RetainFM – Build your Digital Agency on Recurring Revenue – Details, episodes & analysis

Prefer to watch this show? Subscribe to the YouTube Channel!

Most common reasons why  projects go wrong:

• Scope Creep
• Misaligned Expectations
• Misaligned Budget
• Inaccurate or insufficient discovery
• Even long term retainers have a life span

The importance of thinking how to get our of something, before you get into it...

The difference between quotes and estimates...

For Projects:

• Have a specification linked to the estimate – reserve the right to change the quote if the specification changes
• Be clear where the intellectual property lies at different stages of the project
• Have a termination process from BOTH sides in your Contract / Agreement:
• If the client terminates the project
• If you terminate the project
• Have the payment schedule linked to stages YOU control
• Have a documented process for packaging up files, sending them to the client and offboarding the client from your systems

For Retainers:

• Have a termination process outlined in your Contract / Agreement
• Include a notice period – and detail from both sides
• Detail how and when final payments will be expected and what they will cover
• Have a documented process for completing work, sending data to the client and offboarding the client from your systems

Join the Facebook Group

Prefer to watch this show? Subscribe to the YouTube Channel!

• Key metrics to track
• Targets to aim for & industry benchmarks
• Exactly what formulas to use to calculate them

Example metrics:

• Financials (Revenue, AGI, Gross Profit, Net Profit, Overhead Spending)
• Utilization Rates
• Average Billable Rates
• Labor Efficiency Ratio

Marcel Petitpas is the CEO & Co-Founder of Parakeeto, a company dedicated to helping agencies measure and improve their profitability by streamlining their operations and reporting systems, a problem he discovered while running his own agency.

He’s also the head strategic coach at SaaS Academy by Dan Martell, the #1 coaching program for B2B SaaS businesses in the world.

In his work as a speaker, podcast host, and consultant, specializing in Agency Profitability Optimization, he's helped hundreds of agencies around the world measure the right metrics and improve their operations and profitability.

When he’s not helping agencies make more money, he’s probably watching “The Office” or “Parks and Rec” on a never-ending loop and eating breakfast foods for every meal of the day.

Twitter / X: @Parakeeto

Website: www.parakeeto.com (👈 you can also get the Toolkit from here)

Podcast: The Agency Profit Podcast

Join the Facebook Group

Prefer to watch this show? Subscribe to the YouTube Channel!

Local clients operate in a market you’re inherently familiar with. As a part of the same community, you can understand their target audience better, as you share the same environment, culture, and trends.

As a Digital Agency, you often need to target marketing campaigns to specific local audiences. Being in the same locality as a client can provide invaluable insights into the tastes, preferences, and behaviours of local customers. This can be crucial for crafting effective SEO strategies, creating locally relevant content, or running targeted ad campaigns.

With local clients, you have the opportunity for face-to-face meetings, which can foster stronger relationships. These meetings can often lead to a deeper understanding of the client’s needs, more effective communication, and ultimately, more successful projects.

While its easy for digital agencies can work remotely with clients, face-to-face interactions can still be beneficial. Meeting in person can foster better understanding and collaboration, particularly during initial project scoping or strategy development phases where nuanced discussions can be more effectively held in person.

It’s often easier to build trust with local clients. Being part of the same community or area creates a sense of shared identity and mutual understanding, making it easier to establish credibility.

Trust is crucial for any client-agency relationship, but it’s especially important in the digital sphere where clients often need to entrust sensitive data and crucial aspects of their business to their agency. Being locally present can enhance a sense of trust and reliability.

Working with local clients often leads to better networking opportunities within your community. Local clients are more likely to refer you to other local businesses, increasing your client base.

Local networking is an excellent source of business for digital agencies. Attending local business events or joining local business associations can result in referrals and partnerships. A good reputation in local circles can significantly enhance an agency's client base. There does need to be a hint of caution with this, however. Some local networking events can become stagnant (essentially the same people meeting in the same room each meeting). Unless there is an active referral practice in place, be wary if networking groups don't contribute to your business within a few months – it might be time to move on.

