The process to grow your agency is very subjective. Depending on whether you are a product-based company or service-based firm, the process and your end-goal differ to a great extent. Here’s an example of how to grow your agency to give you a better perspective.
Let’s say that you own a product-based business.
Your product is unique and addresses a particular need of your users. Once your users like your product, your consumer base will surely increase. Eventually, you add new features to target a wider range of users, maybe even globally. And, that’s you can grow your product-based business.
Now, let’s say that you are a service-based firm.
You offer a set of services to your clients. The sanctity of your services depends on their end quality – an intangible parameter.
In each of the two cases mentioned above, you will have a different set of challenges. But from my experience, growing an agency into a brand is more difficult than a product-based company.
So, how do you do it? How do you grow your agency to a level that your clients think just of you when they need services that you offer?
In this guide, we will discuss 5 things you can do to grow your agency into a brand. But before we get into that, what does growing into a brand actually mean?
- Your agency stands out from all your competitors for the services you offer.
- You exactly know who your target audience is.
- You communicate your story, consistently, for all your service offerings.
Growing Your Agency Starts From You
Before you start growing your agency, you, as its CEO, should know where you want to take it.
For instance, if you are an SEO agency, you could get into content marketing or conversion rate optimization. But, where exactly do you want to go?
You, as a leader, must understand and strategize about the services you want to get into for growing your agency. Only after that you can mobilize your employees, be it 10 or 100, towards your goal.
Here’s a word of advice: Expand in your niche. If you are an SEO agency, getting into PPC or link building will be easier than trying your hands in mobile app development.
Takeaway: Start by defining the services (in your niche) you want to expand into.
Create Your Identity
One important step in growing your agency into a brand is defining its identity!
I want you to think of big brands like Facebook and Starbucks. Try to think of any major changes you have seen in their brand identities. And you would be amazed to find that there were negligible to no definitive changes made!
For example, this is how YouTube’s logo has changed over the years.
You must have noticed how the essence of their brand identity hasn’t much changed over the years. Now, even if you see anything remotely close to what their logo looks like, you immediately think of YouTube!
Creating a brand identity taking control of your user experience on a psychological level. Maintain consistency in your logos (of course) and the colors you use on your website/app. This is an important step in growing your agency.
This will help your users to associate your agency with a particular color combination or the style of your logo. I believe that if a user has interacted with your firm for 5-7 times, they are more likely to become your loyal consumer with your brand. Defining a brand identity will definitely help you reach this goal.
Takeaway: Create a brand identity for your agency and stick to it.
Partner With White-Label Service Provider: The Key
A white-label provider can help you grow your agency very quickly. But before we move to how can a white-label partner helps you to grow your agency, what does a white-label provider mean?
A white-label service provider or supplier allows you to rebrand, reprice, and resell its services such as development, marketing, etc. This means that you can offer these services without investing in infrastructure or creativity around the solution by partnering with a provider. This can be a ket step in growing your agency.
Partnering with a white-label service provider can help you grow the revenue & services of your agency. But, at the same time, choosing the wrong provider can also give a major hit to your agency.
As such, it is super important to choose the right white-label supplier to grow your agency. Choosing the right white-label partner can also help with creating an identity for your brand with a particular quality of your services.
A long-term partnership with a good white-label provider can play a key role in growing your agency while maintaining consistency in the services your agency offers.
Let’s say that you partner with Provider A for a few months and then switch to Partner B for the next few months. The quality of the services offered by these two providers will definitely vary which is not a good thing for your brand identity.
Takeaway: Establish a long-term relationship with a white-label supplier to easily grow your agency into a brand.
Define Your Brand
Remember how we talked about creating an identity to grow your agency? Well now that you have developed a strategy, created an identity, and partnered with a white-label provider, it’s time to define your brand. The term for this is brand positioning.
Brand Positioning is “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target consumers”.
On a wider level, defining your brand is basically what you want your consumers to think when thinking of your agency. For example, the previous slogan of Walmart was “Always low prices. Always”. They have now changed it to “Save Money. Live Better.”
Now, whenever a consumer thinks of Walmart, they think of economic shopping.
Brand positioning is an important step when growing your agency into a brand. Let’s say that you offer N number of services. Which one of these services do you want your consumers/clients to know your agency for?
This will not only help you generate new leads for that particular category but eventually, will help you become a brand!
Having said that, it’s always a good idea to stick to your niche when positioning your brand. Targeting multiple niches at the same time can leave your users confused about your core offerings.
Takeaway: Position your agency for your core service offerings to define your brand.
The Target Audience Angle
One of the biggest challenges agencies face is defining their target audience.
Identifying your target audience is critical when growing your agency into a brand but also for its efficient functioning. Without defining the right audience, you would be lost in a sea of consumers not knowing who to pitch.
If you are just starting off, creating a buyer’s persona based on your social media engagements or consumer interviews can be quite helpful. A buyer’s persona usually includes things like age group, job title, and a few things about personal background.
Defining your target audience or creating a buyer’s persona will tell you about the potential services your consumers might be interested in. This will help you take a step further in growing your agency. Here’s how to create one!
Let’s say that you are a website development company. Your clients also might be interested in services like web app development or mobile app development.
Identifying such scaling opportunities will give the right direction for your agency.
Takeaway: Define your target audience and grow your agency based on the services they need from your niche.
Conclusion: How to Grow Your Agency?
Creating a brand takes a significant amount of time & efforts, especially for an agency. Stepping in the right direction is important.
Having said that, you have to set up the right team if you are planning to become a brand! Invest resources in hiring industry experts for your agency. Instead of having an in-house team, you can also set up a remote team for your agency!
The idea of growing your agency is a big step and can get overwhelming. But if you love doing something, why not grow your agency into a brand?
