When you try to find out a thing or two about writing a digital marketing agency business plan, you are bombarded by an endless barrage of more or less annoying acronyms such as SCOMS, SUCUTS, AMBERS or something along those lines -none of those above are actual business plan acronyms, at least to the author’s knowledge.
In other words, various business gurus are trying to sell you a prepackaged solution that is supposed to work for any company, no matter what it does or how it makes its money.
Like with all prepackaged solutions, the results are, at best, mediocre.
For a digital marketing agency, due to the exceptionally fluid and innovative niche, such an approach is almost guaranteed to fail. Instead, you have to dig in, brew yourself a gigantic pot of coffee, and really get down to it.
1. Who Is It for?
Inexperienced business owners almost invariably ignore the basic and eternal truth of writing a digital marketing agency business plan: focusing on the audience.
Internal Purposes
For example, you may be coming up with a business plan that will be used mostly for internal purposes. You will be laying out your goals and means to achieve those goals for your employees. You will let them know what is expected of them and what kind of performance will be considered satisfactory. It will also let them know how the company is doing and try to convince them to stay on board.
An internally-oriented business plan is also a great way to understand where you stand realistically, which is often a problem for digital marketing agencies.
Investors and Partners
Another kind of digital marketing agency business plan is aimed at investors and partners. This kind of business plan is intended to reinforce their trust and belief in your digital marketing agency. It goes without saying that this kind of business plan will be finance-heavy, dealing with cold, hard numbers.
Potential Customers
Finally, your digital marketing agency business plan may be aimed at your existing and potential customers. It will be a borderline marketing tactic where you will point out all of the amazing things you are planning to accomplish and the tools that you intend to use. It can also be a great way to advertise the wide array of your services and introduce new ones.
For example, suppose you just started expanding and are now offering digital marketing strategy services. In that case, your customer-oriented business plan is the perfect “delivery mechanism” (to borrow from pharmaceutical terminology here) for this announcement.
It should be pointed out that your digital marketing agency business plan should also start introducing certain terms and concepts that will be more effective in the future, such as AI in digital marketing, natural language processing, data analytics, account-based marketing, and so on.
There is nothing wrong with being ambitious in your digital marketing agency business plan, especially if it is aimed at investors and potential customers.
2. Know Your Market Very Well
A big part of knowing whether your agency will be successful is understanding your audience. Make sure your plan is clear about the definition of your target market–who will you be selling to, and how many other agencies are already selling similar services?
Your ads won’t work if they don’t appeal to what your potential customers want or need. Research and find out as much as possible about the people you want to sell to.
Many business owners fall into the trap of believing that their products or services are “for everyone”– that is, anyone would be interested in or need the products. But even if you define your business as a full-service digital marketing agency that appeals to a broad market of diverse consumers, you need to identify who your ideal consumer is.
3. Numbers. Numbers. Numbers.
Whether you like figures or not, having a thorough understanding of the numbers that impact your business is a crucial component of an agency business plan. It does not matter who the audience for your former digital marketing business plan is; you will have to be excruciatingly precise with your numbers.
When you dig deep enough, a digital marketing agency business plan is never about the words. It is about the numbers.
- How many clients do you have at the moment?
- How many more do you plan on attracting?
- What are you doing to keep your clients?
- How much does your client retention cost?
- How much are you paying your outside partners?
- What kind of growth rate are you expecting?
- How do you plan on selling your services?
- How much will it cost to sell them?
- Are you planning on taking out a new business loan?
- What is your employee turnover rate?
All of this and much, much more has to be backed by numbers.
But, without the numbers backing your claims, no one is going to believe you – not your employees, not your potential investors or partners, not your customers.
If you avoid numbers in your business plan, they will notice it, and once they do, the first place they will go to is that you are trying to hide something.
One word of warning – this does not mean you should divulge absolutely everything about your finances. That being said, some transparency with your numbers can go a long way.
4. Focus on People
The people from the subheading above are your people, your employees.
The reason why they are making a feature in an article about a digital marketing agency business plan in 2023 is that 2023 will hopefully finally be the year when digital marketing agency owners and managers realize the value of the people in their employ.
The situation is such that employee loyalties are all but becoming a thing of the past; in an industry such as digital marketing, this is perhaps even more pronounced than in some other “slower” industries. In addition to this, people are finally talking about the debilitating costs of high employee turnover, which occurs when companies do not value the people who work for them.
It is because of all of this that you need to feature your people heavily in your digital marketing company business plan. (Of course, this is especially true if your digital marketing agency business plan is of the internally oriented kind.)
It would be best if you outlined all the ways in which you plan on retaining your best people and helping them do their jobs better and raise their job titles.
It would be best if you wrote down all of the investments you will make in them and in making your company a better place to work. It would be best if you fleshed out a clear-cut and results-driven hiring policy, as well as an onboarding one.
Everyone who gets a hold of your plan needs to understand that you are a digital marketing agency that understands the realities of the evolving workplace and that values its employees above everything else.