7 Common Challenges Digital Agencies Face

In addition to the common business challenges, as an agency professional, you are probably facing a few or all of the following digital marketing agency challenges. The list below is compiled from working with dozens of marketing agencies over several years.

1. Staying ahead of the curve

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, so agencies must be agile and continuously adapt their strategies to stay ahead of the competition. If you are not continually developing new and innovative ways to help your clients reach their target markets, you will quickly fall behind your competition.

2. Generating leads

As silly as it sounds, as agency owners, we sometimes have a hard time doing what we do best for our clients, and yes, acquiring leads is a crucial challenge for agencies, and they need to find innovative ways to attract new clients.

There are a few reasons for this:

First, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out in a crowded marketplace. With so many digital marketing agencies, it’s tough to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Second, many businesses are reluctant to work with digital marketing agencies. They’re often unsure what a digital marketing agency can do for them and worry about the cost.

Third, many digital marketing agencies rely too much on cold calling and email outreach to generate leads, which can be a very inefficient way to generate leads, especially in today’s market.

There are a few things that digital marketing agencies can do to improve their lead-generation efforts:

First, they should focus on developing solid relationships with potential clients. Instead of cold calling or emailing them out of the blue, they should reach out to them through social media or other online channels.

Second, they should create compelling content that will attract potential clients. They can post this content on their blog and automate it to attract attention on social media, or it can even be automated to generate leads through email campaigns.

Third, agency professionals should attend industry events and meetups to network with potential clients.

Finally, you should ensure that the agency website is optimized for lead generation, including lead capture forms on your website, and automating the process from A to Z.

3. Lack of staff with the necessary skills

A big challenge digital marketing agencies face is the lack of a skilled workforce. There is a massive demand for experienced professionals in the digital marketing space. Still, the supply is insufficient, leading to agencies shelling out a lot of money to get the best talent.

Your agency should focus on offering training and development programs and opportunities for people to learn new skills.

4. Staying Efficient and Lack of Automation

There is no question that automation is critical for digital marketing agencies. By automating the processes they use to plan, create, deploy, and analyze their marketing campaigns, agencies can save time and improve their overall efficiency.

Agencies can use several different automation tools, depending on their specific needs. For example, digital marketing agencies need automated reporting to streamline operations. Automated reporting can help agencies track their progress, performance, and results in real time, which can help them optimize their campaigns and strategies as needed. Additionally, automated reporting can help agencies save time and resources, as it can automate compiling and analyzing data.

Agencies can also automate support requests by connecting their ticketing system to their task management platform, for example, Zendesk is a popular customer service software that helps businesses manage and track customer support tickets. It can be connected to other software, such as Asana, to automate the process of ticket creation and assignment.

5. Client retention

Digital marketing agencies should always look for ways to improve their services and retain their clients longer.

One way to do this is to survey your clients to find out what they are most satisfied and dissatisfied with. Use this information to make changes and improvements to your services. You can also offer your clients a discount on future services for completing the survey.

The agency must always be transparent, keep the client updated on their campaigns, be responsive to their needs and questions, and be proactive in offering suggestions and solutions. The agency should also be willing to work with the client’s budget and be flexible in payment terms.

Lastly, Digital marketing agencies should have automated newsletters connected to their blog and social media. It’s a great way to keep in touch with your clients and followers and keep them up-to-date on your latest news and offerings.

6. Hiring the right people

Hiring the right people is always challenging for any business, but it can be especially difficult for digital marketing agencies. This is because the skill set required for success in this field is constantly evolving and changing.

There are a few key things that agencies can do to make the process of hiring easier:

• Define the skills and experience that are essential for the role.
  Create a detailed job description that outlines these requirements.
• Use various methods to find potential candidates, including job boards, social media, and networking.
• Conduct interviews and assessments to determine whether candidates have the required skills and experience.
• Offer training and development opportunities to help employees keep up with the latest changes in digital marketing.

7. Workload Spikes

Deadlines are typically set for completing specific tasks or delivering certain content. However, when the agency’s workload increases, it can be challenging to meet these deadlines. This can be due to several factors, such as increased demand from clients, staff shortages, or delayed getting content from clients.

When the agency cannot meet a deadline, this can lead to some negative consequences. For example, clients may be unhappy with the delay in getting their content or may be less likely to use the agency in the future. Staff may also be disappointed with the agency if they cannot meet their deadlines. These may cause the agency to lose credibility.

There are several ways that the agency can try to overcome this challenge:

• Ensure that the workload is spread out evenly among the staff, which can be done by staggering the deadlines or having staff work on different tasks.
• Hire more staff during peak periods.
• Utilize skilled freelancers on an on-demand basis.

Conclusion

These are just some of the common challenges we help agencies overcome. If you have any comments about this list, please get in touch with us.