Are you ready to move from solo professional to agency owner? You might be thinking about turning your industry experience into a business that will prove your entrepreneurial skills. But what do you need to create an agency? To help you prepare, we’ll discuss the seven steps to creating your own agency.
Steps:
- Step 1: Identity Your Niche
- Step 2: Prepare a Business Plan
- Step 3: Legal and Administrative Setup
- Step 4: Build your Brand
- Step 5: Create a Team
- Step 6: Launch your Agency
- Step 7: Deliver Outstanding Service
Why Create an Agency
Photo by Mikael Blomkvis
An agency is a company that provides specific services to other businesses. Some agencies offer a single service or a variety of services, including:
- Web development
- Content writing and SEO
- Social media marketing
- Graphic design
- Influencer marketing
- Other areas of digital marketing
Step 1: Identity Your Goals
If you have established a profitable freelance business as an independent professional, expanding into an agency may seem easy. For some professionals, creating an agency can be a path toward greater control over their professional and financial future.
Whatever your purpose, it is crucial to set SMART goals for your new venture and clarify your vision for the business before you launch.
You must also identify your unique selling proposition (USP) during the early stage of your plan. A unique selling proposition is the distinct benefit that makes your product or service better than the competition. Formulating a USP helps focus your marketing strategy and influences messaging, branding, target customers, and other marketing decisions.
Step 2: Prepare a Business Plan
A business plan is a detailed roadmap outlining a company's operations, financial projections, and marketing approaches. It's a crucial tool for securing funding. Key components of a business plan include:
- Executive Summary
- Goals and Objectives
- Service Offerings
- Target Market
- Marketing and Sales Strategy
- Financial Projections
Step 3: Handle Legal and Administrative Concerns
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There are different legal and administrative issues in building an agency and other types of businesses. Let's take business registration as an example. Wherever your business is located, it’s essential to determine what might be required by your local, state, or federal governments.
Many small businesses don’t need to do much more than register their name. You may not need to register even if you use your legal name as your business name. However, a U.S.-based agency will typically use one of the following business entities, and it’s good to get familiar with your options:
- Sole proprietorship
- Partnership
- C Corporation
- S Corporation
- Limited liability company (LLC)
Step 4: Build your Brand
A brand is what your agency projects to the world. It’s the first impression you make—not just the images, messages, personality, and story you share, but the quality of your work and the experience you deliver to your clients. Below are the most critical components of strategic branding.
- Name and Logo: Tips for choosing a memorable agency name and designing a professional logo.
- Create a Website: It is important to have a professional website and know what to include (e.g., services, portfolio, contact information).
- Develop Marketing Materials: Creating business cards, brochures, and other promotional materials.
- Establish Social Media Presence: Setting up and managing social media profiles for your agency.
Step 5: Setup your Operations
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You’re getting near the launch of your agency! Before that, be confident you have the processes to deliver outstanding customer results. Standardized practices will help keep your agency moving forward as you win new work, keep the back office running, and provide guidance and leadership to your collaborators. Fortunately, many different tools are available to help you address your agency’s workflows.
- Capacity planning tools. Capacity planning tools are built to help you monitor your operations and adjust as business conditions fluctuate. Examples:
- Collaboration tools. Managing and scaling an agency depends on effective collaboration through reliable communication tools, project management tools, document collaboration tools, creation tools, and even recognition tools that help keep your team motivated. Examples:
- AI scheduling assistants. An AI scheduling tool can help you optimize your calendar, better coordinate tasks, and streamline meetings across your business. Examples:
- AI finance tools. With help from AI finance tools, it’s easier than ever for businesses to get real-time insights through data analysis, performance analysis, and forecasting. Examples:
- Workforce management (WFM) tools. A WFM tool is typically an all-in-one platform that combines core business activities such as bookkeeping, payroll, HR, and talent management software.
- AI customer service tools. New AI customer service tools are giving businesses many ways to reshape customer experience, from powerful data analytics to effective automation to 24/7 support through natural language chatbots.
Whatever tools you choose, develop processes so you can rely on them. For example, map out the customer journey from onboarding to delivered work so it will be delivered consistently, branded, and reproducible every time. Keep refining and optimizing these processes.
Step 6: Create a Small Team
As you’re only starting, hiring a small team of employees is best. You may start by filling up the core jobs depending on the type of agency you are creating. Once you have more clients, you could hire additional employees to grow your agency.
Step 7: Find your First Clients
The final step is to find clients for your business. But how can you find them? Here are a few ways to find your first clients:
1. Networking. Online and offline networking allows you to find as many potential clients as possible.
2. Marketplaces. Freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr are another simple way to find people who need your services. Review and respond to job postings on these online marketplaces to find an opportunity for your agency and get clients.
3. Referrals. Your existing clients can connect you to their networks. Talking to them is the easiest way to find new clients because you're not doing all the hard work of finding them yourself.
4. Ads. Placing local ads on Facebook or Google AdWords can quickly get leads looking to work with someone nearby. You may start with a small budget and experiment with different ads. Then, you can increase your budget once you start getting leads.
Conclusion
Now that you've mastered the seven essential steps, you can transform your solo career into a thriving agency. As you prepare the requirements, remember to research for additional tips and insights continuously. You can also explore Servicelist for unbiased product reviews to make informed decisions on the tools to power your agency's growth.
