, most agency owners are clueless about the right blueprint to succeed.

Most people don't start, because they have fears, planted deep into their subconscious minds. And these fears are not baseless, so do your homework before you dive in. Many roadblocks down the path can deter you from achieving your goal.

Most startups fail in the first five years. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.

Here we have listed seven steps to launching your own successful digital agency:

Step #1 - Acquire Necessary Skills

Apart from the personality traits such as creativity and intelligence, you need some real experience in the field of digital marketing. Nothing can replace the real-life exposure to actual problems users face and how you can fix them as an agency. Some of these skills are:

1. Communication, negotiation, and persuasion skills
2. Keyword research, basic HTML coding, WordPress, on-page, and off-page SEO
3. Designing ads
4. Website and landing page designing
5. Report generation
6. Crafting marketing messages and brand positioning
7. Google Analytics, Facebook advertising, Google ads
8. Using tools such as UberSuggest, SEMrush, Marketo, HubSpot, and Salesforce
9. Using team management and project management tools such as Asana, Basecamp, and Toggl Plan
10. Managing clients and offering robust customer support

Step #2 - Pick a Niche and Identify Your Target Market

For a startup, targeting all the segments and industries can be a recipe for disaster. The best practice is to identify your target audience based on their niche, company size, and the type of business, such as local, SaaS-based, etc. It would help if you also designed your offering according to your customer base.

Don't try to position yourself as a full-service agency, especially in the beginning, because most agencies specialize only in one or two areas. But when they start marketing themselves as a full-service enterprise, they get trapped in the vicious cycle of mediocre services, increased churn rate, and lower pricing.

The ideal strategy should be to specialize in only one area while improving your services and brand image. Then, you can pitch your clients accordingly. You are likely to attract more clients when you pitch as an expert in a particular field.

How Microsoft Diversified Its Products and Services Range?

Microsoft started as a software company and made an operating system DOS for IBM personal computers in 1981. Later on, it launched the popular Windows software with a visual interface in 1983.

When the Internet became popular in 1995, it launched the web browser "Internet Explorer" to dominate the still unchartered territory. Then, in 2001, it launched the Xbox gaming console. Now, Microsoft's primary business is not Windows OS but its "cloud" computing services.

Create Your Customers' Buyer Personas

It's crucial to determine the buyer persona of your target audience before you announce your service offerings. You should try to find the exact answers to these questions to build your customer avatars.

• What factors or things motivate them?
• What puts them off?
• What are their business objectives?
• What issues and challenges are they struggling with?
• If it seems difficult for you to answer these questions, ask them to fill out a survey in exchange for a small gift offer.

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Step #3 - Focus On Getting New Clients

According to a survey conducted through HARO (Help a Reporter Out) by Blair Nicole at Media Moguls PR, getting and retaining clients is the biggest issue facing digital marketing agencies. Even if you are the best PR person or marketer in town, your agency will cease to exist if you fail to sign up new clients.

Here are some proven ways you can try to attract new clients:

A. Get Testimonials

If you are a beginner, you can focus your attention on getting as many testimonials as possible. If you don't get it naturally from your existing clients, you can offer someone to work for free, and they would likely return the favor by giving you positive feedback.

B. Offer Free Advice and Position Yourself as an Expert

The best way to establish yourself as an authority in any subject and create awareness about your agency is to offer free advice. It's a proven technique many startup owners have successfully tried. So what is the best way to market yourself as an expert and gain an edge over your competition? You can try channels such as Quora, Reddit, Facebook groups, live events, and forums to answer people's queries and offer tips and advice.

C. Target Startups

You can visit Crunchbase or Angel and find the startups that are in the incubation period or the initial stages of their operations. Then, you can prepare a report of the loopholes in the marketing strategy. The report should be comprehensive and also include possible solutions to fix the issues.

D. Try Aggressive Cold Outreach

You should do your outreach aggressively for quick results. You shouldnā€™t restrict yourself to email marketing as the email "open rate" is relatively low.

The best way to ensure that your message reaches the right person is to visit their website, find their contact details, and straightaway fix an appointment to discuss what you can do to boost their brand and increase their revenue.

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STEP #4 - Invest in Content Marketing

Content marketing can change the game for your agency. The website conversion rate for agencies implementing content marketing is almost six times higher than that of agencies. Still, it costs about 62% less than outbound marketing. Content is also considered the most effective strategy for SEO and organic rankings. In addition, content marketing is understood to produce three times as many leads as advertising.

