This is December’s monthly Progress Report for ATTN Agency and this month we explore expanding our services.
Being in e-commerce for many years my partners and I have all built many websites. We explore the good and bad of this option for our agency.
I met with a center of influence (COI) that owns a branding agency. He was very experienced, successful, and we talked a lot about how to leverage freelancers.
Live webinars can be a great way to share value, prove expert knowledge, and build relationships with potential prospects.
I’m also exploring speaking at events. In research I’ve learned that it can be an amazing way to get great leads for clients.
Offering website services
We begin the month with a great lead from one of my favorite clients. His friend has a very successful business in Los Angeles, but their website is average. After a candid conversation about the many improvements needed on their website, they signalled interest in redoing it and rebuilding it from scratch, as will definitely be required.
If we decide to take that job on, that will be our third website rebuild for a client in the last five or six weeks. So far, we have not been doing website rebuilds, as an exclusive service and charging money for it. It has been more of an ancillary service for clients, to get them better traffic. Improved traffic will lead them to spend more money, and if they spend more we earn more!
However, three website rebuilds in the last few weeks, have made me think. My discussions with this latest prospective client about the mark-up on human labor, triggered the thought that website building or rebuilding, as the case may be, can be a big part of our business, especially as we look to expand our service line.
We are very experienced at this and have probably built 200 websites. To offer website building as a specific service is definitely something we should seriously consider. It is a good and much needed service which many potential clients would find useful and needed.
Not every client needs to have their website rebuilt from scratch. Some of them just need a special landing page for traffic, and we can easily take care of that. If we start getting steady website building work, we could probably hire an exclusive project manager to handle everything. That way we could concentrate on our designated activities. I think this idea of offering website services holds merit. It will expand our service line, increase our revenue and also leave clients happier and make things easy for them.
Using Freelancers
A meeting with a successful and fast growing branding agency went really well. We spoke on many topics. One of the topics was about the merits of hiring freelancers, solopreneurs and highly skilled people. His opinion was rather negative about this. He reasoned that these freelancers are probably making enough money on their own, happy doing their own thing, and will not really care to work for another company. However, he also conceded the fact that they can never sell their company, so it would give them the possibility of doing something great, selling a company and then starting over. Interesting perspective!!
Some problems he highlighted based on his past experience:
- Clashing of personalities
- people not working well with each other
- systems of people doing one thing well
- Some people feel they are contributing more in the form of money, referrals, etc
- Some people feel slighted because they are not getting returns similar to their contributions.
He also mentioned that he did not think people would make as much money, as when freelancing. I disagreed because I think you can. During the lateral growth on accounts, for example, we bring in somebody who is just doing Google and then get them involved on Facebook, email, SEO, creative, and content. We pay well and compensate them adequately on all the different things that are up-sold on the account that they bring in. It will mean much more money for an account that the freelancer would earn than just working on Google core.
We talked about hiring employees. Things to look for and how they look for those specifics. They use many freelancers and people working at agencies. People in between jobs are best avoided and not hired. His potential revenue revelations excited me. I do not think you could ever get that in digital marketing which requires highly skilled employees. That means higher pay, more costs and thereby lower revenue. If we get freelancers and just arbitrage profit, it may help us expand our business and have another service offering.
They do name creation, identity creation, branding, UX, etc - all things which clients need at all times. We spoke at length on things they could offer to get MRR for their bigger clients. If they create the identity of the brand, set the tone and the way everything gets communicated and then the brand themselves take over their blogs, ads or organic posts, and the tone is different, it might be frustrating. However, if they offered a costly but comprehensive service taking care of all aspects of brand communication, brands would benefit greatly and receive the package well.
I think we should be able to really work well together on this. Of course, there will be much communication, discussion and negotiation before we actually come into this account.
Live webinars & speaking to provide value and business development
One of the things that I think is going to be important for our business is webinars. This will also give me the chance to use the many tools I have purchased to do live webinars. These will be educational, add value to people following me on the webinar, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. It will:
- Give our agency more visibility
- Give our agency more exposure and generate interest in our agency
- We can share knowledge and provide value to people interested in digital marketing
- It gives me an opportunity to get into public speaking and use it as a tool to get more business
- It will get us leads and traffic conversions
- It will give credibility to the agency
- It will get the attention of people, give us some clout as it instantly gives a signed quality.
I am in the early phase of learning and exploring this, and find myself interested. I have plans for products that I want to sell in the future, like e-services and chrome extensions, etc. Those are not immediately doable. Speaking, adding value, meeting more people and growing my influence, is a big part of selling those products in the future.
Mitch Harper, founder of BigCommerce, talks a lot about that in his podcast. I have seen my small network grow and become more impactful. The more value I give, the more credibility I get. Therefore, it is all about building each other and building oneself.