so in this six part tutorial i'm going
to show you step by step how to start
and operate and scale a digital
marketing agency in 2022 so i am
incredibly excited for this video look
it's going to be a little bit longer
this isn't your typical 10 minute quick
video i'm really going to go in depth in
this video to share with you each one of
these six different segments talking
about digital marketing agencies and
really how to scale them so let's go
ahead and get started with this video
now first i'm going to outline each six
of these different areas and then we're
going to go in depth from them so the
first thing we're going to talk about
here in this video is setting goals and
expectations for digital marketing
agencies essentially how much money can
you make how much time is going to be
required what qualifications do you need
and then in section number two we're
looking at determining what type of
industry you're going to excel in so
there's tons of different types of
marketing and we're going to help you to
decide which type of marketing you would
like to focus on at first when getting
started then in section number three
we're going to talk about building your
online presence and becoming an expert
how do you learn how to market this is a
pretty serious question that we need to
explore and then in part number four
we're looking at identifying your target
clients who do we choose
to market for who do we decide to pick
up as clients do we want high-end
clients do we want dentists doctors
lawyers there are lots of different ways
to go with this and you want to make
sure that you're picking up the right
clients for your digital marketing
agency then in part number five we talk
about building your team do you need to
know how to do all of this or can you
outsource some of it who do you want to
hire do you want to hire family friends
there's just a lot of different ways you
can go with that as well that you want
to be careful with and then in section
number six which is probably my favorite
is going to talk about getting your
first client and then scaling from there
basically talking about growth strategy
and how to grow this digital marketing
agency from zero dollars today to
something that maybe perhaps is making
you hundreds of thousands of dollars per
month and trust me that is very possible
now
before we get into each one of these
sections you can feel free to skip
around if you would like but before we
get into each one of these sections i
need to make a couple of quick
disclaimers first of all i have nothing
to sell you here okay there's no big
online course honestly i don't think you
have to pay someone to learn how to
scale and operate a digital marketing
agency i remember when ty lopez came out
with his digital marketing course way
back in like 2014 or 2015 i actually
took it
and you know i thought it was kind of
helpful but i don't think it was really
worth the cost that i paid for at the
time so i don't think you have to spend
any money to learn how to grow a
marketing agency so this truly is the
best business for anyone to start
you don't have to have any experience
you don't need a college degree you can
be anyone you know me you anybody can do
this
and so this is why i love digital
marketing agencies as a business to
start and i think the best part about
this is that there's really not going to
be much money up front that is required
to start this maybe you want to have a
website maybe you want to have some
different types of software but for the
most part your costs are going to be
very low this is why i like digital
marketing agencies over something like
an e-commerce business or even like a
brick-and-mortar business where you have
to get uh like materials and equipment
and you have to pay for products and
then you have to worry about cash flow
with digital marketing agencies you can
really bootstrap this from the beginning
and there's just not a lot to lose there
besides perhaps maybe your time if you
give this a go and you try it for six
months and it doesn't work out worst
case scenario you probably learned a lot
okay and maybe you didn't make a lot but
you learned a lot that is the absolute
worst case scenario from this so let's
get started with this i recommend taking
out a pen taking out a piece of paper
because we're going to talk about a ton
in this video and as always if you're
not subscribed to this channel already
make sure you hit that subscribe button
because we have tons of different
marketing videos rolling out on this
channel every week okay so let's go
ahead and let's start with setting our
goals and expectations um so there's a
few things first of all before we talk
about entity formation and everything
else let's first of all talk about how
much money can you make with a digital
marketing agency so when my brother and
i started hours years ago our goal
really was just to pay for college we
wanted to just you know you know
diversify away from some of our other
stuff that we were doing our other
businesses and we wanted to just pay for
college so we wanted to just make five
or ten thousand dollars per month which
was you know really a big goal for us um
and i would say that
with digital marketing agencies look
you're not gonna make a hundred thousand
dollars next month unless you're
like smarter than einstein you're not
gonna make a hundred thousand dollars
next month but i can tell you this that
if you really put your effort into it i
believe that anyone within 90 days can
be making 10 000 per month with a
digital marketing agency and i'm gonna
lay that out with like the blueprint
here today in this video of course all
of this being free okay so how much
money can you make with it i think on
the lower end you can make a few
thousand dollars per month if you want
to just do this passively like keeping
your day job or staying in school but
