Smart Agency Masterclass With Jason Swenk: Podcast For Digital Marketing Agencies

Rapid Agency Growth: The 4 Serious Strategies For Your Agency Every agency owner would most likely have rapid agency growth on their list of aspirations for their business. In this episode, we’ll cover: Why you should niche to become more successful and achieve rapid agency growth. Ways to change your pricing to increase revenue and profit margins. How to use case studies as a lead generator.   My guest today is Dan Lok, a self-made millionaire and entrepreneur who consults businesses for an equity position. He has taken on not one, but three troubled agencies and turned them into 7-figure businesses. So, if you are new to agency ownership or been in the game awhile but need some tips for shaking things up, you’re going to want to know more from this self-made millionaire. 4 Serious Strategies For Rapid Agency Growth Strategy #1 - Be a specialist. Does your agency claim to be able to do everything for everyone? Or, is your target something broad, like “small businesses”. You are a generalist but… the riches

What Makes Good Lead Magnets and How Can You Engage with Prospects? In this instalment of #AskSwenk, I discuss what exactly makes good lead magnets and how can you engage with prospects. I also share how to handle clients who approve work without reviewing and whether telesales companies are a good option for the outbound sales of your agency. {0:33} Frank asked: "What are others finding are good lead magnets to generate new contacts/leads? Beyond that, what are good ways get contacts to engage your firm once they are in your database?" The best lead magnets in my opinion are case studies. Headlines are the most crucial part of a case study to use them as lead magnets and I like to stick to the template in my headlines of "How to do something cool without doing something that sucks" to grab the attention of your audience. Once they are leads, ensure to provide them with good content with call to actions to get your prospects to move to the next stage. {2:43} Kelsey asked: "Does anyone have any experience with

Could a killer outbound sales strategy take your agency to a whole other level in how you perform and the clients you attract? In today’s episode, we’ll cover: Why an outbound sales strategy is important. One killer outbound sales strategy for new agency business 4 steps to a successful 100 Call Challenge. Today’s guest, Gene Hammett, knows a thing or two about outbound sales. He used to be my agency’s VP of Sales and scored us meetings with huge brands like Home Depot and Porsche just to name a few. He’s now using his knowledge and experience as a writer, speaker and Strategic Coach for competitive service-based businesses. Gene also hosts Leaders In the Trenches, a podcast for entrepreneurs. Gene recently turned one of his coaching strategies on himself and created a 10-Day, 100 Call Challenge. He’s seeing some fantastic results and shared all the details with us. Why is a Outbound Sales Strategy Beneficial? Having an outbound sales strategy has been lost and forgotten. So many business focus solely on le

Payment Schedules, Payroll for Owners, & Yearly Reviews In this episode of Ask Swenk, i'm talking all things payment and payment schedules. The best client payment schedule and how to get your clients to stick to it. Plus, whether the owner should be on payroll and how to handle those dreaded annual employee reviews. {1:14} Stuart asks: "We have tried to implement your payment schedule of 50% upfront, then 25%, 25%, based on milestones or timelines. However, we haven't had any success with this, and clients have pushed back hard to get this upon them signing off on the work. Aside from not working with these clients, how have you handled push backs like this?" {4:44} Adina asks: "Do you pay yourself a salary on payroll? My accountant says I need to pay myself like an employee and then remit payroll tax ...for myself! Just wondering if this is common practice. {6:37} John asks: "Should my company keep doing yearly reviews for my employees?" How You Can Improve Your Business I hope this provided you with a

Do you want to learn how to go from the freelancer life to starting a digital agency and even grow it so it's worth seven figures. In this episode, I’ll cover: 3 steps for transitioning from freelancer to agency owner. How to identify and overcome growth struggles. How to hire when you’re ready. #1 advice for newbie owners. Rob Riggs has a great story to share about his digital agency journey, and it all begins with freelancing for a pretty awesome guy... ME :) Seriously though, I met Rob through owning my digital agency and we frequently sent work his way. Over the years Rob has turned his freelance business into a thriving digital agency. In this interview, he tells us about the transition that began in 2004, from a one-man show to 12 person digital agency, Your Design Online. He shares how he overcomes challenges, how his role has evolved, and what he would tell his former self to do differently. 3 Steps to go from freelancer to digital agency owner Identify a narrow niche. Rob says he stopped taking on

