Hey guys,

I recently left startup-world and went full-time on a brand strategy/design agency. We’re averaging $10k+ months now, which is dope, but the constant grind of chasing new clients just to maintain run-rate is a slog.

I’ve built out some decent IP and SOPs for delivery, but the lack of recurring work is definitely a challenge, and I’m trying to figure out how to fix that.

So far, most growth has come through my network and referrals, but now I’ve got some budget and time to explore other marketing channels (thinking GAds and cold email). For those who’ve been here, I’ve got a couple of questions:

1. How did you build a more consistent pipeline? Is it about moving upmarket? Launching a digital/physical product? Productising the service and just arbitrage on marketing? Or just going all-in on upselling clients into maintenance/ongoing services?
2. I have also been thinking of testing some recurring, niche-specific service offers based on work I'm doing now. If I go this route, would I be better off:
   • Spinning up standalone agency sites for specific offers/niches to test them quickly, or
   • Testing under my current agency? The hard part is that these offers are a pretty big departure from my current agency (same skills, different niche, different service) so I’m worried prospects might see a landing page, click back to the main site, and get confused about what we actually do.

Would love to hear your thoughts or any tips—thanks in advance!

TL;DR: Running a design agency but struggling to scale. Better to test recurring offers with niche landing pages or under my main brand? Any tips on building a consistent pipeline?

I have a list of leads for my email marketing agency, but I want to make sure I’m reaching out to the right brands. I think it would be ideal to connect with brands that are already running ads but aren’t yet leveraging email marketing, as they might be more open to my services.

Does anyone have advice or strategies on how to qualify leads effectively for this purpose? Specifically:

1. How can I check if a brand is currently running ads?
2. Are there tools or methods to verify if a brand already has email marketing in place?

Any insights or recommendations would be really helpfull.

Which strategy do you think works better?

1. Providing value for free with a personalized message to 100 people a day manually.

2. Reaching out to 2,000 people a day with automation plus a bit personalized that anyone could send.

I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

share some of the ways you choose domain name , which is friencly as brand name and best as per SEO

and also of which the domain is available

it would really be similar concept who has investors, so I could also be debt, Capital groups or placement agents and other services like that

I’ve noticed a few questions that keep repeating, but one topic really stands out:

“I started an agency but I can’t get any clients and have never worked in marketing before. Help me.”

Not only have you never worked in marketing, you’ve probably never worked in B2B sales, and your lack of marketing knowledge means you are just going to be giving canned info you saw in the HighLevel group or some shitty course. This doesn’t work because the people you are selling to are not morons, so they see right through you.

“So, Bromar, what are you supposed to do? I bought these courses and financed a $15K coaching program so I feel lost!”

GO GET A JOB IN THE INDUSTRY.

I swear this is the only industry where people with no experience routinely start businesses and then are surprised they can’t make it work. It’s unbelievable.

I sold gym franchises for years. A requirement to buy one was experience in the industry. Restaurants typically have the same requirement.

Marketing agencies are highly technical endeavors, you are borderline delusional if you think you can just make it up as you go along and attain any real measure of success. Go get a job, work your way to an account manager role, or go client side and work your way up to a Marketing Director or CMO role and THEN start your agency.

I’ve been running a niche B2B agency for 4.5 years. Over the last 2 years, I’ve doubled down on marketing, becoming a recognized leader in LinkedIn content for my sector. Engagement is off the charts, and I get a lot of praise for my posts, newsletter & guest articles.

However, returns don't seem to be there. I get some calls organically, but targets rarely inquire about my paid services or buy my digital products.

I'm starting to hate jumping on calls, as I'm expecting yet another blood-sucking exchange with praise, "future collaborations", trying to get free advice—without any money on the table.

Here’s an example: I recently launched a $2,000 digital product. It generated 500 engagements, brought 50 attendees to a webinar, and led to... just 1 sale (0.2% conversion).

On the outside, it probably looks like I’m crushing it. But the reality is I’m bleeding cash and might have to go out of business soon. My eagerness to get new business likely isn't helping either, as prospects can probably sense the desperation now that I urgently need cash.

Any advice, insights, or tough love would be massively appreciated. Some of the strategic moves I'm pondering before calling it quits:

1. Pivot to selling content creation services.
2. Launch a very low-price/high-volume product.
3. Offer other agencies to acquire my firm essentially for free.
4. Go public about the fact nobody's paying me, to see if anyone steps up.