Furthermore, it has a compounding effect because it's already there on your website, consistently attracting leads for your funnel, unlike paid advertising which shuts down its lead generation engine as soon as you stop making payments.

After the disruptive innovation of Internet-based business solutions, branded content is considered even more effective than traditional modes of advertising such as radio, TV, magazines, direct mailers, or PR.

In this scenario, investment in content marketing becomes essential for marketers.

Here are some helpful content marketing tips digital agencies can follow to succeed in this competitive space:

1. Treat content as an essential tool for the conversion
2. Set the processes for producing quality content
3. Create relevant content and lead magnets
4. Focus on quality than quantity
5. Try content repurposing

A. Create Content According to the Marketing Funnel

To create a 7-figure digital marketing agency, you must know how to create content according to the content marketing funnel:

What is a Content Marketing Funnel?

A content marketing funnel is a system that helps you attract fresh leads to your business through a variety of content. These leads are then nurtured and passed through different funnel stages to convert them into paying customers eventually. It is achieved by progressively "funneling" them through specific, personalized, and product-focused content. The objective is to push the reader to the next stage of the funnel.

Various marketers split the content marketing funnel into four to six parts, but there are mainly three stages that you can consider:

• Top of the Funnel (ToFu)

The content for this stage focuses on increasing brand awareness and boosting website traffic. Therefore, toFu content should be attention-grabbing.

• Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The content created for this stage focuses on the generation and nurturing of leads. Therefore, MOFU content is primarily educational.

• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)

The content created for this stage of the funnel focuses on conversion and purchase. BOFU content is personalized and decisive.

B. Try Content Repurposing

Take your best content and convert it into a video or a podcast or vice versa. In addition, you can take your content to an entirely new audience by repurposing your content. Here are the different ways to repurpose your content:

Smart Ways to Repurpose Content

Many subject matter experts, influencers, and YouTubers conduct interviews with other experts in their field through video conferencing to attract new audiences to their YouTube channels. It also imparts value to their existing viewers.

Here are a few tips for repurposing content:

A. You can conduct interviews with experts in your field. Then, you can use their tips to create a ā€�tipsā€¯ or ā€�how toā€¯ article and can even make an ā€�expert advice ebook.ā€¯

B. You can also conduct a webinar and convert it into a podcast using a free video converter. A webinar can also be converted into a video tutorial with ease using a video editing tool such as iMovie or VideoPad.

C. You can share your agencyā€™s internal data and campaign stats and create impactful case studies out of it.

So, here are three possibilities for content repurposing that you can try.

1. Interviews => Tips & Expert Advice Ebook
2. Webinars => Video Tutorials
3. Internal Data & Campaign Stats => Case Studies

So, you can try the following possibilities and repurpose the content from long-form to short-form and visual content and vice versa.

If you are successfully implementing content marketing, you will:

1. Invest a minimal amount in paid ads
2. Increase organic search traffic through quality content written for the audiences
3. Create buzz and increase brand awareness
4. Get higher conversion rates

C. Boost Your Content Creation Capacity

As a digital agency, you should try to produce more and more evergreen content once you get a few clients in hand. The best example of evergreen content is Wikipedia, and you can take inspiration from some of the topics on this online encyclopedia.

However, a topic such as "The best strategies to create backlinks in 2021" is not evergreen content as nobody would like to read this content once 2021 is over. Wikipedia attracts more than two million visitors every month because of its evergreen content. Your content should have the following features to drive significant results from your evergreen content:

1. It should be comprehensive and long-form
2. It should be educational
3. It should address the pain points of your audience
4. It should add value to the lives of the readers
5. It should contain long-tail and intent-based keywords
6. It should be correctly formatted
7. It should contain visual elements and graphics
8. It should list the key takeaways

You can use the following tools to check the quality standards of the popular content for your chosen keywords.

• BuzzSumo
• Ahrefs
• Ubersuggest
• SEMrush
• Exploding Topics

Your post should stand out, so it doesn't go unnoticed in the pile of 2.5 million blog posts being published online every day. It would help if you focused on quality, frequency, and comprehensiveness while creating content. Also, make sure your content is visually appealing.

Key Takeaway: Ā To differentiate your blog post from the flood of posts published on the web every day, you should find a unique angle.

