If you are an agency founder, leader, or business development director, there’s a good chance you have found yourself coming up against some unique challenges in recent years.
The pandemic has led to fundamental shifts in the business landscape for marketing agencies, and the competition is getting steeper as an increasing number of businesses from various industries transition online.
Here are our four top digital marketing challenges and solutions that will help your marketing strategy stand out in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.
You win work via word-of-mouth rather than cold leads
How can you help your clients and avoid significant expenditures?
While word of mouth referrals will always have a higher conversion rate than entirely cold leads, that’s not to say your website and digital marketing strategy doesnt have a huge role to play in converting both entirely cold leads and those who have been referred by a trusted client, partner or colleague.
Client testimonials and case studies can generate a positive organic buzz around your services. Often agencies leave these gems in PowerPoint credentials decks or hidden deep within their website. Make sure your case studies and testimonials speak to the challenges you solved not just the services your provided. It’s a crucial shift in helping you appear at the moment potential clients are searching for solutions to their problems.
Client testimonials are a win-win in that you get all the perks of traditional word-of-mouth marketing but you also get to take advantage of digital communication offers—including a wider audience. Make sure you build capturing client testimonials into your wrap-up process at the end of every project.
Investing in case studies will take your strategy to the next level by shifting the focus from the services you provide to the challenges you have solved. Once you’ve honed this content, give it a boost with a paid media strategy to drive the right kind of traffic to your site at the right time.
You’re struggling to hire top talent
How can digital marketing boost your recruitment strategy?
When you use a paid, owned, and earned media strategy to attract new talent, you can help top talent find you—and not the other way around.
Competition for high-quality talent has always been high, and as the pandemic has only enhanced this with people exiting the industry, moving out of city centre hubs or looking for greater work/life balance. No agency wants to waste time, energy, and resources attracting and onboarding new talent only to have to repeatedly re-invest in the same process if it doesn’t work out.
There is also a particular opportunity post pandemic for agencies based in more suburban or rural areas to attract top talent now that virtual and hybrid working is a norm.
Approach your recruitment strategy just as you would client attraction. Mobilise content marketing campaigns to speak directly to your target audience and bring to life your agency’s vision and values. Then use PPC, and SEO marketing techniques to attract top-tier talent and minimise your long-term recruitment expenditures. This is especially useful if you’re not a big networked or well know agency, as you will be competing in a crowded market.
LinkedIn is great, not only to advertise your vacancies but to also promote your thinking and business values which are more crucial than ever in helping to attract talent. Teaming up with an experienced digital marketing agency can help you target the type of high-calibre talent that you want to attract.
Your business name is similar to a competitor
How do you make sure the right web traffic comes to you?
When it comes to the name game, it can be tricky finding a business name that stands out, speaks to your values and capabilities but hasn’t already been taken. Especially when you consider agencies from across the globe which could appear in the same Google search with a company monkier that resembles your own.
Bidding on your brand name is an PPC strategy that will allow you to maximise your SERP exposure and retain greater control of your overall marketing strategy. And this is especially true since most digital businesses are seeing a jump in paid media competition across the board over the past 18 months.
Anybody searching out brand names is already likely to be a high-intent searcher—and these are the types of hits that are most likely to convert. By bidding on your own brand name you help ensure these valuable searches don’t fall into your competitor’s lap.
Your clients ask you for specialist digital marketing solutions (that you don’t have)
How can you help your clients and avoid significant expenditures?
When a client asks you to provide a specialised digital marketing solution, teaming up with a partner agency will help you ensure a high-quality product while keeping your spending in check.
It’s essential to be clear about the services you can and can’t provide. But it is also equally important to maintain your existing client base by enhancing your relationships with added value. If a client is seeking a service that you don’t have the know-how, personnel, or resources to provide, outsourcing that particular service is likely to be a more effective solution than onboarding new expertise.
Working hand-in-hand with a qualified digital marketing agency will ensure that you can cater to your client’s diverse digital marketing needs so your agency can continue to specialise in what you do best and maintain exceptional client service.
At Climbing Trees we work with a number of agencies and consultancies to lead their own brand SEO and PPC initiatives while also supporting their clients with more specialist and technical digital marketing services. We operate a few different outsourcing models, so get in touch if you’d like to find out more.
Building profitable partnerships to future-proof your ethical marketing strategy
Here at Climbing Trees, we understand the unique challenges agencies face as we move forward into an increasingly uncertain digital landscape.
We believe that business growth and sustainable strategies go hand-in-hand, and we are committed to working with your agency to create long-term, personalised, and specialised solutions.
And to prove our own commitment, we are currently in the process of getting B Corp Certification.