TL;DR: Content does well, but nobody pays. What do?

Hello,

I have close to a decade experience in product and project management and have directly managed over 160 professionals across departments such as engineering, design, marketing and product.

I just finished the handover process at my current job, and this Friday will be my last day.

I need a remote job, and I love the fast paced environment of an agency, so I'm interested to joining one.

How can I find agencies to apply?

Can I make a post here asking for job?

Thanks!

Hello, I’ve been running an agency for a year or so now and I’ve been contacted by a Chinese company to help market their blockchain project. Now this might make me sound completely stupid but I’ve never worked with a Chinese company before and they only use kakaotalk. Till yesterday I hadn’t even heard of it, they asked me to join a meeting via a link and obviously it didn’t work I needed an account and everything. My question is how do I join without a link? Went into their FAQs and it said just click the link and join the meeting. Anyone experienced this before and is there an easy way to just join a meeting?

https://preview.redd.it/t5gyj11xxh2e1.png?width=2716&format=png&auto=webp&s=d77c33d90eb885c279669266ef3a3f0104a0ee90

I go back and forth about whether this copy is trying to be clever and isn't clear for people who come to our site. I personally like it, but I would love some feedback on this. Thanks!

I'm thinking to start my own creative agency I have 6+ years of experience in my field., I will provide services like graphic design, animation, motion graphics, illustrations, etc. Just for letting you know, i'm still doing a freelancing, and I do most of the projects from my personal long term client and they all are locals from my country. I don't have any sales experiences, I just did few years work on Fiverr and Upwork, so now I'm thinking to do the international projects, so I was trying to make a agency site for it. I don't have any team, like designers, sales person, etc etc, so I will show my portfolio in my agency site for now, I know little bit about SEO so I will do it in my site, and will do backlinks and guest postings. But don't know if it will give me some clients, or not, I don't have any experience about this for agency sites. So can someone tell me if it is worth or not? Or I should have hire a proper sales person for generate a lead. Also I've seen that everyday many agencies are opening, and I don't know if in the future competition will be so high and it will be too harder to get clients.

So on the other hand I was thinking to start a site, where I will sell my products, like realistic and abstract paintings, which I do personally, and will sell merchandises, illustrations too, and also I'm starting a cartoon series on youtube so I'm thinking to do premium content put on my site as a product.

So the main issues are:

1. I don't have enough budget to hire a sales person for generate a lead, and don't know if SEO will give me the clients?
2. Which type of site will be better for start, like Agency site which is a service based, or starting a product based site, where I will sell my own products, I'm planning to sell my products internationally too?
3. If I sell products, what are some things I need to take care of that are outside of running an agency site?
4. Is running an agency site future proof, (I know product base site is also not future proof) but I think making my own product market would be better idea instead of selling services. What do you think? Because as I said every month many agencies are opening locally and internationally. And it is too tough to get the clients.
5. If you have any experience of starting your own agency or product based site or Both experiences, what difficulties have you faced, and do you have any tips?

Greetings,

I am a web developer and have a handful of people with same skills around me. I plan to start an agency to get small projects for website development mostly showcase websites. I have already created a website but was thinking to do cold emailing to get clients. Initially I wanna start with real estate agents cause I have a good number of emails from this domain. I wanted to ask if this is the right approach mainly in two things:

1. Do real estate agents want website or can be made to want a website?
2. Is cold emailing is the right approach?

Any other insights or ideas are also welcomed. Thank you!

My partner and I started an agency around 3 months back and for the past month have start cold calling as well. We have tried cold dming, cold emailing and cold calling as well and nothing seems to work.

While cold dming we do get some responses they tend to usually reject us in the end. While cold emailing i am not sure if the client is seeing our message or is it that we are sending the message to the wrong email. I have warmed up our emails and sent personalized emails to businesses as well. Cold calling most of the calls get send to voicemail or people just dont pick up the call. We called around 150 businesses and could only speak to around 10 (in those 10 we couldnt contact the owner).

Can you guys give some tips on outreach and what i could change and improve. The niche i am targeting is primarily Solar Installations businesses and pool contractors.

Hi , I am a Ui/Ux designer looking for project or part/full time opportunity. I have designed several landing pages , websites and apps.