then also running some marketing for a
couple of brands picking up a few
clients getting them on retainer we'll
talk about pricing structure later in
this video as well but i think from the
lower end you can make a few thousand
dollars per month and i've seen people
make hundreds of thousands of dollars
per month with their digital marketing
agencies now we make five figures
monthly with our agency and we decided
to keep it at a certain level where we
have pretty much all of it outsourced we
have people running it
and i don't have to really do much today
because i don't want to scale that
agency past it but you know that's
another topic for another day as well
but you can get it up to something
that's making you maybe 20 30 40 50 000
per month and then eventually automate
it um so that it's just making you money
while you go and work on other business
ventures or just go on vacation and have
fun that's also possible and we've done
that okay so getting deeper into this
topic of setting goals and expectations
you need to think about who is going to
be in this business is it just you who's
starting this digital marketing agency
maybe perhaps you've been talking about
this with a friend of yours or a
colleague or maybe
one of your siblings or somebody in your
family
i'm going to give you just a couple
quick pointers here when it comes to
starting businesses because i have
dozens of companies it's just kind of
like a big mess right now but i've
dozens of companies i can tell you this
that you want to be really careful
starting a business with a friend
because i've seen businesses really
break up friendships and you can be both
on the same page at first but over time
as you run a business it kind of just
changes dynamics and friendships and so
i would actually recommend against
starting a business with a friend
especially a really close friend because
i've just seen it so many times where
your friendship ends up getting ruined
because of the business it just happens
time and time and time again that i've
seen um so you know i started my
business with my brother and pretty much
all my businesses i start with my
brother because i can trust him we're on
the same page with everything i know
we're not going to cross each other
that's just personal but just be very
very selective of who you start a
business with and who's essentially
getting equity in that business if you
do a 50 50 split on a business with your
business partner and two years from now
you realize hey i'm doing all the work
my business partner doesn't do anything
and they're getting half the money and
you might be really kind of upset about
that but you know if they own half the
business they get half the money so you
want to just be really really selective
on that and i personally think that it's
best to either keep the business 100 to
yourself or maybe bring in one other
person but don't try to have like eight
of your friends all starting the same
business together it's just going to get
really messy the fewer people the better
you want to retain as much equity as
possible in the business if you want to
bring other people on you can bring them
on sort of as like
like consultants or freelancers but try
to retain as much equity of the business
as possible
and you know we'll talk about entity
formation here right now in this point
as well so when you are starting a
company like a digital marketing agency
you're going to probably want to form
something called a limited liability
company this is an llc now i'm not a
lawyer just a guy on the internet so
make sure you do your own research on
this but typically we like to start
limited liability companies instead of
just using our personal name uh when we
are running a business especially
something like a digital marketing
agency there's really two reasons for
this one for tax reasons and two because
in the com in the company there limited
liability company it's actually going to
in some cases hopefully defer liability
to the company so let's say that you're
running a marketing campaign for a
business the campaign goes terribly
wrong that company ends up getting sued
because of some marketing mistake that
you made and then that company tries to
sue you well if you're running this
through your business you should be
somewhat okay because they can sue the
business and maybe the business will go
down but they can't come after your
personal assets and your personal bank
account and of course you need to really
dig into this because there's you know
holes you can like poke in corporate
veils but you're going to want to create
a limited liability company or perhaps a
corporation so the best way to do this
is through a company called ink file
they're an affiliate here so this is how
i'm just funding this video so
if you want to go check them out and you
want to start your llc i recommend going
down to the link in the description it's
to ink file and they're going to help
you set up your llc
and also there's other things like
setting up a registered agent that
they're going to take care of for you as
well overall this cost is going to be
pretty minimal i use ink file for all of
my filings whenever i create a new
business they just kind of streamline
the process now you could do this
yourself if you don't want to use ink
file you could do it yourself but it's
going to be like a lot more headache and
a lot more confusing you have to go
through your like department of state so
if you want to do it right i recommend
using a company like inkfile i will
leave that link to them down below in
the description uh if you want to sign
up and if there's any discounts or
anything i will also put that in the
description as well next to that link
okay so once we form that entity once we
form that llc and we've decided who we
have as a business partner if we have
any then we want to think about how much
