The New Way to Build a $1,000,000+ Agency in 2024

If you're still trying to provide multiple different services for multiple different niches in your marketing agency, or trying to be an all-in-one solution, I have bad news for you. You're not going to be able to scale. How do I know this? With our company, Seven Figure Agency, we've helped over 133 digital marketing agencies scale to $1 million per year and beyond. And not one single one of them was able to do this by serving everyone or offering multiple services for multiple industries. No, they created a hyper-focused, niche marketing agency where they serve one particular industry and solve a specific problem for them. That's it. So the data's clear. Building a niche agency is the easiest way to 7 figures. But how do you actually do it? In this video, I'm gonna show you how you can take your existing agency and turn it into a highly profitable niche-specific business so that you can get more clients, deliver better results, grow faster, and make a bigger impact. Let's get into it. What is a niche agency anyway? So running a niche agency is that you're gonna be targeting one specific audience, one particular industry. So plumbing company, HVAC company, chiropractors, right? A very specific industry, very specific market providing one main service. So developing a growth program that's designed for that industry with that unique industry at heart, right? What a plumbing company needs in order to grow is a little bit different than what a chiropractic company needs, which is a little different than what a Montessori school needs, right? So choosing one particular market and developing a growth program specific to that industry and solving that main problem, which is helping them grow, helping them generate more leads, more sales, more revenue growth as a function of your services. By contrast, I mean, basically the difference between a generalist agency and a niche agency. With a generalist agency, you're helping anybody, right? Could be plumber, roofer, lawyer, dentist, e-commerce store, everything in between. And you're providing a variety of services: SEO, Google Ads, funnel build creation, whatever you can think of. Versus a niche agency, they're going after a very specific market. In our case, plumbing and HVAC companies. And you provide a very specific program. Program that's designed for that particular industry. And if you kind of compare and contrast our agency, we started Click Incorporated as a generalist agency working with restaurants and lawyers and anybody that our local backyard market, you know, was not very effective, wasn't very successful. We had some early success with plumbing companies and we decided we're going to focus on this industry and we're going to develop a proven strategy, a proven approach. We're going to constantly get better and we're going to improve and refine. And when we we put the blinders on and decided, you know, plumbing companies is where it's at for us. We were able to, to really accelerate the growth. We grew to 7 figures in about 2 years and grew to multiple 7 figures, made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies 5 years in a row. Let's talk about why niching is so powerful and, and why it's gonna be a game changer for you and your agency. Number 1, everybody wants to work with the expert in their type of business. Like they wanna work with someone that's got proven results with companies just like them. As an example, when we started our agency, Click Incorporated, we're working with local companies. I would sit in a BNI meeting or I would get a referral and I would go and meet with the prospect. So let's just say I got an introduction to go meet with a dentist. I sit down with a dentist and I talk about them and I talk about their goals and I talk about what they've tried and where they're looking to go. Inevitably, what does that dentist want to know? What does he ask? He asks, what other dentists have you worked with? What are the, you know, results that you've got? Can I see the website or kind of what you did? Is there other dentists that I can talk to? And naturally I don't, right? I haven't figured that out. I don't I don't have any of those clients, you would be my first client. I'd be cutting my teeth on you. The dentist may give me a shot, but most people, if they're gonna pay a premium rate, they wanna deal with the expert, somebody that's got proven results. Number 2, it's obviously easier, right? When you've got that expertise, when you've got that social proof, when you've got that proven program and you can say, here's the clients that I work with, here's their websites, here's where they're ranking, here's the result they've gotten. Hey, by the way, if you wanna talk to, you know, that client, Here's the number, feel free to reach out. When you've got that, it becomes so much easier to convert clients, right? Your close ratio gets a lot higher. So from a marketing and sales perspective, yes, much better to be in the niche. But what most people don't think about is it has a huge impact on your ability to scale as well because delivering services, like if you're going to build a growth program to do that for one day a plumber, the next day a roofer, the next day an attorney, the next day an e-commerce store, you have to figure it out for that industry. The keywords are different, the copy. Style is different. The whole approach tends to be different. And so you may be a really good strategic thinker as the owner in your agency, and you could figure that stuff out, but you're burning bandwidth every time you take on a new client. You've got to engineer a new program. You can't even apply that to the next client because you don't ever think— you may or may not ever get someone in that industry again. Versus as a niche agency, you can say, hey, look, I'm going after plumbing, right? And if all I'm