Growing a London web agency can be a daunting prospect, especially in a highly competitive environment. On the other hand, it can be very rewarding if you get it right. Anything is possible providing you plan and execute an effective business strategy using the best available teams at your disposal. Below we have mentioned a few simple procedures to follow that will help you grow from a small web agency, into a digital powerhouse.
Strategy and Vision
First and foremost it’s important to establish a mission statement and clear overall objective. A London web agency cannot move forward as a business, unless it has a solid strategy in place. It can be difficult to decide which direction you want to take your agency but defining your target market would be a good place to start. Picking a niche will keep your team focused and as you build up your portfolio, you will attract more clients. Ultimately it’s about being laser focused on measurable results and this applies to both your agency and your clients.
Build your team
Building the right team is challenging and continuous process but ultimately the agency should be investing in people who add value to your organisation. It’s important to maximise on each team member’s skills and identify gaps where you need to hire.
Employing the right person can take time. Predicting hiring needs based on future sales targets will easy employee stress and prevent current staff from being overworked and overwhelmed.
See 10 Things Your Agency Should Be Doing to Grow Faster to learn more about different internal processes and hiring a team.
Service
If you want to survive in the fiercely competitive digital world, you must ensure to offer and deliver an unparalleled level of service. Offering good customer service will set you above the rest of the competition and will increase the chance of repeat business. You can’t beat customer loyalty and word of mouth is usually more effective than you think. Offering a wider range of services by collaborating with other agencies gives you an opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell to clients. Building recurring revenues in a retainer style relationship is also an excellent service to offer in order to maximise your profits.
Add Value
There are many ways to improve client relationships which could in-turn lead to more work down the line. Here are some examples;
- Trend Updates
- Competitive Reviews
- Quarterly Strategy Meetings
- Self Critical Reviews
How much do you know about your clients? An independent Client Survey can show you how clients really perceive you and could highlight some of your strengths and weaknesses.
Brand
Spending time working on your brand is crucial if your serious about growing your London web agency. Who are you, what do you do and how are you better then your competitors? The larger agencies tend to have a corporate identity and often lack in engaging personalities. This presents an opportunity for smaller agencies to define and express original personalities. Social media plays a large part in this as agencies with little or no social media look old fashioned.
Productivity
Streamlining your processes for maximum efficiency is one of the most important ways to get more out of your team. An example would be to simplify document repetitive processes by creating templates and sytemising proposals and contracts by using software like PandaDoc will save you time and money. It also means your processes are more scaleable, which will work in your favour as you grow. The next step would be to automate these systems in conjunction with project management systems for example in order to maximise efficiency.
Sales and Marketing
One of the best strategies to showcase the services of your London web agency is to be your own best client. It gives you, as an agency, an opportunity to showcase your excellent work, which will have prospective clients running at you from all directions. It’s important to keep the pipeline of work consistently full. This means ensuring that marketing and sales techniques are implemented regularly to provide your agency with a steady flow of new business. There are hundreds of tools online that have been constructed to help you to identify potential target markets. Leadfeeder is an example of a tool that identifies the IP addresses of companies that have been browsing your website. This could prove useful as it will allow you to pitch to users that have been browsing your website.
Up-selling is a must. Once you have nailed some big clients, it’s time to show them what else you can offer them. This is the time to decide where to take your business. Once you know you can offer a particular service to one client, you can then offer it to the rest of your clients.
According to a study bu eMarketer, client case studies are one of the most popular self-promotional tactics used by marketing agencies. They can be very successful lead magnets and will increase your chances of closing more deals.
Here are a list of other alternative marketing channels that could help you increase your exposure.
- Snapchat advertising
- Native advertising (see StackAdapt)
- Content discovery networks (see Outbrain)
- Influencer marketing (see #paid)
Accelerate growth with strategic partnerships
Working with other agencies is an excellent way to increase the potential workload by identifying gaps in your own agency and supplementing them with strategic partnerships. This is also particularly useful to do as you grow as it will allow you to offload some of the workload when the resources are tight. It can also work out well in future when agencies you have previously worked with return the favour by offloading work to you.
New Business
Many agencies often have one client story that stands out from the rest. It’s important to use this as often as you can in as many ways as possible. How can you begin to start telling your case studies differently? Clients aren’t interested in stories that differ slightly from one agency to the other. They are interested how you made a difference and knowledge of what will be useful to them in their situation. Using your best case studies and making them relevant to any brand or market will strengthen your business development strategy.
Learn more about how to establish and maintain client relationships here: The Secret Source of Agency New Business
Pitching
If you’re looking to grow your London web agency and secure those big project clients, you are going to need to be able to deliver well executed pitches. Smaller agencies can differentiate from the larger agencies as they are often more personable. Giving clear, cut through advice is often what the client wants to hear but make sure you don’t offer something you can’t deliver as it’s likely to cause problems further down the line/
Conclusion
It’s not easy to grow a London web agency and it certainly won’t happen overnight. However, hard work and determination will eventually pay off, providing you execute your masterful strategy. It’s important to be patient and follow simple, realistic steps that aim to bring you closer towards your goal. The aim is play the big agencies at their won game and try to match them, where and when appropriate.
If you are looking for any assistance in web design, web development, mobile and tablet optimisation or want to know more about what we offer in terms of services, then please feel free to contact us.
