Think the digital agency space is saturated? Think again.
These days, everyone is a social media expert. Or a web designer. Or a digital coach There seems to be as many digital marketing experts as there are personal trainers. So should you start a digital agency?
Absolutely yes.
With all the options for digital marketing and web designing and online marketing strategy available to businesses these days, it feels that sometimes it’s a saturated market full of 1000 different opinions on 1000 different subjects. And most of the time each person you speak to puts down the person or the approach before them and has yet another grand theory on how it all works that somehow positions them as the ultimate authority on everything digital.
So with all that competition out there muddying the waters, why in the world would you want to start your own digital marketing, SEO or web design business? Here’s three very big reasons why you should start one.
1. Because most of what’s out there has no idea what it’s doing.
My first example is of a search engine optimisation business in Darwin that has been positioning itself as an expert in the area of SEO. They have the tshirt to prove it and have been speaking at a few industry seminars recently — but their own website is nowhere to be seen on Google when searching for SEO or search optimisation in Darwin.
Another example is a local web designer who is routinely creating websites on the do-it-yourself web builder site, Wix, and charging small businesses $5000 or more to set them up, and then charging over seven times the annual cost of the Wix service per year to “manage and host” the site for businesses.
Yet another example is a Darwin social media expert who has no idea how to use the Facebook Ads platform beyond boosting posts on Facebook pages. And is charging over $500 per month to businesses to handle their social media presence.
The web and social media has created a massive opportunity for people to create, often thriving businesses, out of having a little slice of knowledge on something that is a hot topic right now.
So if you have good, solid, proveable knowledge on a topic within the digital realm and you really can deliver a good, reliable product with real return on investment for clients, then you are already ahead of 80% of the web design, digital marketing and social media experts in this market. All it takes is carving out your niche, working hard to build your portfolio to prove your value, and then see your business grow as you get known for your results.
2. Because you’re living in a time of immense change
There is almost limitless opportunity to create a business in digital marketing simply because millions of dollars of advertising money is haemorrhaging out of traditional media and it’s never going back.
This is why TV, radio and the newspaper are so frequently dropping their rates, offering new gimmicks to get you to advertise with them, and desperately trying to fill gaps in their advertising space with new packages and deals and even tempting you with cheap trips to Bali if you spend $15,000 with them during a year. Trust me, you’re paying for that trip. The cost of it was factored in to the package price.
When I spoke to a large automotive retailer in 2017 about their advertising plans in 2018, their answer was that they no longer saw any value in radio and television for their product and were putting 80% of their advertising money in to digital media.
Even as far back as 2014, Telstra had moved 50% of its advertising budget into digital marketing. In 2013, more traditional marketing represented 90% of its budget. That 10% it has invested in digital had reaped such huge results that it immediately pulled tens of millions of dollars of advertising out of radio, TV and print.
Chatting with an events business this last week, they admitted that, after a decade of advertising on Channel 9, they decided, one month, to stop and just advertise on Facebook with a small, test budget. The result? More enquiries, new business and better results than they’d had in years on their TV campaign. They’ve never gone back. The end result has been that the business has actually grown since they stopped sinking over $30,000 a year in to that one television station and now spend less than one quarter of that amount on digital marketing.
The world of marketing has changed dramatically since the turn of the millennium. And continues to change at an astounding rate. The advantage to being a website builder, digital marketer, SEO practitioner or social media agency is that, if you stay on top of all the changes and trends and new technologies as they emerge, you are riding the waves of change that are happening — not being swept up in them. But so few of us stay on top of what’s happening. We settle in to our way of preferring to operate, choosing our technology rut or figuring that our way of posting on Facebook is the only way to post on Facebook. The truth is that what I put on my podcast about anything to do with digital marketing can be wrong within 6 weeks simply because the industry shifted, the market changed or some new thing has appeared that has disrupted the old model. Even if that model was only a year old to begin with!
This is a huge opportunity for really savvy, smart people and agencies who do the hard yard of research and product knowledge to make sure that they’re not just recycling the same stuff that went out of relevance 2 years ago.
3. Because there’s still so much more gold left in the pot
You’d think that there’d be no more clients left to serve with all these agencies and experts floating around in regional markets. In my market in Darwin, I’m one of dozens who are doing what I do. They’re agencies and individuals with clients lists from 1 to over 100 each. Yet, as part of my consultancy work, I’m still meeting between 5 and 15 businesses every week that don’t have someone helping them with their web, SEO, social media or digital marketing. I certainly can’t serve them all, so I do what I can to advise them on who to work with and make the referral where I can. And yet, they keep on coming and coming and coming. Make no mistake there’s plenty of work for digital marketers in regional Australia. And there’s a whole lot more to come.
As the local radio stations, newspapers and TV stations attempt to hoist their rates up yet again (after all, they do it every year to their most loyal clients) but then offer super low-cost options to attract new clients, watch a new wave of businesses bleed out from those old-school media companies looking for a place to call their digital home. This will happen around the turn of the financial year when the boards and accountants and directors try to offset their lower revenue from losing so many clients the previous financial year, by essentially punishing their most loyal customers with higher rates. Nice huh? May, June and July are an awesome time for digital agencies to start up, advertise and line up ready for the annual procession of businesses being screwed over by their media companies. So get on it!
The Federal government is ploughing tens of millions of dollars in to digital readiness, online solutions, entrepreneur development and small business growth schemes right now. It makes sense. When over 90% of business in this country is small business and most employment is provided by small business, and every owner of a small business is a tax-payer who provides jobs, stability and a safety net for local economies when big businesses take their bat, ball and stumps looking for a cheaper place to make their widgets, it is logical that you invest in the businesses that stay in the towns they start in, keep employing the people that they take on, and contribute more per-dollar-of-revenue in to their communities than any large business ever will.
This investment means a tonne more educated and savvy small businesses learning that their media companies have been charging them more and more for less and less audience every year. It means that they’re getting advice from digital-oriented business advisors. It means that they know what they’re looking for and are moving in to the digital marketing space with plans and strategies in place ready to work with the digital business that gives them a good deal, a solid plan for a return on investment or at least, has the greatest depth of knowledge of the technology and the market.
There really hasn’t been a better time to get started on building your own digital marketing, web and social media agency.
So where do you start?
I’ve got a page on my website at clickstarter.com.au/asbas. On that page you’ll see a range of the kinds of things that digital agencies can do, that also happen to be the kinds of things that the Australian Small Business Advisory Services Digital Solutions program can help you out with getting started on. It’s not just for bricks and mortar businesses. If you’ve got an ABN and are in the Northern Territory, Western Australia or Queensland, you qualify. If you’re in other states, there’s options for you too. Just search for ASBAS in you state to see who’s conducting the program near you. Which means, that if you want to know more about any of the stuff in that page, you can register with the ASBAS program through the links there and book in time with myself or one of a whole of other advisors like me who can guide you into the journey of starting your own digital agency wherever you are.
And there’s even entrepreneur programs we can link you with to help you start the whole work for yourself business journey.
That page again is clickstarter.com.au/asbas
