How To Start A Digital Marketing Agency With No Experience

Are you looking into starting your digital marketing agency BUT have no experience?

You’ve come to the right place.

In this article, I discuss step by step on how you can start from zero to scale up to $10,000 in the next 90 days even with no experience.

How much can you make as a digital marketing agency?

Just like any other businesses out there, the formative months working as a digital marketing agency will be the most difficult.

If you put a gun to my head and asked me to put a number on it. I would say a couple thousand dollars per month if you are doing this part time.

All the way up to $10,000 per month is an obtainable goal in the first 3 months of starting your digital marketing agency.

Types of Marketing for Digital Marketing Agency

There are many methods you can use to make money as a digital marketing agency. A common mistake is trying to do TOO MANY THINGS at once.

DONT be a jack of all trades when you are starting out. You don’t have to be a full service digital marketing agency from the get go.

If anything, trying to do too much without much experience will hurt your own business.

Focus on a few key areas, get REALLY GOOD at them, and after time when you get good at them then slowly venture into different types of marketing.

Some of the areas of Digital Marketing Agency area:

Social Media Marketing

Running social accounts for companies on platforms such as facebook, instagram, tiktok, twitter, etc.

This is a good way to get started, there is money to be made here and every business could benefit from this.

An example would be working with a chiropractor and posting instagram videos for them. You can make videos for them, get them viral and potentially get a ton of extra business for them.

Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is a kind of advertising where an ad is placed on certain platforms. You will pay the platform to place your ad on theirs.

There are many different platforms to run paid advertising. Typically you can run it on google, facebook, instagram, youtube, etc

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a method of ranking your website on search engines. 

Example: go to google and search for “chiropractor in orange county”, the results at the top are not there by chance or luck. It takes a ton of work (for competitive keywords) to get to the shown on the first page of google.

Those results gets a massive amount of traffic to their website and more traffic means more SALES.

Companies are willing to pay a lot of money to get their website to rank at the top of google search results (especially if it’s for a competitive keyword).

SEO takes a lot longer to show results compared to paid advertising, but if you can master this type of marketing, you can make big bucks.

Email Marketing

Email marketing helps companies connect with their audience to promote their product and brand.

This type of marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels. Statistics have shown that of all the different marketing methods that Email marketing is best for closing the sale.

People tend to get to know brands through other marketing methods such as social media, but when it comes to actually making the sale – Email marketing wins. So keep that in mind.

Web Development

Building an easy to use and visually appealing websites to serve the company specific company’s needs. This could be anything from raising brand awareness, SEO friendly, and for generating sales.

Graphic Design and Video Editing

You might say that does not fall into the category of marketing.

You’re right. However..

Graphic design and video editing is part of the puzzle in making sure your digital marketing campaigns are successful.

This is something you can add on, running alongside any of the marketing methods above as all of them will require some sort of graphic design and video editing.

So which marketing services should I choose?

If you are planning to start a digital marketing agency with no experience then I would recommend picking 1-2 marketing services that resonate with you and learning them really well.

In the future when you are comfortable with those skills, then you can add more skills as you go.

How to be an expert and learn those marketing skills?

Whether you want to learn how to use facebook ads, build high converting landing pages, or rank web pages on the first page of google, you can get educated using the internet.

Watch YouTube Videos

YouTube is a great place to learn for free. There are tons of great content creators who give out content FOR FREE. Seek them out and learn from those videos.

One thing I have learned over the years is to not get paralysis analysis. Though YouTube is a great place to learn, there are a lot of videos and its easy to feel like you are learning by watching video after video.

You will need to take action, try and experience them on your own to actually learn those skills.

Enroll in Paid Courses

Paid courses offer a few key advantages over other methods of learning digital marketing. First, they provide DIRECT access to experts who can help you learn the ropes and answer any questions you have along the way. Second, paid courses typically come with some sort of guarantee, so you can be sure you’re getting your money’s worth. Most importantly, paid courses offer a more structured learning experience, which can be helpful if you’re struggling to stay motivated on your own.

Of course, there are also some downsides to taking a paid course. For one thing, they can be pretty expensive.

Intern in a Digital Agency

If you ever have the chance, intern in a digital agency. It will give you first-hand experience in all aspects of digital marketing, from social media to website design and development. You’ll also get to see how a professional agency works and learn about the different roles that make up a team.

Since there are so many directions a digital agency can take, interning in an agency can expose you to them to help you find the area that interests you the most.

Things to do before hiring clients

Build your own Digital Agency website

Building a website (a simple one using wordpress, wix or squarespace) is an important step because it will show that you are serious, a legitimate business and guess what

Building your own website or blog and documenting your process can be used as a learning step so you could potentially build websites for other businesses in future. 

Learn how to use Canva

Canva is a simple graphic design and video editing tool made. It  has a simple interface and was made for people who do not have experience with graphic design or video editing. 

Easy ways to get your clients

Facebook and Linkedin

Post on your facebook profile and get your friends to help them out. Example “Hey, i’ve just started my digital marketing agency out and am looking for fitness coaches or real estate agents to work with”

You’ll get some likes, some tags and comments from people who are actual fitness coaches or real estate agents. Number of them depending on how many friends you have on facebook.

You can use this same method on Linkedin and get double the results.

Facebook and Linkedin Groups

This method is one the quicker ways to find your ideal target customers. 

1. Join some doctor groups and dentist groups.
2. Add people who are in these groups as your friends. Adding your ideal customers as friends, further down the line they will be able to see your success stories, who you are, what you do and how you can help their business. (Caution: Do not add more than 50 friends per day, or you will get blocked on facebook!