time this is going to take us overall
with this new business venture and this
is why i love digital marketing agencies
because when it comes to time commitment
it's really up to you like i said you
can have this as something that you're
doing maybe for five or ten hours per
week after school or after work or you
can make it a full-time thing where
you're working 80 hours a week on it's
really up to you and that's what i
absolutely love about the flexibility of
something like a digital marketing
agency it's not like you have a physical
store where you have to be there from 8
am to 5 pm and you know deal with
customers every day all day you can do
this really kind of on your own however
you see fit all right now we're getting
into section number two which is
determining the type of marketing that
you were going to really focus on for
your digital marketing agency so i'm
gonna tell you right now the biggest
mistake that anyone makes when they
start a digital marketing agency or
social media marketing agency or
whatever it might be the biggest mistake
that i've seen people make is they try
to be a jack of all trades they try to
be a full service agency from day one
now i personally think this is a huge
mistake okay and i say this because i
tried this when i started way back with
our agency like in like 2015 we tried to
be a full-service agency but we didn't
know what we were doing and we were
basically mediocre we were average at
all these different things and so
instead of trying to be average at all
these different things i suggest focus
on a couple of key specific areas get
really good at them and then eventually
as you scale your business as you bring
on more clients maybe you can start
hiring more employees and then you can
venture into a couple of different areas
that you know maybe you're not an expert
in at the time so let me just give you a
rundown of some of the like kind of
primary areas for marketing we have
things like social media marketing this
is pretty straightforward and the great
thing is a lot of people can do this
this can be running social accounts for
companies whether this is instagram
facebook tick tock snapchat
twitter any of the other different types
of social platforms out there running
social media marketing for companies
look there's always going to be money in
this and you can always pick up clients
just one example here uh you know just
look at like your local ice cream shop
you go into the ice cream shop you say
hey let me run your tech talk let me
blow it up make sure that you know you
get tons of new clients and we can do
all this through social media you get
them on a retainer maybe a thousand
dollars a month two thousand dollars a
month you start bringing them clients
and they're going to be very very happy
right that's just one like small example
there of social media and how you can
really really get good at social media
marketing now this is also helpful
perhaps maybe you have a tick tock
account that has blown up and you have
hundreds of thousands of followers on
there you can easily kind of convert
that into social media marketing for
other businesses that's just another
example there okay social media
marketing that's a huge area that you
can focus on another one is going to be
search engine marketing or paid
advertising in general okay so paid
advertising uh this is also pretty
straightforward in the name basically
running ads on all these platforms
whether it's on google or a youtube ad
before this video or maybe uh you're
running ads on tick tock or snapchat or
instagram or facebook right you can run
ads in so many different places but paid
advertising and actually in the physical
world as well paid advertising even
through billboards or through like your
local newspapers sometimes those
actually do work trust me um but running
paid advertising for companies you can
do this in the same setup and we'll talk
about pricing and basically how to build
uh companies and how to determine prices
but
with paid advertising you can also set
something up with like a retainer for
example you say okay give me 500 a month
or a thousand dollars per month and i'll
run the ads for you obviously that
company pays for the ad spend as well
but you have them on retainer on top of
that
that's another great option there okay
the third category that you can focus on
is something called search engine
optimization so search engine
optimization this is basically trying to
rank a company's website uh very highly
in typically google search or the second
largest search engine is going to be
youtube search okay so when i go on to
google and i type in dermatologist in
philadelphia whoever's coming up number
one in that spot that's not just luck i
mean if you're showing up number one on
google for a really highly competitive
search term that really is worth a ton
of money and companies are willing to
pay a lot of money to anyone who can
help them get to the top search result
in google or even on youtube um and so
if you can learn how to hack that how to
get really good at that trust me this is
another thing that's it's going to take
time to learn and in section number
three we're actually talking about you
know how to become an expert but search
engine optimization this is probably my
best field i have a really solid
understanding of it just because we've
been running blogs and websites and
youtube channels for almost a decade now
so this is one that we actually offer to
some of our clients um because we just
have a really solid understanding of it
all right so another option is going to
be email marketing there's so much money
in email marketing and a lot of
companies just don't know how to run
email campaigns so this is one that i've
actually i'm not an expert with email
marketing right and so because i'm not
an expert with email marketing i hired
somebody else to run some of my email
