by Ready to bring on more clients? Wondering how to augment and allocate resources as you grow?
In this article, you'll discover how to put the right processes and people in place to support growth.
How to Overcome the Challenges of Growing Your Marketing Agency
Running a small business is filled with ups and downs, struggles and triumphs. For social media marketing agency owner Karlyn Ankrom, the journey has been one of learning, growth, and constantly working to overcome challenges.
Karlyn fell into owning her agency almost by accident. Though she always wanted to run her own business, managing an agency and people was never part of her plan. She started off freelancing social media services, slowly taking on more clients and bringing on contractors. It wasn't until 2018, when she hired her first 1099 contractor that she realized she had built an agency.
That first hire came out of pure necessity—there simply weren't enough hours in the day for Karlyn to serve all of her clients alone. Though leaving the security of full-time employment was scary, she eventually made the leap. For years, Karlyn moonlighted, running her agency as a side hustle while working a 9 to 5 job.
When her agency began earning enough income to replace her salary, she gave her employers an opportunity to become her first client. Though initially intimidated to jump into entrepreneurship fully, Karlyn learned to embrace uncertainty. “… Sometimes you have to let other things go so you can step into what you really want to do and… your purpose going forward”, Karlyn admits.
#1: Learn to Scale Intentionally
In 2021, Karlyn's agency, Oh Snap! Social, exploded. As businesses realized digital marketing was here to stay post-pandemic, her team grew rapidly to meet demand. Caught up in the enthusiasm for growth, Karlyn eagerly took on new clients and contractors without much forethought. She admits they “had a massive year in 2021 because people were like, ‘Oh, I guess we're not going back to like anything in person.'”
However, the dangers of scaling too quickly soon became apparent. Within a short period, Karlyn had onboarded five new monthly retainer clients, wreaking havoc operationally. In hindsight, she wishes she had limited new business to two clients per month for more sustainable growth. Ankrom learned that “when you have so much business that you as an owner have to go back into the content creation realm… that's a red flag.” Being forced back into hands-on, creative tasks made her realize the agency couldn't run without sufficient systems and staff in place first.
Social media is constantly changing. It requires Karlyn and her team to be up to speed on the latest trends. Listening to her clients' needs, Karlyn hired more team members to fill the void and trained current staff to level up their skills. You have to empower your team to think outside of the box when it comes to creating social content. This allows you to be the leader, the visionary, instead of the implementer—it allows your business to scale.
Scaling her business with intention meant that Karlyn could grow her business with more ease and less stress. It came down to having the proper systems and procedures in place so that her team knew what was happening and her clients could also manage that level of expectation.
#2: Craft Efficient Systems and Processes
Creating agency systems and processes for scalability is a significant aspect of growing your business, especially if it's a new business. Karlyn hired an operations manager in 2018 to focus specifically on documenting procedures like automating Oh Snap's onboarding process.
With Karlyn shifting into the visionary role, she relies on her “hammer” Ops Manager to honor her boundaries even when she doesn't honor them herself. This support system has been pivotal in enforcing client contracts, ensuring the team stays within budgeted hours, and holding Karlyn accountable for time off, like when she had a child and was able to take three months off without the “house of cards falling down.”
“She's more than just operations; she is very much someone who is looking at the back end of the business all the way down to the numbers, coming up with innovative ideas to help me from a visionary standpoint and progressing forward to hit my goals,” Karlyn said. For example, Oh Snap's ops manager has helped grow the business's revenue by pointing out areas of profitability within its pricing structure.
Hiring skill sets that differ from your own is vital. “My brain does not think in systems and processes…I have to really pull back my expertise in a lot of ways and just get back to the basics,” Karlyn said. Though not always easy for her direct, no-nonsense style, Karlyn now often runs messaging by AI tools before sending it to her team and clients, prompting it to use a friendly, easy-to-understand tone of voice.
Curious About How to Use AI?
We recently launched a new show that help marketers, creators, and entrepreneurs understand the business applications of AI.
It's hosted by Michael Stelzner and explores this exciting new frontier in easy-to-understand terms.
Pull up your favorite podcast app and search for AI Explored. (Look for the cover art shown to the right.)
Or click the button below for more information.
Additionally, providing clients with upfront documentation that clearly defines industry jargon has reduced repetitive questions. As an agency owner, your job is to educate and guide both your team and clients. Creating streamlined communications processes frees up your client service hours for actual service delivery.
Ready to Supercharge Your Marketing Strategy?
