For one reason or another, the size of your digital marketing firm has become overwhelming. Maybe as its leader you are struggling to oversee all the different marketing departments; maybe the threats of an economic recession are starting to manifest, and you simply cannot afford to maintain such a large office. In any case, you need to downsize – but you don’t want to deprive your clients of the marketing services they undeniably need.
Here are a few tips and tricks for downsizing quickly without losing the clients your firm needs to survive.
Talk to Your Clients About Their Must-have Services
Most of your clients probably aren’t taking advantage of all the services your digital marketing firm offers, which means you may be able to cut some of the unused services from your menu. In doing so, you may be able to let go some of your more specialized staff or cancel subscriptions to expensive, niche tools that are draining your monthly operating budgets.
Of course, you don’t want to cut any services that your clients want or need — now or in the imminent future. Therefore, before you start hacking and slicing your services menu, you should talk to your clients about their current and future digital marketing goals.
In these conversations, you should take note of any objectives that will draw upon specific services offered by your agency. When services are never or exceedingly rarely utilized, you know you can eliminate them without any risk of losing your clients.
Identify the Best and Most Unique Services at Your Firm
Every digital marketing firm excels in some specific marketing channel. Some firms have an overwhelming amount of technical expertise in SEO; others are more creative and thrive at content and social media marketing.
You should think carefully about what your team is best at – how they are trained and what they most enjoy – and try to focus on those services when marketing your firm to new and existing clients.
In many cases, the more unique your services, the better, as clients will struggle to find similar offerings from any other digital marketing firm. Then, even if you do have to eliminate more popular services, you should be able to retain a loyal clientele.
Partner With White Label Marketing Providers
Your digital marketing firm doesn’t have to provide every possible digital marketing service in-house. In fact, some of the most successful digital marketing companies have bare-bones core teams and outsource most of their services to white label agencies.
White labeling is the process of providing service under another business’s branding; it allows some niche digital marketers to skip time-consuming and exhausting efforts like sales and customer service and focus on the marketing services themselves. It is typical for smaller digital marketing firms to outsource some of the more technical digital marketing services, using white label PPC and SEO to meet client needs.
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Allow Your Team to Work Remotely
Digital marketing, as the name suggests, takes place online, and most of the work required to manage digital marketing campaigns is also digital in nature. Thus, it might not be necessary for your firm to maintain physical premises.
Office spaces are expensive, not only because of the steep rents demanded by commercial landlords but also because office spaces must be filled with all manner of supplies, equipment and décor. In most cases, your staff will be more than happy to work remotely full time, which will allow you to sell off all your office assets and reduce operating expenses of your firm by a considerable amount.
Automate Everything You Can
Digital marketing often involves small, repetitive tasks that can take time and energy away from your team members without allowing them to take any real steps toward accomplishing client goals.
Fortunately, with technology, you can automate many of these tasks, allowing your employees’ workflows to become more efficient and your agency to reduce its operating costs. You can look into various process automation software, specifically programs designed for use by digital marketers.
Downsizing is not a death sentence. In fact, if done properly, your downsized digital marketing agency could be more successful than ever. By optimizing your services in various ways, you can continue to deliver value to your clients and build a business that makes you proud.