campaigns from one of my other
businesses so instead of me trying to do
this myself i just outsource it to
someone else but email marketing this is
a huge one you can make a lot of money
on this especially actually if you want
to do this i would target influencers or
brands that have like big social
followings and they just don't know how
to build email funnels and lead funnels
in general so email marketing huge money
in that you can focus on that become an
expert in that field and make a ton of
money another one web development look
if you already know how to make websites
beautiful that's great if you don't
don't worry we have tons of videos on
this channel that can show you they're
multi-hour long videos that can show you
how to build websites um and so if you
want to learn how to do that you know
you can check out some of those videos
i'll link to them down below but if you
get really good with wordpress you can
build websites for businesses i mean you
know a lot of businesses need websites
and it's pretty tedious job uh like
building websites it's not very fun
right so there's definitely money in
that for people if you have a digital
marketing agency that focuses on
building out websites for your clients
and then you know you can even bundle
that in with like search engine
optimization and just make packages from
that okay now there's two other fields
that i just want to briefly touch on
here one of them is something like
public relations or also known as pr so
there's big money in this okay running
public relations for people or for
companies to get the word out about
something i find this actually really
works well for authors somebody who just
wrote a book if you can find a way to
connect with them and say hey let me run
pr for you i'll get you into the
newspaper i'll get you on to you know
forbes and yahoo and business insider
and i'm going to make sure that you know
we line up 50 different podcasts
for you so you can be a podcast guest on
all these different ones to help you
with pr this isn't really digital
marketing as much but it's still one
that i think is a really great
opportunity and it's honestly overlooked
in a lot of cases is running a pr agency
i absolutely love this uh we've done
this for a number of clients as well um
it's just honestly really fun to just
see kind of like how far you can hack
the news and next thing you know your
client ends up on like you know cnn or
fox news or something and they're just
like you know it's it's crazy what you
can do in the pr industry uh with with
public relations okay so that's another
field you can focus on and then another
one is something like really focusing on
graphic design which you know you could
say is a graphic design business but you
still could really make a lot of money
uh from a graphic design angle with
digital marketing so as you can see
these are just some of the different
possibilities and routes that you can
take with a digital marketing agency
from this list and you know you could
probably add 10 others on this list as
well that are much more niched down and
specific but from this list i recommend
picking two to three of these different
categories and saying i'm gonna focus on
these specifically at first and then
eventually i can scale out and learn all
of these but i'm gonna stick with just
two to three of these right now and
scale out later okay because like i said
the biggest mistake people can make is
by trying to be a jack of all trades and
do all of them at the same time okay
because i'm assuming that you don't are
not an expert right now at all of these
right so unless you're an expert all of
them go for it just you know launch it
but um if not then
stick to one or two okay so that is
leading us into section number three
here which is to build your online
presence and also how to become an
expert in the field of digital marketing
all right so there's a couple of routes
we can take with becoming an expert and
building our digital presence now the
first thing that we can do and i think
the best option but the one that
probably a lot of people don't want to
hear is to become essentially an
apprentice or an intern somewhere at
another marketing agency so you can
really learn the ins and outs and the
ropes of how marketing companies work um
this people aren't gonna like this
because it takes time right and you know
i'm sitting here saying well your best
bet is to spend two years at a marketing
agency learn the ins and outs and then
go start your own two years from now you
probably don't want to do that so
if you don't want to do that then the
other option is you can do a lot of
self-teaching to become an expert in any
one of these fields that's the beauty of
the internet today in this world so we
have over 100 videos on this channel
alone that can really help you along the
way whether this is how to run google
ads or how to run ads on facebook or
how to build websites or how to sell on
shopify i mean we have videos for all of
these different topics um so i do
recommend you know checking out some of
those other ones and of course
subscribing to the channel because you
can do a lot of teaching for yourself
for example i taught myself a lot of
these different marketing strategies and
i've just learned them over time and
sometimes you know the best way to learn
is through your own mistakes which is
hard to say because you don't want to
charge clients if you're doing a
terrible job and that's why
i think another great way to kind of
learn how to do this is to basically
offer your services for free for as long
as possible until you can really build
up rapport and also build up a lot of
skills so i think this is a great
opportunity for a lot of people and you
know we'll actually get deeper into this
in section number six when we talk about
getting clients and growth strategy but
