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hey guys this is the one if you're thinking about starting a digital marketing agency this is the episode you need to watch i have done a lot of episodes over the years about how to find clients how to get your agency going but i have never gone into the granular detail that it takes to make a digital marketing agency business plan in this episode i'm going to talk about a template that we have at our agency we're going to put the link below you're going to be able to download it and i'm going to go section by section about what has to be in that business plan one of the parts you guys are going to love is when i get to the sales forecast when i break down the numbers of what it's going to take to get your agency going this episode's going to be fun we're going to go through other things like the scope the services that you're going to offer we're gonna go through things like the equipment you need the software you need we're gonna go through everything get your notepad out this is gonna be great take some notes and go make your business plan it's gonna help you get your agency going and that's what we're all looking for let's have some fun let's start right now [Music] all right hold on i need to find a place to put this one all sec forwards up there we go done so the first couple parts of the business plan are self-explanatory you got confidentiality you got the table of amendments gets a table of contents then we get into the stuff that really matters so number one the executive summary when getting your agency started the executive summary is going to summarize the entire business plan you're going to go through everything that you put into it and summarize it in a couple paragraphs at the end i don't usually do this at the beginning but one thing to note early on the executive summary we have in here having a section of your list of services when you're getting your agency started you can either choose to go very niche or you can be a full service agency before you get started on this business plan i think it is very important to understand what your strengths are and where you're going to start your agency if it is your goal to have a full service agency then write down that goal right away list of all the services web development seo video production graphic design content writing everything that's involved in a full service agency because as you go through this plan it's going to help you with the market research and it's going to help you towards the end when you're trying to figure out your numbers and what services and revenue you're looking for from each service category the other reason is it takes us into section two where you're going to be talking about the scope of your business so when we get into number two and we start looking at things like scope an example scope statement if you're let's say a full service agency would be providing full service marketing and advertising services to a wide range of industry of clients then once again you're going to list off those services in this section now in section 2 project overview there's one more section that i always note and that's the location whenever you're starting an agency a lot of people will start it out of their basement they'll start it from their house and that is completely fine but if you're thinking about taking your agency right off the bat to the next level one of the reasons you might need this business plan is to get a lease or talk to different partners that you want to involve in the process the location section is vital and i say that because having a location is one of the things that took our agency to the next level it brought this level of validation and credibility to our agency so if you're thinking about taking off and getting it going look for locations near you even small offices outside of your home it might just be the thing that lands you that next big contract next section three management and training are the first two sections of our keys to success so if i'm going to go here and put number three i'm gonna run out of room soon our keys to success in the template there is very generic paragraphs but depending how you're getting your agency going if it's just going to be you or if you're going to involve partners other people that management section is going to be written out specifically to your agency on how you're getting started but for me the more important section is the training section one of the biggest mistakes that i made early on in the agency when we started hiring people is we didn't have a training process in place we didn't have a way to orientate the employees so we were really flying by the seat of our paths we were basically winging everything and early on that was fun we were able to get things done quickly but very quickly when the bigger projects came we started to lose focus a little bit we started to get disoriented and things got missed the quality control went way down so we had to put the training systems in place i would note that in the business plan and that's one of the things that you should do right away when getting your agency going make a training system know how you're gonna file files know where you're gonna put files into the cloud know how you're gonna manage revisions do those types of things here rather than rambling i'm gonna write them on the board behind me so you can reference them as i keep going make a training system it's going to make a huge difference all right [Music] all right there we go get that in place put that in your training section it's going to make a huge difference getting started next in this section is your swot analysis strengths weaknesses opportunities threats this is going to be different depending on all the services that you offer and where you're located in the world for almost everyone one of the strengths is going to be that digital marketing still is not fully accepted and digital marketing can be tracked more than any other advertising medium but one of the weaknesses of agencies is that often cost more than hiring internally for companies as a result not all companies get on board right away with hiring an agency but one of the opportunities that i would put there is that agencies now can do three different forms of supporting clients one you can do all the services for them two you can supplement them and three you can train them on how to do the marketing themselves and then threats there's a bunch that i like to put i like to talk about other agencies in your competition i like to talk about ai and platforms looking to bring clients on and manage it themselves then you got things like fiverr and you have some low-cost mediums that some clients are going to choose over hiring a full-service agency beyond those things i just mentioned be specific to the services that you're going to offer every service has a different opportunity and threat for example video if you're going to be a video production company as part of your agency then your weaknesses and threats come from the fact that phones can now shoot 4k and it's getting cheaper and cheaper to have things like gopros and even mirrorless cameras for clients to purchase themselves at the same time videography is really hard so that's not always recommended to get really high quality stuff anyway