Working with local clients often means you’re helping local businesses grow, which can have a positive impact on your community. This can enhance your agency’s reputation and lead to more local work.

Helping local businesses grow can elevate the reputation of a digital agency within a local area. Success stories can be more tangibly demonstrated and can serve as strong social proof for the effectiveness of an agency's digital strategies.

This can either be through some form or partnership or shared community effort with some of your clients, or by tapping in to a local need and contributing individually.

In many cases, working with local clients can lead to quicker decision-making processes. Face-to-face meetings, shared working hours, and easier scheduling can speed up approvals and make project management more efficient. This is true for non-local clients too… sometimes a trip or a dedicated call can lead to faster decisions than

What is a marketing strategy?

"A marketing strategy refers to a business' overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of the products or services the business provides.” – Investopedia

Typically, a marketing plan consists of these seven broad areas"

• Business Goals and Financial Targets
• Target Audiences (Buyer Personas)
• Competitor Research
• Value Propositions and back story (Your “Why”)
• Marketing Channels
• Tactical Plan – also known as a marketing plan. This is where your DIGITAL MARKETING strategy fits in
• Measurement / Success Metrics – your Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs).

What Is a DIGITAL marketing strategy?

(Aka Data-Driven Marketing)

Really, it would make more sense to call it a Digital Marketing Plan as to not confuse the terminology – it is a tactical and considered process that focuses your digital and online marketing through THREE phases:

• Traffic generation – how are you going to get the right people to look are you stuff?
• Conversion to customers – how do you get those people to buy your stuff?
• Improving customer experience – turning one time customers into multiple purchasers and brand advocates

Mapping these elements out as a funnel map (using something like Funnelytics) can really help your thinking…

Typically, a Digital Marketing Plan / Strategy includes the following themes:

• A strategic plan for your website
• Structure
• Levels of Conversion
• Customer retention
• Customer service
• SEO
• Keyword research and mapping
• Competitor research and tracking
• Technical (on-page) SEO
• Content Guidelines
• Inbox (off-page) SEO
• Content Marketing
• Content plan for various phases of the Digital Marketing Plan
• Evergreen content vs seasonal content
• Types of content
• Copy
• Video
• Audio
• Imagery
• etc…
• Email Marketing
• Details of platform and opt-in processes
• General news
• Lead generation
• Lead nurturing
• Service communications
• Social Media
• Channels
• Types of content
• Themes / Purposes per challenge
• Pay Per Click
• Channels
• Budgets
• Retargeting
• Landing pages

According to Smart Insights, 45% of companies DO NOT have a Digital Marketing Strategy / Plan – is that you / your client? Without one, your efforts are haphazard and without direction…

Join our Facebook Group!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Jarvis – A Company of One

Don’t ask the questions “what would you do differently?”, instead ask the question “How would you begin again?”

Hindsight:

• A great thing
• A curse

The truth is this: 

• You can’t change the past, so don’t wish you had
• You CAN shape the future – and this works best if you have a picture, vision or goal that you are aiming for. 

So what is my vision? (Don’t worry about being selfish with this!)

• Mortgage-free by the time I’m 41
• Retire between 50 and 55 from “Everyday business"
• Get to a place where my wife doesn’t have to work
• Either live or have a holiday home by the sea (and have the freedom to operate from either place)
• Drive a nice car (I’m a petrol head)
• Make lifelong memories for my children
• Be in a position where money isn’t an issue

What am I going to do to get there? 

Starting again...

