How to Grow 2 Successful Agencies at the Same Time
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In this episode of Inbound Agency Journey, Gray interviews Nicole Pereira from Campaign Creators and Deep Root Digital about starting and scaling her two agencies.
Nicole cut her teeth in online marketing back in the late 90s and has experienced all the changes in the industry that have occurred. Digital marketing helped her utilize her technical skills and marketing savvy to grow businesses.
Her interview has insights that are beneficial for both new and experienced agency owners.
Here are the main takeaways from the interview:
Don’t Be OK with Okay
While running the agency Business on Market Street, she saw that they were just doing things okay. They were offering a broad range of services, but they hadn’t honed in on their strengths. A lot of time and energy was being wasted on items that weren’t best for the business. They then decided to spin off another business, Deep Root Digital that focused on technology and design and then spun off Campaign Creators that focuses on funnel building, specifically in the middle of the funnel.
By focusing on their strengths and letting other agencies handle the services they weren’t as good at, Nicole and her team have been able to start and scale two separate agencies successfully. It can be tough to turn down business away when you’re niching down, but it’s what you have to do if you want to focus on your strengths.
Act Like a Business
Even with two agencies under one roof and overlapping resources, Campaign Creators and Deep Root Digital completely work as separate companies. They charge each other for services when resources overlap, they each have specific accounting systems, independent timelines, different points of contact, and they offer each other referrals.
Though you may not be running two separate agencies, the principles are important that if you’re going to build a business, then you need to act like a business, no matter your size.
Getting lax can be easy. It’s important to take note that if you seriously want to grow and scale your agencies, you need to be serious about treating your business like a real business. This includes marketing your services as well. A lot of agencies will neglect their own marketing. You need to treat yourself as your own best client.
Focus on Optimizing
A lot of marketing online focuses on generating traffic or emails, and then there’s a lot of content on sales, but there’s less focus on the journey a lead goes from to become a client. This is the focus of Campaign Creators. They developed a proprietary system to nurture leads so that they’re sales ready when they come out the other end. They have complex funnels and triggers to get leads have the content they need to get where they need to go.
By doing a good job educating and nurturing leads, agencies can help their clients with sales as well as in their own marketing efforts. Most businesses don’t have this middle of the funnel optimized for sales success.
Another scenario with optimizing is building a service around it. Optimization takes current marketing to the next level. Many clients could use optimization to get the most they can out of their current efforts. Optimization is a niche service that agencies could begin exploring.
If you’re interested in learning more about the work that Nicole Pereira and her team are doing, check out Campaign Creators, Deep Root Digital, San Diego HUG group and you can connect with her on Twitter.