You can follow these tips to find a unique angle:

1. Check out other blogs:
2. Use Google search and tools like BuzzSumo to find the top-ranking posts in your niche and add something of your own to this content.
3. Use skyscraper technique to create longer content with helpful screenshots
4. Add up-to-date info
5. Add your research and insights
6. Cover the topic from a different angle

D. Expand Existing Content

Google loves fresh content, and it brings lots of opportunities to the table for marketers. For example, you can expand the existing content, explain it with examples and stats, and add new tips and tricks.

Use a tool like Clickflow to find your decently performing posts in organic search, which have partially lost traffic. It provides you the Content Decay report with a ranked list of pages you need to update to win back traffic quickly. Update the content in these posts using different methods discussed above, and you'll see a sudden rise in traffic.

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Apart from a boost in organic rankings and traffic, updating content has the following benefits:

• Increase your click-through rate (CTR)
• Fix issues in the existing content
• Tell Google that you have fresh content
• Add fresh context
• Replace broken links
• Update stats and facts with the latest info and resources

E. Follow Influencers

Another way to find out the content gaining traction from social media audiences is to follow influencers. There are hundreds of thousands of influencers, and you can divide them into four major categories viz. nano, micro, macro, and mega influencers. These can be defined as follows:

1. Mega Influencers: More than 1 million followers
2. Macro Influencers: 100,000 to 1 million followers
3. Micro-Influencers: 10,000 to 100,000 followers
4. Nano Influencers: Less than 10,000 followers

The different tools you can use to find these influencers are Followerwonk, Awario, Klear, etc.

Key Takeaway: See the posts generating conversations and use these topics and ideas for your next blog post. Once you publish your post, inform the particular influencer that your blog post is inspired by one of their social media posts, and they will likely share it from their social handle.

Further reading:

• 11-Point Content Marketing Checklist Proven to Boost Your Engagement
• Startup Marketing: Your Ultimate Strategy For Incredible Growth
• How to Grow and Scale Your Digital Marketing Agency in 2021
• The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing
• 8 Game-Changing Benefits of Content Marketing

STEP #5 - Scale Your Agency by Delivering Results

Now that you have successfully launched your agency, the next step is to scale it upNow that you have successfully launched your agency and created a compelling launching page, the next step is to scale it up.

A. Choose a Model

You need a business model first to scale successfully and deliver results as a 7-figure digital marketing agency. Without a predefined model, you will not have a clear strategy and specific goals in front of you. Instead, you can choose your niche and define your income goals while selecting a business model.

B. Put Processes and Systems in Place

It's essential to have proper internal processes and Systems to create a 7 figure and digital marketing agency, These processes start with hiring experts, trainees, and freelancers and onboarding newĀ clients.

Setting up processes is a tedious job, but once these processes are in place, they would help you to increase your efficiency as an agency. Document everything that you learn, plan, systematize, and automate. If you have proper processes in place, you will not have to spend too much time onboarding a new hire for a client. A few white-label platforms also offer automatic onboarding.

Since most onboarding tasks and communications are predefined and planned, these automation tools reduce your Headache as they take care of all the information you need. It also brings consistency which is highly appreciated and expected by your client.

You can use project plan templates and use them in your campaigns.

However, in the absence of proper processes, your team members may change the processes as per their whims and fancy. Moreover, it might annoy your customers as they want more transparency, consistency, and accuracy.

If you have standard processes in place, it will help an employee efficiently perform the job for another employee on emergency leave. It will also allow you to step away from the business when you go out of town or need a break.

Key Takeaway: Better processes and excellent customer support reduce client churn rate.

C. Grow Your Team

It is essential to hire experts and interns Whose wavelength is in sync with your agency's objectives, vision, and work culture. So, their personalities, attitude, and work ethic should match with your agency's work culture. If they are not ready to put in extra efforts to turn your agency into a revenue generation machine, don't keep them. Instead, design your compensation and bonuses based on an individual's performance and contribution to your agency's growth.

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D. Find and Nurture the Right People

The biggest mistake agency owners make is mistreating their best employees. They are forced to work long hours while their underperforming counterparts work as they want. If you want to create a 7 figure agency, make your best employees feel valued and respected. When hiring employees, you should select them based on the following characteristics:

1. Problem-solving skills
2. Integrity and honesty
3. Focus on excellence and quality
4. Persistence
5. Empathy toward clients

STEP #6 - Collaborate with Others

To become a 7-figure digital marketing agency, you must collaborate with others. Since you can't operate as an island, it is crucial to have channel partners.

