Running a small marketing agency and honestly struggling to keep up with all the changes. What areas should I focus on for growth? AI seems huge but wondering what else I’m missing.
We had terrible client retention until we stopped treating social listening like basic campaign research and started positioning it as strategic intelligence. During a retail client’s product launch, our sentiment analysis caught negative conversation patterns their internal team completely missed. That intel let them pivot their messaging mid-campaign and dodge a PR disaster. Now we sell ongoing social listening as brand intelligence - it’s our most profitable service because clients see us as their cultural radar system.
Last quarter I worked with an e-commerce client and learned something weird about positioning. Instead of being a full-service agency that does everything, we focused just on email retention. Built some automation workflows that brought back 23% more revenue from customers they already had. That narrow focus actually got us bigger contracts - we became the experts at one specific thing instead of just another agency that’s decent at everything.
Last year I worked with a SaaS client and learned something huge - stop being the vendor who just cranks out content. We repositioned ourselves as strategic partners instead. Started every conversation with content audits and editorial planning, not deliverable lists. The shift from ‘doer’ to ‘advisor’ boosted our project values 40% and made us bulletproof when budget cuts came around.
I managed accounts for three agencies last quarter and noticed something cool. The winners weren’t just running paid ads - they’d turned performance creative into a main service. One client’s Facebook ROAS went from 2.1x to 4.3x after we started rapid-testing video hooks in-house instead of outsourcing. Agencies combining media buying with fast creative production are charging premium rates right now.
Reflecting on a recent agency audit, I uncovered an interesting trend: the fastest-growing firms weren’t focused on trendy AI solutions but rather doubled down on technical SEO. Analyzing SERP data from over 200 client sites revealed that agencies excelling in log file analysis and Core Web Vitals were charging 60% higher rates. This highlights a significant gap in the market; many competitors struggle with complex technical aspects, presenting a valuable opportunity for those willing to invest the time in mastering them.
Working with a manufacturing client taught me something unexpected about growing an agency. Their biggest content gap wasn’t top-funnel awareness stuff - it was deep bottom-funnel comparison content. We started creating detailed buyer’s guides and competitive analysis pages, and they became our best converting service. The takeaway? Sometimes the biggest wins aren’t from chasing new trends but finding overlooked content gaps in established industries where people are actually ready to buy.