Why Your Agency Hit a Plateau and How to Catapult to the Next Level

Do you feel that your agency has hit a plateau? Are you wondering what steps you could take to reignite your growth? Maybe it’s time to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you're not making your agency's needs a priority. Maybe you're just too close to your business and can't see the forest for the trees.

In this week's podcast episode, our Agency Scale Specialist Darby Copenhaver shares the common challenges he's hearing from agencies. In his role, Darby speaks with agency owners who are looking for a leg up, whether that means working with Jason or not, to identify their issues and create a game plan for overcoming them so they can achieve their growth goals.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Overcoming the most common issues for agency owners.
• How to get more clarity so you can scale.
• Branding yourself vs. branding the agency.
• Why the fear of missing out (FOMO) is holding you back.

The Most Common Reasons Agency Growth Reaches a Plateau

As agency owners, we put so much energy into our clients’ success and strategies and we forget to do the same when it comes to our own marketing and growth strategies. Because of this, many of the agency owners that come to us frequently feel stuck. They’ve plateaued and can’t figure out what comes next. In Darby’s opinion, this is rooted in a lack of prioritization.

We tend to put ourselves last because we want to do the best we can for our clients. This is very common, but we need to make time for the things that we want to accomplish in our businesses. Remember there’s a difference between making time and having time. There’s always time where you make it. You may not think you have time, but you must make the time to overcome the plateau you're on.

How Clarity Will Help Overcome the Plateau You're On

We’ve talked about the importance of niching down and the benefits it can bring for your business. However, it is still a very common fear, and understandably so. Agency owners feel they’re missing out on something or going in a certain direction will mean leaving many opportunities behind. This kind of thinking pulls you in many different directions at once. A clear vision of the goals you have for your agency will make all the difference.

Improving yourself and your agency will take dedication and intent. Reaching your goals is just as important as reaching the goals of the people you work with. This is something that we often discuss in the Digital Agency Elite mastermind when we advise members to say no to some things and delegate tasks to free their time for focus on what they really want to do.

The Understanding That Comes With More Clarity

Once we start to cover some of the things that may be slowing their growth, agency owners start to recognize some small changes that could make a big difference for their agencies. One of the most common ones is capitalizing on their existing relationships. They realize they haven’t taken the time to recognize opportunities with existing clients and grow revenue from there. There’s so much low-hanging fruit there that they don’t realize. With the help of the mastermind team, they realize they need to go after those opportunities and empower their team to do so as well.

Many of them also overlook the importance of creating content and building authority. Having clarity about who you are as an agency, who you audience is and what you offer can lead to building content of value around that. This can only improve your business because providing value-driven content instead of generalized marketing tips will lead to better opportunities.

Should You Brand Yourself or Brand Your Agency?

Sharing your personal branding helps you align with the right clients. Remember that people buy from people and tend to not trust companies and corporations. Personalizing things will help you establish yourself as someone clients can trust. You can see bigger companies commonly offer a personification of the business (like the Geico gecko) people can relate to.  And in Jason’s social media, you’ll see posts about his adventures on the mountain, which personifies his brand and attracts the type of people that share his love of adventure.

Many agency owners believe that branding themselves will mean that they’ll be expected to do everything themselves. It’s a misconception that people need to get past because it’s just not realistic. If you buy a Tesla, you don’t expect to deal directly with Elon Musk in the purchase process, but that’s the personality that probably attracted you to that company and that product in the first place. It’s about investing in the leader and having the confidence that their team will work in consonance with what those figures represent.

Some mastermind members that took the step to do their own content on Youtube or their own podcast find that many times clients and employees approach the agency because they wanted to work with them. They are attracted by the personality and the values that they represent and now this content has become their main source of leads.

Lose The Fear of Missing Out & Start Taking Risks

The clarity that you need to continue your growth will come with losing the fear of saying no, niching down, and putting yourself out there. Mastermind members feel encouraged to make these changes and lose that fear because they can see it works for other agency owners. Once they see it works, they want to reach that same level of success.

As Darby says, anything in life involves some degree of risk. Every time you say yes to something you’ll be saying no to other things. Just take into consideration what you are really giving up and what are you gaining.

Want the Support of Amazing Digital Agency Owners?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to the Digital Agency Elite to learn all about our exclusive mastermind.