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This business idea is interesting as I am personally running a marketing agency as well.
The agency has been running since 2018, and I like this business model due to the ease of getting started.
You can start the business with just RM100 upfront to register the business in SSM as a sole proprietor/enterprise.
No employees or office is needed to get started as you are selling a marketing service, where you can expect a nice 80-100% margins at the start of the business.
Skills Needed to Start A Marketing Agency
Here are some skills you can offer as a marketing agency in Malaysia:
-Web Design
-Graphic Design
-Logo Design
-Social Media Content Marketing
-Video Marketing
-Specialised FB/IG/Tiktok/XHS Marketing
-Google Ads
-SEO
-Copywriting
-Lead Generation
-Influencer Marketing
Any of the skills above can be learn quickly with Youtube videos or paid courses.
Picking A Niche
Once you have identified the service that you want to offer, the next step is to pick a niche that you want to serve.
Picking a niche is important to stand out from other marketing agencies in the industry.
Let’s say you run a restaurant and you are looking for a marketing agency to help out with social media marketing, which agency would you choose?
Agency A: Serve all types of businesses in Malaysia, from big to small and in various industries.
Agency B: Only serve F&B businesses. Fully specialised in F&B social media marketing.
Agency B would likely be the preferred option as we will always prefer specialist over generalist.
This is also the reason why in the medical field, a Specialist will earn few times more than a GP clinic.
Also, if you are just starting out, branding yourself in a specific niche would instantly make you stand out vs the generalist marketing agency.
Getting Clients
Your business is now ready to go! This is the most important step because without clients, your business will not survive no matter how good your skills are.
Here’s how to get clients:
Find a friend who is in your niche and offer them to work for free in exchange for a case study and testimonial.
If you dont have a friend that is in your niche, go to LinkedIn and message business owners in your niche with this idea. Besides LinkedIn, you can also do cold email or cold call.
Note: You can also charge the business owner straight away instead of free, but keep the charges low as you are still new in the industry. It’s important to have a good case study and testimonial as a start, then you can charge higher as you work with more clients.
Once you have this case study and testimonial, you can then reach out to other clients with either free or paid method.
Free method:
You can share the testimonial across all social media platforms, put in detail how did you get the client the results, what was their result before you come in, and after you come in. Humans love seeing progress!
Besides posting on social media, you can also email/DM business owners in your niche to get their permission to send over the case study
Paid method:
The paid method is straightforward, but will need monthly commitment in ads. You can run ads on either social media or search engine.
Retaining Clients
There’s a chinese saying: 创业难，守业更难
It means it’s hard to start a business, but it’s even harder to maintain the business and keep it running.
Imagine this, you manage to secure 10 clients. However, if the 10 clients only pay you once and leave, you will always be chasing for the next clients and eventually this leaky bucket will run out of water (aka cash), and you will have to close the business due to fatigue.
Another scenario would be you manage to secure 10 clients, and they pay you every month as they are happy with not only the service you provide, but also the responsive communication to their needs.
Here are 5 ways to retain clients:
1: Constantly keep them updated on both the progress and outcome of your work. Clients prefer to be updated than them having to chase you for updates.
2: Deliver results and exceed expectation in your service. Ask the client what do they expect before you begin your marketing service, and aim to exceed those expectations
3: Once in a while, provide a complimentary service. They will appreciate it and you can extend the customer retention.
4: Meet face to face every quarter. While Zoom and Google Meet is good, meeting the client for coffee/lunch face to face is the key to build client relationship and make them comfortable with you, instead of switching over to a new stranger.
5: Plant the seed for the future. Client will stay on if they know there is something else coming in the pipeline, where you plan to do xxx in the upcoming months. Always stay up to date and plant the seed for a new deliverable.
Hiring Employees for Your Agency
The mistake most marketing agencies make is hiring too soon without having stable pool of clients.
It’s easy to hire, but hard to fire in Malaysia.
I would recommend going with part timers first, where you pay them based on the number of days they work. This flexibility would help you to save cost and give you an opportunity to see how they work, and their compatibility with your style.
Once you are satisfied with the part timer, you can then make this person a full time.
Another thing that I’ve learn is always hire based on 2 traits:
1: Skills. Hire A players where their skills are better than the average.
2: Attitude. Hire employees with an attitude of continuous learning.
Conclusion
A successful marketing agency business will give you great cash flow as your margins are high vs a product business. You will also enjoy the freedom once you have hired A-players employees to do the work as you oversee from above.
Follow the guidelines above and you will increase your chances of succeeding and transition from employee to entrepreneur!