What You Should Do (And Shouldn't Do) When Selling Digital Agency In episode thirty four of #AskSwenk, I discuss what you should do (and shouldn't do) when selling digital agency, plus how to compensate referral agencies and how to follow-up when a prospect goes dark. {1:08} Amy asked: "I'm in negotiations to sell my marketing agency. What should I be aware of? Pitfalls to avoid?" You need to determine why is the other agency or business interested in buying your agency? Revenue? Location? It's important to figure this out for the leverage of your agency and make sure to ask them the same questions they ask about your business to evaluate if they can afford you. You should also keep the fact you are considering selling confidential to avoid potentially losing clients. {5:57} Scott asked: "What are your thoughts on paid referrals or partnerships between agencies? For example, your agency refers me work I pay you x% commission. " This can be done a couple of different ways but depends on how big projects or r

Are your team within your agency losing far too much time in email communications both internally and with clients? In this episode, we'll cover: Gaining control of your clogged and cluttered email inbox. A system that sorts, organizes and stores emails in a way that makes sense. How to save time so you can get busy making money. Today’s guest is digital agency owner Ian Garlic who owns Authentic Web, a video production and distribution agency and host of the podcast, TAO of Inbound. He shares with us a solution for sorting and organizing internal communication. Buried by emails? As his agency grew, Ian was having a problem with his email inbox getting clogged. He was cc’d on everything but wasn’t necessarily involved in the details of every project. So, when Ian needed to jump in on something he was digging through emails trying to get a macro picture of what what going on by having to weed through all the micro details in old emails. The solution Ian discovered is Slack - a communication tool for tracking

Agency Case Studies, Team Accountability & Avoiding Client Changes. On this episode of #AskSwenk, we'll cover: How you can use case studies to attract agency new business, how to improve your team accountability, and what do you do to stop your client from requesting a zillion changes. This Week's Questions: {0:51} Christian asks: "How can I use a successful case study to attract more business within the same niche?" {3:01} Eric asks: "What can I do to hold my team accountable to their goals? More importantly, if they don't hit them... what kind of repercussions should there be?" {5:26} Steve asks: "How can I handle a client who wants a zillion rounds of changes? We are constantly making changes only to find out they want more changes on top of their changes. It's killing us in hours. Is there a more efficient and profitable way to handle it?" Would You Like To Work With Me LIVE & In Person? I'm doing a live workshop here in Atlanta, GA in July, and I wanted to see if you'd like to come. This is an ex

Struggle to find the work-life balance for you and your agency? As an agency owner, it's so easy to become a prisoner within your business as you strive to make it the best digital agency out there. In this episode, we’ll cover: How to build your agency around your life, to find a work-life balance instead of being a prisoner. 3 ways to build your agency around your personality. How to brand your agency and be the leader in your category. Today’s podcast guest is Re Perez, founder of Branding For The People, a branding agency for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Re has worked for some pretty huge agencies working on some major Fortune 500 clients. He talks to us about leaving all that behind in order to build an agency around his personality and lifestyle finding the best work-life balance. Re had a pretty interesting journey that led him to starting his agency.  His highly successful career took him from New York to Dubai and back to New York. Yet despite a successful career he wasn’t fulfilled with the

Do you find it hard to keep up with developments in technology and getting client contracts just right? In this episode of #AskSwenk, I answer your questions and cover these topics for you: What KPI's your agency should be measuring, how to keep up with all the latest technology and what key info you need to include in client contracts. Agency KPI's, Technology, & Client Contracts This Week's Questions: {0:25} Susan asks: "What KPI's does a digital marketing agency need to measure?"   {2:10} Troy asks: "You are pretty much on every channel. I've listened to your podcast, seen you on Twitter, FB, Instagram and your blog, How do you keep up with it all?"   {4:28} Rory asks: "As I'm just starting out, and bringing on clients, are there any super critical "things" to include in contracts and should we worry about contracts?" Are You Ready to Improve Your Agency? After you have mastered these challenges, what's next on your list? If you want to take your agency to the next level, constantly finding ways to im