going to work with is plumbing and HVAC companies, well, guess what? I can get really good. I can put a system together. I can engineer the process and then I can put team members in place to do that work so I don't have to do it where I'm not personally reinventing what I'm doing from one client to the next. And ultimately I can create the freedom that I'm after while delivering even better results. And I think that's the other benefit is that you become really good at getting results within that industry, right? There's so much competition. There's so many people that could do digital marketing. When you go deep into an industry, you've got data in terms of like what, which keywords you rank for and how you got them ranked and what copy on the website converts? What imagery resonates the best? And which directories tend to move the needle? And, and what strategies work best to drive online reviews? And what is it that we can do to follow up more effectively? Right? You start to look at all those variables just for that industry and you compound it with each new client that you get, you get extremely good and you get a right to demand a premium rate because not only are you an expert in that space with proven results, but you truly are the best, right? Because you've got more experience and you've got more data that's gone into it. And I truly believe that being in a niche is the fastest and easiest way accelerate your growth. As I mentioned earlier, we now have 133 agencies that have come through this process, decided on a niche, developed their program, and grown to 7 figures and multiple 7 figures and even 8 figures. I could tell you it is a proven path to grow your agency. I wanna kind of allay any fears that you might have. Like, you know, there's a lot of fears around going down the niche path and, and usually you start to think, I like the idea of being in the niche. I like the idea of marketing myself to an industry. I like the idea of, you know, building success within a space. But what about all the other business? What about all of those other opportunities that I'm missing? And I can tell you there's plenty of opportunity even in small niches. We've had people grow to 7 figures in a micro niche within home services like, you know, pool contractors or like even narrower decorative concrete companies or asphalt companies. And they've grown to 7 figures in multiple 7 figures. So regardless of how small the niche is, there's plenty of opportunities. There will be more traction to those people within those spaces, right? Because The more specific you are, the more relevant your messaging can be, the more they're like, that's for me. So you get more traction from the clients. All of the marketing strategies you might want to put in play that would be completely ineffective in a general agency become hyper-effective. Putting out content, doing webinars, running a podcast, even running ads because you've got a very clear audience that you're trying to work with. You also wind up with a lot less distraction, right? Like if you're taking general clients and you've got yourself open to anything, you distracted me with people that you don't really think are a good fit, meeting with people that would never do business with you, meeting with people and engineering plans that they'll come into fruition. I truly believe that by niching, you'll lose opportunity, you'll attract the right kinds of opportunities, and saying no to misaligned clients is critical to saying yes to the better fit opportunities. Don't worry, I've got enough data to tell you that being in the niche is gonna be the fastest way to grow, and you're not gonna be missing out on all this opportunity. You're gonna be attracting the right kinds of, of opportunity. Couple of steps, right? How do we actually get this off the ground? How do we build a niche agency? Well, number one, we have to choose the niche, right? What, what's the mark out of all the types of businesses? Which one should you focus on? Number 2, we gotta find the specific problem, right? What's the unique issue that that industry's facing that you can solve? The bigger the problem you solve, the more that you can charge. Number 3 is you want to create a unique process to solve that problem. Don't just have a vanilla offering. Come to the table with a proprietary approach specific to the industry based on how that industry runs, based on their average value per transaction, based on their sales cycle so that you can really stand out and then develop messaging for that industry, their problems, their issues, and your specific, specific unique mechanism to get them the results, right? When you get the right niche, the right messaging, and the right mechanism, that's where you get accelerated growth in your digital marketing agency. How do you choose the niche? Well, a couple of things you want to think about. I really think the best niche is going to be one that you probably have some experience in. You know, you've already done business with these clients and you've gotten some great results or you've got some past experience in that industry. Maybe you ran a business in that industry or your family ran a business in that industry, or you worked in that industry before. You're going to have more background and ideally more connections and more opportunities to go faster. Right. So those are the main things I would think about. Some other things, do they clump together and self-identify? You want to make sure that if you're going to go after an industry, it's something as specific as plumbing companies or roofing companies or audiologists, right? You could be very specific. And when you call out that industry, they would self-identify. The second thing I really think you want to think about in terms of choosing your niche is making sure they have a propensity to invest in marketing. What we don't want to