IF I was to start again I’d: 

1. Identify my most marketable skill – web development / SEO
2. Identify how I can demonstrate the MOST VALUE to my new customers as fast as possible – demonstrate an ROI -> increase enquiry rates
3. Identify a niche (or niches) who experience this problem and where I can offer the quickest return – B2B owner/manager businesses
4. Validate the idea by offering to work for 3 clients for free… 
5. Identify the process to doing this in the smallest amount of steps:

• SEO Healthcheck
• User experience on the website
• Landing pages / bounce rates / etc

1. Put a reporting metric in place so that the evidence is clear
2. Productise this and optimise my website for the terms, questions and results from the three free clients
3. Put a marketing strategy in place

• Outreach
• Social media
• Podcasts
• PPC?

1. Identify levels 2 and 3 of additional services I could offer
2. Review my own results and pipeline
3. Refine my processes, price, client base (niches)
4. Repeat steps 3 - 11…  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dave Foy is a course creator and online educator for non-coders who want to learn how to build faster and more profitably with WordPress and Elementor.

As a former primary school teacher, Dave started out teaching 5-11 year olds in the U.K. so he knows a thing or two about breaking down tough-to-grasp concepts in ways that literally anyone can understand.

20 years ago, he built his very first website. Then in 2003 he left teaching, turned pro, and spent 15+ years hand-coding websites in-house and latterly for the micro agency he started with a friend.

Dave’s the creator of three online courses, The Perfect Starter Site, No Stress WordPress, and No Fear Funnels, all designed to help non-coder designers build their businesses faster and more profitably with Elementor.

He’s also co-created High Ticket Sales Funnels with his good mate, Troy Dean from WP Elevation.

Teaching people how to build websites in Wordpress more quickly and more profitably. 

Seeing the potential that non-coders could just build their ideas with page builders in Wordpress, Dave started teaching people how Wordpress works!

Why NSWP v2.0

1. The new tech – Gutenberg, Elementor 2.0
2. The potential of doing something with WordPress is greater than it has ever been

Covers the questions that you don’t even know how to google! 

Bonuses include:

• The Perfect Starter Site
• DNS & Domains
• 10 minute CSS Crash Course
• Global Styling
• Lifetime access
• Facebook Group

The importance of cementing real relationships with meaning in real life.

Register for the masterclass / Get the course!

The Masterclass

• 29th October 2019
• 30 to 40 minutes of teaching
• Completely Free
• No Stress WordPress will be offered during the masterclass
• The 5 blockers people hit when they try to use Wordpress for their business
• A free enrolment (at random, by refund) to someone who purchases off the back of the masterclass

Register for the masterclass / Get the course!

Simon Sinek: Start With Why

Dan Malby: WP&UP

Join our Facebook Group!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vito started his marketing journey leading a hard rock band from a small band in Tel Aviv to releasing albums and touring the world to thousands of people.

Later he applied his skills to grow a web agency to a team of 12 in 3 years before launching WP FeedBack, a communication tool for WordPress professionals, becoming the first plugin by a new company to reach 6 figures within 30 days.

Finding a pain point in your niche

• Finding a problem from within the inside of your community
• If you try to “jump in” to a different industry or niche, you can find a lot of resistance – look into your own community
• Do a survey – this is even less than an MVP (minimum viable product), BUT it validates an idea! 
• Developing a product
• Scaling without the need to hire too many additional staff
• A product doesn’t even have to be developed web SAAS, it could be anything! 

• Sell before you build

Book: The Lean Start-Up – Eric Ries

• Knowing when to pivot

People focus on the result too much – you need to enjoy the journey

• Imagine your day - don’t manufacture vending machines

People need to see you at least 5 times before they care. You need to be out there on different channels. 

• Facebook remarketing
• Google remarketing

Ask the question: how can you 10X the ripple effect?

Building your client's avatar – put pictures on your wall. 

No external money was spent on initial advertising – do this organically so you validate the idea with real followers. 

