What Does a Digital Agency Represent in 2021?
Digital Agency represents the future. In the year 2021 marketing, advertising, and pretty much any kind of business aspect, have transferred to a digital platform. A business that doesn’t contain a digital part will very soon stop existing.
Radio, television, and other more traditional marketing techniques still have some, but not too many, relevance. Modern strategies for marketing campaigns are almost always focused on the Internet and social media platforms.
So, lets start with usual information, like what does a digital agency represent.
A digital agency is an advertising agency that utilizes new technology and marketing methods.
The goal of this type of agency is to help businesses adapt and thrive in the modern world of marketing.
Digital agencies take a more modern approach. These agencies concentrate on bringing and establishing brands in the online world.
Exclusively digital marketing methods like SEO, UI/UX design, Social Media Marketing, etc. arguably bring much more tangible results.
These agencies can easily measure and evaluate the impact they have on your business.
Unlike some of the traditional forms of marketing, you will have direct insight into how effective is each of the marketing channels you use.
With that, your marketing will be much more flexible. You can make a real investment in channels that are bringing the best results.
How To Start a Digital Marketing Agency in 2021?
It maybe seems easy to start a digital agency, but don’t get too cocky. It is essential for a digital agency, and its employees, to be aware and know almost every method in the world that is known as digital marketing.
Why is that important?
Well if you don’t follow the newest principles, and modern techniques, your clients, and your agency will fall out and become irrelevant.
If you are a newcomer, and you just started your new digital agency business, try focusing on one or two aspects or areas. Don’t try to offer every service there is.
Focus, learn, become the best in few areas of modern marketing, and then, gradually expand your services.
You don’t need to be an expert on everything. Still, you should have an above-average knowledge about each of the services below.
1. Decide on a Service to Offer
To grow a proper brand for digital channels takes time. Time & knowledge. For a new digital agency, it is essential to focus their attention on few services.
Don’t overextend. Yes, from the start, you can offer a lot of different services, but can you deliver?
Our advice is to narrow it down. Focus on a few of them, but make them pop. Learn everything about them, become an expert agency for those few services.
After that, you will easily upgrade your agency with new “features”.
Here is a list of the most popular services you can offer:
- Web Design
- Front End Development
- Branding
- SEO
- Graphic Design
- Social Marketing
- Writing & Translation
- Video & Animation
2. Purchase Your Domain Name & Hosting
How to select a proper domain name?
One of the hardest parts of starting a business for many aspiring entrepreneurs is choosing a domain name. And you must get this part right!
Domain name will become a part of your brand. It will be an essential component to the digital part of you business. Proper web design and development will just upgrade that domain name, but without a good domain name your business will suffer.
Bellow is a small list that will help you choose a good domain name.
You need to find a domain name with these qualities:
1. Makes a great first impression:
2. It is relatively easy to brand
3. Easy to memorize
4. Preferably has a .com extension
You can search for available names and register your own domain name through websites like namecheap.com or godaddy.com.
Premium domains are more expensive for a reason. Still, you will have to put in the same amount of work to make any success.
Once you register your domain, it is time to purchase hosting.
For a start, even basic, shared hosting can work.
Remember, you can always transfer to a better package or a completely different company.
Here is a list of some of the best hosting providers currently:
- DreamHost.
- Bluehost.
- A2 Hosting.
- HostGator.
- InMotion Hosting.
- MochaHost.
- Web Hosting Hub.
- BigCommerce.
- Siteground
3. Establish Online Presence For Your Digital Agency
a) Logo Design
So, you started your digital agency, and you bought your new and unique domain name. A good foundation is created.
Now you are ready for the next step. It is called Logo Design, and to be honest, it is one of the most important things for your business.
Inkyy Web Design & Branding Studio has plenty of experience in creating Logo Designs for your brands. More about our design and experience in creating logos you will find here.
Every business, blog, website, or information portal needs a proper logo. Don’t be the only business that doesn’t have one. Your logo is the front of your business and brand. It is your foundation.
That is particularly true for a digital agency. Everyone will expect you to have an exceptional, contemporary logo.
If you offer logo design as a service, that is one reason more to get this step right.
Research the competition and companies that you admire. To stand out, you should strive to have a better-designed and more recognizable logo.
Take a look at the work from famous designers on websites like dribbble.com to get you inspired.
You should have a general idea about what you are after before starting the logo design projects.
Here are some of the options you have:
Logo Design Contents
Websites like 99Design allow you to receive logo design drafts from multiple designers. The benefits of this option are that you will most likely receive the most design concepts for the price.
You can make a contest for around $400.
However, the quality of all of the concepts can be questionable.
Hire a Freelancer
Websites like Fiverr and UpWork are the most obvious choices for this method.
You can receive a logo for as low as $5 or as high as $1 000.
Quality and creativity are dependent on the price. There are exceptions, of course. Take a closer look at the designers’ portfolio and customer reviews.
Hire an Digital Agency
The most cost-effective, and hands-free solution for you would be to hire a specialized branding and logo design agency.
In most cases, the project will go smoothly, from the initial brief to the final design. Best of all is that you don’t need to be as engaged like in the other methods.
Agencies like Inkyy Web Design & Branding Studio offer professional logo design for as low as $50 per concept. Make sure the project includes source files that you can use in later stages.
Logo Generator
We do not recommend using this method in any scenario. You will receive subpar results, with an extremely generic logo. One exception would be to test some of the ideas you have before you contact the designer or an agency.