i'm rambling now but be specific to the services that you're going to offer next section four this is going to be your bread and butter this is what's going to make you stand out your marketing strategy all right let's put that here number four now you guys are gonna know how to fill this one out but here's a couple tips in this section that i like to do whenever these plans are put together one have your website made before you send a business plan out that way you can include a screen recording or screenshot of the entire home page of your website in this plan it's also a great place to talk about how you're going to advertise are you going to use facebook ads are you going to use google ads are you just going to do networking all of those are acceptable but one pro tip that i can say if you're going to be a digital marketing agency that offers things like google ads if you don't advertise on google ads yourself then that's one of the ways that clients can weed you out and realize that maybe you're not fully embracing what you're trying to sell so write that right into the plan get it in there if you're gonna be a google ads agency if you're gonna run ads for clients then say that you're going to run ads for yourself and talk about the different campaigns and ad groups that you're going to run what demographic you're going after right in the plan one section 4.6 is your competition now for competition pricing i always find it important to search the closest agencies to you use google maps do a quick search find the closest agencies to you and for whatever service you're going to offer give them a call and find out what their prices are you're going to do a little bit of competitive analysis here yes you're going to be making calls but at the same time a lot of agencies work together you can be honest with them call them try to find out their pricing it's a good way to help you understand where you're going to start your pricing schedule now remember that doesn't mean that you're going to be the cheapest agency you're going to be offering value to the customers and if you're offering more value than the other agencies are you should price yourself accordingly and justify it now guys section five is construction and equipment it's not really going to apply that applies to a lot of other business plans but construction and equipment you are going to have equipment to a certain extent you're going to need a really good computer you're going to need a really good phone you possibly are going to need a mirrorless camera a gopro whatever it's going to take for you to build that content for your clients get that in there it's a great way to budget yourself at the beginning and prioritize which pieces of equipment you're going to get first here i'll write a quick list down next is the financial summary number six this is the one that a lot of you guys have been waiting for this is where i'm going to break down the numbers of getting your agency started now i'm going to step to the side we're going to take a shot of this that we are going to put on the screen for a couple seconds take a screenshot if you need then i'm going to erase the board and i will write out what the financial and sales forecast looks like hold on [Music] all right guys i've written some stuff here and the one thing i'd like to say is i often work backwards from the goal i often look at the total that you want to make on a best case scenario first and then work backwards so if you're starting agency let's say you want to be a one million dollar agency then i start by putting that one million dollar agency right here now this template goes through and has a best case and a worst case scenario you can do just one scenario however sometimes if you're trying to get funding for equipment or you're looking at getting a lease it's good to put the perspective of the worst and best case scenario into the business plan you're always shooting for your goal there's no doubt about that but having the best and worst case scenario in there i have seen help people get financing in the past now the next thing you're going to do is you're going to think about the products and services you're going to offer whether that's seo videography photography content making social media whatever it is you're going to put your prices of your services here so i'm going to say 500 a month for this one 2 000 a month for this one 1500 a month for this one same thing here 500 2000 and 1500. now you could have longer list than that but for the purposes of this we'll just put that there for now now the number of clients here this column is important because that's going to help you get to your totals and hopefully to that million dollar goal to figure out your number of clients i often do the basic math this is how you're going to make your money how you're going to find your clients so let's say you start your agency and you yourself make ten calls a day you buckle down two hours a day you make ten calls that's 3600 calls a year and you have a one percent conversion rate that's 36 clients just from the calls that you're going to make i've seen other influencers talk about this this is one of the ways that i got my agency going but it's not the only way you're going to run those google ads you're going to network you're going to do other things let's say 36 clients is conservative on that aspect maybe you're going to have somewhere in the ballpark of 40 to 50 clients in the first year hustling really hard then you're going to take that 40 to 50 clients and you're going to disperse it through the different services that you're offering so on the best case scenario let's say on the 500 product you get five clients on the two thousand dollar product you get 25 clients and then on the 1500 product you get let's say 15 ish clients so now we add that up we got 2500 we got 50 000 and we got two thousand five hundred a total of seventy five thousand dollars per month just short of that one million dollar mark seventy five thousand a month equals 900 000 agency and if you want to get back to that million then you have to adjust how you're going to find your clients on your calculation over there then you do the worst case scenario let's say for the 500 you're gonna get two clients thousand dollars a month for the 2000 you're gonna get ten clients which is twenty thousand dollars a month and then for your fifteen hundred dollar product you're also going to get ten clients for fifteen thousand total for that is 36 000 per month 432 000 per year all right when you're doing this you're not just going to be writing the numbers like i am you are going to go figure out and make reasonable judgments based on what you're going to do and how much time you're going to have to dedicate to sales if you are starting a one-person agency you're not thinking about hiring you're thinking about hiring contractors just to help out where needed some of these numbers may be unrealistic in your first year think about what you're going to be able to handle and then put together the sales forecast for that all right another screenshot i'm going to step back next in that same section is your break even analysis most of the items are listed there which you can make a choice on which ones you're going to do based on if you're going to have rent if you're going to have insurance