A. Find Channel Partners and Other Agencies

A successful digital marketing agency works with many channel partners, agencies, and content providers. For example, web designing is a part of digital marketing services. Therefore, it is recommended that you collaborate with competitive web designing companies to design websites for your clients. In addition, it will decrease your dependency on full-time web designers on board to finish things in time.

B. Collaborate with Influencers

It is also imperative to collaborate with influencers as they help you to present your content in front of new audiences. They also help you in conversion by introducing your product or service from their social handles. Influencers can also increase your website traffic dramatically and send you high-quality traffic. It will save you enormous time and money spent on paid advertising.

C. Collaborate with White-Label Agencies

You can also leverage technology and use white label tools to your advantage. For example, you can use DashClicks' white-label platform and InstaSites to create hundreds of professional-grade websites within a matter of seconds. InstaSite is a tool that helps you build hundreds of niche-based websites for your clients in less than a minute. All you need to do is choose a template based on your niche, enter your clients' basic details, and press the submit button. The idea is to save time and scale your agency. Here is an example of a content-ready website created by InstaSites.

Step #7 - Leverage Tools

As a successful agency, you can build your tools and offer them to your clients for free. Therefore, it can be an excellent strategy to create backlinks and attract traffic. Apart from that, it would also help you in creating brand awareness.

A. Build Tools

As a digital marketing agency, you can build an SEO, plagiarism detection, or backlink tool and offer it free of cost on your website. Successful marketers such as Neil Patel have done it earlier with keyword research tools such as UberSuggest.

B. Use Tools to Automate Processes

Similarly, you can use tools to automate processes such as Kissflow Process. You can also use a white label dashboard to manage everything about your campaign from a single dashboard.

C. Use Tools to Save Time and Add Value

It will save a lot of time and hassle for you. For example, to generate digital marketing reports for your clients, you can use a white label tool InstaReports. It will create beautiful-looking reports with lots of data and insights. Usually, in-house employees procrastinate when they need to generate a report, mainly because it’s pretty monotonous and boring. InstaReports can generate professional reports with minimal effort.

Other Growth Strategies

Mergers and acquisitions are among the other most popular growth strategies which numerous agencies use to their advantage. You can acquire a struggling agency and turn it into a successful business, and it will become an extra source of income for you. Apart from that, you can start free coaching programs for working professionals, arrange workshops, and participate in sponsored events.

You can also try affiliate marketing to become a 7-figure digital marketing agency. Hire interns and train them to do repetitive and time-consuming tasks. It has advantageous for both parties. Fresh employees get a break in the digital marketing industry and learn the cutting edge practices, while you can cut the human resource cost and still manage to get the same results.

Conclusion

The strategies and tactics discussed above will provide you with a blueprint to turn your struggling agency into a 7-figure digital marketing agency. It is essential to create standard processes to get an edge over your competition and improve your workflow.

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Customer support is also a necessary part of agency growth, and it should be on top of your list to keep your customers happy.

You should also invest in training your employees. It will pay off tremendously in the long run. Conduct workshops and training programs periodically for your employees, and you will see an unexpected growth in productivity and performance. If you make your employees feel valued, they will give their best to help you become a multi-million dollar agency.

Using white label services allows digital marketing agencies to build revenue potential and expand their business. White label agencies such as DashClicks also provide you with platforms such as InstaSites and InstaReports to help you build niche-specific websites and generate exhaustive reports for clients. They save your time and help establish your agency as a reputed, professional brand.

White label service providers are one-stop shops that offer the resources and expertise needed to boost customer loyalty, client retention, and brand reputation all of which help attract new clients.

Many solopreneurs and owners of small agencies find it challenging to deal with numerous in-house specialists or freelancers. Hiring these specialists can be exorbitantly expensive. For instance, you are a reputed web design and development company. Your clients will eventually ask for additional services such as PPC, social media marketing, PR, or SEO, along with your core services. If you don't have trained professionals on board, you may lose such contracts and clients.

So is there a way for digital marketing agencies to scale their operations without compromising service quality?

Yes, of course!

Hire white label services.

Table of Contents

• What are White Label Digital Marketing Services?
• Why Use White Label Digital Marketing Services?
• What is DashClicks InstaReports Tool?
• Conclusion

What are White Label Digital Marketing Services?

A white label digital marketing agency usually provides a set of services like SEO, Content Marketing, Google Ads, or Facebook Ads that you can rebrand using your logo/name and resell to your clients as your own for a premium fee. Hiring white label services support your digital marketing agency, SEO company, or consultancy and allow them to get a skilled workforce.

