Wherever there is ample opportunity, there’s a lot of competition.
While cliché, it’s what the current digital agency landscape looks like today. As businesses continue to recognize the power of online presence in this remote era, more spring up to meet their demands. Case in point: there has been a 17.4% annual increase in growth of digital agencies from 2017-2022.
The competition is strong, and as an agency owner, you need to brainstorm creative ways to gain more clients to thrive in the long haul. This article will discuss some proven strategies you can implement to achieve just that.
Let’s get started.
Why is it difficult for digital agencies to find new clients?
There are several reasons why most digital agencies need help to get new clients. As a digital agency owner, you can probably relate to the following challenges:
- Service differentiation: Most agencies need to learn how to differentiate their products and offerings from industry competitors. When you do the same thing others are doing, you won’t stand out and, therefore, face difficulty attracting new clients.
- Branding differentiation: You need current and potential clients to see your agency in a different light. You must present your agency—website, content, and creatives—uniquely so it instantly catches and holds the viewer’s attention.
- Industry changes: Industry change is constant. As platforms keep changing, you must keep evolving your services.
- Long sales cycle: If you’re in an industry with a long sales cycle, apply marketing tactics to shorten the cycle. For example, personalize customer touch points throughout the sales journey or nurture leads with CRM software.
- Customer budget and expectations: Quality costs money, so striking the right balance between cost-effectiveness and customer expectations is tricky. You can ease into the money conversation with your prospective clients and educate them on the value you offer—namely, why investing in your agency is worth it and how it’ll help the client achieve their goals.
How to start with client acquisition?
If you’re a new agency owner, prioritize getting high-quality and preferably long-term clients for your digital marketing agency.
You’ll have to go back to client acquisition basics and adopt a strategic approach. Consider the following:
Who is your ideal client?
Knowing your ideal clients means defining who your potential clients are. It doesn’t matter how unique your offering is. Not everyone will need it.
Follow these two steps to create an ideal client profile:
- Interview potential clients: Get on a call with prospective clients and find out who they are, what kind of business they do, and their unique parameters. Learn everything you can to understand their vision and end-goals better.
- Get targeting criteria: Use the information from the prospective client to create targeting criteria that reflects your ideal client profile. This includes geographical location, business type, company size, and interests.
How to get started with your first client
Follow the buyer persona method if you don’t have prospective clients to whom you can reach out. This is an excellent way to kickstart business.
Here’s how to go about this:
- Create three personas to test different target markets.
- Name and describe them in as much detail as possible. Bring your imagination and creativity up a notch.
- Use one list of parameters for all three personas (think: company size, budgets, geolocation). This allows you to compare and analyze the personas better.
- Visualize them as though they were real clients doing business with you
Once you have a buyer persona and a clear idea of your ideal clients, start hunting them down based on the parameters and bring them in using lead generation and marketing tools.
9 Proven client acquisition strategies and channels
This section will discuss some proven strategies to get you more clients in no time.
1. Work on your personal brand and thought leadership
Creating a brand image for your business is critical if you’re working on getting new leads consistently. Use detailed and thoughtful brand imagery in every interaction with clients. People like what they recognize, so being distinct cultivates brand loyalty.
Unique proposition
What is most valuable about your service? The answer to this question is your unique proposition. It is what makes you different from others. Work on your differentiators because your uniqueness is what attracts clients to you and makes them likely to do business with your agency.
2. Pursue surround sound marketing
Surround sound marketing follows the theory that the more people hear about or see your product or service, the more likely they will purchase from you. For example, following popular marketing lead generation techniques and tips like messaging frequency leads to higher levels of awareness and purchase intent.
But to pursue surround sound marketing, you need to appear in the search results for keywords with high traffic or high intent.
Here’s how to get started with surround sound marketing for your agency:
- Research your client’s journey. Understand where they seek advice and how they make purchase decisions.
- Map out this journey to uncover the influential touchpoints.
- Find a way to appear on all the touchpoints.
Think of it as purchasing a high ticket to client acquisition—all the while increasing your search visibility and building ongoing content partnerships.
3. Create downloadable lead generation assets
When users receive free but valuable content they can’t get elsewhere, they are happy to share their contact information in exchange, helping you generate more quality leads.