Logo generators are not free, and you might need to get back and pay up to $50 for source files.
b) Website Design
Once you settle down on the final logo design, you should look toward designing your website. Why a proper website design is important?
Website design, in a simple sense, is the ability to create a masterpiece, art, which will elevate your business to new heights.
You should already have a general idea about the general style, colors, fonts, etc. that will make up your brand.
Similar to the logo, your website should stand out as well.
However, you can’t just design a weird-looking page that will grab some attention and wear out in a couple of days.
Make sure you stand out for all the right reasons. Hire someone, professional like Inkyy Web Design Studio, to create a fully custom design, original illustrations, and animations, because we will follow all of the website design principles.
Carefully approach both the visual and user experience aspects of the design. Easy navigation is one of the basic principles that your website must-have.
Easy to use, friendly UI, and modern design is what a modern business must-have. Inkyy is there to help you with that.
Check out our portfolio, find out more about Inkyy, and contact us if you need any help with this.
c) Website Development
You don’t have to be a full-stack front-end developer to create a fully functional website.
We wrote a little bit more about this topic, and that article you can find here.
‘Drag and Drop’ builders are getting more advanced, and you can easily mock up a website without any coding knowledge.
Additionally, CMS solutions like WordPress are fairly easy to install, use and customize. There is a plugin for almost anything.
All of this sounds good. You can, without any previous knowledge about web design and coding, construct a website. All of that is fine. But is it good? Will that website make your business even better, or will it have a bad user experience?
If you don’t understand what are you doing, you can end up with too much overhead and a very slow website. That is not good. In this modern times, a digital era so to say, you need to have a great website. Even a good website isn’t cutting it anymore.
Ideally, you should find someone or a studio that has professionals and experienced front-end developers that will construct your website per your instructions, using only the newest and modern techniques.
Inkyy Website Development & Desing Studio is a studio with creative professionals that will elevate your business to higher levels. You can contact us by filling this form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
4. Portfolio & Partnership
It’s perfect if you already have a portfolio or even case studies related to your work.
But, what happens if you don’t have anything to show yet?
The first thing you will have to do is connect with freelancers, teams, or companies that already offer the same or similar services to you.
Hopefully, you will be able to partner up with companies like Inkyy.
Most likely, you will be able to lend a few pieces for your portfolio free of charge. One of the most common conditions is that you will need to outsource all of the actual work to them.
Once you have a bigger and better network of partners, you will be able to take on more work.
The main goal is for you to have enough confidence in them so you can freely focus on acquiring new leads.
5. Setting Up Your Prices
Before you are ready to take on new projects, you need to have a clear price list.
It is a common practice to agree on the price for your services with your clients before you start working on your project. Both sides know the cost of the project, and then, with your mind at ease, you can continue with website design, creating a logo, branding, development of apps, or any other service you provide.
Depending on the nature of the service you will have to choose between one of the following models.
- Hourly
- Flat price
- Commission-based pricing
- Percentage of spend
Here are the most common methods of payment:
Make sure you factor in all the expenses, taxes, etc. and come up with the price that will keep you profitable.
If you are outsourcing any stage of the work, factor in how much they charge as well. As you gain experience, you will have a better idea of the balance between quality work and price.
Don’t be afraid to ask for a better deal, especially once your partnerships begin to progress.
Be ready to adapt quickly and raise your prices as necessary.
Believe in yourself. If you think that you deserve more money, or that conditions of the deal at this time aren’t good, don’t hesitate to enter re-negotiations.
It is a common practice to re-negotiate your deals once per year. If you don’t value yourself and your agency, that who will?
6. Lead Generation
Our guide up to now has walked you through everything you need to get your digital agency up and running.
The ‘only’ thing now is to make a profit. Yeah, it seams so easy. It’s not. It is the hardest thing in business.
You need to get your ‘game plan’ up and running. Make sure your workflow is flawless.
Quality of your services, availability, client satisfaction, and the result, the product you deliver, will be the number one thing that measures your success.
Probably the most important aspect of your new digital agency is to retain your current clients. If they are satisfied, they will commend you, spread the good word to other people and businesses.
And that is the biggest praise for your work. The other clients will come, trust us.
Focus on bringing outstanding results consistently, without exceptions. Build genuine relationships with people that already trust in your work, and your business will flourish.
Methods to Attract New Clients For Your Digital Agency
Finding new leads is never easy. Even tougher is to find the right type of clients you enjoy working with is even harder.
The perfect client doesn’t exist. There will always be some ‘tensions’ between your agency and your clients, and that is perfectly fine.
For every owner, his business comes first, and because of that, they will sometimes have no understanding.
Your experience in running a digital agency will bear fruit here.
The ability to handle multiple clients while everyone is satisfied is the outline of a good and quality digital agency. When you master these skills, then attracting new clients with proper methods will be easier.
There are different ways to attract new clients. Here are some of the methods to get you started:
- Use your personal network
- Contact local businesses
- Focus on SEO to drive organic traffic from search engines
- Content Marketing
- Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing (Cold Email)
Research and test out each of the methods above. Work on creating a bulletproof lead generation strategy.
All of the above mentioned is a blueprint how to create and own a proper, new, modern digital agency.
That is how Inkyy Web Desing & Branding studio was created. A lot of blood and sweat was invested in the creation of Inkyy digital agency & studio, and it payed of.
So, don’t be afraid. Go. Dive into the unknown. Become a business owner. Create your own digital agency. Trust us, it is worth it.
