The Importance of Agency Partnerships
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No one wants to turn away business.
One of the worst feelings is talking with a prospect and realizing that the services that you offer only solve half of their problem.
For example, they really need marketing help, check. But they also need a website, built specifically in the HubSpot COS, uh oh.
So what do you do? Learn to develop in the COS and hire a new developer? For most agencies that is neither realistic nor a smart alternative.
In order to not lose the prospect to another agency that does both you need to have a solution.
That’s where agency partnerships come in.
You Can’t Do it All
Nor should you.
Agencies that offer dozens of services with small teams cannot scale or offer amazing quality. Spread yourself too thin and you become a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.
It’s fine to not do websites, it’s fine to not do PPC, it’s fine to not do social media management. You don’t have to because there are hundreds if not thousands of other agencies out there that do.
The key is to build relationships with them and form partnerships that are mutually beneficial.
Don’t be afraid to pass along leads and refer business to partners. If you send someone a good lead, they will be likely to return the favor.
Be sure the leads you are sending them are good leads. Passing off unwanted or unqualified leads to other agencies isn’t doing them a favor, it’s passing your headache on to someone else.
Gray gets a little heated up in this episode over that one, it’s happened to us a time or two.
How to Build Agency Relationships
For some of you, especially young agencies, you may not have a ton of friends in the space yet that you can count on. Here are a few ways that we have made some great relationships.
- Conferences — Each year we attend the INBOUND conference that HubSpot puts on in Boston. It’s not just a place to go and try to find leads, it’s a great place to build relationships with other agency owners. We have made some great friendships through this conference and others and each year look forward to going.
- Online Communities — The big one here is inbound.org. If you don’t have an account, make one. There are a lot of talented people in this community. Help answer posted questions and begin making connections.
- Local events — If you are a HubSpot partner, HUG groups are a great place to meet other local agencies. If you are not a HubSpot partner, not to worry. If you are near a city look for local marketing conferences to attend. If there are none, consider starting your own.
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