if you want to learn how to do something
and you're not really sure how to do it
look just go and offer it to a business
for free or for very very minimal cost
and a lot of businesses are going to
take you up on that if you say hey i
want to grow social media accounts i
don't have any experience but i'll do it
for free for you if you go to a business
saying that a lot of them from my
experience will agree to it or you know
not every single one of them but i would
say at least one out of ten will say
fine you want to go run our social media
for free they don't see any possible
loss there so they'll let you go and do
it and then you start to build up those
skills you get better at it you learn
over time and then eventually you can
start charging and you can leverage
maybe not that client that you did it
for free but you can use what you did
for them and you can then charge the
business down the street to do the same
thing for that other business so that's
another great way to learn is just
through experience just through making
mistakes and learning the ropes yourself
on top of you know the theory and the
reading books i'll leave a link to a
couple of different books that i thought
were really great about uh marketing
there's a good seo book that i read for
search engine optimization um you can
read you know you can read some like
gary vee books or neil patel books those
are okay i think they're a little fluffy
but they can definitely help you with
certain types of strategy all right now
you're also going to want to make
yourself look very professional so
you're going to want to build out a
website for your business hopefully
you've already formed the entity through
ink file or through your state
and then you're going to want to build a
website and social accounts for your
business immediately after you file for
that llc um and so you can build a
website on something like wordpress it's
pretty inexpensive or you can do it on
squarespace or on wix um you know i
personally think the easiest is to
honestly just do it through wordpress uh
hosting it with hostinger um so there we
do also have a full tutorial on that by
the way uh but i think that's probably
gonna be the best setup for you it's
gonna cost you you know like two or
three or four dollars a month to have
your website set up like that and just
from learning how to build your own
website you're going to gain some
experience and then maybe perhaps you
can go build a website for some of the
businesses in your local area for free
um and then eventually you know just
become an expert at that right so that's
what i was just doing for that there's a
couple other things like canva i
recommend signing up for canva learning
the ins and outs of that it's going to
be really helpful for graphic design if
you want to just put together some logos
for some companies or for yourself then
learn the ins and outs of canva also
webflow i absolutely love webflow i
think it's probably it's it's my
personal favorite for building websites
for companies i don't build any of these
sites myself anymore we just outsource
all that of course
but that's my personal favorite for that
is building websites with webflow and
then also perhaps you know maybe you
just want to get a free trial with
shopify so that you can learn how to
start a shopify store even if you don't
have one maybe one of your clients in
the future is going to want to do that
and you know you've already done that
because you've just practiced it with
the free trial you messed around for 14
days and you learned a lot from that
that's just another thing that you can
do so basically what i'm saying is go
through download all all these different
types of software get the free trials
learn the ins and outs of each one of
these it's going to help you to get some
footing
to start you off so that you can then
eventually go and start doing some of
this work for free for companies or
businesses in your area and then you
know a couple months after that you can
go and start charging companies for that
and i know that's not like some people
aren't going to like that i'm saying go
work for free but trust me
it's going to be the best option if you
go out with no experience and you try to
pitch businesses in your local area to
charge them thousands of dollars to do
something look trust me because
i see this every day i have family
members who have businesses like
restaurants and and different businesses
in the area and i would say probably
at least 10 to 20 times per week they
get phone calls from people saying hey i
have a digital marketing agency can i
you know build a website for you i see
that you're not you know on like um
whatever yelp or something let me help
you out with that let me help you rank
with that and like
they shut all of them down because they
all just want to charge them money and
they just have so many people coming at
them offering these services so you need
to find a way to differentiate yourself
uh from all those other people and i
think offering for free right off the
bat is going to be the best way to get
your foot in the door okay so now we're
getting into section number four which
is identifying your target client who
are you going to choose to have as a
client as a customer um look i'm going
to give you just a quick hint here you
don't want to have anybody and everybody
that you can get as a client you want to
be very specific as to who you choose to
work with all right so the most obvious
one that a lot of people go for right
off the bat is going to be doctors
lawyers
dentists
because you know when you look at these
people especially in your local area
they tend to be making a lot of money
and so they're willing to spend
thousands of dollars per month to get
new customers because you know let's say
that
the the lawyer in your area is making a
hundred thousand dollars per month and
