As Q4 approaches, has your agency prepared to close out the current year in preparation for what’s on the horizon? We know Q4 comes with its own challenges, but it is also a great time to discover new ways to add value for your clients and maintain the high level of performance they have come to expect from your team.
During Q4, many clients are often reassessing their budgets and determining their needs for the upcoming year. Depending on their satisfaction with the results your agency has produced for them, they may decide to:
Increase their investment in your agency’s services
Maintain their current budget with your agency
Decrease their marketing budget
Cancel their work agreement with your agency
Out of these possible outcomes, the last two are likely the ones any agency leader would want to avoid. The first one, of course, is the most desirable. As you continue demonstrating how the fruits of your labor benefit your client, would you not be positioned to pitch them on investing further?
How do you inspire and motivate your clients to continue investing or increase their investment with your agency? You prove the performance you have delivered for your accounts has led to tangible results!
That leads to you arriving here. How do you prepare for Q4 and also continue to perform for your clients during a demanding time of year for your business?
Need to Scale Your Agency Now?
How to Prove the Past Year’s Performance for Your Clients
When you want to demonstrate the value your services provide, nothing compares to a live report. This deliverable becomes a living digital entity that can outline exactly what your team has accomplished for your client and the tangible results these efforts produced.
Whether your client requests a record of what you have done for them or not, keeping an internal track record of these successes can benefit your agency in more than one way. For example, if you are not sending these documents to clients so that they can see what you have accomplished for them, you can still use the report to create a case study or whitepaper to promote your own business.
However you plan to use your live reports, make sure that they remain housed in an easily accessible folder on your cloud drive. If the client does request that you do provide them with this information, you can retrieve it with little time and effort.
Along with the raw data, ensure that these figures also include insights from your team to put them into their proper context. For example, if your client now ranks '#1' on Google for 50 new desirable keywords, did they displace any of their competitors as a result? Did their organic traffic increase by a certain percentage once they began climbing the SERPs for these terms?
You can use the information within your SEO reports to construct the proper narrative that pairs seamlessly with the data. This not only highlights your achievements but it also illustrates how you delivered these results for your clients and demonstrates the tangible value they produced for your client’s business.
How to Continue Adding Value to Your Clients’ Accounts During Q4
Q4 is often a hectic time of year and between the end of year rush and the holidays your clients may not be engaging with your team as frequently, so how do you continue to add value?
Rather than keeping your head down in the work, look for ways that you can better prepare them for the new year. As an example, you could invest time into researching and identifying keywords for their SEO and/or Paid Search campaigns for the new year. When they are ready to hit the pavement in Q1, you will have fresh ideas and new opportunities prepared, which can also help cut down on crunch time in the future.
5 Ways to Use Q4 to Strengthen Your Own Business
1. Set Your Own Goals for the Next Year
At Conduit, we abide by the mantra of beginning with the end in mind. When you have an end goal envisioned, you can create a roadmap that leads you to your desired outcome.
Try to find a moment during Q4 to outline both abstract and concrete goals for next year. For example, you may have a goal that is less definable but equally important such as “improve the client experience at my agency”.
Conversely, you could also have one that is more tangible in nature like “increase the client roster size by 30%”. If you already have 30 clients currently onboard with your agency, you would then need to acquire another 9 during the next year to meet this objective.
No matter the goal you set, it should follow the S.M.A.R.T. framework:
Specific – What are you trying to achieve in particular?
Measurable – How can you track your progress towards achieving the goal?
Achievable – Can the goal be realistically accomplished?
Relevant – Does the goal directly benefit your agency as a business?
Time-bound – Can you set a realistic timeline or deadline for accomplishing it?
With the S.M.A.R.T. framework in place, you can define exactly how you will achieve your goals without any ambiguity. You can track progress along the roadmap and make sure that all of your necessary benchmarks are met to reach your desired outcome.
2. Take Inventory of Your Current Capacity and Bandwidth
Has your team spent the past year working at or over capacity? Does it feel like “extra bandwidth” is a mythical, unobtainable state of being?
If your team is already maxed-out with your current client roster, this could affect your ability to scale. Should a new, large account onboard in the new year, you may not have the capability to continue delivering elite performance across all of your accounts if they are all competing for your team’s work hours.
Do you feel like you have reached a brick wall in terms of capacity? It may be time to hire one or more new team members or explore the possibilities of a partnership with a white label provider to stabilize the bandwidth crisis.
However, if you find that you have plenty of bandwidth, this may also present a new opportunity. You could use the available time to invest in other aspects of your agency such as any of the following:
3. Strengthen Your In-House Team
What are some ways that you can build up your current in-house team? From free Google Skillshop certifications to trainings and industry seminars, you can discover opportunities to expand their own knowledge and expertise to provide a more excellent service for your clients.
You can also use any available bandwidth to have a “listening tour” with your team. Ask them where they think the agency’s operations can improve further. For example, they may have ideas for a new tool or service that can help streamline processes or automate recurring tasks so that they can spend more time on higher-level objectives.
Want to start somewhere simple? Listen to podcasts by other agency leaders, such as AgencyTalk or PredictiveROI's Sell With Authority Podcast. You can easily drop links into a Slack thread or email and send them to your team.
4. Invest in More Internal Marketing
During a busy year you may unintentionally neglect one of your most important clients: your agency! While prioritizing client work always comes first, you should also ensure that you dedicate any available bandwidth and resources to promote your own business to potential clients that you want to reach.
Align your own internal marketing strategies with your business goals for the upcoming year. If you want to land more clients in the medical industry, you can create a paid media strategy designed to target these business leaders within your desired niche and geographic locations. You can also spend more time researching your competitors that are targeting the same niche to see where they are creating success and how you can compete more effectively against them.
Lastly, as an agency leader, one of the best forms of internal marketing is testimonials from your existing clients. Ask your client’s point-of-contact, such as their CEO or CMO, if they can provide you with a quote in either written or video form that you can use to promote your services on your own website.
5. Look for New Ways to Land and Expand Accounts
Are there any services that clients have been requesting that your agency does not have the resources or expertise to deliver on? If you cannot eventually meet these needs, your client may decide to explore opportunities with a competing agency that can and will rise to the occasion.
Keep a close ear to the ground on what your clients have requested over the past year. Are there opportunities that you can pursue to expand your ability to deliver across these desired channels?
A white label partnership can enable your agency to integrate these capabilities into your offering at an expert level immediately. You can then confidently say “yes” when asked if you can provide TikTok advertising or OTT advertising services. Not only will your agency appeal to more desirable prospects, but you can also explore more opportunities to expand your accounts with current clients!
Say “Yes” to Better Opportunities in Q4 and Beyond with a White Label Partner
At Conduit Digital, our team partners with successful agencies across North America to deliver elite, scalable white label digital marketing products and performance for their clients. We equip your agency with a 100% U.S.-based suite of services, resources, and reports that you can use to enable better opportunities for your business.
To learn more about how you can say “yes” to these opportunities in the new year, schedule a 20-minute discovery call with us today.
