Learn how to revamp your agency’s business development and be ready for 2022 in our latest post.
The way you run your business has changed drastically over the last two years.
Shouldn’t the way you attract new clients change as well?
For many agencies, their biz dev plan has seen little change since 2020. In most cases, it wasn’t even necessary - the demand boom unleashed by the pandemic meant you had more work than you could possibly keep up with.
That strategy, however, might not hold up in 2022 anymore. Demand is at least starting to slag, and your employee attrition problem isn’t going away anytime soon.
How do you revamp your agency business development in the post-pandemic era? What changes should you make? What should you retain?
I’ll share some answers in this guide. You’ll learn:
- Why it’s crucial that you define your niche expertise in 2022
- Why 2022 is the year of “active biz dev” and why referrals just don’t cut it anymore
- How great content can help you tap into an entirely new market
1. Defining your expertise is more important than ever
We’ve talked about expertise and specialization in the past. And while most agency leaders will readily admit that it’s important, many keep putting it off on their “to-do” list.
In 2022, it’s time to change this.
Understand that in 2022, your usual competitive advantages are largely eroded. If you could earlier corner the local market simply by being physically present, in 2022, your local clients are now being courted by remote agencies across the world.
In this landscape, expertise is how you win new clients, and more importantly, retain talent.
At a time when attrition rates are at an all-time high, retaining talent isn’t just about offering a raise (though that helps). It’s also about giving your employees more meaningful work and the opportunity to learn on the job.
According to one survey, the “nature of the work”, and “opportunity to learn” are the biggest reasons for employee engagement and happiness.
Any agency that positions itself as a “jack of all” likely doesn’t offer the deep learning and immersion necessary to truly learn and grow. In an ultra-competitive hiring landscape, employees are more likely to gravitate to companies that can help them become future-ready by picking up new skills.
The same rationale applies to dealing with clients as well. At a time when agencies and the businesses they serve are going remote, why should any client pick a mediocre “full stack” agency when it can hire true experts from half a dozen dedicated agencies?
Furthermore, clients, just like yourself, feel the competitive pressure as well. Their small business isn’t just competing with other similar small businesses - they’re competing with the Walmarts and Amazons of the world. To survive in this environment, they need deep expertise, not just generic advice.
Whatever else you do, start off 2022 by clearly defining what you do and learning to do it well.
Our article on agency positioning is a good place to start this quest.
2. Make biz dev an active pursuit
What does your current agency biz dev plan look like?
If you’re like most agencies, your answer will likely be “hope and pray for a referral”.
Agency biz dev is remarkably passive, even in our current competitive environment. Even though most agency leaders know that they need to overhaul their approach, there is still strong resistance because of the fear of being too “salesy”.
This is perhaps why referrals remain the top source of leads for agencies.
While nothing beats a strong referral as far as conversion rates go, referrals really don’t scale. More importantly, they take all agency (pun intended) away from you. Instead of proactively finding new clients, you end up waiting for someone to contact you.
The solution to this problem is twofold:
- Adopt a proactive, even “salesy” approach to biz dev. Use email, social media, seminars - anything you’d do for your own clients - to get in front of new prospects.
- Zero-in on your own dream clients and use account based marketing (ABM) to turn them into leads
Both of these approaches require focused, active participation. Biz dev can’t just be “something you sometimes do”; it’s a core part of your regular work activities.
Ideally, you’d want dedicated personnel for this, but even if you don’t go that deep, you should be doing some biz dev every day. Send out a few emails to prospects. Publish and promote content. Establish yourself on agency search platforms.
Essentially, your goal should be to spread out and be seen and heard. And this should permeate throughout your agency’s culture. Your creatives should be willing to tweet and snap and blog about their work. Your account managers should be ready to answer questions and send emails to prospective clients.
The more you can make “active biz dev” a part of your agency’s DNA, the less you’ll find yourself worrying about your next client.
3. Great biz dev starts with great content
Above, I talked about the importance of actively seeking new clients.
And the best way to do that passively is by creating content.
This might sound paradoxical, but every time you actively create content, you create a channel that can passively earn you clients.
A top-ranked blog post can earn you a steady stream of leads years after it went live.
A viral Instagram story can reach millions of people you never even intended to target.
A great YouTube video can introduce your brand to entirely new audience segments.
Sure, the majority of these interactions will lead to nothing more than a few likes and subscribers. But for every 100 people you help, a few will remember your brand. And the next time they need professional help, they just might turn to you.
This simple thesis has been at the heart of content marketing for over a decade. Yet, the number of agencies that consistently create compelling content is minuscule.
There are, for instance, nearly 40,000 agencies in the US alone. But when you Google a question related to your expertise, do you really see 40,000 agencies represented in the results?
Of course, content creation to win engagement isn’t anything new - you already do this for your clients.
What has changed is the nature of this content.
Remember when we talked about the opportunities in small towns and local businesses? Since the pandemic, a huge number of small businesses have been forced to move online. And while they have deep local expertise, they’re often clueless about marketing themselves on the internet.
This audience needs content that is tailored towards helping them navigate the internet. They’re still in the ‘Awareness’ phase of the content lifecycle. Deep expertise and thought leadership, while perfect for your bigger clients, can come across as jargon to businesses that didn’t have any online presence until a year ago.
Thus, your content roadmap for targeting these clients should focus more on the basics. Don’t be afraid of holding their hands through beginner topics. Your goal should be to help them, not just bump up your engagement metrics.
Adopt this approach in your 2022 content plan and you’ll see big wins.
4. Don’t stop developing your existing business
I get it - acquiring new clients is exhilarating. Turning a cold prospect into a revenue generating client is exciting and greatly rewarding.
Yet, for most agencies, a bulk of their new revenue comes from growing their existing clients.
In the pursuit of “new” business, this fact can get lost sometimes. You can be so fixated on winning new deals that you forget to expand your existing relationships. And it is substantially easier to expand existing clients than to win new ones. After all, these clients already know and understand you.
Growing business with existing clients requires two things:
- Deep knowledge of the client’s business and core industry
- An expanding portfolio of products and services to sell to these clients
You should be actively scouting for opportunities for your clients. Maybe they’re falling behind on their social media. Maybe their content strategy is outdated. Or maybe they need a thorough rebranding to compete better.
This needs to happen at both the agency level and the Account Manager level.
Your account managers should know the client’s business and their point of contact thoroughly. The latter is particularly important. If you don’t know what metrics matter to your point of contact, you can’t possibly pitch them ideas that improve on those metrics.
At the agency level, it’s critical that you constantly improve and expand your expertise, especially in correlated areas. An SEO agency that doesn’t do content, for instance, is at a huge loss given the strong synergies between the two. Similarly, social media agencies without in-house video creation capabilities are going to miss opportunities.
To recap:
- Constantly expand your portfolio of services
- Understand the metrics that matter to your client contacts
- Find opportunities that can improve these metrics with your current set of services
Over to You
Agency business development has changed over the last two years. Some older competitive advantages have been erased, while newer ones have popped up. In a rapidly changing competitive landscape, you can’t just rely on passive referrals. Instead, you have to create an active, evolving biz dev strategy.
This starts with clearly defining your expertise. At the same time, it also requires casting a wider net to tap into the massive market of local businesses coming online for the first time. And once you’re done with that, you need to focus on growing existing clients.
One way to streamline agency biz dev is to bring your entire agency under one roof. With Workamajig, you can get immediate insight into every facet of your business. Know exactly how many leads you have in the pipeline, your metrics for any business period, and products & services you need to focus on more.
See how Workamajig can transform your agency - tap the button below for a free demo today.
