Agency Growth: How to Break Through Revenue Plateaus with a More Powerful Marketing Function

Many agencies reach a certain revenue figure only to then have revenue stay at that level for years. We also see agencies that assign marketing to busy account team members who are limited to executing marketing tactics in what little free time they have after client work.

 In both cases, the end result is typically that agency revenue can grow only to the point that the owner’s/senior team’s known referral sources can take it. To break through to the next level, the agency must grow its reputation to reach new prospects. Reputation takes time to build.

To push through revenue plateaus and grow agency reputation requires a financial investment and time commitment. Reputation is built by:

1. Attending and speaking at conferences and events that your prospects attend.

2. Sponsorships with key organizations.

3. Social media activity.

4. Most importantly, a sustained, value-added mailing campaign to large prospect databases.

The goal is to build a marketing ecosystem that paints the impression of the agency’s omnipresence in the minds of your prospect universe.

To achieve unbroken revenue growth, agencies need to invest in a marketing function with a team of two who have no client billable responsibilities. Instead, their role is to facilitate, measure and follow up on website and LinkedIn activity by potential prospects. They also respond to prospects who express interest via your mailing campaigns.

Generally, this team should include 1) a thinker who partners with your senior-most client leaders to drive meaningful marketing (and messaging) activity and 2) a lower-level tactician to handle database management, mailing logistics, etc. Both members can also support the pitch team on qualified new business leads with research, sales tools and more.

The Yo-Yo Effect…and how to avoid it.

Many agencies apply inconsistent efforts to their marketing program and experience equally inconsistent results. One month you’re generating quality leads. The next month, you’re not. Business is up. Business is down. Business is flat.

There’s a reason.

We call it “The Yo-Yo Effect”. Marketing activity only ramps up as client-related activities decrease. Then, when client activities increase, marketing gets pushed into the back seat once again. This is due to a philosophy that minimizes the importance of consistent, high-value marketing to your agency’s growth.

For example: Bob’s billable work has fallen off so the CEO assigns him to “new business development” (conveniently ignoring the very real possibility that Bob may not be at all qualified for this responsibility). When Bob’s billable hours increase, he’s taken off marketing/new business and replaced by Martha who now has too much free time on her hands. When Martha’s client work gets busier, she’s replaced by Fred. 

Sound familiar? On again…off again…on again…off again…the cycle keeps repeating itself. It’s no surprise that the overall impact of marketing for this agency is minimal.

(As an aside: If there are senior staffers with even periodic time on their hands, they may not be right for the firm in the first place…much less responsible for generating new revenue.]

Even in the best of times, marketing requires consistency of leadership, resources and effort to build your agency’s reputation and consistently drive quality leads. Today, marketing in general and especially digital marketing are more important than ever.

The key to success is consistency of quality effort over time.  It takes commitment throughout the agency.

The role and responsibilities of your marketing leader.

How can your agency expand its reputation, drive quality leads and win business in an ever-more-competitive environment? Who’s going to propel the marketing function forward for you?

First, to start putting an end to “The Yo-Yo Effect”, you must dedicate an experienced and respected leader solely to marketing who is not constrained by client billability. This leader must deeply understand your agency’s value proposition and supporting intellectual property.   

Second, this leader must have the right attitude, mind-set and digital know-how to be successful. He or she should be able to drive the agency’s marketing strategy and tactical execution (and be supported with resources to help with lower-level work).

Third, the leader must be able to develop and execute a robust (and written) marketing plan. The plan should include not only activities to build overall agency reputation but also the reputations of niche practices areas, premium products and even thought leaders as experts.

Fourth, agency ownership expects and this person accepts accountability for results. Again, this assumes adequate resources have been dedicated to the function.

Fifth, this person must make a strong first impression with prospects and be able to translate prospects’ challenges into communications solutions without being too salesy.

The characteristics of a robust and effective marketing plan.

A powerful marketing plan is always strategic in nature. It’s not simply a list of things to do. Rather, it should flow directly from your agency’s fundamental reason for being. How are you meaningfully different? How do you achieve better results than competitors? Why should a prospect select YOU instead of the hundreds of other choices available?

To be effective and relentlessly drive quality leads to your agency, strong marketing plans share common characteristics such as:

1. The plan is in writing. It’s understood and agreed upon by you and your senior team.

2. Your agency is clearly differentiated vs. competition.

3. Differentiate based on what you know (deep knowledge has your firm competing at a strategic level) and not what you do (which is usually generic and you’re competing as a commodity).