I can share you my recent works in DM.

This is a guide purely for new agency owners who want to build something solid. I am an agency owner with experience in the industry for nearly a decade. I did not start the agency after working in an agency. I got frustrated of my corporate life and decided to start my own agency with $500.

Be clear about your Niche: I have came across multiple agency owners who is pretty confused regarding their core service offerings and the industries which you want to focus on. So if you want to offer Performance Marketing for RealEstate, Position your agency like that. Create your strategy around that, and target be the expert in that and spread your wings.

Start with existing clients: Again seen lots of agency owners saying I started but I am not getting clients. To resolve that issue, before you start your agency Be a freelance consultant and offer services once you have solid amount of repeat clients, Announce your agency launch to them and slowly increase their price. (I have done this mistake I jumped in and took me 7 months to land my first client)

The Agency: When you start out you aren't an agency owner, you are just a freelancer or solo entrepreneur, you become an agency owner when you have atleast 20 clients in your portfolio and 10 current accounts and with atleast 5 full time employees working for you. And there is no shame in telling you work alone. For clients what matters is WILL YOU BE ABLE TO GIVE THE RESULTS WHICH IS PROMISED.

Hire Smarter: I understand the excitement of Hiring and keeping employees, we feel really proud especially when you run a business for the first time. But the idea here is to reduce your cost as much as you can. So outsource to freelancers as much as you can, Just make sure that they are providing good quality work. Do not change the freelancers often If someone is giving you good results and you found someone way cheaper do not abandon your existing freelancer, Because quality of results matters in our space. Hire wisely on very important roles, those who bring in revenue to the agency, and you grow you can hire more and create a strong team. But again define who should be hired on full time, contractual and part-time basis.

Packages & Pricing: Create a document which would contain all the information regarding your services, the detailed deliverables, starting prices or package pricing. Yes i understand that pricing changes according to clients but now you will get a base idea regarding what's your base pricing and whats the basic deliverables for that. So you will not go below that pricing at all. You create a Standard there for your agency. If you do not know how to calculate pricing, feel free to drop me a message.

SOP: Another important challenge for agency owners is creating SOPs for the agency, Yes it is very important to make sure the agency is working in a disciplined manner, its not just about doing the work its about doing the work in a specific manner. SOPs are a Live Documents which you can keep updating upon specific intervals. There are lot of agencies out there who have not defined their SOPs, they need to start defining their SOPs mainly the Client Acquisition, Client Onboarding & Operations SOPs.

Deck, Portfolio & Proposals: Its very crucial to create an agency deck, portfolio and proposal templates and keep it handy. Never waste much time especially in creating a proposal from scratch every time you get a client. Keep a standard branded proposal template.

Social Media & Website: Creating a website and social media handles are important but be clear about how you going to utilize them. For example. My website gives a complete picture of my agency, agency personality and our branded process and methodologies. We use Instagram to showcase company culture or sharing work etc. and LinkedIn is purely for client acquisitions. So the content will be created accordingly. Create a blog, create a post for that LinkedIn & Create a reel/post/story on Instagram. Make sure your website and social media communicates better. and SEO should be optimized to create a better visibility. Also add your agency on all B2B, B2C and Agency Listing Directories for better reach.

No Paid Ads: It might be surprising to here Yes i do not believe in running Paid Ads especially during the initial stages of agency growth. Use that budget to purchase a specialized tool or market research reports which can used for client projects etc. Run Ads when you have strong portfolio and you want to expand your service umbrella or target other countries.

Lead Generation: The best way for Lead Generation during the initial stages are referral from your existing clients, Linkedin, It plays an important role with lead generation No you do not need Sales Navigator you can find hot leads with the right keyword searches, A well optimized website can give you good leads but not much but decent amount, Lastly partnering with other agencies and referring clients to each other. This can create a strong revenue stream for your agency. Never rely on one source of Lead Generation technique, keep multiple sources for leads. You can read more about our lead generation technique here: https://www.reddit.com/r/agency/comments/1gru8wg/comment/lx9gzed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Scaling: An agency can be scaled when there is always strong revenue incoming from multiple sources. Scale understanding the market and demand. If you are not comfortable scaling your agency Do not do. Believe in your Gut Feeling.

This is a just an outline on How to start an agency, I know i have not covered few topics here Feel free to reach out to me. If you have questions.

