I’ve been running a small marketing agency for three years now and honestly, I’m feeling stuck. Revenue has plateaued and I’m not sure where to focus our efforts next. What areas should agencies like mine be investing in for 2024? Any insights would be helpful.
Last year we went all-in on email automation after our clients’ paid ads started tanking. I couldn’t believe how many businesses were still just blasting everyone the same generic emails. We built proper welcome sequences and cart abandonment flows - suddenly clients could see exactly where their revenue was coming from and our retention went through the roof. Plus the recurring email work finally gave us predictable cash flow.
Reflecting on a recent audit, we discovered that an agency’s revenue challenges stemmed not from ineffective marketing, but rather from overlooked technical SEO issues that were hurting client performance. By implementing Core Web Vitals monitoring and conducting thorough log file analysis for each account, we saw client retention soar by 40%. The lesson: demonstrating tangible organic growth via technical improvements not only enhances client satisfaction but also justifies higher fees.
Hit the same wall with our agency until we started white-labeling PPC audits for other marketing shops. Tons of agencies were bleeding clients because their ads sucked, but they didn’t have PPC people in-house. We’d audit their accounts, fix the negative keyword mess and ad fatigue, then split the improved ROAS. Boom - predictable revenue from multiple sources without the client acquisition nightmare.
Same thing happened to us two years back - 15 people, totally stuck. Game changer was dropping all the random services and going all-in on content ops for SaaS. We built specific frameworks for their editorial calendars and keyword clustering, and that became what set us apart. Bottom line: pick a niche, build solid systems for it, and you’ll crush the generalist agencies.