Get expert training and an unbeatable conference experience when you attend Social Media Marketing World—from your friends at Social Media Examiner.
Broaden your reach, skyrocket your engagement, and grow your sales. Become the marketing hero your company or clients need!
🔥 As a valued reader, you can save 50% on an All-Access or Virtual ticket if you act now. Sale Ends Friday! 🔥
GET THE DETAILSFor example, Oh Snap uses Slack for all client communications. Challenges arose when clients began using it as a texting platform to ask a ton of questions. While her team loves teaching others about what they love—social media—answering a slew of questions was eating up work hours to create amazing deliverables. Learning by failing forward, the company now has a client onboarding process that sets up communications expectations as well as processes for managing hours for her team.
You also want to keep in mind that the scope of your work in your agreements with clients needs to be crystal clear about what you will and won't do. You want to leave your team a buffer but also make sure that you're working within your margin goal.
For example, if you have a goal of 50% margin and you get 200 hours for a project, then you need to put forth 100 of those hours to your team. You're probably not going to hit that 50% margin, even with 100 hours, but you have that buffer you can add in. So, you have to think about what your goal is as far as revenue when you're working on hourly-based projects or retainers. This slows scope creep because then a team member can say, “That's not in our scope, but we're happy to add it for this amount.”
#3: Avoid Comparison and Burnout
For small business owners, avoiding burnout while growing a sustainable company is an ever-present challenge. Karlyn admits she came dangerously close after chasing arbitrary milestones. She found herself so focused on other people's success that she abandoned her own well-being.
“I got caught up in that hustle…of a million dollars because I thought that's what everyone wanted,” Karlyn admits. She chased the perception of overnight riches and glory often perpetuated on social media. But after having a daughter, her perspective shifted. She realized all her efforts were so she could spend more time with family—not to build a huge agency for the sake of it.
As an agency owner, you need to remember that people largely share their successes and curated lifestyles online, not their failures. Comparing yourself is dangerous. With social media bombarded by the highlight reels of others daily, Karlyn has become vigilant about staying in her own lane, as challenging as that can be. “What I remind myself is… a lot of those people who have that presence and have all those followers and act like everything's always so perfect and successful for them don't have money in the bank,” Karlyn said.
Burnout is real. It's as real for your team as it is for you as an agency owner. Much like swimmers competing in a race, it's important to keep your blinders on and stay focused on your own race—your lane is different from your competitors. Karlyn recommends muting people you follow on social media who reflect bounce-back culture, like the person who just had a baby and they're already releasing a new product, showing up on Reels twice a day, and silently growing their followers by 20,000 in the past week, for example. Everyone's on their own journey, and rarely do they share all the gory details of the process.
Now, with a team of six and a motto of maintaining, refining, and simplifying, Karlyn is laser-focused on finding the right agency balance. This includes sticking to an ideal client avatar, running a tight ship internally, and automating everything possible. Simplifying her team, how they work, and the clients that they choose to work with has given Karlyn room to breathe and grow.
Karlyn Ankrom is the founder of Oh Snap! Social and creator of the Fan Firestarter Framework, a new approach to social media marketing made specifically to help new businesses get on the fast track to “unsucking their social media.” You can find her on Instagram.
Brooke B. Sellas is host of the Marketing Agency Show, a Social Media Examiner production. She is founder and CEO of B Squared Media, an agency that helps people connect, converse, and convert on social media. Her book is called Conversations That Connect. Find her on X/Twitter and LinkedIn.
Listen to the Podcast Now
This article is sourced from the Marketing Agency Show. Listen or subscribe below.
Where to subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube Music | YouTube | Amazon Music | RSS
✋🏽 If you enjoyed this episode of the Marketing Agency Show, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.
Stay Up-to-Date: Get New Marketing Articles Delivered to You!
Don't miss out on upcoming social media marketing insights and strategies! Sign up to receive notifications when we publish new articles on Social Media Examiner. Our expertly crafted content will help you stay ahead of the curve and drive results for your business. Click the link below to sign up now and receive our annual report!
Discover Proven Marketing Strategies and Tips
Want to go even deeper with your marketing? Check out the Social Media Marketing Podcast! Publishing weekly since 2012, the Social Media Marketing Podcast helps you navigate the constantly changing marketing jungle, with expert interviews from marketing pros.
But don’t let the name fool you. This show is about a lot more than just social media marketing. With over 600 episodes and millions of downloads each year, this show has been a trusted source for marketers for well over a decade.
