How to market your marketing agency

Being in the marketing industry, you already know the importance of branding and promotion. Unfortunately, you don't always have time to invest in your own marketing, seeing how you're spending so much time focusing on your clients.

That's how you slowly start to lose relevancy and get fewer and fewer potential clients reaching out. In order to avoid this, you need to continually work on your agency's marketing strategy.

In this article, we'll explain how to do it effectively so that you gain more qualified leads, scale your business and increase your revenue.

We'll cover:

• Choosing the right social media platforms
• Starting a podcast
• Developing case studies
• Focusing on in-person networking
• Positioning yourself as an industry expert
• Best practices to get clients

How to promote a marketing agency

The first thing you need to do is think of yourself as one of your clients. Do exactly what you would do for a client:

• create goals
• understand your target audience
• think about which social channels you'll use
• prepare a content plan
• think about paid aids
• create a plan for offline marketing efforts

If you've been running a digital marketing agency for a while, you've probably already done something similar to this in the beginning. However, it would help if you kept optimizing your marketing efforts with the changes in the market.

A great way to do that is by making a new SWOT analysis every few years. You need to be on top of the marketing trends, as well as your place in the local or global market.

If newer marketing agencies like Tiddle are focusing on newer technologies like TikTok, virtual reality and such from the start, and you don't have the time to learn about them and include them in your existing process, you'll soon be seen as an old-school agency.

We know how hard it can be to implement changes once you have multiple clients and a company blog and networking events. However, you need to change with the times and create new types of content.

If you specifically decide not to use new technologies, you need to use that as a positive in your branding. You should explain why you're the best pick even if you're not engaging in specific industry practices.

It could be because you're a small family business, focusing on small local businesses or that you're focusing on PR and want to make sure that you're not hopping on every trend before you had enough time to research the references and make sure that they don't come back to bite your client in the ass.

Choose the right social media platforms

If you're using every social media possible to share content aimed at attracting potential clients, you're wasting time and money.

We suggest starting by taking a good look at your existing clients and the way they reached out to you. Once you know that, create a different plan for every social media platform.

For example, Instagram could be used to showcase company culture as well as previous work and any interesting content that could help you attract new employees.

On the other hand, your LinkedIn page could be specifically focused on attracting new clients by showcasing your brand as the authority in the industry. It's a great place to share free advice and tips, industry awards, previous successes, personal recommendations and more.

Your marketing agency is your own business and you should present it in the best way possible.

Since your social platforms have different goals, you can segment your audience and personalize your content. It's important to have a social media presence, but it needs to be done with a plan, otherwise, you're just creating empty content that doesn't bring in any results.

Start a podcast

Starting a podcast can be a valuable addition to your marketing strategy for your agency if you do it correctly.

You should:

• have a clear and unique perspective or voice
• have the resources to produce high-quality content consistently
• have the plan to promote and distribute the podcast effectively

However, before starting a podcast, it's important to assess whether you have enough time, energy and topics to cover.

Starting a podcast is a great way to connect with industry experts and present yourself as an authority on the topics of social media marketing, influencer marketing, attracting clients and more.

You can invite guests in the form of CEOs from other agencies and create valuable content that showcases you as a great pick for any potential clients.

A great example of this is The Morning Kick, a podcast started by a digital marketing agency with the goal of increasing the metric average time spent.

The idea to develop a podcast came from a simple question - Would you rather have 100,000 people see your ad for a second or have 100 engaged listeners returning every week?

With a podcast, they could engage their audience for a longer time. The maths came down to this - in the same time span, their audience could either watch 4 podcast episodes or read all of the blogs they published in a year.

That gave them a huge advantage because they found a great way to keep their audience's attention for longer and it's an opportunity to create loyal relationships.

Of course, there are downsides to creating a podcast in order to promote your digital marketing agency. The first one is how much time and effort it takes to produce one on a regular basis.

While it lets you effectively promote your services, it will take some time to build your audience and gain momentum.

Develop case studies about your clients

One of the best ways to promote your marketing agency and attract clients is by creating case studies that show your previous successes.

A recent survey suggests that nearly 63% of respondents believe that case studies serve as a powerful tool to generate new leads.

When talking about social proof, it's important to present it with a storytelling aspect. If you just create an infographic with numbers, without any explanations, you're not providing enough information for anyone to further engage with your brand.

Write about your process, but also include quotes from clients and high-quality images that tie the story together.

Case studies are a great way for potential clients to build trust in your brand because they see that your expertise helped someone in a similar situation achieve their goals. Our advice is to create case studies focusing on different aspects of your services.

