How to Start a digital marketing agency from scratch

So you have some marketing abilities and you want to start a digital marketing agency from scratch. But you don’t know how? Right? I have mentioned the most important points and the easiest way to build your own digital advertising agency based on the experience that I have gathered in past few years. There are no better ways to earn a good amount of income and be your own boss at the same time. Also, a digital marketing agency gives you the opportunity to work with international clients and earn dollars.

So, what is the process to start a digital marketing agency in 2022? Where is the best place to start scaling? Here in this blog, we will be revealing all the secrets of how to start a digital marketing agency from scratch – without any experience.

Here is your 7-step checklist on How to start a digital marketing agency from scratch?

1. Is digital marketing agency a good business to start?

Here is why starting a digital marketing agency could be the next best business idea out there, that you to start even within a day.

Pros –

No Inventory: If you are looking at a business that doesn’t require you to manage an inventory. Doesn’t require a huge warehouse to store inventories and a big team of people to move that inventory then starting a digital marketing agency business could be the right choice for you.

No Upfront Cost to set up: This type of ROI (Return on investment) based business model doesn’t require huge capital investment to kick start the business. Many are the times when almost no capital investment (monetary) is required or very minimum up-front cost will be required to start a digital marketing agency.

Profit Margin: Profit margin is very high in the digital marketing agency business. The reason being you can produce content or strategy once, which can work for multiple clients. The profit margin can range between 25% to 75% of the actual project cost. And as you don’t have to produce any physical product, you can produce multiple content or service for several years using a single computer.

Cons –

To start a digital marketing agency business you’re going to have to put some serious amount of time into it. You’re going to make some sacrifices in some areas of your life, whether that’s watching Netflix or going out and having fun with friends. But that’s OK I believe because the rewards attached to it are also great. We all have to make some sacrifices to make a business stand. Right?

So, Keep on reading this article to know in detail about how to start a digital marketing agency from scratch – with no experience.

2. Set your business goals

Define your growth plan

A well-documented business plan will help you stay focused on your goal and you can measure your achivements time to time. So, it is suggested to have a SMART business plan regarding customer acquisition, coustomer retention, marketing, sales, accounting and about all the possible aspects of business.

Revenue Model

Your next step will be to define your revenue model i.e. how you are going to make money and how you’ll charge your clients for the services you provide.

The majority of the digital marketing agencies charge their clients on the following three revenue models –

• Per hour
• Per project
• Monthly fee

Per hour – In the western countries this model is more popular, and you get paid for the services that you provide on an hourly basis. The rate may vary from $20 per hour to $90 per hour depending on your expertise and experience, location of your client, type of business your client has, the type of services that you are providing, and the nature & complexity of the project.

Per project – The best way to start as a digital marketing agency or as a freelancer is to pick up projects from Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiver where  You can make an agreement with your client on a fixed amount to complete the project. Here the main deciding factor is your estimation, based on that it will be measured how much profit you make or you may end up making a loss because of wrong estimations.

Monthly fee – In case of services like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), and paid advertising (PPC), the client agrees to pay a monthly charge for the agreed services. If you focus on services like PPC, SEO, and, SMM you will not have to worry much about retaining clients in the long run.

In my opinion ‘monthly fee’ is the most profitable revenue model, as you get paid repeatedly, and the least profitable is the ‘per hour’ revenue model because at any point of time clients may withdraw the agreement if they are not really satisfied with the work or if they find a better hourly rate.

However, new agencies should focus on, the ‘per hour’ and ‘per project’ model. Even though this is not the most profitable model but at this stage, your goal is to gain more clients and build a portfolio. Also in ‘per hour’ and ‘per project ’model you can adjust your rates to be able to attract new clients with competitive rates.

Decide how you plan to operate your business

First, you have to decide how you want to run the digital marketing agency in short term and long term and how you want to grow your business. You may start all by yourself from the comfort of your home. All you need is a computer and a good internet connection.

On the other hand, you can hire a remote team and assign them tasks on a per project basis. So that when you do not have enough clients you will not be bound to pay your remote workers a monthly fee.

Once you have understood your role in the company, whether you will be working on the projects yourself or you will be focusing more on customer acquisition and delegating the task to your team members, it will be easier for you to focus on your end goal.

