Make no mistake about it: a recognizable and loved brand is one of the most valuable assets a company owns. As a small business, you may be competing against big brands with devoted customers and unlimited marketing budgets.
Your brand is your reputation!
In today’s market, a successful brand has to be consistent in communication and experience, across many applications:
- Environment (storefront or office)
- Print collateral, signage, packaging
- Website & online advertising
- Content publishing
- Sales & customer service
- Internal (with employees)
We all want to sell ourselves to our prospects, but doing that by over-promising can set you up for failure. When explaining the strategy to your client, it’s best to downplay their expectations.
For instance, you may be able to achieve the desired SEO rank for their website in 3 months but explain to them that it might take as long as 6 months to get to that point. And when you make the mark after 3 months (or anywhere less than 6), your client will be impressed with the delivery and happily remain on board with your digital marketing agency.
As a digital marketing agency, your goal is to plan and execute marketing campaigns for the clients without too much concern about their niche. You’ll gain insight into these niches as you go. But for a startup digital marketing agency, it would be very beneficial to have at least one specific niche fully mastered.
When you speak the lingo of the niche and show your interest in it, the clients of that niche will be more inclined to choose your agency. It also helps you get into the nitty-gritty details of that client’s specific struggles in the market, thus delivering better solutions.
The majority of today’s business owners understand that they need digital marketing, but they probably don’t understand a thing about it. Chances are that they know what they need to achieve their own goals.
So, if a client tells you that they want to get more customers so that they could hire more people and have more free time for themselves, don’t try to pitch them with talks about SEO, Google and social media ads. They are more likely to respond to you positively if you show understanding of their situation and explain to them in their own words that you can make their goal happen.