off the beginning all of those different items are listed there and it's a good baseline of what you're going to need the one that often catches digital marketers starting an agency off guard is the software cost let's talk about what software you need to get an agency going now the list is actually longer than that but if you're getting agencies started these eight are the most important now i am not getting paid by any of these companies to mention them but i'm going to mention a couple that we use now just to help you out in your research for scheduling we have used hootsuite in the past we've also used zoho design you're going to be using adobe at the highest level if you're doing it on your own and you want to try to do some basic design learn it you can use canva in the beginning for reporting do a google search in your area and find a reporting software that is built for the niches that you are going to offer we have yet to find a reporting software that does everything across the board if you find one make sure you put in the comments below and let me know because we still haven't found it video editing you can use imovie in the beginning you can do video editing on your phone and when you get more advanced you can use premiere or final cut on a mac your cloud filing we personally use dropbox but there's ton out there there's one drive there's so many different options with whichever cloud you choose you're going to need to be able to share links with your clients for any of those large files video files that you can't send through email your email and hosting whichever client you're going to choose we're going to host your website may also have that email option your music licensing there's a lot out there now we use art list but there is a ton of other ones that exist and then your stock photos there is your standards like shutter stock adobe stock deposit photos but then there's fringe ones like pixels which may help you in the beginning or invado may help you get started at a lower subscription cost all right that takes us through that section then one of the last major sections that you're gonna have is the projected cash flow we have that as section six almost all business plans will project over a three year period there is a standard chart that's going to allow you to take your sales forecast and the expenses that you had in your break even analysis put it into there it's right in the chart it is built in a way that's really easy to figure out you can figure out your forecast over the next three years taking all of your calculations into consideration don't be afraid to alter this though depending on your situation what products you're serving and what the purpose of the business plan is sometimes you don't need to go as in depth as what sits there and then on the other hand sometimes you have to go more in depth than what's there next section seven is your legal consideration this is going to be different for every location around the world the section of this business plan is built more for a north american climate however every place around the world is going to have their own business set up their incorporation their tax documentation that needs to get into place look up what those business parameters are in your area and fill out that section it's going to really define what you need to do to get the agency going from day one and then last section eight is the contact information that's where you're gonna put your information so that wherever this business plan is going those people can contact you now this has been a long episode for any of you that have made it this far i know you're super serious about starting your digital marketing agency and i applaud you go out and do it chase your dream make it happen now the business plan is not going to be your be-all end-all it is a framework of what you are going to strive for and what you're going to try to make happen it's like solidifying your goals and that's why i still think it's important to have a business plan i don't think many people starting agencies build one so if you're just getting started i implore you to do it if you've already started and you've just come to see some of what goes into the plan put it together with some of the numbers that you have right now and where you want to go over the next couple years the reason that the table of amendments is at the beginning is because this is a working document this is going to evolve over time and in many ways this business plan could turn into your five or ten year plan down the road as you evolve it and change things as you get to put in more concrete numbers year after year finally before i close this episode out i just want to go through three things that i want to reiterate that i already mentioned in this episode but i just want to highlight one more time number one know which services you're going to offer and build this plan based on those niche whether it's going to be full service or a niche agency know what you're going to do chase after it and try to do it based on where your strengths are it's going to help you get your agency started number two know who you're building the plan for if you're trying to get a lease then build the plan catering to that if you're trying to get financing for equipment then you're building it for those financial institutions or whoever is going to be loaning the money to you and lastly number three these business plans are a working document i just mentioned it you're building it for your goals and over time the plan plan's going to evolve as you start to get more concrete numbers and understand your business that is it for this episode i have one thing that i'm going to ask you guys all you guys that made it to the end of this video i'm going to ask you to put in the comments below if you like whiteboard style videos this is one of the first times i've used a whiteboard in a long time on my channel i thought it would make sense for going through this business plan and if you like it put in the comments below just let me know so that i can correct and either do it again or never do it again and as always smash that like button if you enjoyed or got value from this if you didn't at all hit the dislike button i will not hold it against you again i'm just trying to get better i'm trying to offer you guys more value with every episode i put out that's it this was a long one thank you guys i love you and i can't wait to see you guys in the next episode that's all for now all right guys go get your agency started get out there and hustle i know how hard it is to get an agency going i've lived through it you're gonna have to put in your evenings in your weekends but it is uber rewarding if this is the career that you guys want go after it i am here i'm here to listen to the issues that you're having as you're getting started i am here to support you and offer you feedback based on what i have learned what i've experienced over time never be afraid to put stuff in the comments below never be afraid to tell me what's going on i'm here to help and guys two other videos both relating to finding clients and starting an agency whichever one relates to you click on it watch it i appreciate it a lot all right guys that is all for this episode for realness time can't wait to see you guys in the next one black screen you