have to do is go into an industry like nail salons and say, hey, you know, you're not doing any online marketing. What do you do to market yourself? And they'll say, well, we don't, right? We maybe we put a, an ad in the local flyer, but it's mostly walk-in traffic and repeat of robustness. Very hard to convince them they should spend $2,500 a month in marketing, right? Even if you could show them a return on investment, better to find an industry like plumbing, like legal, like locksmiths that are already spending money and have over the years spent a lot of money on marketing where you're tapping into an existing spending source versus trying to convince them to spend the money. And then the other, the other things you want to think about are, is there an industry association? Because one of the ways you're going to market to that industry is by joining the association and plugging into the live events. Is there an association for that niche that you could join? And do they have events where they get together, you know, live and in person that you can plug in? And then the last thing you want to think about is do you have any background or affinity within that niche? Background or affinity being, did you run a landscape business? Affinity, do you enjoy that, that industry? I think this is pretty important. Will you feel comfortable having conversations with people in that niche and spending a lot of time thinking about that particular industry? If not, you might want to consider a different space. Some of the top niches, and I like to bring this up, you can type in top niches here in the comments if you want me to send you the list, but home services. But don't use home services as the niche. You want to be specific within home services. Kitchen remodeling companies, plumbing companies, painting contractors, garage door installation, right? So home services, healthcare. Again, within healthcare, you want to be specific. Could be day spas, could be eye doctors, could be weight loss centers, could be any of the things within that particular space. Dermatologist, automotive, within automotive, you got auto repair shops, body shops, used car dealers, new car dealers, legal. I, you know, I think legal is a niche, but you, if you can go into a specific type of legal, criminal, divorce, personal injury, and then you get all of the niches within business to business. Those are the niches. If I look at the, at the, the 133 agencies we work with that have gone to 7 figures, most of them fit into one of those subcategories or sub-niches. So that gives you some creative juice, but Again, you want to really think about where you've got some background, where you've got some experience, where you've got some proven results so that you can tap into that. Now, once you've chosen the niche, we need to figure out what the problem is. And so in the case of plumbing and HVAC companies, one of the problems is they don't get enough leads. Another problem is they're not following up with the leads quick enough. Another problem is they've spent a lot of money with the big companies like Scorpion and ReachLocal and Yodle over the years and haven't got a good return on investment. Within your industry, what are those problems? What are those issues that they're looking to solve. And then we want to design a unique process to solve it, right? So don't just say we do websites and SEO and pay-per-click. You want to say, hey, look, we're going to help make sure that you generate leads. We're going to track and show you exactly what your average cost per lead is. We're going to help you attract more of the high-ticket, high-transaction-value services that you want more of. And we're going to put marketing automation in place to help make sure that you convert more of those leads into sales and more of those sales into repeat customers that refer us to others. And so then You craft a program that touches all the things that you need in order to move the needle for them, and you give it a proprietary process, right? So that you stand out in the marketplace, even as someone that specializes within the industry. And then you craft compelling messaging, speaking to the problem, speaking to the opportunities, and then speaking to the unique mechanism that you can bring to the table. If you do this right, you can put your blinders on and say, I'm going to choose a very specific vertical and I'm going to go to market. And every day I'm going to solve the problems for that industry. Industry, I'm gonna become the best of the best within that particular niche. I promise you, you'll be on the fastest path to accelerated growth and to a 7-figure or multiple 7-figure agency that can provide more money to pay the bills, to live your desired lifestyle, more freedom because you've got systems built around it and you have to do it all yourself and a bigger impact, right? Well, you are actually gonna confidently be knocking it outta the park for your clients because you've got really, really good in that industry. Look, niching down is scary. You're worried about turning away business, but the truth is, by serving everyone, you're serving no one. The fastest way to build a million-dollar agency in 2024 is to pick a niche, become the absolute best at serving that niche, and double down on it. Now, if you want to know the entire process of how to build and scale a niche agency like this— I'm talking about creating the offer, acquiring clients, retaining clients, and automating your business so that you can hit 7 figures— then click the link in the description and get our free 7-Figure Agency Roadmap Implementation Course. It literally covers the entire system we use to help over 133 agencies scale to $1 million. Again, you can get free access by clicking the first link in the description. If you found this video valuable, make sure to subscribe and I'll see you on the next one.