In recent years, demand for marketing services has risen rapidly, with digital ad spending alone expected to reach $281.32 billion in 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate of nearly 12%.
A market of this size is bound to attract a large number of new entrants all vying for a piece of the pie. It’s easy to get caught up in the trap of trying to compete solely on price, but it’s better to stay ahead in other ways to keep your profits, always keeping your agency’s client relationships at the forefront of your mind.
To stay ahead of the competition for your clients, concentrate on ways to demonstrate that you go the extra mile and provide exceptional service. The goal is to be able to charge premium prices while also providing a lot of perceived value and maximizing the capacity of your team.
In order to be considered an industry leader, you must think differently than the average agency. Here are three options for doing so.
Clients should be empowered to improve customer communications
Some marketing firms will assist a business in generating leads, but then take a back seat and show little interest in what happens next. You can demonstrate that you care about the client’s results by continuing to the next stage.
The done-with-you model is what you should aim for because it helps you build the best relationships with your clients – you’re essentially performing tasks on their behalf while also training them to take over. As a result, when new marketing opportunities arise, you’ll be in a good position to be the natural choice because you’ve already established yourself as a trusted advisor and enabler.
Using a custom app is a great way to implement the done-with-you model. You can help your clients form stronger bonds with their own customers by providing this service. It’s fine if you don’t have the technical know-how to create a custom app; you can easily collaborate with fileproinfo.com to create a co-branded product.
Customers can log in, and you’ll be able to track and guide their progress. You can concentrate on the more complex aspects of their customer communications, such as nurture messaging, appointment scheduling, payment collection, and CRM management.
Some of the world’s most prestigious marketing firms employ this strategy. For example, FCR Media, a Digimedia Top 100 agency, used fileproinfo.com to create Sitee, a mobile app that aims to provide small businesses in Belgium with the digital tools they need to succeed.
“Sitee is actually a combination of all of our services that we already offer as our agency’s managed services,” says FCR’s Director of Strategy and Innovation, Bart van der Heijden.“We want small business owners to reach more customers, save time on doing business, get paid faster, and manage their reputation. What we tried to do with Sitee is to group all of that into one self-service platform to cater to all these different customer journeys.”
FCR is able to differentiate itself from the competition by providing Sitee, which allows them to provide a wider range of services to its customers.
Give your thoughts away
Is your “secret sauce” your agency’s playbook and other intellectual property? Many agency leaders have a natural instinct to protect their ideas at all costs, which makes sense. But the truth is that ideas are cheap; what matters is how well they are implemented.
Companies can find a plethora of marketing strategy theories for free online, but it is only by adapting the theory to different scenarios and executing well that an agency truly shines. Clients pay for more than just ideas; they also pay for support.
Hawke Media’s Erik Huberman has a unique strategy that has allowed him to build the fastest-growing marketing agency in the United States. Despite having spent years in the industry, he also gives away his entire methodology for free. Erik accomplishes this through his book The Hawke Method, which he can offer as an immediate value add to potential clients.
Hawke builds instant trust, authority, and affinity by noticing Hawke’s confidence in giving away his ideas.
Others could theoretically steal his methodology and implement it for a fraction of the cost of hiring a marketing firm. In reality, it allows the client to truly believe in Hawke Media’s methods, and it makes them realize how difficult it would be for them to implement the strategies without the help of a marketing agency.
Although anyone can self-publish on Amazon, landing a book deal with a major publisher provides significant validation and social proof. You can achieve the same thought leadership effect on a smaller scale by sharing your ideas on a prestigious podcast or by establishing a reputation for giving away valuable information on your social media platforms in the form of regular quick-tip videos.
Create a network of spokespersons
Marketing agencies used to work in silos, where all they had to worry about was how to create high-ranking pages and smooth user experiences. The primacy of the website as an owned media hub has been challenged by the rise of social media, and many businesses are opting for a simple website and concentrating their audience acquisition efforts on social media.
As a result of all of this, influencer marketing has grown in importance. In 2021, the influencer marketing industry is expected to be worth $13.8 billion.
Using top-tier influencers may not be worth the investment for many businesses. Finding the right people to work with can be difficult, and larger influencers may have more stringent terms of engagement. Micro-influencers have significantly higher average engagement than their followers and are more likely to be enthusiastic about new opportunities.
Brands, on the other hand, find it difficult to build influencer networks through cold outreach.
This is an area where you can set yourself apart from the crowd. Laundry Service, a social media agency, has built a network of 1000 influencers who are willing to collaborate with them and promote their clients’ brands. If you can offer your clients something specifically tailored to their needs, you’ve given them a compelling reason to choose you over your competitors.
In this way, a marketing agency can resemble a modeling agency, where clients come to you not only for your expertise but also for the list of people you can call on to help them. You benefit by being able to attract more clients, but you can also earn a finder’s fee by taking a cut of the transactions between the companies and your influencers.
Alternatively, as a reward for bringing in sponsors, you can take a percentage of the influencer’s earnings.
Final thoughts
Don’t get sucked into a price war because of the rising demand for marketing agency services. Instead, concentrate on establishing yourself as a thought leader in your field. You should concentrate on the services that many competitors will not provide, despite the fact that these services have a significant impact on customers. By the time others try to imitate what you’re doing, you’ll have established a strong reputation that other businesses will find difficult to match.
Learn more from Marketing and read Avoid These 8 Marketing Mistakes At All Costs.