One of the advantages to start a digital marketing agency is that you can operate your business from home or from anywhere there is an internet connection and you can operate with remote employees. There are lots of online and SaaS companies who follow this model and it’s also the future digital marketing agency business.

As your business grows, you may consider hiring local candidates, but they should also be allowed to work from home so that you don’t need to pay for recurring office expenses.

3. Learn your digital marketing skills and build self-confidence

Without having a pleasing persona and witty communication skills, surviving in this industry may be a little difficult. So it is better to hone your digital marketing skills and pay attention to developing a personality.

Learn digital marketing tools and techniques

While you are learning how to start a digital marketing agency of your own, you should acquire knowledge about digital marketing tools and techniques. There are a lot of digital marketing tools that will help you to create, publish, and analyze traffic to your pages. These are some digital marketing tools that you can check for great outcomes –

• Buffer: It is a leading social media management and communication tool which can help you to make decisions and schedule posts based on analytics.

• Hootsuite: It is somewhat similar to buffer. Using this tool you can plan the content on various social media platforms from a single dashboard.

• Mailchimp: Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service. This is used for managing mailing lists and easily creating email marketing campaigns for the target customers.

• Meta (Facebook) Business Suite: lets you manage all of your connected accounts across Facebook and Instagram in one place. It offers a variety of tools that makes it easier to manage your business presence for free. Meta Business Suite can help you reach more people and stay up to date, while you manage, schedule, and post your digital marketing agency creatives from one place.

• Canva: This is by far the most popular and easy-to-use, drag and drop photo and video editing tool you have ever come across. Even the free version gives you a lot of readymade templates to custom design our graphics for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Also, there are tons of other tools available for designing, editing, and marketing. Like –

• Proof Hub-Proofing tool
• Filestage
• Adobe Photoshop Express
• PicsArt

Invest in personality development and self-growth

In today’s generation, it is of utmost importance to invest in yourself. You should spare some time each day to develop your personality and communication skill.

Due to a lack of good personality and presentation skills, you may face disappointment in many areas of your life, especially when you are interacting with a foreign client.

So, there is no better time than now to invest your time in personality development and self-grow. Some tips to develop the personality are –

• Confident & well-spoken
• Pay attention to your attire
• Help people who need it
• Keep a positive outlook
• Respect the value of others’ time.

4. Branding your digital marketing agency

Define your brand name

With millions of brand names in the world, it is getting harder to create and find a unique brand name. That represents your brand style and purpose. You can start with three steps:

What type of name do you want? There are seven different categories of name and pretty much every brand name in the world falls within one of these six categories:

1. Eponymous
2. Descriptive
3. Acronymic
4. Suggestive
5. Non-English
6. Abstract

Decide what you want the name to say:

Look, of course, it is tempting to create names that talk about who created them or what you do, or where you operate. The best brand names describe they stand for a big idea. So as you think about the new brand name think carefully and ask yourself what’s your big idea.

Apple, Uber, Disney, and Starbucks, all are iconic brand names. That seems perfect in today’s world.

But, do you think that, when the founders choose to go ahead with these good brand names, was it a stroke of genius? Or it is the process of doing great business with memorable, catchy names that stand the test of time?

“The truth is, a name is only one part of a great business. But it’s far from the biggest or most important part of the business. Most of the iconic brand names only became memorable after people experienced an amazing product or service from the company.”

Check that the name is available:

It is important to check the name isn’t already taken, otherwise, you might have to create hundreds of names, perhaps thousands before you find one that’s even available with a .com domain name. And of course, don’t forget to check the name doesn’t mean anything negative in other languages or countries the last thing you want is an embarrassing naming fail.

Design Logo, Letterhead, Invoice Format, Proposal Format

You have to keep your branded materials ready before marketing your brand on social media or any other platform. You should have the formats ready when you are approaching a client for submitting a proposal or quotation.

To make your marketing templates attractive, make sure to add a beautiful mix of colors, and a design layout that makes your text eye-catching.

Setting up your website

After you have your brand name and logo ready, it’s time to set up your website or blog. And you have to make sure that your website is searchable on Google. Also, it is advised to start publishing blogs related to Digital Marketing so that it helps your business to get new leads through your blog. Search engines prefer ranking websites that are updated regularly and proper on-page and off-page SEO is taken care of.

Organic Search (SEO) Traffic

When someone searches for something using a search engine, the result page they see contains a list of organic or unpaid results.