4. New business-friendly website with powerful SEO (which we’ve learned that even many digital agencies don’t know how to do well).

5. Development of a large database including tight targeting and segmentation. Content marketing is a numbers game so a larger database will lead to greater results.

6. How to ensure the consistency of the brand look/feel for your firm.

7. Creation and delivery of consistent, relevant, insight-rich and useful messaging delivered via multiple channels to prospects (e-mail, social media, digital advertising, online events, selected snail mail and more).

8. Non-stop lead-generation based on the integrated orchestration of multiple activities.

9. Executing a myriad of activities including sponsorship of key conferences, speaking opportunities, spokesperson outreach to the media on newsworthy issues that reinforce your agency expertise, industry awards and events, new client wins, etc.

Finally, successful agencies also recognize that translating marketing success into new business success requires creating and maintaining a “New business state of mind” throughout the firm.

The marketing function has many responsibilities.

Your marketing function must integrate a wide range of activities into a cohesive, lead-driving whole. Including:

1. Setting goals with metrics for results and ROI.

2. Database development:

   1. Building a large, comprehensive database of your best prospects.

   2. Segmenting this database by target categories.

   3. Ongoing management of the database to keep it current and clean.

3. Messaging and content development:

   1. Developing with your senior leadership team effective content for mailings, social pages, scripts for phone calls, etc.

   2. Don’t just add to the clutter – Conduct the research needed to provide insight-rich and useful thought leadership that your prospects can actually use to build their businesses and brands.

   3. Identifying the channels to be used to reach your targets.

   4. Content and messaging that work across channels.

4. Planning and purposeful pursuit of the agency’s Top 5 dream prospects.

5. Managing and coordinating multiple campaigns:

   1. Paid media.

   2. Earned media.

   3. Social media.

   4. Owned media.

6. Managing and continuously improving the agency’s sales tools:

   1. New business-friendly website (Navigation, on-page content, SEO, SEM).

   2. Capabilities deck (For presentation in person, via video, as attachment, microsite).

   3. Case studies (Brief, feature strategic insights, include specific results).

   4. Social media pages (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X).

   5. Oversight of (and contributions to) agency blog and thought leadership.

   6. Senior team bios and photographs.

   7. Other collateral pieces.

7. Monitoring key metrics…and creating appropriate response:   

   1. Website visits.

   2. Pages/content most visited.

   3. Downloads and follow-up.

   4. Requests for more information.

   5. Target selected visitors with customized content and digital activity.

8. Lead generation and follow-up:

   1. Number of leads.

   2. Research prospects and provide information to pitch leader.

9. Lead or participate in:

   1. Lead qualification process.

   2. Pitch/not pitch decisions.

   3. Oversight of pitch team to ensure that the agency’s pitch process is followed.

   4. Pitch debrief sessions to help hone the agency’s pitch process over time.

   5. Specific organic growth opportunities.

10. Providing research, information and materials:

    1. To pitch team based on insights learned during lead qualification process.

    2. To prep and support senior leaders for networking opportunities.

11. Custodian of the agency brand:

    1. Visual identity for the firm (Logo, color palette and more).

    2. Sales tools and brand materials.

    3. Consistency of formats for documents and presentations.

    4. Brand tone and personality.

    5. Creating new and differentiating online brand-related experiences for prospects. 

These are the areas that drive sustained growth and new business success over time. Put an end to “The Yo-Yo Effect” forever.

The bottom line for marketing your agency.

Marketing (including digital marketing) is the primary driver of leads for successful agencies. To win quality new business, agencies will need to be more consistent and intentional with their marketing efforts.

The above goals and tasks may be daunting for agencies that have never had a dedicated business development function before. Prosper Group is here to help you design the overall function, the specific roles for each member of the business development team, recruit the right leadership and design the hand-off process of a prospect from marketing to the pitch team.

The critical pieces of business development.

Marketing is but one piece of the business development program. The function must also support senior team prospecting and networking efforts along with supporting pitch teams after leads have been properly qualified.

You should also be measuring the effectiveness of the agency’s marketing spend, senior team networking efforts, junior team training for growth and the agency’s new business win rate. However, the biggest contribution to agency success for this function is driving a robust marketing program.

We’re here to help you succeed.

Prosper Group exists to help the owners of independent marketing and communications agencies achieve their ambitions and maximize the value of their life's work.

Our team of former agency leaders and owners focus their deep experience on implementing proven proprietary methodologies across our three practices of agency performance, owner exit planning and M&A transactions in order to drive owner and agency success.

To learn more about us, please visit our Services page.