I've been a freelancing on the side working on marketing analytics / tracking

I have a full time data role (non-marketing) however I love marketing analytics.

I've been toying with the idea of a dedicated Tracking and Analytics agency doing everything around marketing analytics from setting up tracking to building reports to generating insights to automating decisions.

I'm wondering if there exists a market for such a service or is it too niche? Will you hire a agency that can set all your data straight , give you deeper insights on your marketing activities and track ROI.

I'm thinking of charging $600 per month per site. Does this sound interesting?

I've been a freelancing on the side working on marketing analytics / tracking

I have a full time data role (non-marketing) however I love marketing analytics.

I've been toying with the idea of a dedicated Tracking and Analytics agency doing everything around marketing analytics from setting up tracking to building reports to generating insights to automating decisions.

I'm wondering if there exists a market for such a service or is it too niche? Will you hire a agency that can set all your data straight , give you deeper insights on your marketing activities and track ROI.

I'm thinking of charging $600 per month per site. Does this sound interesting?

Hey everyone,
I'm reaching out for some advice from those who have navigated a pricing dilemma. My team and I are running into a bit of a crunch, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you've handled something similar.

We've been operating a tech-focused business for the past five years, with clients in the US, EU, and the Middle East. Over time, we’ve expanded—added physical offices, grown our team, and faced rising operational costs.

The issue we're facing now is that despite all this growth, we’ve kept our pricing the same for both new and existing clients. Our rates have always been above the market average, reflecting the quality and value we deliver. Unfortunately, even with this, our current pricing no longer covers the full scope of what we’re providing. It’s becoming clear that we need to adjust our prices.

Here’s where I could use some guidance:

• How did you go about increasing your rates, particularly when the main reason is covering rising operational costs, not just "price hikes"?
• For new clients—how do you effectively communicate the value of your services and justify a price increase without it coming across as a surprise or shock?

We want to ensure we don’t lose any new opportunities or strain relationships with our current clients. While we’re focused on providing great value, we also need to stay sustainable as we continue to grow.

Would love to hear your stories, advice, or lessons learned. How did you find the right balance between growing and adjusting pricing?

Appreciate the help in advance!

Heard this term while talking to some colleagues from another agency. They described it as something they use to supplement their work, but I looked into the company they were talking about (Penji) and I’m still confused. What’s the difference between CaaS and an agency?

imagine you are writing your FAQ section and rather than subjective pov

you want to pre answer the most common concern client have, what are the 3 question you would like to answer to the client

Hey guys, I have a creative agency that is going to hit 30k this year. It’s taken me 1.5 years to get to this point and I’m starting to feel things flowing. I’m planning to set aside some cash in 2025 for a mentor.

Looking for someone doing at least $100k top line revenue/yr

Here are some companies I look up to: www.PorterProMedia.com www.raindrop.agency www.ogilvy.com

I’d love to have a few minutes of your time on a virtual call.

Does anyone deal with clients that ghost them? I have some clients that will not reply to anything I send them. They straight up ghost me but continue to let me do the work and let their CC get charged monthly.

Some clients where ad accounts are being shut down due to their CC being compromised and they need to update the CC in the account but they won’t reply to anything.

Another agency we are white labeling for that owes us money. Zero response.

Another client on the fence about continuing with us because she’s having a hard time up selling her clients that she’s booking from our ads, into higher priced packages. I offered to reduce our agency fee by 50% for the next two months to help offset the money going out. She said she’d think on it. That was a week ago, can’t get her to respond anymore. (I know that this just means she’s moving on)

It’s so baffling and frustrating when paying clients won’t even reply to you or get any of their issues resolved. I wish they’d at least tell us to fuck off and never contact them again. Just say SOMETHING.

Wow, this could really impact Google and open up market share for others over the next couple of years.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/google-must-sell-chrome-to-restore-competition-in-online-search-u-s-justice-department-says-1.7389230?cmp=rss

I’m currently exploring the best way to outsource work for my marketing agency, and I’m torn between using white-label companies and building a network of freelancers. I’d love to hear your advice or experiences with either (or both).

Here’s the dilemma I’m facing:

White-Label Companies:

• Pros: They often have established systems, teams, and a wide range of services.
• Cons: It’s hard to find a trusted provider, and even harder to get everything I need from one company. Many use different platforms/software for their services, making it difficult to centralize workflows.

