Once your startup SEO agency is up and running, it may not take long before you find yourself with a full-time staff and a waiting list of clients. You’ll need to make a decision about how to scale your business in order to keep up with the demand. A successful SEO agency will always face challenges when scaling, but there are some tried and true methods that work well for most businesses. In this article, we’ll explore 5 proven ways that can help you grow your business successfully.
Hire an assistant
Hiring an assistant can help you scale your business. As your business grows, you’ll be busier and busier with the day-to-day tasks of running a company. You may find yourself spending too much time on administrative work or on less important tasks that are necessary for the smooth operation of your agency. An assistant is a perfect solution to this problem because they can take on these tasks so you don’t have to worry about them.
And don’t wait until you’re overwhelmed. Hire a little sooner than you feel comfortable with so you have time to train your new assistant properly and without stress or pressure. This will allow them to take over more seamlessly.
Use tools to automate tasks
Doing things manually is time-consuming and tedious, which is why it’s important for your SEO agency to automate tasks. You’ll need to invest in tools that allow you to publish content more easily, monitor social media channels for mentions of your business, track competitors’ rankings, engage with prospects on social media channels, and provide customer service.
Tools are an excellent way to automate tasks when scaling your SEO agency because they can help save time and money while you’re focusing on other aspects of growing your business. Anything that you can find a tool to automate, do it. The time it frees up is well worth the expense.
Build solid relationships
One of the most important aspects of scaling your SEO agency is building solid relationships with clients. Your clients are the bread and butter of your business. Without them, you have no business. So building solid relationships is crucial to scaling your business.
Give each client as much personal attention as possible. Address issues and problems as soon as they arise. Apologize for mistakes and offer discounts or other things to show them you care about retaining their business. Have conversations and jot notes in their files so you can ask about their spouse, children, hobbies, or other things they’ve casually mentioned in future conversations.
When you make a client feel like more than just another file in your system, they’ll not only stick around longer, but also recommend you to others. And that will help you grow your business quickly.
Use white-label products to meet higher demand
A well-known business strategy is to find a company that makes a product you want to sell and becomes their reseller. If you start by reselling one product from another company, you can grow your SEO agency from there. For example, if your agency decides to offer website design services, you could partner with an agency that provides website services. A white label agreement essentially means that the other company would support your client’s website needs under your branding. The biggest benefit of this strategy is that it allows your business to start offering new products without having to invest in developing them yourself or hiring staff and training them to support that need. By partnering with another company, you’ll be able to offer more without needing more hours from yourself. This will help you scale the number of clients you can support.
Standardize as many processes as possible
It’s listed last, but the first thing you’ll want to do is standardize as many processes as possible. This might include establishing a uniform pricing structure, onboarding process, and branding guidelines for your agency. Establishing these policies and procedures will help keep things manageable as you scale. If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at other agencies for ways to be sure you’re on the right track.
Next, make sure that all of your employees are aware of how the business operates. It’s important to be clear about what it takes to meet client expectations and what clients can expect from working with your agency. Communicating with your staff clearly about expectations and responsibilities will also help ensure that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do, which is key when scaling an agency or team.
Now that you know how to scale your SEO agency, the only thing left to do is grow your business. The beauty of these five proven ways to grow your agency is that they work whether you’ve just started out or are well established.
