Go From Service Provider to Agency: How to Scale Your Marketing Business
Being a lone service provider is fine in the beginning, but to really scale and grow your marketing business to the next level that will allow you to hit big financial goals and actually spend less time in the weeds, you have to scale to an agency. This means you outsource many of the services through your team that you were previously doing yourself. As you hire team members who specialize in certain services, you can even expand your business offering to market to a larger audience.
But first, there are critical action steps to take before growing to that next level. Keep reading as we dive into how to scale your marketing business to go from service provider to agency!
Before You Scale Your Business
Before you start to scale, there are a couple of things you need to be crystal clear about; one of those things being what your end goal is. This is going to help you calculate how much money you need to make, which sets off a domino effect of other factors and actions that need to be taken to get there. There are a couple of end goals you might set for yourself as a benchmark so you can reach them in phases. For example you might have your first goal as “replace income from full-time job,” then it would be “grow to $X with 40% profit margins.” Knowing your end goal (no matter which benchmark) is critical because it defines your price point, your client capacity, when you can hire, what to offer and so much more.
KNOW WHAT BRINGS HAPPINESS OUTSIDE OF WORK
All too often, we can get lost in our work and lose touch of the things outside of our business that bring us joy. It’s important to take the time to connect back to those things, and to do it often. The quickest way we see so many service providers become discouraged or reevaluating their business as a whole is because they’ve allowed themselves to be completely immersed in their business without making time regularly in their schedules to participate in the things that make them happy. The only way for you to show up in your zone of genius is to serve yourself holistically!
Should You Hire or Land More Clients?
More often than not, the actual first steps to scaling for many service providers is to land more clients instead of hiring. However, that does mean that there are quite a few steps to take to be able to land more clients. After all, one of the biggest reasons you likely want to scale is to free up some of your capacity to focus on other things. With that said, there is another way to do that which doesn’t involve hiring quite yet: raising your prices. Now, we know this conversation causes many service providers to run away with their tail tucked between their legs, but if your gut reaction is that raising your prices isn’t an option, it should be because you’re already charging a premium price, not because you’re afraid.
RAISING YOUR PRICES CONFIDENTLY
We also find that a lot of business owners feel doubtful when it comes to raising their prices. You might be telling yourself stories about how your current clients won’t stay with you if you increase your prices or that landing a new client at that rate is going to be impossible. That’s just not true– in fact, we have an Incubator client who experienced a $60k increase in 6 weeks from already-existing contracts that she simply raised the prices on. Raising your prices doesn’t have to be scary, and we designed a whole calculator in the Incubator that takes into account your capacity and your financial goals to let you know what your price should be.
DECREASING THE TIME IT TAKES TO DO YOUR WORK
It isn’t all about raising your prices; you also need to lessen the amount of time it takes to do your work and narrow down on scope. We can absolutely guarantee that you’re over-delivering, and not in a great-client-experience way but rather a working-for-free way. There are two ways you can do this, the first one being to take things out of your offer. Seriously. When’s the last time you did an offer audit? What’s the bare minimum you can include in your offer to still get clients the same results in less time? Lay it all out and remove the extra fluff that’s only there to make the offer look better.
Next, you can take a look at the systems and automations that you can put in place that will actually free up your time. For example, sales, onboarding, client welcome, etc are all processes that you can create automations for. With those automated systems in place, you’ll find yourself with more time and headspace to put back into client work. In fact, this is what you need to do anyways if you’re even considering building a team, which is what we’ll dive into next.
How to Build a Team that Allows You to Scale
So, we just mentioned how important systems and structure are to nail down before you consider hiring your first team member. We want to help you align the goals and values of your business with the systems you put in place. Our approach is all about how to create structure while taking into account the messiness of life, clients, and running a marketing business.
OPTIMIZING SYSTEMS FOR YOUR CLIENTS’ INPUT
As a marketing business, you often rely on the client’s contribution and feedback before you can move on to the next step. This also means that you’re likely spending lots of your time chasing clients down. If you don’t have systems or structures in place, everything will be stalled and slowed down, and your processes won’t be replicable for every client. As a result, the elements that enable you to deliver a productized service will get stuck at this point, plus it won’t be as easy to create SOPs for your team members to follow. Consider setting up calls often to walk through the things that you’ll need approval on, sending forms with automated reminder emails, hopping on a quick phone call, etc.
HOW TO HIRE FOR ATTITUDE
If your company's values and priorities are set, it guides your decision in the hiring process and informs how you delegate and train. Many small businesses make the mistake of hiring primarily for skill. While there will always be positions that require skill above all else, there are so many other positions in your company where skills can be learned on the job. If a candidate has the right attitude, they are going to thrive.
However, hiring for attitude is by no means a window of opportunity for discrimination. We are likely to be drawn to people who are most like us, but keep in mind that this will not add value to your business. Ultimately, the trick when hiring is to hire according to your company’s values, paired with skill. What we look for in candidates is their attitude around flexibility and adapting to change. Companies tend to grow and evolve over time, and we need employees that can keep up at all stages of our business.
HIRING ACCORDING TO YOUR PRIORITIES
Once you’ve identified your priorities, hire for them! We want you to be empowered by what your team can ultimately bring to the table. Having a team allows you to be more intentional about your company’s specific goals and, although it’s normal for company values to reflect personal values, you can get really clear on your business’ priorities and personality with a team. As a marketing agency, you might think of hiring a copywriter, designer or social media coordinator to add to your team. That way your new hire will be working on actual deliverables, taking that workload off of you and giving you the capacity to bring on more clients, which may be a priority for your business personally.
DESIGNING A WELL-INTEGRATED EMPLOYEE SYSTEM
When hiring for service excellence (i.e. understanding your ideal client by knowing what your business does and does not do well), ask yourself two critical questions:
What makes employees reasonably able to achieve the excellence you've defined?
What makes them reasonably motivated to achieve that excellence?
Identifying these two factors will enable you to design a well-integrated employee system and define your company values, policies, and programs. In fact, if this isn’t incorporated into your employee system, you’ll struggle to deliver service excellence.
Another important piece is to reflect on any unnecessary urgency you’re placing on your team. By creating a structure that eliminates, or at least diminishes, the number of “emergency clients,” you’re actively preventing burnout on your team because no one is required to be the hero. Remember that it is possible to be both service-minded and lighthearted.
You Don’t Need to Scale Alone
There’s so much we have to say in regards to scaling that we couldn’t fit into just one blog post, which is why we created the Incubator to be able to share all about creating a High-Touch Signature Service™ by refining your offer and raising prices, streamlining your work week, automating with systems, becoming an ethical leader, and much more. You’ll have 12 months of access to all of the lessons, personalized critiques, weekly coaching, and one-on-one milestone calls. All you have to do to get started is take about 10 minutes to complete an application here.
There’s no commitment involved with your application. Just simply let us know you submitted on Instagram @bossproject so we can be sure to bump you to the top of the queue and get the conversation started ASAP!
