5 Lessons For New Digital Marketing Agency Owners
Denis Sinelnikov is the CEO of Media Components, an award-winning full-service digital marketing agency.
Owning a successful digital marketing agency makes me feel good. I am proud of what I have achieved over the past 20 years. However, this era was not without obstacles and mistakes. We should always learn from our mistakes, but I didn't make all the mistakes I should have. Here are five things I wish I knew before starting my own marketing agency.
1. Don't worry about campaign performance.
When I started digital marketing, I thought that I should be an instant hit and keep track of every moment of the campaign. This caused a lot of stress and mismanagement of customer expectations. Through trial and error, I realized that the results of the campaign come quickly.
This is a bold statement. Let's break it down. Yes, you need to set clear goals and milestones. These numbers are not absolute rules. These scores vary by marketing platform, brand, and industry segment.
This is not the time you promise. If you have a solid foundation for your digital marketing campaign, understand your target demographics, and create a compelling story for your client, you will reap positive returns on your business. By understanding this concept, I became a more focused and successful trader.
2. Realistically manage customer expectations.
I knew from the beginning that I could technically turn down a client. Unfortunately, I still stuck with the concept of service where the customer doesn't have to say no. I thought that in this case they would go to a competitor who would say yes.
And learning how to say “no” to a client is just the tip of the iceberg in learning how to manage expectations. Teamwork and LinkedIn have good articles on learning how to manage expectations. I summarize them in five main points:
• Transparency of the process.
• Flexible communication.
• Actual points.
• Additional production costs.
• Access to assets.
The first three are simple and clear. But the last two opened my eyes. I used to discuss prices with clients in advance. However, I have had clients come in with last minute requests or require extra attention to build their websites or campaigns. When I learned how to communicate how much my last-minute orders would cost me, which would add hours to what I was already doing, and created a system that allowed customers to move forward without asking for time, my attitudes changed and expectations became more manageable.
3. Don't wait to form your team.
Usually we start our business alone. This is especially true for digital marketing because we can do almost everything from a computer. When I first started, it was quite easy for me to do web design, image processing, copywriting and communication with clients on my own. However, over time, storage became more difficult and frustrating. I thought I'd be lazy if I didn't follow.
Faced with exhaustion, I eventually hired partners, employees, and freelancers to make up my team. I didn't have to wait to build my team. I experienced the unnecessary stress and frustration of delegating authority to my team during a crisis.
We often find ourselves in the sweet spot of success: we're not big enough to be stressed out and need more people, but we don't think we have the ability to attract a partner or employee. I learned that we need to start building our team.
Delegation, communication and trust are three key elements in building a strong and effective team. They are easier to perform when you slowly raise your team. Build trust, delegate effectively, and build close ties when your team is small and unstressed. This is how I develop my team now. I would like to start over.
4. Know how to sell yourself.
Do you know who needs a good digital marketer? You take the time to sell yourself. It may seem trivial now, but when I started, I thought all I needed was word of mouth, customer referrals, and a little crystal at the bottom of the page, or an ad to tell me where it came from. The rest will be built from there. Yes, it helps you grow your business, but it's not the only thing that helps you grow.
It is important to promote yourself as a digital marketer. Not only does this let people see your name, but it also shows off your expertise, market knowledge, and creativity. From case studies that show your understanding of the demographics of the market, to articles that showcase your skills, to advertisements that showcase your talent for storytelling, you not only increase brand awareness, but also increase brand credibility. I immediately did this for my clients, but it took me a while to realize that I should do this for myself as well.
5. Spider traps are part of human nature.
Did you know that we are making many of the same mistakes online as we did in the early 2020s and early 2000s? We don't call things the same because no one wants to rewrite the same blog post every year for 15 years. However, “do not date” and “do not advertise yourself” are the same mistake. Many articles from twenty years ago are about the same egos of today: social anxiety, egocentrism, and lack of communication skills.
In other words, when we talk about Internet traps, we are focusing on the symptoms, not the underlying problems that cause the traps to work. I struggled with my mistakes until I began to identify the skills that I lacked. After mastering these basic skills, my networking has improved.
At the beginning of a career, it is important to learn from mistakes. All these things that I wish I had known before, I learned to implement over time. Now that you know all this, I hope that 10 years from now you won't be shaking your head and saying, “I wish I had known sooner.
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