Show how your marketing agency helped a small business grow, a larger business owner have more free time, a new business develop a brand identity and more. The more personal information you include in these client success stories, the more your audience will relate.

If you're interested in a great case study example, take a look at our own case studies by clicking the banner below.

While it's important to have a landing page dedicated to case studies, it's always a good idea to try and reach a wider audience. One way you could do that is with guest blogs.

Guest blogging

Build relationships with other companies interested in blog or link exchanges. Offer to create a blog focusing on how to write a good case study and include examples from your own content. Provide valuable insight and link to your landing page.

That way, your guest blog isn't too salesy, while still providing you with increased brand awareness.

Make sure to also include these case studies in your social media campaigns to reach new audiences.

Focus on in-person networking

CEOs are often the face of their company. That's why it's important to get out there and network with other peers and potential clients.

The goal is to create a sense that your digital agency is omnipresent. Not only should you be present on all relevant online platforms, but also at offline events.

Make sure your digital agency is present at any relevant marketing events where you could meet other industry leaders, learn more about your local market and share your views on marketing trends.

You can also organize your own events and make people come to you. Find a smaller venue to begin with and leverage on an event management system for registering, ticketing, reserved seating, and a ticket scanning app for fast ticket redemption.

In order to spread the word about your company in the marketing world, try organizing a few networking events a year. They don't have to be over the top, just make sure that the guest list is packed with people that you would like to partner with.

They could be owners of digital agencies as well as owners of other types of companies i.e. potential new customers. That way, you could partner with other businesses and cross-promote each other or delegate work with a set referral fee.

That creates comradery amongst advertising agencies and alleviates any feelings of rivalry.

Alongside official networking events, make sure you're also keeping up with your industry-related peers in individual check-ins. It could be a business dinner or lunch which lets you dive deep and build loyal relationships.

Even if they aren’t interested at the time, they'll keep you in mind if some work comes up.

Position yourself as a leader in the industry

People that aren't in your industry don't have a specific way of knowing which digital agencies are the best. That's until you tell them.

A great example of this is the old Chivas effect story. As the tale goes, the company behind Chivas was struggling to reach new markets so they decided to double their price. They didn't change anything else about the whisky, nor did they change the branding or promotional messaging.

The results?

Their sales doubled.

The buyers saw the increase in price as a reflection of the brand's quality. Basically, the brand found a way to explain to the consumer base that they're leaders in the whiskey industry.

In the same vein, colleges in America decided to raise their tuition fees, which resulted in an increase in enrollment. That's because parents saw the high tuition costs as an indicator of a better standard of education.

While you could raise your prices, to present your business as the best option, we also have some other ways to position yourself as a leader in the industry:

• share valuable input, not just top-of-the-funnel content
• put a pay-wall in front of your ebooks and other types of content
• focus on a niche

Start by publishing content that is truly valuable and isn't easy to find on search engines. It's a great way to prove how much expertise and experience you have.

However, after a certain amount of time, you should move that content behind a paywall or sign-up form.

There's no reason to keep giving away valuable tips without gaining something in return.

Best practices to get clients for a marketing agency

Now that we've covered how to promote marketing agencies, it's time to give actionable advice on the best ways to get new clients.

Lead magnets

We've already mentioned the importance of putting your valuable content behind a sign-up form. That way you're getting your audience's emails and other information in return for your white papers, reports, ebooks and more.

Once you have that information, you should further engage them to try and convert them into clients.

Segment your leads and create a sequence of emails that showcase the benefits of choosing your marketing agency.

Referrals

A happy client is the best client, but you can take that a step further by offering them an incentive to refer your company to their peers. By agreeing on a referral fee, you're encouraging them to bring in new clients and help you grow your business.

Make sure to explain to them that having more clients doesn't mean that you'll spend less time or effort on existing projects.

Engage in online communities

Instead of engaging in cold calling, find online communities where the leads are hot. Online directories, Facebook groups and Slack channels are great places to present your company and offer up your services.

If you decide to go this route, you will need to be consistent and post engaging and valuable content that will get people hooked. Help others when they have questions and offer help when needed.

Make sure you're professional in every way and have patience for people with different degrees of technical knowledge.

What next...

I hope the above ideas have inspired you to go out and start winning new clients. At Better Proposals, our superpower is helping you convert those leads into paying customers with state-of-the-art proposal software. Check out our collection of ready-made templates specifically for marketing professionals - here. Happy closing!