Crafting a Digital Marketing Agency Business Plan

This is a guest post from David Lawrence, an experienced writer and content manager who has contributed to various publications in Digital Marketing. With a love and passion for web technologies, he has researched and written many publications about marketing and SEO for the last 4 years.

Any business worth its salt must have a business plan that outlines various things about the business, and a digital marketing agency is no exception.

Certainly, a digital marketing agency business cannot be started and operated using the prepackaged business plans that come in templates, especially if your business is unique, calls for a lot of creativity and operates in a dynamic environment.

A pro digital marketing business plan must factor in the uniqueness of the digital marketing industry and set measures to ensure the business keeps going, even in turbulent times.

Here are some things that a digital marketing agency business plan in 2018 must factor in.

The audience or intended users

It is very important to consider the people or groups of people whom you intend to target with your business. Any decisions taken when referring to your business plan document will need to consider those it was meant for when being crafted. The following are some audiences that a business plan may be meant for:

Internal audience

These are people working on the inside of a business, such as employees. A business plan meant for internal users mostly outlines the business goals and how to go about achieving them, what defines satisfactory performance, and other such things. It may also inform the users of the business’s status, such as how stable it is and any future plans. It will try to persuade them to remain part of the business.

External audience

This is mainly aimed at getting potential partners and investors to win their confidence and convince them to put their resources in the business. It focuses a lot on finances and is heavily loaded with figures as it seeks financial resources. It may explain financial performance, both present and future (projected.)

Customer-oriented business plan

This outlines the digital agency’s future plans and the various activities that the business intends to implement to customers. It is a marketing tool. A business plan being for 2018 must certainly take into account the great technological advances taking place. It should also consider introducing some future-gazing ideas, like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation.

Your numbers must be accurate and feature in the plan

Whoever your intended audience may be, your digital business plan must have all the facts in numbers, and they need to be correct. A business plan is less wordy, but must be heavily loaded with numbers, including:

1. What is your current customer population?
2. How many clients do you intend to win?
3. What plans do you have in place to win more clients?
4. What costs do you incur to retain your clients?
5. How much of the business earnings do you apportion to the outside partners?
6. What is your anticipated rate of growth for your business?
7. What plans do you have for selling your services or products?
8. How much will it cost you to carry out the sales that you have planned to achieve?
9. How large is the business loan are you planning to take, if you intend to take one at all?
10. What is the rate of your staff turnover?

You must use numbers to support all your claims and plans. Failure to do so will hinder you from winning the confidence of the investors, customers, employees, and other important parties. It may also appear like you are concealing something, or perhaps you’re not well versed in the business.

However, you need not lay bare all your financial information, but you must provide enough of the information needed.

People-oriented

In 2018, the focus of your digital business must emphasise heavily on the people that matter to the business – customers, employees, and others.

Most importantly, it must address the issues pertaining to the retention of top talent in the business, bringing other gifted people on board, facilitating proper delivery, and many other employees’ related issues.

It must be very clear for anyone that reads your plan that your digital marketing agency appreciates the changing work environment and puts a premium on its people, especially employees.

Conclusion

The unique nature of digital marketing agency and the issues that are specific to your business must be emphasized, and as such, an all-size-fits-all business plan for a digital marketing agency does not exist.

You must sit down and think hard to come up with a business plan that is suited to your case.