If you are looking for technology secrets for your agency to impress your clients, then today's episode is just for you. In this episode, we’ll cover: 3 technology secrets that will WOW your clients. A Facebook development that every business should be using. The hottest trend in live streaming video. The #1 easiest hack to boost your Google ranking. On this episode of The Smart Agency Master Class, we’ll hear from Ryan Steinolfson with some advice that can boost your business and totally impress your clients when you bring these growth solutions to the table. Ryan’s agency, Accelerate Marketing, specializes in social proof and live streaming video for it’s clients. He says live streaming is a lot more complex than it appears and his agency helps their clients with it in three ways: Live streaming on the client’s behalf. Teaching client teams to live stream, or with their course Live Stream Blueprint. Developing “Advocacy Days”, which are live stream events among multiple strategic partners that are connec

What You Need to Know When Starting an Agency When starting an agency, it can be intimidating from building the best team to creating your portfolio of clients to make your business profit. But as the agency grows, you may find yourself outgrowing clients that you had when you initially started and needing to consider growing your team or outsourcing content for different projects. On this episode of #AskSwenk, we'll cover:  what to do when your agency has outgrown a client, all about starting an agency (like when and how), and whether you should outsource your content writing. (0:21) Jojo asked: "My question is, how far do we need to go for these clients before it is time to think about politely passing them off to a more suitable freelancer or smaller agency? I appreciate that they were part of our business growth up to this point, but some of these clients are "loss-making" for us and get in the way of other work." (2:46) Nancy asked: "What will I be ready to start an agency? Should I start one now and lea

Are you considering hiring freelancers but don't know the best way to successfully manage remote teams for your digital agency? In this episode, we’ll cover: Creative ways to find top talent. Freelancer onboarding… or not? Managing freelance and remote teams. Today’s guest is the co-founder of Hubstaff, a technology solution for managing a remote staff with everything from time tracking and progress monitoring to payables and financials. Dave Nevogt shares with us some great tips on sourcing, hiring and managing freelancers. Out-of-the-box talent searching ideas: Often times agency owners don’t know where to look for the right candidates. Most end up relying on referrals or freelance marketplaces. Very few agencies experiment with other sources, such as: Check out LinkedIn or AngelList. Create a LinkedIn search filtered by your criteria. You never know who’s looking, who might be employed but unhappy. Reach out in a personalized private message and include a link to the job description. If they’re interest

On this episode of #AskSwenk, we'll cover:  How to handle clients who think you have a conflict of interest because you're specialized in a niche. Also, ways to get your foot in the door with new clients, plus getting better business leads for your sales team. This Week's Questions: Tackling Conflict of Interest {0:29}  Giles asked: "We specialize in design and marketing for the bar and restaurant sector. We've recently had a couple of meetings with prospects who were concerned about a conflict of interest as we already do work for one of the largest players in this sector in the UK. How would you tackle their concerns?" Getting Your Foot in the Door {2:36} Bobby asked:  "What assessments would you use for getting a foot in the door with a client?" Finding Better Business Leads {5:16}  Phil asked:  "There's one thing I consistently hear from my sales team and that is 'it's just bad timing for the client right now.' Have you found a good way to overcome this objection? " Related:  http://jasonswenk.com/askswen

Top 5 Business Growth Tips on How to Scale Your Agency Are you struggling on scaling your agency and just can't find the best business growth tips that fit your business model? In this episode, we’ll cover: Top 5 business growth tips to grow and scale your digital agency. How to juggle and manage multiple businesses. If you’re looking for a 7 or 8 figure entrepreneur to model, this guy might be it… Syed Balkhi is the owner of several multi-million dollar online business and he's crushing it. Syed’s trifecta of online startups includes:  WPBeginner (the largest free Wordpress resource), OptinMonster (lead generation software, and List25 (entertainment site) -- all of which are hitting 7+ figures and combined, serve over 400 million visitors! He’s also a former agency owner and a stakeholder in several other businesses. In this episode, Syed shares his best advice for getting your business to the next level. He’s got a ton of great tips for growing and scaling. Top 5 ways to grow and scale #5 - Answer everybo