you know so they're gonna have more
budget there to spend on marketing to
bring in more uh customers for
themselves now the issue with this i
think the the reason why i wouldn't
target these people right away when
you're first starting off is because
there's just so much competition in this
space of trying to get lawyers doctors
and dentists
to run their campaigns for them what
type of marketing this is you know it's
up to you but still
there's going to be a lot of competition
because what i was saying earlier is
that like i i know a lot of people who
have these businesses and they just get
pitched so much on them that i think
you're better off focusing on some
different fields and kind of just
skipping over like the dr dentist lawyer
space unless you want to do that for
free just to gain some experience the
other options here perhaps you could uh
find target clients like big
corporations and when i say big
corporations i mean like really big
sometimes publicly traded companies i've
done this myself where i've kind of
angled it more like a consulting gig but
will go into fintech companies because i
have a personal brand so i'll go into
fintech companies and you can charge
them 500 an hour a thousand dollars an
hour sounds kind of ridiculous but you
can because corporations they just have
so much money like to them they just
have millions of dollars that they're
throwing around and so it's not really a
big deal for them to pay someone 500 an
hour to
find ways to you know market their
product better because it can be worth a
lot more to them
so targeting corporations can be really
great the problem with that is that it's
kind of hard to get your foot in the
door with like a big corporation um i
probably can't say which companies i did
this recently for because i'm under ndas
but
some pretty big investing app uh that
you know like yeah can't mention it but
um
you can do that hard to get your foot in
the door obviously so maybe it's hard to
start off with uh doing some marketing
for big corporations but there's a ton
of money in that another one that i
think is really exciting i've never done
this myself but i think it's really
exciting is political candidates okay
you can offer a marketing service
specifically for political candidates
there's always going to be campaigns
running at any time of the year any time
like literally ever people are always
running for congress for senate uh for
president even um and so i have a couple
friends who have done this actually
where they will get campaigns on
retainer they'll say okay i need ten
thousand dollars per month and i'm going
to help you 10 hours a week to run your
campaign to do the marketing side of it
to make sure that we're drumming up
a lot of noise and we're getting crowds
together and we're just you know running
some of that marketing and a lot of
campaigns you know some of them
have pretty tight budgets but i've seen
ones that are really able to spend a lot
of money because they've raised from a
lot of super pacs where they've just
done something where you know they have
a lot of money flowing in so political
campaigns i honestly just love politics
so i wanted to include it in there but
it's one that i think is pretty unique
you're not gonna have a lot of
competition in this space if you go to
everyone who's running for congress in
your state or in your like tri-state
area and you approach them and say hey
you know i can help you with this let me
help you with your social media
like you know give me four thousand
dollars a month i'll help you with your
social media i'll make sure that this
you know 10x is and you'll get so many
more views and everything else um
there's a lot of money in that okay uh
another option here for target clients
is something like a e-commerce business
so you know let's say that you approach
people who have shopify stores or who
are selling physical products whether
this is e-commerce or actually physical
products like a store in your town and
you can help them to get online and to
start selling those products online both
of those are definitely great options
all right now i'm going to let you in on
a little secret because this is my
favorite type of client to land
and it's going to be a startup okay a
startup that just recently raised a ton
of venture capital maybe they just did
like a series a or a series b or a
series c and they raised a lot of money
maybe they raised a couple million
dollars and they're looking for growth
they're trying to get more downloads for
their app or you know whatever type of
startup it is they're trying to sell
more product or they're just trying to
sell more software and get more users
and i found that startups tend to have
really high budget and they're looking
to spend it they're looking to burn it
because they're trying to get more
growth the startup world is absolutely
insane so i have a fund so i you know
i'm in this world quite a bit and so
i've learned a lot about the startup
world and seeing just how many people
are are just burning money on marketing
and i don't wanna say burning as if it's
a bad thing but there's a lot of money
flowing around
after a startup raises uh around and you
know they have a few million dollars to
spend they're looking to get growth and
they're willing to basically like
they're looking for someone to help the
market trust me like i know a lot of
founders and they all are like hey nate
do you know anybody who can help us to
market to get more users and they have
trouble finding people for that so if
you kind of cater your agency to uh
growth especially if it's like user
growth app growth right
i think there's just so much money in
that and you can make tens of thousands
of dollars per month from something like
that and it's an angle that i just don't
see very often a lot of these videos
that i see on youtube i watch a couple
of these about digital marketing