So, you can accept additional service requests from your clients and add fresh revenue streams without having to hire new in-house employees. Meanwhile, you will also use the white label platforms and tools to generate explanatory reports loaded with data to impress your clients. They allow you to sell in your name services that you did not work on.

For example, agency A hires agency B to manage its clients' projects. Though the services will be delivered under agency A's brand name, all three parties benefit. Agency A gets the freedom to scale and focus on its core competence, and agency B gets more business based on its strengths. Meanwhile, the client achieves the targeted results in terms of traffic, conversion, and ROI.

Most agencies hire white label digital marketing services to manage specific client projects primarily because of capacity issues. Usually, full-service marketing agencies specialize in just one or two services. In some cases, their employees are overtasked. Most others don't have in-house experts to provide the many services that clients may need, such as social media marketing, SEO, and content writing.

A white label service provider bills the agency and not the client. Agencies usually inflate their rates to make a profit.

If you like this business model and think that it can be ideal for you, please take a moment to check out our white-label fulfillment services.

Why Use White Label Digital Marketing Services?

When you expand your business and clients start trusting you, they would eventually ask you to deliver additional services. Your agency may or may not specialize in those particular services, but you can't say no to an important client. Using white label digital marketing services allows you to say yesā  to projects from big enterprises and add high-ticket clients without having to invest in resources, training, or infrastructure.

Furthermore, white-label reports will also help you keep your clients satisfied and happy. If you want to position yourself as a full-service agency, white labeling is the best option for you. It can be game-changing for your business. Here's how:

1. Position Your Agency as a One-Stop Solution

Positioning yourself as a full-service agency is a good business strategy to attract new clients and retain the existing ones. However, you may face several bottlenecks and implementation issues along the way. Not every business can afford to hire an army of specialists such as copywriters, digital designers, developers, SEO and PPC specialists, social media marketers, PR specialists, and videographers. Therefore, they struggle with handling and fulfilling the diverse needs of their clients.

Using white label digital marketing services allows you to position yourself as a one-stop-shop that provides a broad spectrum of specialized services such as:

• Facebook Ads
• SEO
• Website design
• Funnel building
• Social media posting
• Content marketing
• Google Ads
• Directory listings

2. Free Time to Focus on Your Core Competency and Prospecting

When employees are overtasked, they work outside their core competencies resulting in frequent delays, wastage of time, and work dissatisfaction. It brings down productivity and employee morale.

White labeling additional services will save you from unnecessary hassles and allow you to focus on the jobs that your agency does best. It results in quality work, a happy workforce, satisfied clients, and renewed contracts.

3. Run Effective Marketing Campaigns

White labeling allows you to get more mileage from your campaigns. Did your in-house content team create an excellent piece of content? You can use the digital PR resources of a white label agency to promote it aggressively.

Using white labeling SEO services will give your content the push to rank on top in organic search. This sudden jump in ranking will lead to noticeably enhanced traffic, improved results, and conversion rates.

According to a HubSpot report, 59% of marketers said that inbound methods led to their sales teams' highest quality leads.

If your website is optimized for high intent and popular search keywords, it will attract high volumes of traffic and quality leads.

4. Keep Costs Down

According to indeed.com, in the U.S., the average annual base salaries of an SEO specialist, a digital marketing specialist, a copywriter, and a content strategist are $51,929, $56,070, $58,796, $75,641, respectively. It shows that hiring full-time digital marketing professionals is expensive. Hiring a team of six professionals could shoot up your company expenses significantly.

White labeling digital marketing services can help you scale as needed; they will provide you services without you having to hire or maintain an in-house staff. It will reduce costs and expand your abilities, allowing you to upsell existing clients and increase your revenue quickly.

5. Leverage the Incredible Power of Social Media

Social media is a highly effective marketing tool. It enables you to create brand awareness, increase engagement, educate consumers, run campaigns, and boost conversions. It makes a perfect use case for white labeling.

Just scheduling social media posts will not get you more followers, high-level engagement, or ROI. You should try social listening. It will help you measure brand sentiment, solicit social conversations and brand mentions on all major platforms. However, you can't easily find social monitoring experts, and social listening tools are prohibitively expensive.

White label agencies have skilled resources and premium access to costly tools that enable you to leverage social media to achieve your business goals. White labeling will also help you save time and money spent on hiring, training, buying tools, and doing research.

