You've got goals and that is the right first step. I have successfully run and now market and sell services in the digital marketing and web development industry. Our companies growth last year doubled the year previously and this year already is looking to do the same. So I've been where you are with a startup that's looking to hit it big in this niche.

There are a few things to consider when driving sales to a design/marketing agency:

#1 - Understand your universal metric. In most agencies it is billable hours. If this is the case know your costs (labor, overhead, fees, etc.) and understand your profit margin. Using a universal metric like billable hours helps you to easily and successfully make strong financial growth plans. Success and progress can be measured from this single metric.

#2 - Create a conversion funnel that helps you track your progress. If I knew that I needed 4,000 billable hours per year to hit my goal of $200k in revenue then I know that every month I need to complete 334 hours of billable work. That number not only helps me manage my sales but also my labor, resourcing, etc.

I would use the conversion funnel focused on the following stages: prospects > progressing > proposal delivered > closing. Then I would break down goals for each of these stages based on previous conversion rates (percentage of leads going from one stage to the next).

If I know I can land 50% of all of the proposals I deliver than I need to figure out how many progressing leads I need to get to that point. You essentially work backwards here.

#3 - You have your universal metric and you know your individual stage goals and conversion rates between stages (which you can work on improving). Now you need to find the top locations your prospective customers are congregating online and offline (don't forget this part). Then you use a targeted message to connect with your prospective client opportunities to help them understand how you solve their problems.

There are lots of ways to find, market and sell to clients in the web design and digital marketing niche. I've got lots of successful experience doing it.

Let's talk through how you can do this for your own business and dive into the specifics. Hope this helps!

You might be interested to know that I have been on both sides of this conversation. I have managed in-house marketing for a large ecommerce company and also ran strategy at a digital agency for some of the biggest businesses in the world.

The problem with most online marketing campaigns run by digital agencies consist of two real reasons.

#1 - Most agencies don't do their homework. Online marketing campaigns require lots of work upfront. Smart campaigns, customized to your individual business bring the best results -- but most agencies don't really think about your business. Agencies too often only think about how to get you to sign the contract.

They don't know your products or understand your customers.

Also, if you start a campaign without clear objectives, tools for measuring, and back-up plans for when things don't go as planned you will find yourself in trouble.

#2 - The second factor that plagues online marketing campaigns but is easily fixed (especially if you already are doing #1) is optimization.

You start the campaign small to save money and effort. You find what works. Then once you know what is working you stop doing what isn't working and spend your efforts at ramping up what is working.

Then you continue to test and refine your marketing campaign. Continuous optimization creates significant cost savings which is a major factor to ROI.

If you can't reduce costs it requires you to make a significant amount of new revenue to make up for over spending.

These two factors drive a lot of the issues businesses have with agency led digital marketing. If you need help at getting the most from a marketing agency, or just need to know what you can do to drive strong, measurable ROI let me know.

A few minutes can save you a lot of headaches. I'm just a call away.