agencies um and a lot of people just you
know say like run facebook ads for your
local store you can do that but you're
going to be maxed out to a certain point
i think just go for the big fish right i
mean try to get in to some of these
things like these these startups or into
these corporations you have to do some
scheming obviously slide into some
linkedin dms
but it is definitely possible all right
so in section number five we're talking
about building your team so i want to
keep this part pretty brief because i
think when you are first starting out
you really should it should just be you
or maybe some close associates you
probably don't have the budget to bring
on multiple people as like w-2 full-time
employees and so the way that i
personally structured this and that i
would structure it again if i was going
to do it again is to do a lot of it
myself at first especially so that i can
learn how to do it
but then i would just bring people on as
freelancers basically you 1099 them it's
just a tax term you have them on a 1099
uh so that they're not like actual
employees you just have them doing like
miscellaneous freelance work from time
to time maybe when you get overloaded
and you can outsource that to them so
what i like to do is build up a team and
basically a network of people that you
can reach out to whenever you need them
without having like a big overhead so i
have a friend who has a digital
marketing agency
and i don't want to trash him here in
this video so that could say his name um
but he has like 30 some employees and
they're on w2 like they're on salary and
that said the average salary of those
employees probably you know say 60 000
per year times 30 people that's what
like 1.8 million dollars a year that
he's spending in like just paying his
employees that's really stressful he has
all those people that he has to pay
regardless of how many clients he has
that's why i like structuring it with
1099s and freelancers so instead of
having tons of employees i like to just
have a network of people so i have
probably a dozen different graphic
designers that i can call up right now
and say hey you want some work this week
let me hit you with it go right and i
can just pay them for that week i can
pay them for that job um and then you
know after that i don't worry about it
and you know maybe won't contact them
for a few more weeks and because they're
freelancers right so build a team of as
many people in each space as you can so
build a team of a bunch of graphic
designers build a team of a bunch of web
designers build a team of a bunch of
people who are really skilled with uh
copywriting right basically like writing
copy or like you know this is great for
email marketing or for like even like
the copy on websites basically just the
wording people who are good at writing
okay so build a team of writers find
half a dozen people who are good at
writing find some people who are really
good at even video editing or some other
different things as well right build
this team like lay this all out in a
spreadsheet that's what i do or you can
even literally just have it on your wall
and you know this could be two dozen
different people that you can reach out
to how do you find these people uh you
can find these people well you know i
personally find a lot of them actually
just through referrals and through
friends but you can find a lot of them
on a website like upwork i don't like
fiverr i think fiverr the quality is
pretty bad
so i i don't use fiverr for any serious
jobs
that we're doing but upwork i think is
really excellent you can find some
really great people on there um
on top of that uh you can actually just
post a lot of people off of linkedin as
well i've i slide into linkedin dms like
every day so when i see something that i
really like i'll just shoot them a
message you know i'll go find the
linkedin i'll shoot through the message
and nobody messages on linkedin so if
you see someone on instagram and you
really like their stuff and you message
them on instagram you know maybe they'll
respond but you know sometimes people
don't uh so that's why i slide into
linkedin dms i swear it always works
people don't turn off notifications for
linkedin it's just some weird bizarre
thing but it works really really well
okay so building your team like i said i
would focus personally on freelancers
especially at first um building that
like big big web of freelancers that you
can reach out to at any time but you
don't have a big overhead cost because
you're not paying them every week you're
only paying them when you need them for
a job so if you get a job that you're
charging your client five thousand
dollars and then you can go pay a
graphic designer you can go pay someone
else to do all this other stuff and you
can maybe pay them a thousand dollars
and you're making five thousand making a
four thousand dollar spread right there
that's just one way to start to scale
the business right um all right now
we're getting into the sixth section
here which is talking about getting
clients and growth strategy now if you
skipped to this part and you missed some
of the other stuff in the video i
already did mention some things that i
would do to get your first clients and i
think the best thing to do is to
definitely work for free for your first
few clients okay go in offer whatever
service you have whether it's social
media marketing or with paid ads or
email marketing go into a couple of
businesses and offer to them for free to
do this for them you can even explain to
them say hey look i'm not an expert at
this this is why i'm doing it for free
but it's at no cost to you there's no
downside for you let me just do this for
you and let me grow your social media
you offer that to a couple of different
businesses or
people who are looking to grow right you
offer that to them if you actually grow
