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How To Start A Digital Marketing Agency in 2021 - read the full article about how digital marketing works, Digital Marketing and All digital inbound channels from Eric Siu - Leveling up on Qualified.One
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- All right, so today were going to talk about how to start a digital marketing agency.
So, youve decided its time to go off on your own, or you could be working full-time somewhere and you want to get going on doing, well, a digital marketing agency because the cash flows are great and you could do a lot with those cash flows.
You can choose to reinvest it in other areas, such as your business, or maybe find other opportunities as well.
I have an agency called Single Grain.
And through that agency, actually we were able to parlay the cashflows from that business into other projects within the business or finding other opportunities, other more exponential or more durable sources of revenue.
I think its a great model because you look at it, its basically your funding mechanism every single year if you come across interesting opportunities.
And so I think the goal here, if youre starting out, is you wanna aim for your first 100K.
Or if youre working somewhere, you wanna aim to replace the current salary that youre at right now.
If youre able to do that, then great, you can finally quit.
The best thing you can do is you start the agency when youre working full-time somewhere.
Ideally your place lets you work on a side hustle while youre working full-time.
And we certainly, at Single Grain, we actually encourage that.
We encourage people to have side hustles because whatever learnings they get from their side hustles, they will translate it over to one of the companies that we have that theyre working for.
And for a lot of people are like, "Oh, you know, its not good to let people have side hustles.
Its a distraction." People are going to be people, and you might as well maximize what theyre doing and encourage people to do that.
And if their side hustle turns out great, they were gonna quit anyway, so let em go do it, let them go do something amazing.
By the way, I did this before.
I was working at a company and they found out that I was trying to start this digital agency, which was not competitive to the company.
I was working on a media company.
And one of the leads reached out to the front desk and then I got fired.
And then from there, I just went all in on the agency.
While I was working the full-time job, I was reaching out to my "Dream 100." So theres this book called "The Ultimate Sales Machine" by the late Chet Holmes, and it talks about this Dream 100.
These are the top 100 people that you wanna work with.
So, everyday, I was trying to get a little closer, just reaching out to people.
I would use, back then it was called the Data.com.
And then now you can use a website like hunter.io to find emails.
You can use LinkedIn to find titles.
You can also reach out to people on LinkedIn as well.
But my main thing was I was reaching out to people while I had the safety net of my full-time job.
I was answering questions on Cora.
Things have changed.
There are different online communities.
Now, there are Facebook groups, you can make YouTube videos, LinkedIn organic reach is great.
These are the things that I would be using now to try to prospect.
So Id be creating content while Im spearing people.
So aiming for people on my dream 100 list.
Maybe its VPs of marketing or maybe its CEOs that I wanna be working with.
You gotta figure out, first, what is your niche? Who are the types of clientele that you do really well with? Youre creating some content on LinkedIn, where organic reach is very strong.
Maybe you might be doing some YouTube as well.
What I would say is, if youre gonna start creating content, pick one channel first.
Dont try to view too many, cause its gonna take you probably two to three years to compound.
LinkedIn, you might be able to strike lightning in a bottle because organic reach is great.
You stick with one content channel first and understand that its going to take time to build that up.
And then the other thing I would do is, maybe every single day, youre reaching out to five, 10, 15 people or so, and maybe youre making a video on Loom.
So its L-O-O-M.
And you can use Loom to make a quick two to three minute, five minute screen casts saying, "Hey these are the three things I found wrong with your site.
Let me know if youd like to chat about it." And then maybe what youre sending in the email subject line is, three issues with your site.
Cause people are always like, if Im a CEO is like, "Oh, theres issues on my site?" Boom, they would forward it to someone else, the relevant person on their team because they wanna be fixing the issues on the site.
So you have a good headline.
You have three minutes, five minutes showing that youve done the work and youre doing this as much as you can to build up your clientele.
In the early days, you charge whatever you can.
Were talking about getting to your first 100K, right? So, maybe youre charging, could be a $1,000 a month, $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month.
And then as you get bigger and bigger, you can start to charge more and more.
You can just start to charge 10,000 a month, 15,000, 20,000 a month, 50,000 a month.
Weve talked about creating content, weve talked about reaching out to people, but also, get listed on these other websites, these digital marketing websites.
Get listed on Upwork, get listed on freelancer.com, get listed on marketerhire.com.
These are all job marketplaces where theyll pair you with people looking for, people that are looking for marketing help, theyll be looking for you.
And start building your reviews up.
You can use clutch.co.
Thats where you can list your agency as well.
Thats an agency directory.
Theres a whole host of things you can be doing, but I think being proactive, controlling the things that you can control.
Put out one piece of content.
Try to go for every single day.
Try to reach out to a couple *people set number every single day.
Thats output that you can control, and eventually the numbers will fall in your favor.
And just understand that, hey, to take a lot more pressure off of you, ideally, if you have a full-time job, youre doing this after your full-time job, to build the agency up.
And your goal is to get to that 100K.
Just understand too when youre doing deals, when youre trying to close deals, that every no brings you closer to a yes.
Dont feel down.
Use it as fuel, use it as energy to get stronger and stronger.
I think also understanding that your network is your net worth.
Being part of virtual networks or being part of in-person networks.
Im in a lot of different communities.
I go to the Ted Conference every single year, and thats great.
Very high level of people that attend.
Im in entrepreneur groups like Entrepreneurs Organization, YPO, MasterMind Talks.
I also throw my own groups as well.
We have a group called The Growth Accelerator, which is a peer group where its seven to nine figure entrepreneurs.
So my point of telling you this is that thats always been important to me, hanging out with like-minded people, throwing dinners, things like that.
Even when I had no network at all and I didnt really have a lot of experience, I would throw dinners at my house.
Id pay for dinner.
Sometimes I couldnt even afford to pay for dinner.
Get a group of people together.
We all learn.
Wed put each other on the hot seat and wed learn.
And now you have the advent of Twitter spaces, of Clubhouse, a lot of different drop-in audio options.
Its a great way to do speed networking.
To me, its speed relationship building.
So understand that everything youre gonna be doing in the agency world is really built off of relationships.
A lot of agencies I know that dont really do good work, their founders have really good relationships.
So thats what you wanna get good at doing.
Even though Im an introvert, what I do is, if I go to a conference, Ill get a group of speakers together and then Ill throw the dinner.
So every time I go somewhere for a conference, Ill try to get a group of people together and Ill just cover the bill.
It just makes it a lot easier.
And so that is stuff that compounds over time and you just become the connector.
Relationships last a lifetime.
What I would also say is, as you work towards the 100K, maybe youre hiring some help.
Maybe youre hiring some freelancers.
You can go to Upwork, you can go to freelancer.com, the sites I mentioned earlier, you could actually go there too to hire help.
A lot of people are looking to also get work.
Eventually what you wanna do is go from freelancer and then level up all the way to full-timers cause those full-timers are going to be bought in.
Im really just talking about the first 100K here, so Ill, Ill make another video talking about how you can start an agency but then take it to seven figures or so.
But Im talking about the first six figures right now.
Theres a lot of work to get to seven figures, then eight figures, and then so on.
Just keep playing the game.
So, anyway, if you enjoyed this video, dont forget to check out the next video over here.
And if youre coming from the podcast, dont forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and we will catch you later.
Dont forget to hit the like button as well cause it helps us grow.
All right, see you later.
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Eric Siu - Leveling up: How To Start A Digital Marketing Agency in 2021 - Digital Marketing