October 12, 2021
In the first AgencyTalk episode, Conduit CEO Tim Burke and Marcus Murphy discussed an important, yet seldom-addressed topic: Agency failure.
What causes agencies to ultimately shut their doors for good? Check out the video below to hear Tim and Marcus’s takes along with some other great insights!
As with any industry, not all digital marketing agencies will last indefinitely. When Marcus asked Tim what are some reasons for agency failure, this is what he had to say:
When starting any business, there needs to be an end goal in mind. From there, you can create a GPS roadmap to achieve what you set out to accomplish. Without that north star, leaders can’t lead their teams effectively. Lack of specificity is and always will be the greatest roadblock toward progress.
Even if you have outlined specific goals for your agency – how do you reach them? Without the right process framework to arrive at your destination, a directionless environment can result in massive detours on your business journey. When you have the infrastructure built to support your mission, you can remain on course and produce tangible results along the way.
Starting an agency does not unlock a get-rich-quick opportunity. It requires a dedication to working hard, delivering on results, and a great plan to reach your goals in order to scale.
While everyone’s business operates differently, authenticity and credibility should be two universal threads in the fabric of your business. You produce high-quality, original work for your clients and follow through on the commitments you’ve made to them. This will help improve your agency’s reputation and reduce dreaded account churn.
A successful agency builds its foundation on these following principles:
These P’s form stable pillars for a great digital agency. When they are all working in sync with one another, you can position yourself to scale higher than the competing agencies in your market.
Utilization ties inherently to scale. When you are underutilizing your team, your agency is not operating profitably. When you are overutilizing them, this strain on capacity can cause excess stress and lead people to leave your team.
Without the infrastructure to manage capacity at high volumes, an agency stands the risk of failing under the weight of its own ambitions.
To summarize everything above, agencies fail in isolation. Without support, critical operations can crumble and profitability seems like a pipe dream.
Businesses need a strong support network behind them in order to scale. For agencies, a white-label digital performance partnership supplies that much-needed help when those can’t-miss opportunities arise.
As Tim says, there are three types of white label partnerships: Platform, vendor, and partner.
Conduit was founded to be the white label performance partner for successful digital agencies. We chose partnership instead of acting as a platform or vendor because we believe the best results come from investing in those who invest in us.
Over the years that we have partnered with agencies, these are the key benefits that we believe highlights the impact of agency partnership:
White label partners operate on a wholesale model while delivering measurable performance results. This generates long-term profitability by allowing your agency to keep expenses at a reasonable level for maximum value.
Partnership allows you to align your agency’s utilization rate with your growth rate. Instead of worrying about overutilizing your team or having to hire new people, your partner’s team can help you expand your services with certified experts or even simply handle your account overflow profitably.
If your client wants a service that you don’t provide, there’s a good chance they will start looking for a competing agency that can and will fulfill their needs. When you have access to your a complete suite of digital marketing solutions, you can trust your partner’s team to fulfill these campaigns at a high level. The sentences “we can’t do that,” or “we don’t do that here,” are no longer part of your business vocabulary.
At Conduit, we spend each day helping our successful agency partners scale. With a complete suite of digital products managed by dedicated in-house teams of certified experts, we give your agency the ability to say “yes” to more of the right opportunities. This is all accomplished without offshoring or outsourcing and never “setting and forgetting” your client’s campaigns.
To learn more about scaling your own agency with a digital performance partner, visit our Agency Partnership page to learn more.
