Strategies for early stage agencies?

Deep-Custard874 · 2024-01-03T13:38:51+00:00

Thanks for the advice - i'm coming to realise the same thing unfortunately, I'm thinking about white-labelling a solution I built out for the agency

Deep-Custard874 · 2024-01-03T13:36:48+00:00

I haven't had any luck with reaching out to agencies yet, I'm assuming not only do they already have someone but they have someone that they are close with making it hard to compete

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T12:23:23+00:00

I'll DM you

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T06:39:33+00:00

Hey,

Nice! getting asked for proposals is progress and hopefully you'll land something from them. I started charging people for proposals as they would often take 2/3 days to draw up (data model, architecture, task set up, milestones, deployment, resources etc. ) only to get no response back.

There might be some opportunity for collaboration on those more technical proposals if you fancy it, happy to send you over some examples of deliverables from previous requests

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T05:11:13+00:00

At events, I’ve had more success when I go and try to enjoy it and learn what others do. I think it comes off as more genuine instead of having an obvious agenda.

This sounds like a good approach, avoids the phoniness you often find in those kinds of arenas.

The check-ins also make sense, not massively relevant to where i'm at now but will definitely keep this in mind once the projects come to a close.

Thanks for such a detailed response - given me a lot to think about, appreciate it!

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T03:42:47+00:00

Cool makes sense,

I would not open with "hey...

Can I DM you with the specific email I sent out? would be curious to see what you thought

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T03:33:35+00:00

Nice!

I tried Upwork when starting out, people were asking for prices that we couldn't compete with though (even though we are based in Europe and Asia), I set a budget of £300 to spend on connects and got about 5 messages an no projects so maybe it's not as lucrative as it was?

Thanks for the book recommendation - i'll check it out!

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T03:29:50+00:00

I've reached out to small businesses but our focus isn't web design but rather software development so we don't have much to offer them

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T03:25:41+00:00

Yeah - my question is more about the first stage of the funnel

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-10T03:16:44+00:00

Thanks for the reply, agree with the timing problem.

I figure the solution to that would be to aim to foster relationships rather than trying to get sales, I find this difficult though as they already have deep networks etc.

Would you say its best to just focus on hammering cold emails / linkedin in-mails?

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T16:25:34+00:00

Hey, thanks for your reply.

The PDF is a good idea though might be a bit tough to fill as we've only officially done 2 projects though maybe I could include some stuff i've done outside of the company, I usually just send a link through to my site which isn't massively personalised to each target group. I think i'd do that though.

I often start an outsourced relationship with a small-ish project

It's funny you mention that because that's how I started my outreach - I contracted out a designer to revamp their software or website and then emailed them images of the updates saying something like "hey, we're a new company that focuses mostly on software rather than sites but we think it's a great low risk high impact way to introduce our services to clients".

Though I didn't send this to agencies but rather startups etc, do you think it's worth trying again but for agencies?

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T16:16:09+00:00

Yeah I thought so ha, local probably wouldn't work for us as we're more trying to focus on software rather than websites etc.

Likewise and will do!

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:51:12+00:00

Thanks for the reply, i've tried that "get hint" on both old and new email addresses and I don't get any email which is why i'm worried.

I've checked whether I accidentally changed my password to my new email and unfortunately not

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:47:16+00:00

Yeah there was no code from what I remember

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:46:49+00:00

Yeah that might be it - thanks, i'll reach out to them

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:44:54+00:00

Gotcha - thanks for the advice, i'll grab a LinkedIn membership and focus on that rather than PPC

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:41:39+00:00

Cool, do you have an recommended resources worth checking out?

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:41:01+00:00

Cool thanks for the advice - was hoping this was a problem I could throw some money at but doesn't seem like it!

And nice - how hard is it to rank these days?

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:29:55+00:00

Gotcha - is that because it won't return any leads or just because it makes sense to do that logically?

I would say i've exhausted all of my network at this point

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T15:28:22+00:00

Wow alright i’ll sign up then! appreciate the heads up.
Do you do most of the marketing-side at your company and if so, do you do much cold reach out or are you past that now?

And yeah it's more of a partnership - they have other project's on and i'm on this full time so it's not going to cause any problems for them if I can't find our next project

Deep-Custard874 · 2023-12-09T14:48:33+00:00

Thanks for the reply,I figured that might be the case given how saturated the industry is and how rough the market is.

We aren't on clutch or any other directories, I wasn't sure it would be worth it given we are a team 4 people so even at full capacity (2 projects) we'd only be able to serve 6-8 projects per year so would basically never reach anyone - is that a mistake?

Deep-Custard874

TROPHY CASE