them then you can leverage that and
start charging businesses money after
you can you know do that right so you
say hey look uh this local business i
grew their tick tock account from zero
to 60 000 followers and they're getting
millions of views per month in the local
area i did this for them now you go to
the next business down the street and
say hey look this is what i just did for
them i can do this for you as well it's
only going to cost you 1500 per month
for me to run your socials for you right
that's exactly how i would do that to
start getting clients because it's
really three ways to get clients and new
customers the first way is to just go in
and just ask cold emails cold calls
showing up the doors of businesses and
really just trying to get clients that
way now this can work and this is what
you're going to have to do for your
first few clients but eventually you
probably don't want to be doing that
because what you really want the sweet
spot for getting new clients is through
referrals because you're already going
to have some rapport you're all you're
already going to have some trust so
let's say that you're doing marketing
for the ice cream business in your local
area and they love what you're doing now
they go tell the local
chiropractor hey you know this this
person just helped me market my ice
cream business and i have so many more
customers now they go tell their buddy
who's a chiropractor and they go tell
their buddy who owns a pizza shop and
now those people want you and they're
begging for you to work with them you
don't have to go in knocking on their
door begging for for them to hire you
they already are reaching out to you so
referrals are the absolute best way to
get new clients and this is when you can
start charging more money this is when
you are in more demand so it's just a
way better thing for people to be asking
you to work with them rather than you
begging them to work with you okay
that's always going to be the goal and
the third way to get clients is through
paid traffic like if you want to run ads
for example um you know like let's say
that someone searches marketing agency
in philadelphia you can run an ad to
show up number one on that a lot of
people will click on that that costs
money i don't think you probably want to
do that right off the bat i would just
do that if you have like extra bandwidth
and maybe you have like you know just
money to spend on that to bring in new
clients but i wouldn't recommend running
paid ads uh to to get your first clients
um i think the best way is just you know
brute force going in and like just
trying to
get a couple clients um for for free
okay so we want to talk about one really
important thing here and that is how
much should you charge for your services
so i'm gonna tell you right now uh the
biggest mistake that people make with
digital marketing agencies for charging
for pricing
is they basically as an agency owner
they will just look at their expenses
and say okay well how much time did this
take me to you know do this service
and how much did it cost me and then
they just kind of like add money on top
of that to make a spread and say well
you know it cost me three thousand
dollars to do all of this for the
company so let me charge them five
thousand dollars this is not what you
want to do okay people do this all the
time it's bad you don't want to do that
all right don't look at how much you're
spending and then just add money on top
of that you need to do it in the reverse
okay you need to start off by saying how
much value is being created for my
client
and then how much can i charge to make
sure that i'm like getting as close as
possible to the amount of value that i
provided for my client so for example if
you provide a service and you are
driving 20 000 worth of value to that
client because you're just driving so
much business for them and they end up
getting twenty thousand dollars from
that you probably wanna charge at least
ten thousand dollars right so you you
don't wanna miss charge with this okay
you wanna charge based off of how much
value they are getting and how much it's
worth to them
rather than how much it's costing you
and what this means is that sometimes
you could be running at a loss so it's
in this is why you need to be really
careful with with businesses especially
if you start bringing out employees like
let's say that um like your expenses for
creating logos for um a a company let's
say that your expenses are like a
thousand dollars to create a logo for
one of your clients but how much is it
worth it for them maybe it's only worth
it for them for 500
that's the value that they put on a logo
so you need to find a way to make those
expenses lower um or else you can have
some serious problems because you have
to see what everybody else is offering
in your local area what everybody else
is bidding on uh the the other marketing
agencies that i'm referring to here so
that's just something that you really
need to think about okay how much value
are you driving and then how close can
you get to the value that you're
providing them uh versus your expenses
and and your overall price okay that's
how i would do pricing okay
so those are the main things we want to
talk about in this video i hope you
found it valuable if you did make sure
you drop a like subscribe to the channel
and please please please let me know if
you have any questions you can either
shoot me a dm on instagram i'll leave my
instagram up here somewhere or you can
comment down below as well and i'll do
my best to respond to you as soon as
possible sometimes i get a little bit
flooded but i will be updating some
stuff on instagram and everything else
instagram and twitter is another great
option as well so thanks for watching
the video and i'll see everybody in next
week's video best of luck to everyone