It is estimated that there are more than 700 digital marketing agencies in India as of 2020 compared to only 50 digital marketing agencies in 2011. However, it is likely that the number of agencies would be much higher since it doesn’t take a substantial capital investment to create a digital marketing agency.
It is predicted that brands in India will spend close to Rs 50,000 on digital ads by 2025. In 2019, the digital ad spends constituted around 27% of overall ad spends by companies in India.
This is a massive shift from the times when brands were hardly spending more than 5% of their overall marketing spend on digital. This explains why digital media marketing is an extremely attractive industry to be in.
As mentioned earlier, since the entry barriers of starting a digital marketing agency aren’t high, enthusiastic professionals or even young professionals are keen to start their digital media marketing agencies once they gain some experience.
However, there are few common mistakes which are committed by setting up digital marketing agencies.
Let us have a look at some of them:
Not knowing your customers:
Digital Marketing services can only be successful if the products or services reach the correct audience. To achieve that, marketing firms must be well aware of the customer, the product or service of the customers as well as their intended audience.
Without knowing such basic criteria, any marketing strategy would fail to reach the targeted customer base and may prove useless to the client.
Jumping from one niche to another:
Digital Marketing has also developed various areas within it. Where some marketing firms prefer using Google Ads and Facebook, some prefer animation whereas some are purely focused on using words to weave magic.
A company ideally should try and establish their niche and stick to it. This will allow them to develop expertise and reputation in such a field. Jumping from one niche to another will merely generate chaos and not leads.
Being obsessed with big brands:
As in any industry, it is next to impossible to get hold of a big brand as a customer when you start off.
Unfortunately, certain digital media marketing agency owners only keep focussing on acquiring big brands and thus end up missing the various other opportunities which are available.
New digital marketing agencies build their portfolio working with smaller brands and then approach bigger brands.
They could also ally with other agencies which may be focussing on a different niche and acquire projects through them. For example, a social media agency could tie-up with an SEO agency and outsource SEO assignments to the latter.
Don’t overcharge or undercharge:
One of the most prudent activities that one must undertake at the beginning of the business should be a decision about the pricing structure. Pricing is a vital part of the business strategy and the owners must be careful of neither charging too little nor charging too much. Even the best digital marketing company in Delhi or Mumbai would fail if their pricing is incorrect.
Overpromising:
One of the most basic mistakes that digital marketing services providers often make is overpromising. An agency must be careful about not promising the quantum of leads to be generated, conversions that would be undertaken, or revenue that will be brought in. Such data is best left to a post-service analysis rather than a pre-service promise.
Spending your profits instead of investing:
In the initial years, it helps more to be frugal than extravagant. It will be very tempting for the agency to spend their profits on a swanky office or a coffee machine. However, such profits must be saved up and invested in better software, additional technical staff, or better bandwidth for their internet. Such investments will help increase their profits as well.
Taking on too many clients:
Every entrepreneur has the aim and dream of making it big, however, taking slow steps is often necessary. To serve more clients to get higher revenue, quality of service may suffer or deadlines may not be met. This would have a higher impact on the future growth prospects of the company than having a lower number of clients initially.
While well begun is half done, entrepreneurs must ensure that the second step they take after starting their business is also a correct one by avoiding the above common mistakes. This will surely take them on a stable path to success.