The second week of July was an incredible time for us at Clientjoy. After our rebranding, we took the first leap in accomplishing our mission of helping agencies serve their clients better. We organised Clientjoy Agency Summit– A platform wherein over 12+ industry experts shared their experiences and proven growth processes for agencies. Lee Matthew Jackson joined us for the first session powered by LegalWiz and discussed about ‘How to market your agency and stand out from the crowd’. In this blog, we picked some great insights and shared the best marketing tactics to stand out as an agency.
Lee is the founder of Event Engine. He helps thousands of online agency owners across the world fall back in love with their businesses. He hosts the Agency Trailblazer Podcast, which has over 15,000 downloads a month. His company provides ready trailed marketing and management technology to the conference and events industries
As the session started, Lee talked about several problems that he and his team faced during their initial journey.
They encountered difficulties such as:
- Working Long hours
- Usually, when you start an agency and are unclear about the work that your agency is going to take up, you end up getting lost in the pile load of work.
- Accepting projects of lower values
- Generating leads is a very common problem for entrepreneurs. When you don’t have clients, you feel like taking up every kind of work that comes your way.
- Overdelivering the services
- This happens when there is no clear bifurcation of who does what for whom. While starting out, if you don’t have the packages of your services listed down, it might happen that you overdeliver the services and receive only a minimal return.
- No clear messaging
- – Lack of clarity is yet another common issue faced by agencies. A clearly communicated message is very essential in order to keep a proper track of the work and generate efficient outp
Yash Shah, Co-founder and CEO of Clientjoy agreed and added that “It becomes a problem when you are everything for everyone”.
Thankfully, Lee became our knight in shining armour and discussed marketing tactics to stand out as an agency. His insights come from his own proven journey and add up greatly for the success of any agency. Lee suggested the following steps:
A) Establish An Identity:
Solving your brand’s identity crisis is the core step. In order to establish a clear identity, keep pestering yourself repeatedly with these questions:
- Why are you starting/ want to run your agency?
- -What drives you to start your agency?
- What are your strengths?
- -Find out the things you are really good at and would love to do repeatedly. Make sure that you include your team while you decide on this.
- Who do you serve?
- – Recognise the niche market where you can utilize your strengths in a better way.
- What are their problems/ aspirations?
- – Empathise with your clients. Know where they want to reach and what is stopping them?
- How can you help?
- – Show up and be there. Find out what is it that you can give to them.
- Lee strongly suggests that all agencies should follow this practice and be clear about the purpose of their existence.
If you want to distinguish yourself from other agencies, it is crucial for you to figure out how. Establishing an identity is the first step of that process.
B. Define Your Core Values:
A clear identity will help you see your values. After you know the why, what and who of your agency, it is time to figure out the ‘how’.
Your clients out there will have an option to choose from numerous agencies. Every agency is going to deliver the services required by them. What differentiates here is ‘how’ those services are delivered.
Incorporate values into your work. Give a reason to your potential clients to choose you over your competitors.
Your values will essentially act as a strong part of your identity.
After establishing a strong identity and defining a clear set of values, the next step for standing out as an agency is about figuring out the ‘where’.
C. Choose A Suitable Platform:
Why is it essential to choose a specific platform? Well, you don’t want to keep waiting for a ship at the airport. Right?
That is exactly why you need to choose where your brand will appear. After the first and second stage, you now know the target market, and you know about your messaging and marketing. This will help you get better clarity on:
- Where to show up?
– Different kinds of the audience are present on different platforms. You cannot get your hands on everything. Ideally, you should not.
If you are targeting an audience of the age group of 18-28, it will make more sense for your brand to establish a stronger presence on Instagram than on Facebook.
- How to show up?
– Devise and plan out a strategy to establish your presence. Decide when you will show up and how you will do that. Launch your brand with a bang!
- What to talk about?
– You know who your audience is, you know what issues they are facing, you are also aware of where they want to be.
Start empathizing with them. Have a conversation with your audience. Figure out how you will talk to them. But most important of all, show up and make them believe you are there.
Figure out the marketing activities you should be engaging in and review relevant marketing channels that will enable you to do the same.
Lee’s incredible insights offered great value to us in terms of marketing your agency to stand out from the crowd.
Are you following the right practices?
Check out Lee Matthew Jackson’s full session here.
.png)
.png)
