In this YouTube monologue, Roy Abdo demystifies the reality of running a digital marketing agency, emphasizing that success requires far more than posting on social media. He outlines a multi‑phase workflow: (1) strategic research that examines a client’s website, competitors, social presence, and engagement, using tools such as SEMrush, SpyFu, Lead Forensics, and Social Media Examiner; (2) deep customer discovery through interviews with past customers to uncover pain points, ideal buyer personas, and keyword insights; (3) translating research into content, funnels, and ad creatives, with careful keyword integration across web copy, videos, and images; (4) precise ad targeting and retargeting, recognizing that conversion typically needs 3‑9 touchpoints; (5) ongoing reporting that ties together strategy, execution, and performance metrics. He also discusses prospecting tactics—identifying funded or scaling businesses, auditing their current digital assets, and positioning agency value—and shares practical advice for new agency founders: produce valuable content, seek mentorship, focus on results over price, and over‑deliver. Finally, he describes his hiring process, which includes personality testing and a take‑home project to assess critical thinking, curiosity, and teamwork. The overall message is that a successful digital agency hinges on rigorous research, systematic execution, data‑driven reporting, and a culture of continuous learning.
Chapters
If you're thinking about starting a digital agency, everyone will think it's easy, right? Oh, you guys do posts on Facebook, Instagram. It's not about that. It goes way, way beyond that. It's very complex because at the first step you have to think, that client, what is their digital presence? And that's why we do something called strategy. What a strategy is, we look at their website, we look at their competitors' website, look at their social media, we look at their engagement, the content they produce, what kind of stuff they could produce. There's so many stuff we have to do in step 1 before even We're starting, even starting a digital marketing campaign for you. And that work takes hours of research, examining, researching, digging into deep, deep level of what's going on with them. Then the second step would be examining those resources. Can they produce content? What kind of content they have? Who's their ideal customer? Who's their second ideal customers? What kind of funnel? You have to log into at least 5 to 6 tools we use online, starting from something called SEMrush or, you know, I mean, starting with something called like SEMrush or Lead Forensics or SpyFu or Social Media Examiner. And then, I mean, look at all those tools to understand that client you're trying to help and how can you help them and figure out who is their ideal customer. You have to interview their customers. You have to pick up the phone and talk to 10 previous customers they had, figure out how they found them, what they like about them, so you can figure out what kind of campaign to run for those people. Right? Because it's not about just running a campaign. Anyone can run a campaign. Anyone can do like, you know, a campaign, but that campaign for it to be successful, you have to do the legwork for it. You have to do the research and the strategy for it. It's not just about like turning on an ad and boosting. Everybody can boost stuff. Okay? So the work that we do involves a lot of like understanding what are the pain points. Can you hear me well? Don't pay attention to him. A lot of the work we do goes into what are those pain points of that customer's, that you're, you know, that of the business is trying to help. So if you're a business, you have those customers. We go in depth into your customers' profiles on Facebook, their analytics, what they're liking, what they're consuming, what kind of keywords they're searching. And we reverse those back. Your business needs to have those words. And how do we do that? We take those words, put 'em into your website, create content, create videos, create, you know, pictures with captions on them. So this way, that person, that ideal customer, that ideal prospect you're trying to attract, knows how you're gonna help them. And then the catch is whenever we run campaign, we don't just like boost them to everybody because it doesn't matter because your brain doesn't see the stuff that aren't interested in you if you're not interested in them. So your brain, we have to position your content to be successful. How do we do that? By mapping this research into the advertising piece we do. And everybody can say, oh my God, yeah, I do Facebook on my own. Like, yeah, good luck. Good luck doing all those pieces on your own. Figuring out all those customer journeys and then run those ads and retarget people because it takes anywhere from, you know, 3 to 6 to 9 touchpoints for someone to convert to your ad to go to that business. And if you're just doing it on your own, you're probably not measuring those fractions. You're not seeing what, at what touchpoint they are, right? And after all of that, you have to keep reporting on what's going on. So that's what it takes to build a digital strategy. It's a multiple piece. There's a strategy piece, which is the research. There's the actual execution pieces, which is the ads, the funnels, the creatives. And there's the reporting piece, which is what you have to connect all those stuff together. The biggest issue you're going to have starting an agency, and those businesses are going to tell you, oh, I'm posting on Facebook on my own. Oh, I'm running my own advertising. Oh, we don't— my business is not on Facebook. And that's kind of like the blocks you have to go into. Or like, you know what, our business is already doing well with email marketing. So your goal is going to be showing them how you could help them win with digital marketing. How are you going to do that? By figuring out their current presence, their website, their Facebook, their advertising they're running, what's missing in them and where you can add value. And we do tons of that. So this is how we prospect for clients is we figure out who's either got funded to start to scale their companies or who's running something that they could do better. And this is how you're going to pitch them. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of objections for those who knows nothing about you. As an advice for a marketing agency, start by putting value out. You gotta put content, like what you're seeing right now. This is content. You're trusting me more and more because what? I'm showcasing you how the ropes. Because what's going on is you're trying to start an agency and you know, you've never done it before. So there's no blueprint, there's nothing to follow. So you're leading into the dark. You're like going into something and you have no idea what's in there. So I think the best advice, like what helped me tons is how I took from different people who started agencies or mentors or people who built companies. And ask them for help. Asking for help is huge. And then basically bringing a team that is dedicated to build things together with you and then focus on the value you're providing versus focus on, you know, the actual price point, the, you know, the details of the price, right? Because what clients care about is the results you're going to get them. They don't care if it's like 2 people shop, 10 people shop, 100 people. What they care about is you're getting more customers, are you getting more attention, are you getting more leads? So focus on the results you can bring and make sure what you overdeliver on those results. I look for people who are driven to do things on their own and they build skill sets that are useful for the business, or they have the openness and the openness to learn new things. Because if you're open to learn new things, that means you're willing to what? Grow and scale with us. Because if those are stuck in your own bubble, the world is evolving. Like things are shifting, the attention is shifting. So I look for those who are curious. I look for those who like to produce versus you know, just only consume. And I look for those who are positive and want to build things together. Like, teamwork is huge right now. Our interview process, first we make them take a test, a personality test, so we can figure out what their DNA is, how they think about the world, how they see the world. Our second step is we give them a task, a project. It's like, hey, here's what's going on, how would you solve it? And my goal from that is to see their critical thinking. Because, you know, you can just hire a machine to do, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, but you need the critical thinker who could think, oh, what if I do this, how would that work? How would that look like, right? So we, I look for people who are able to critically think and solve problems and create things with tools they have learned.
