Is your marketing agency prioritizing client campaigns at the expense of your own?

We get it — when you’re running a business, especially a small business, you want to do everything that you can to keep clients happy and coming back. It’s your client-focused efforts that keep the lights on and directly impact your bottom line, after all, and it’s tough to retain customers if you’re not putting out exceptional work.

If this sounds like your agency, you’re not alone. Many marketing agencies find it difficult to prioritize their own marketing, especially if it means taking time or resources away from paying work. However, doing so is a mistake that could come back to haunt you if you’re looking to scale your business into something bigger.

Here’s what to know about prioritizing your own marketing, including why it’s a smart strategy and how to start doing more of it.

Why Agencies Should Prioritize their Own Marketing

When you’re running a marketing agency, it can seem like there are never enough hours in the day to accomplish all that you need to do for your client’s campaigns, let alone your own. That doesn’t mean that you should put your agency’s marketing on the back burner, though.

Prioritizing your marketing has a few big advantages, all of which are worth a bit of extra time and effort:

It Shows Off Your Skills

Would you trust a copywriter who couldn’t put together their own “About” page? Or a graphic designer who didn’t have their own logo? Your agency’s ability to market itself effectively shows potential and current clients that you know what you’re doing and can apply the same skills to their campaigns.

If you want to make your agency indispensable, then you have to showcase your abilities. This includes showing off your creative and strategic abilities on your website with case studies, customer testimonials, and samples of work. It’s also smart to apply for awards so you can get industry recognition and credibility.

It Expands Your Business

Successful marketing equals more prospects, more leads, and more sales — all of which most agencies could probably use. If you’re not marketing your services, you’re almost certainly missing out on profit potential.

Look into paid advertising as a way to reach a wider audience on engaged platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. You can use these platforms to tap into the exact type of audience you’re looking to work with, which ensures the dollars you spend aren’t wasted.

It Establishes Brand Presence

Becoming an industry leader isn’t something that happens passively. Self-promotion will get your business in front of more people, in turn, building credibility and helping establish your agency’s reputation.

If you’re able to make your agency a household name, then you’ve won half the marketing battle. There’s nothing like brand recognition to add a little clout to your agency; just make sure you’re supporting that clout with solid work and a diverse content strategy that’s rooted in insight and educational tips from your leadership team.

How to Prioritize Your Marketing

There are still only 24 hours in a day and much fewer in a workday. That means you’ll have to work your own marketing into your existing workflow — and we’ve got some tips on how to do it.

• • Designate a team. This is a big one. Agencies are notorious for working nimbly, but if you have a dedicated team focused on your internal strategy, then you’re going to get a lot accomplished. Decide who will be responsible for overseeing your agency’s campaigns and the team members they’ll be working with. And if you don’t have anyone currently in-house that has the capacity, look into hiring someone.
  • State clear goals and initiatives. Create an outline of exactly what you want to achieve and how you intend to achieve it. Think both short- and long-term, and make sure to be as specific as possible with your objectives. These will serve as great markers to check against after your marketing plan has gained momentum.
  • Establish a process for creating content and marketing materials. Determine what your workflow will look like. Marketing automation and collaborative software will be hugely helpful here for assigning work, tracking progress, and seeing what’s working and what’s not.
  • Put together an editorial calendar. Try to plan out at least a month or a quarter’s worth of content at a time. This gives you enough headway to get everything done, which is essential when you’re not getting paid for the work and could easily brush it aside without accountability.
  • Put together a social media calendar. Plan out social media, too, and automate your posts in large batches so that most of the work you’ll have to do later on is related to engagement or timely commentary.

• Use tools. Marketing tools are your best friend, especially if you don’t have a ton of time or in-house resources. Aside from the tools we’ve already mentioned, look into others like chatbots, CRMs, and SEO platforms that can help you get as strategic as possible.

Stop putting off your agency’s marketing strategy. Doing so will only hurt your brand in the long run. We know it’s easy to do so for the sake of your paying clients and putting their needs first, but if you continue to let your own marketing suffer, it could end up costing you big time.