Tips for Starting and Running a Digital Marketing Agency in 2022

Keeping in mind we are living in a world so integrated with digital technology it shouldn’t come off as a huge surprise digital marketing makes an incredibly lucrative playing ground for aspiring entrepreneurs and marketing professionals.

To illustrate the point, the recent research says that, at the moment, the industry sits at $455.3 billion spent on digital advertising while this number is expected to grow to $645.8 billion by the year 2024.

So, the circumstances for starting your own gig are more than favorable. However, as many before you learned the hard way, a good position doesn’t always translate to success. Let us take a look then at a couple of proven strategies that will help you leverage the current growth of the digital marketing industry and set your future company for success.

Find your own niche and master it

You know the old saying – Jack of all trades is a master of none. Well, the digital marketing industry pays for the expertise, and trying to compete with much larger and more established competitors by fighting on all fronts can only bring your company to an untimely end. What you do instead is to find a niche where you excel and see how far you can push your skillset. A higher level of proficiency will give you access to higher-paying clients and as the money starts coming in you can consider branching out to other areas.

Try being a contractor before becoming an owner

This transitional period will help you assess where you’re at in the labor market and strike out without assuming too much risk. In this time, you will be forced to master the art of time management, build relationships within the industry, and build the skill of ascertaining how much you can charge for specific services. Most importantly, you will be able to sharpen your professional and earn volumes of real-life experience you will be able to leverage once you finally start your own gig.

Secure stable cash flow

Your goal is to be able to cover the operational costs of your company at any given time, regardless of the current market situation. You can take care of it by doing two things. First, write down a detailed business plan that will optimize the expenses of your company and outline the month-to-month financing. The second move is to reach out to companies providing trade finance services and have a plan in check for the times when you are not able to cover the expenses or charge the pending invoices in time.

Develop an appropriate business model

Depending on the area you choose to start with setting up a viable pricing model can be tricky since hard work doesn’t always translate to fair payment. So, although a flat retainer may seem like the simplest way to go, you should strongly consider other charging methods:

• Commission-based – You get paid when a client makes the money of the sale.
• Percentage of spend – Tying your prices to the client’s marketing budget
• Hourly – Charge your services on an hourly basis

All these methods have their distinct pros and cons so you can try starting out with a flat retainer and implementing other strategies depending on the type of the project.

Set clear and measurable goals

Starting out your own company implies you have some goal in mind, no matter whether we are talking about profits, prestige, higher business value, or autonomy. If you want to succeed in any of them you need to break these general ideas into precise, measurable, time-limited, and attainable steps you will use to push your company further. Even if these milestones are as modest as getting one new client per month they are a much better roadmap than having no concrete objectives ahead of you whatsoever.

Make your company scalable

The goal of every business is to use favorable market conditions and expand. However, if you don’t have a plan in check for such instances, you are going to experience a lot of growing pain. So, be sure to have an idea of how, when, and under which circumstances your company is going to branch out. With that in mind, using the subscription-based cloud tools and leveraging outsourced labor will give you more freedom to adapt to the current market situation and quickly expand without rebuilding infrastructure.

We hope these few tips will give you a general idea about the strategies you can implement to make your digital marketing agency successful and competitive. The digital marketing industry is expected to experience considerable growth in the following years but all these things will mean very little if your company is not set up to deal with its trials and tribulations. This task will be very difficult, but you at least know where to start.