Freelancers:

• Pros: They can work under my terms and are easily integrated into my own project management software. I also have more control over processes and can customize workflows.
• Cons: It’s risky trusting an individual to deliver consistently. The fear of a freelancer ghosting mid-project or not delivering at all keeps me up at night.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has gone through this decision-making process. How do you manage the risks associated with freelancers or white-label companies? Any recommendations on finding trusted providers or mitigating the risks with freelancers?

Also, if you’ve found a hybrid solution that works, I’d love to hear about that too!

Thanks in advance for your insights. 🙏

Hi Reddit e Fam

Firstly, I want to thank everyone that answered my yesterday’s post regarding small clients

I wanted your advice in one more issue:

For the last 5 years I have had a digital marketing/agency side hustle together with my full time job

Although I climbed really high in the FT job hierarchy, I carried my side hustle with me as a mean to improve my life and my family’s life a bit

I got a bit of lifestyle creep but nothing too flashy, just a trip abroad every year.

I live in South Europe so even in the Director/Senior Manager level in advertising the money are not so much.

So, I keep my side hustle that helps to chip in an additional 1.000 per month in profit more or less.

The problem is that for the last 2.5 years I can’t break through and choose one of the two.

I often get very busy in my FT job and I don’t have any time for the side hustle/agency

I already outsourced 50% of the delivery & accounting to freelancers but still I don’t have enough time and my side hustle clients leave…

Outsourcing also kills my margins…

So, I get the feast and famine cycle continuously.

In the FT job part I can’t break through to a very very senior role because the market here is small and my mind is constantly busy and I am unable to make a correct decision

In the side hustle, I am always time starved and clients get unhappy.

So it goes like a vicious cycle where I get clients, I get busy with work, I get money and then I lose the clients and I get busy with looking for more clients while I already work 8-10 hours in my morning job.

I guess this could be normal but I really want to break through and do only one of them (preferably the side hustle that is also my own business)

To make matters worse I have people in my close environment who are younger than me and went on their own and they are thriving now, making 6 figures per year while I work like crazy just to complement my monthly salary

Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful and my side hustle saved me from huge troubles these 5 years but I need to be able to focus on one thing.

Any advice would be more than helpful 🙏🏼🙏🏼

PS to give you a bit of more context I have to triple the profit from my side hustle to be able to leave my FT job

Curious to hear about how much time agency owners and teams are spending each week conducting Client Research and Monitoring as well as keeping on top of Industry News and Trend Analysis across your teams. I've done some research and I can see it's around 10/15 hours each week for small/medium size agencies, so I'm curious to see if that bears fruit here

We built a news and trends aggregator for agencies which can pretty much completely reduce this time through daily news and trends updates on your clients, compiled and in real language, it's also completely free to use - here if you want to check it out. It saved my agency quite a bit of time as we were spending quite a bit of time staying up to date on our clients

I am not website developer. I learn everything on YouTube. My next thing I wanted to add was ny certificates and start YouTube channel giving suggestions and link it too my website. Here's my website : www.campaignss.com

Are you automating your business processes, and if so, is it working and how much time are you saving?

What do you think about 'Equity for Affiliate' Partnership I am planning to execute for our SaaS, a web personalization platform.

Only for existing service agency owners, targeting NAMER and EMEA, ideally in the web dev and digital marketing space with a client base already.

Target: Generate $100,000 in recurring revenue within the first year.
Reward: Earn 0.5% equity, scaling linearly up to 1% as revenue milestones are achieved.

Pricing Overview:
SaaS: $500-2000/month (annual contracts only)
Private Cloud License: $30,000/year (hosting costs incurred by the end-user).

Competition is priced at an average of 1500 USD per month.

What This Means for the Partner:
To meet the target, acquiring ~4 License-based clients would suffice or ~9 SaaS Clients (average revenue of 1000 USD/month) Beyond the affiliate equity, this opens a new line of business for them: conversion optimization consulting, with 100% of that revenue remaining with them.

Long-Term Value:
Upon achieving these targets, the 0.5% equity stake will be locked in. Once we hit $5M (50 partners committing a minimum of 100,000 USD per year) in annual sales, we plan to raise funds, with the first opportunity to liquidate equity reserved for our partners. At a conservative 10x valuation, this could translate into $250,000 for them.