Give away free and helpful tools and templates that establish your brand authority in your niche. For instance, the Foundations of Content Strategy: a Free 5-Part Email Course turned out to be an excellent lead generation asset for Omniscient Digital. Similarly, you can also create downloadable content like ebooks and guides and use them as lead magnets to capture potential clients.
Your work doesn’t stop after leads opt-in—you need to nurture them into clients.
Use a customer relationship management software (CRM) for agencies to manage your leads throughout the client acquisition funnel. Keep constant tabs on leads’ inquiries, track all lead interactions, and nurture leads through every stage of the sales funnel.
The fact that the tool helps with other marketing and sales activities like lead scoring and lead qualification is another benefit.
4. Build your email list
Email marketing is an impactful way to stay in front of your clients and get new ones. It increases brand awareness as your clients get a notification each time you send an email.
To differentiate yourself from other newsletters, ensure you’re:
- Consistently sending newsletters and case studies to draw the client’s attention toward your digital agency
- Writing a catchy subject line to prompt recipients to open the emails
- Maintaining a balance between promotional content and value sharing
- Using a CRM to help automate the process, warm, and nurture your leads
5. Leverage partnerships and your network
There are three ways to effectively leverage your network:
Cross-promote services
Partnership with non-competitor agencies is a great way to get new clients. And it works both ways—they send clients who need your services your way, and you do the same in return.
Consider cross-promoting non-competitive service with other agencies. For instance, if your agency offers advertising services, partner with a content marketing agency. If your clients are looking to get content written, you can suggest them—and if any of their clients have advertising needs, they’ll suggest you.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
Launch podcasts
Another way to leverage your network is to launch podcasts that give people in your industry or niche a platform for exposure. Podcasts are great for creating brand awareness and generating leads. Get that quid pro quo effect and acquire clients for your agency by reaching out to different podcast hosts in your target market to be featured, and feature them in yours too.
Ask for referrals and intros
Asking for referrals is a fantastic way to expand your client base. If you were introduced to a prospect by a mutual friend, that prospect is more likely to do business with you.The introduction breaks the ice and starts you on a new agency-client relationship.
You can also get new clients from your existing clients by offering a referral discount to anyone that brings new customers to your agency. It’s a way of motivating your current clients and also improving your customer retention rate.
6. Guest posting
Clients prefer agencies that have a solid online presence and publicly display their knowledge and expertise.
Guest posting is a common tactic for establishing your agency as a thought leader in your industry, helping you increase your agency’s brand awareness and draw clients to you.
But for this to work, you need to ensure your agency’s name is right where your target audience can see it. Alongside reaching out to publications and blogs frequented by your target clients, you can:
- Write listicles, how-to-guides, and success stories that resonate with your client’s specific needs
- Include visual content to engage and improve readability
- Use a strong CTA that links back to your website
7. Cold outreach
If you think cold outreach is an outdated strategy, think again. In a recent survey, almost half of small businesses reported utilizing cold email outreach to generate new customers..
You can make yourself stand out. How? By personalizing your cold emails:
- Address your emails to a single person
- Make it clear you know what their company does
- Highlight any pain points they may face
- Show how your agency can help
- Include some success stories in your pitch
With a catchy headline and a carefully drafted email copy, you’ll see higher open rates and a boost in conversions in no time.
8. Conferences and events
Speaking at events is another way to establish your voice of authority in your industry or niche.
Keep an eye for relevant events on platforms like Meetup.com or join the mailing lists of popular marketing events you feel your target audience frequents or is likely to attend.
9. Paid advertising
Investing in paid ads is a no-brainer if you want faster results—generating more leads and acquiring new customers. That’s because ads produce immediate results and support your SEO efforts by helping you find keywords to drive your organic search traffic.
Running ads using an omnichannel marketing approach is highly effective.
Target specific audience segments on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and automate your Facebook ads to create interactive experiences with your prospects. Use dynamic search ad headlines to keep your ads relevant and increase conversions. In addition, create a remarketing strategy to re-target the audience that clicked through the first time. They were interested once, so it’s likely they’ll be interested again.
Put these ideas into action to grow your agency
Getting clients for your agency is an art—one that requires strategy.
Streamline your client acquisition efforts with demand generation strategies provided by our blog. Check out some of our templates and increase your revenue today!