Book: Dotcom Secrets – Russel Brunson

• Nurturing the attractive character
• “Become the guy”… 
• Keep the conversation going… 

Automating the conversation: 

• Facebook groups, etc – safe places to keep engaged users in the conversation

Accept the pivot process

Twitter: @feedbackwp

Website: wpfeedback.co

Join our Facebook Group!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The key to scoping the competition – DO NOT get obsessed with what they are doing. You are marketing YOUR BUSINESS or YOUR CLIENTS BUSINESS, not the competitors. 

What you want to achieve from scoping: 

1. Their priorities
2. The things they are doing well
3. The things they’re not doing well
4. The things they haven’t thought of yet

The plan

Go into your competitor research with the following method. 

• Their structure
• Their Keywords
• Their CTAs / Boosts / Popups
• Their Ads
• Their Social Media

How to do it… 

Tools:

1. SEMRush or Ahrefs (or SERanking, but it won’t do the ads!)

Process:

1. Browse their site - maybe even draw their sitemap
2. Note any messages or popups
3. Look at the Ads – its where they’re spending money
4. Do some secret shopping – make an enquiry, get a quote… 
5. Do you own independent keyword research (you could do this first or at the end)
6. Identify the holes – what’s the new angle? 

Join our Facebook Group!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amy Woods is an expert in content repurposing and the founder of Content 10x. She helps online content creators grow their audience by maximizing their return on every piece of content that they create. Content 10x provide content repurposing services to podcasters, video content creators and bloggers.  

Amy is also the host of The Content 10x Podcast, where she teaches all that you need to know about repurposing your content! She is the author of the book Content 10x: More Content, Less Time, Maximum Results.

Amy lives in Manchester, England and before setting up as an entrepreneur she spent 13 years as a management consultant, working on post-M&A restructuring for Fortune 500 companies.  

Content 10x – a repurposing agency.

• Growing the team
• Content 10X Toolkit (it’s coming!)

Content 10x - THE BOOK:

• A resource guide – the “Bible” of content repurposing
• The systems, processes, budgets for repurposing

How to get the most out of the content we create both in terms of intellectual value and time.

The book covers:

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Emails
• Social Media
• Live streams
• eBooks / Books
• Flash Briefings
• Speaking at events
• Repurposing time
• etc...

It also covers:

• Tools
• Systems
• Processes
• Places you can get help
• How you can review your archives of content
• How to make the most out of your time

Get Content 10x on Amazon!

The process of repurposing INTO a book… 

• Amy had around 50 different episodes of podcasts that had already been repurposed
• Sit down and figure out the structure of the book
• Cross-reference existing content into the structure of the book – where are the gaps?

Amy was able to spot the gaps in the content she’d already created – she then created the external content BEFORE creating the chapter in the book. 

Understanding the reasons WHY YOU are writing the book 

• A book-sized business card?
• Or a bestseller?

MDP027 – The Benefits of Repurposing Content

Twitter: @content10x

Website: https://www.content10x.com

Join our Facebook Group!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Founder of Angled Crown, the Agency Trailblazer Podcast and Agency Transformation Live – Lee Jackson talks about the process he underwent to create a business that works FOR him, so he can be with his family when they NEED him.

• Understanding what you WANT so that you can make your work fit around your life, not vice versa. 
• Defining what success looks like for you, and then working back from there to make decisions 
• Life is too short – what quality of life are you modeling to your family?
• Making small decisions that have a big impact
• Set working hours
• Travel with your family
• Creating Processes
• Focusing on work being done, not working all day
• Increasing prices to reflect the value of your time
• Bring that ethos to your staff and sales
• Be nimble with overheads
• Stop comparing yourself to other people
• These changes take time – be prepared to work HARDER for a short time to achieve the work / life balance you desire

Lee's Podcast Episode – You are not a failure

MDP061 - Creating a live event for your niche

MDP046 - Transforming Your Business

MDP003 - How mentoring changed my business

https://angledcrown.com/

https://agencytrailblazer.com/

https://agencytrailblazer.com/group – FB Group

https://agencytransformation.live/

Join our Facebook Group!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.