6. Keep Up with Algorithm Changes

Social media platforms keep changing their algorithms to provide optimal user experience and reduce misinformation. But it makes things difficult for marketers as organic feeds can completely disappear after such updates are rolled out.

To address this, experts at white label agencies craft strategies according to the changes in algorithms. They supplement organic content with paid advertising to reclaim the lost organic reach. They work to offset the apparent impact of such algorithm updates often shown in social media analytics reports.

White label agencies have dedicated resources to research algorithm changes and update tactics accordingly. It can free you from the heavy lifting of reverse-engineering a social platform's latest whims and fancies. The result? No more sleepless nights every time Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn changes their algorithms that might impact the visibility of your posts.

7. Assess Social Media Strategy and Campaigns

A white label agency is not just an extension of your team; it is also a reliable, accountable partner in progress. It will offer you valuable consultations on marketing campaigns and help you tweak them as per client needs and expectations.

Suppose your team has created effective messaging to support your campaign and stunning graphics to engage audiences. Your white label partner will guide you on the right tone, language, or imagery to increase your campaign's impact. It will also suggest the right hashtags to increase your visibility and the best story angles you can try for different audiences.

8. Manage SEO

SEO is getting increasingly complicated because of the sweeping changes in search engine algorithms. Your mistakes may cost you big if you don't address them in time. To succeed, you need to implement various strategies such as:

• On-page SEO
• Technical SEO
• Local SEO
• Schema markup
• Google rich results

Impact of SEO on your business

With more than 3.5 billion searches, businesses get infinite opportunities every single day. So, a website that's ranking on search engines can have a tremendous impact on a business.

With thousands of visitors, you can achieve a reasonable conversion rate if you offer a good user experience on the site. More traffic means more leads, conversion, and local traffic, which accounts for a significant chunk of sales for local businesses.

A white label agency has trained SEO experts to help your website rank on popular keywords to generate revenue from the incoming traffic. If you can attract a high traffic volume, you don't need a sales team.

9. Get Access to Premium SEO Tools

The key to SEO success is your ability to leverage premium SEO tools to target high-value keywords and optimize your website to attract targeted traffic. There are many SEO tools, but most are unaffordable for creative agencies.

Since white label agencies serve many businesses and clients, they have the trained experts and premium access to these tools. If you go for the paid subscription for these SEO tools, you might end up paying over $10,000 per year only on the software. However, with white label agencies, you get to access the best SEO tools and save over $10,000 per year that you'd have otherwise spent on buying premium accounts.

10. Use White Label Reports

You can download the SEO audit report using a tool, but explaining its technical intricacies to your client can be difficult. A white label agency has trained professionals who understand data and can identify trends. A partnership with a white label SEO agency will help you explain the complex reports.

DashClicks InstaReports provides data-driven, informative, and easy-to-understand SEO reports that you can share with your clients to help them update their strategy. These reports are comprehensive and answer every question your client may ask. They also provide in-depth analysis on how to improve a campaign.

11. Implement Effective Content Marketing

Effective content marketing hinges around fresh content that offers value. When you resell white label content, two teams are involved in its creation, curation, and promotion, ensuring optimal quality, timely delivery, and impressive marketing.

For example, you and your white label agency work on a killer case study to boost traffic and conversions on a client's website. Once it is ready, all three parties, i.e., you, the client, and the white label agency, will promote it to achieve your respective objectives since you all have a stake in it.

What is DashClicks InstaReports Tool?

DashClicks InstaReports offer a comprehensive overview of your business and marketing. They showcase the most significant pain points of your customers and highlight gaps in your strategies. Your clients can use these reports to find relatable solutions.

Hundreds of digital and PR marketing agencies have partnered with us. They use our white-label platforms to gain traction and achieve noticeable results for their clients.

You can generate the following types of reports using the DashClicks automated reporting system.

• Business details
• Overall scores
• Listings
• Reviews
• Social
• Website
• SEO
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads

If you want to look at a sample report that the InstaReports software generates within seconds, click here.

Conclusion

59% of businesses cite cost-cutting as a significant reason for outsourcing or white labeling. This and the many other benefits of white labeling will continue to drive this business in the future. White labeling is on the rise across the globe, and for a good reason. If you haven't used it yet, it's time you did. DashClicks offers all these advantages and resources like DashClicks InstaReports to keep your clients happy. Visit our website today to know more.