Using Google Search

1. Type in google search “real estate agents near me” or “dentist in hacienda heights”. Look for those who paid for ads at the top of the search engines.
2. Those who are already buying ads already know the importance of marketing and already sold the consent they need some sort of advertising to grow their business. So it’s a lot easier to get them as customers rather than convincing someone the idea of advertising and why they should work with you.

Using Google Maps

1. Similar to Google Search, (but requires less geography knowledge). Head over to google maps, zoom into a city and type in a type of business. Example Chiropractor, Dentist, Auto Repair.
2. Like the example in google search method, a few of these businesses will pop up, and these businesses that have google business profiles or ratings typically know the benefits of marketing, and most probably willing and ready to invest money in marketing to grow their business.

Business Networking websites

Business networking websites are a great way to connect with other like minded professionals in other industries.

One of the most popular business networking websites is BNI.com. BNI provides its members with a variety of resources, including a directory of businesses, events, and training materials. 

Eventbrite is another popular business networking website that offers a variety of events.

Starting a youtube channel

This one is amazing if you’re okay with putting yourself out there.

Posting videos on youtube and targeting search intent keywords can bring in hundreds and thousands of TARGETED views.

The thing about using youtube is that posting on youtube is evergreen. You can get search views now and years later. This is unlike posting on facebook or instagram where you can get views for up to 48 hours and then no one will ever see your video again. 

The videos that you post should just give them massive value in their specific niche, not pushy or hard-selling your services.

Example of videos are “5 High Converting Facebook ads for Chiropractors” or “Marketing Campaigns for Chiropractors”

You can even show them in depth things that you do because chances are they do not want to be doing what you do. 

Things like setting up a website, running facebook ads or setting up landing pages.

Because they would rather spend their time focusing on their craft. 

They watch your videos to let them know that you know what you are talking about and know what you are doing.

From them on, you might get a comment, get reached out and you can then connect with that person to turn them into your clients.

Why would people work with me? I have no experience!

A great way to kickstart your Digital Marketing Agency when you have no experience….

Is to do it for free!

I’m sure you have heard this before and it’s no different when it comes to digital marketing.

For example if a business does not have a website or social media presence, you have nothing to lose working with them. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain as well.

You’re not doing it because you are generous (you could be) but do it to enhance your skills and build your confidence.

Building Your Team

When you are just starting, you should be really just doing it by yourself. Learning the ways and getting good at them BEFORE building a team or a network of people you can reach out to.

Yes, it sounds like a good idea to go ahead and hire a bunch of writers, designers, people who are already good with building ad campaigns and get them to do the work for you.

However, I feel that before going that route I highly encourage you to learn the ways first. Learn how to write good articles or e-mails. Learn to build your own website so you know what an effective website is. 

After experiencing by yourself and knowing what is a good enough article or good enough website, then hiring a team would be a better idea.

The thing is, when you are brand new to this Digital Marketing and you hire a bunch of people to do it for you, how can you differentiate between a mediocre, good or amazing job?

How Much Should You Charge Your Clients?

A common method that beginners use to find out how much to charge their clients is to see how much time they will use to complete a certain task.

Using this method, now only might you be undercharging but it’s going to take a long time to reach $10,000 a month. Don’t do this!

Let me explain.

Let’s say you got a job to build an e-mail marketing campaign for a chiropractor and it takes you 5 days (40 hours) to build it. And for example say you charge your client $50 per hour.

$50 per hour x 40 hours = $2,000 for this job

So over time, say you become more efficient at building email marketing campaigns and instead of 40 hours, you take 20 hours.

Does that mean you’ll charge $1,000 for your work?

Being more efficient with your time and working less hours does not mean less pay. Instead calculate the VALUE you provide to your clients and charge accordingly.

So for the same job, if the campaign could bring more clients and earn them an extra $20,000, you can charge at least $8,000-$10,000 for your services.

What is a Digital Marketing Agency?

A digital marketing agency is a business (could be ran as a company, partnership or solo) that is an expert in one or many of these fields such as:

• Seach Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Paid Advertising
• Social Media Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Website Building
• Graphics Design and Video Editing

There are tons of other examples we can use.

To make it easier to understand, let’s break marketing down into 3 stages:-

1. Lead Generation
2. Nurture Leads
3. Close Sales

Lead Generation – This is the stage where you will capture prospects personal information such as e-mail address, name, follower on social media, address, phone number, etc

Nurture Leads – Nurture leads is the stage where you purposefully engage the leads you captured and feed them relevant information while supporting and interacting with them to understand and fulfill their needs.

This step is done by setting up follow up campaigns using two way communication such as the chat function, voice calls or email follow up campaigns.

Close Sales – This stage is the process you take prospects to get the products and services and turn them into customers.

What is the best software and tools to run a digital marketing agency?

You could run a digital marketing agency without any software and tools when you are starting out and only have a few clients.

BUT

In order to run a successful business, and whether you are looking to specialize in providing SEO services, generate leads, social media marketing, web design or whichever business model you choose to go with, I recommend using GoHighLevel.

GoHighLevel is an all in 1 marketing software with digital marketing agencies in mind..

Here are some of the features of GoHighLevel:

For example, lets say you closed a deal with a gym.

They want you to website or a funnel?

You can build websites and funnels easily using GoHighLevel. Not only that, you can use GoHighLevel prebuilt websites and save tons of time on that.

Heck need to build a digital marketing agency platform? You can do it with GoHighLevel!

Need to create an appointment booking system?

You can use GoHighLevel to automate your workflow and pipeline so you know exactly where your leads are in the funnel.

GoHighLevel has a large library of templates you can choose from so you can save time on building websites, funnels, workflows, . They work with many industries such as Accounting firms, Law firms, dentistry, gyms, insurance, real estate, restaurants, and tons more.

For more information on GoHighLevel, check out my GoHighLevel review