As businesses are looking down the barrel towards a global recession Web, Advertising and Digital agencies are going back to the drawing boards to see how they can tackle the challenges better and prepare their business for what the future beholds. At such a time, it becomes necessary to implement growth practices for the agency.
We talked with leading industry experts and did research on what the best in the business are doing during these crucial times and which of those growth practices for agencies are or are most likely to be paying off.
Using the information gathered we have prepared this blog where we have presented 5 best growth practices for Agencies that are being used to enable growth in 2020.
Improving LinkedIn Presence
Linkedin has 600+ million monthly users. It becomes even more important as a platform for agencies because you find business professionals over there making LinkedIn into a major business growth driver as you can influence them there.
As major business activities have been under a slowdown and business are currently not under a deal striking or a transactional mode you can shift focus from single mindedly closing new prospects and use those resources to strengthen you and your team’s presence on LinkedIn to capitalize on its long term benefits.
Rather than just posting on the company LinkedIn page, improve you and your team members’ LinkedIn profile. Have a professional profile picture and bio written. Get recommendations from client team members and improve social proof of the expertise and customer service working with your firm delivers through these recommendations.
Also, strategically post informative and engaging posts from personal profiles of the founders and the leadership team at a set frequency.
LinkedIn algorithms preferes posts without links. You can conduct interviews of company leaders with other influencers and then post the extract on their profiles. Ensure that the leaders comment and engage on other relevant influencers’ posts on a regular basis.
All these activities will improve visibility of the team and the agency. It also helps showcase expertise the team has and build credibility. It would not just improve client retention but also help you get new business by improving conversion rates from outreach activities as the markets become more stable.
Creating Case Studies/Testimonials
Invest in creating more case studies. It helps prospects visualize the approach your team takes towards solving a given problem and what differentiates you from other competitors in the market.
In the basic case study outline it is important to have three broad sections:
– The business challenge: Define the problem that was at hand and how it was effecting your client
– Team’s approach: Show what solution the team derived for the business challenge and the delivery model
– The final result: Help visualize how your team’s approach help the client get the desired outcome
You can publish these case-studies on the website or send them to specific leads while trying to nurture them into clients.
Record videos where you discuss the work you have done with a client of yours and ask them to share how working with your team and implementing your solution has helped them achieve their business goals.
You can then convert these videos into written communication too and distribute them at relevant places.
By showing what experience your existing clients have had with you will help you establish trust with new prospects and convert them into paying clients. It is a powerful way to add social proof.
Delivering excellent Customer experience
Focus on customer retention by delivering excellent customer experience. Customer experience is crafted through all the interactions and touch points a customer has throughout their customer journey. Use tools tailored to you and your client’s needs that help manage leads, proposals, project delivery and invoicing to deliver seamless customer service.
Set clear project milestones and communicate it with the clients setting right expectations. Let them know who would be responsible for achieving the given milestone so that they know whom to communicate with to stay updated. This clarity and transparency will help you delight the customer turning them into loyal advocates.
To enable your team to deliver an excellent customer experience you can use a customer life-cycle management tool like Clientjoy that lets you view a customer’s purchase history and other project details at one place and lets you predict their future needs. It will enable you to be proactive and attentive, helping you to understand a 360 degree view of your customer’s needs and also provide them related products or services based on their purchase history.
To be able to deliver a good customer experience you need to capture customer feedback in real-time. After every chat interaction, send them an email asking about their experience. Conduct outbound calls to gain deeper customer insights.
Using a quality framework to deliver the solution is also an integral part of framing the customer experience. Adopt a Scrum approach. It is dividing the project into a series of sprints. You can have a monthly scrum with 10 days in each sprint or you can tweak it according to the client’s need.
It will help you keep track of projects closely, take decisions faster and ensure timely delivery of it.
Customer expectations are high but word of mouth travels fast making customer experience an effective growth driver.
Run content-led lead generation ads
Create well-researched unique content tailored to your target audience. Have it gated and deliver it to the right audience using Digital ads.
Target on building an email list through running such ads. Once a prospective customer shares their contact information for your content they can start receiving a drip email sequence that will nurture the lead further.
The objective of this would be to get the targeted prospect to get to know your brand and then position your expertise. Building and maintaining a healthy list of prospects is important for business.
Have a lead qualification method and then share qualified leads with the Sales team for further prospecting, nurturing and closing.
Build a community
Online communities help build trust, get feedback for innovating, reduce support cost and get more sales.
Public social groups on Facebook can be a boon to your marketing efforts. It provides your current and future prospects a place to generate content for you and provides you a place to influence them.
It gives them a place for inclusion where they can bond over common interests and purpose. It increases retention and improves overall brand experience.
You would need a strong content calendar to keep them engaged. Be open to sharing and discussing the problems and challenges that your target audience faces.
Start small and build up. Provide prompt help to the members who reach out and engage on all comments. It would provide you layers to grow your community from there.
We hope you found the information useful and following these 5 best growth practices for agencies shared above helps your agency business grow faster in 2020 and beyond.
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