Organic results typically appear in the center of the page and are the results the search engine decides are the best match for the words that were typed in, which is called the search query.

Result pages will also display advertisements as paid results through they’ll be separate and labeled as ads. There’s no cost to appear in the organic results.

Build an Online Presence – Social Media

Digital Advertising is going to be bigger and bigger in the coming years. When you’re starting a digital marketing agency, you’ll want to be on social media. This will help to increase your digital presence and network. But be sure to check which platform works best for you.

Presence in B2B & B2C platforms

Listing your business on B2B platforms can be proved beneficial if you list your services, offer some physical product, or deal in e-commerce. Some major B2B media platforms are –

• Clutch.co
• Amazon
• Alibaba
• eBay
• Indiamart

5. Legal registrations & taxation

The next step is to register your business with the Governing Authority of registration in your Country. In India Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) and in the USA Small Business Administration (SBA) will help you to register a business and complete the necessary formalities.

In India, a business whose turnover exceeds 40 lakhs rupees is required to get Goods and Service Tax (GST) registered. However, for certain types of businesses getting registered under GST is mandatory. If an organization carries out its business without registration under GST, it will be an offense under GST and heavy penalties will be applicable.

6. Customer Acquisition & Lead Generation

Define your target audience:

If you have a sense of who might be interested in your company, you’ll be able to figure out how to reach your target audience. And you will be able to focus on each target group and break them down further. The process of doing this is called segmentation, where you are essentially breaking down your target audiences into smaller subgroups based on things like geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral.

Get your first client:

In this article we have discussed how to start a digital marketing agency and prepare the ground for your startup but to become a business in real world, you need clients. A business without clients is just an idea and not an actual business.

To get the first digital marketing client you may try doing the following, which has worked for me pretty well in the beginning.

Friends and family – There is a good probability that some of your friends or a family member own a small business and want to scale its business. Especially in terms of marketing, you can help him prepare a website or run some social media advertisement or Google ad.  

Social Media / Linkedin Contacts: Reach out to your social media contacts and offer them to help with their digital marketing tasks. At first, take a look at their website and keep yourself prepared with the marketing tactics that you have come up with and how you are planning to help them get more clients, improve their search appearance, and in general generate more leads.

Keep in mind that this is your first client and the ‘first official proposal’ you are sending out try to make it as detailed as possible with specific result-oriented goals.

Explain to them why it is important to invest some money in improving their website look and feel, why they need to have active social media accounts, and how they can benefit from Search Engine ads. You have to make them understand that they are missing out on opportunities by not using email marketing strategies, social media marketing, and everything else which is needed to convince them to hire you as their digital marketing consultant.

Make sure, to keep your prices low at this stage, because you are trying to get your first few customers to build your portfolio and build your presence in the Digital marketing field.

The lessons learned in the initial stage of customer acquisition and working on the first few projects will give you an immense sense of pride and happiness. And the experience gained during this time will be invaluable to work on your future projects.

Freelancing websites like – Upwork, PeoplePerHour, fiver is another great way to get your first client.

7. Build a team for your digital marketing agency

The next decision to make is how you plan to expand your digital marketing agency.

Acquiring an Office Space:

You can do this in three possible ways –

• You can have a virtual office at your home and hire remote teams to work for you
• Or you can start it in a ‘traditional business model’ where you need to take office space on rent and hire local employees
• Or a combination of both

All three options have some pros and cons attached to them.

If you are looking to serve global clients, then for you location doesn’t matter much. You can have an office set up at your home only. And connect with your employees and clients remotely. Because having a physical office will only increase your monthly expenditure.

On the other hand, if you plan to serve clients in a specific region or city then establishing a physical office in that particular area will help you create more brand awareness locally and get more local clients.

Also, you should focus on hiring the right skill set for the required job and within your budget.

Learn Team management skills:

Team management is the ability of an individual to administrate or coordinate a group of individuals to perform a given task effectively. Now take a look at how you can improve your leadership and team management skills.

• Provide cohesive leadership and lead by example
• Relay effective communication
• Set a vision for the common goal
• Define individual roles and responsibilities among the team
• Help your team to learn and grow, and Resolve repetitive problems for your team.

We at Internet Entry try our best to provide you with the right information and resources to get started on your digital marketing journey. Follow our blog and  YouTube channel for more such interesting articles videos.