On this episode of #AskSwenk, we'll cover: What awards you should be looking at nabbing to attract big brand clients, whether you should be putting your published pricing on your website, and how to protect the concepts you've pitched. This Week's Questions: 0:22 - Jerry asked: "What industry awards should I go after for my agency that can attract the bigger clients?" 1:53 - John asks: "What are your thoughts about posting your prices on your website or not posting them? I see many other agencies who do post and then many who do not." 3:39 - Elizabeth asks: "My agency is pitching concepts a lot more now. Concepts which we are proposing to make the content for. How can we protect our ideas from clients taking our ideas to other agencies?" Let Me Help In this episode of Ask Swenk, we've discussed a range of topics like published pricing for your agency and spec work but did this cover what you need to improve your agency? Do you need more advice? Don’t worry, I have all you need to get through these obstacle

Do you know how to ensure you are guaranteeing leads for your business? If you are struggling with this as well as growing your team or how to prevent time lost to bad clients, this episode of Ask Swenk is the one you need. In this video, I’ll cover: What to do when a prospect wants you to guarantee leads. My #1 struggle in growing my agency team and 3 ways we overcame it. How to fire a terrible client so you can quit wasting time. Guaranteeing Leads in a Proposal (0:23) Lawrence asks:  "A prospect is asking for us to guarantee the number of sales leads our digital marketing will create -- which is impossible and could change over time. How would you go about putting this into the proposal?" Don’t shy away from guaranteeing performance! Take pride and back your work. I have NO issue with guaranteeing leads... DO IT! But, you cannot guarantee sales. Lead generation in your control, converting leads and the sales process is not. 3 steps to guaranteeing leads: Determine a very specific criteria for qualified

Do you really need to have a big agency experience to truly be successful as an agency owner? In this episode, we’ll cover: What it’s like working at a big agency. Why a CCO would leave a large, publicly traded agency. Does size matter?  How you can determine your purpose and use it to build your brand. For anyone who has questions or doubts in their own abilities to startup a digital agency and run better than the big dogs, you’ll have to check out this interview. My guest, Kerri Konik, has worked at some pretty huge agencies, and left her latest as Chief Creative Officer in order to start her own agency. She tells us what it’s like at the big agencies and why she left to do her own thing. The grass isn’t any greener at the big agencies… it’s greener on the side that you water:) What it’s like at a big agency (...and why leave)? After years of working at big agencies Kerri started her agency, Brandscape Atelier, five years ago because she felt like she wasn’t making much of an impact on her clients’ busine

Do you know how to ensure you are guaranteeing leads for your business? If you are struggling with this as well as growing your team or how to prevent time lost to bad clients, this episode of Ask Swenk is the one you need. In this video, I’ll cover: What to do when a prospect wants you to guarantee leads. My #1 struggle in growing my agency team and 3 ways we overcame it. How to fire a terrible client so you can quit wasting time.   Guaranteeing Leads in a Proposal (0:23) Lawrence asks:  "A prospect is asking for us to guarantee the number of sales leads our digital marketing will create -- which is impossible and could change over time. How would you go about putting this into the proposal?" Don’t shy away from guaranteeing performance! Take pride and back your work. I have NO issue with guaranteeing leads... DO IT! But, you cannot guarantee sales. Lead generation in your control, converting leads and the sales process is not. 3 steps to guaranteeing leads: Determine a very specific criteria for qualifie

When building an agency, having big brand clients can elevate your agency to a whole other level. This is where the challenge comes in of how do you grab the attention of those big brands? In this episode, we’ll cover: Grabbing the attention of big brands. 5 Steps to creating a winning environment. The hierarchy of an agency with big brand clients. Don’t be a “me too” agency Mike says the agency’s Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Zak Mroueh, has always made it their mission to capture the attention of big brands and get to the next level. He says agencies are always telling their clients to stand out, be different, and do things that are uncomfortable. However, they don’t “walk the walk” and follow their own advice. For example, ever notice how agency websites all look the same? That’s why Zulu’s website is one of the most entertaining agency site you’ll see. It pokes fun at the agency industry’s cliches and stereotypes. It’s edgy, it’s funny, and it’s one example of Zulu walking the walk. (I’m telling y