Regardless of your business size, it can be difficult to know which tasks to keep in-house and which to outsource. The answer is different for virtually everyone. For example, if you are an accountant, outsourcing your bookkeeping does not make a lot of sense. However, if you are a travel blogger, it makes perfect sense to outsource your financial tracking. When it comes to marketing, there are a couple of popular trends: either keep marketing wholly in-house with a marketing department or outsource it entirely to a marketing agency or firm. What happens when you feel like your marketing has stagnated overall? Or how do you deal with an outside…

It may seem counterintuitive to have a plan to turn down work – but as many experienced freelancers and consultants can attest, not all clients are good fits for your services. An associate recently discovered this after spending a considerable amount of time going back and forth with a prospect on the terms of their work agreement. The longer the negotiations, the more wiry my associate felt about the entire relationship. Who can blame her, is this how the entire process would be with this client? Yes. In my experience, when a client is unreasonably difficult or demanding even before signing a contract, they are telegraphing their post-contract behavior. As a professional, and…

We’ve all been there. Your client emails you three weeks into a project and requests a major change. This isn’t the kind of change that requires some minor copy edits or design tweaks. No. This is the kind of change the necessitates a complete redesign or a total revision of the project scope. [Tweet “You can’t stop clients from requesting project changes; but you can turn them into opportunities.”] The bad news is that you can’t stop this from happening. All clients will inevitably change their minds at some point during a project. But, you can set expectations and mitigate these changes so you keep your sanity and save your…

Zero commute, working in your PJs, doing your laundry during the workday — freelancing sure sounds appealing, doesn’t it? But then you think about happy hour with colleagues, learning from incredibly smart, experienced colleagues, and working with big, national brands. And then agency life sounds pretty sweet, too. [Tweet “Agencies come with security, while freelancing brings flexibility.”] It’s an age-old debate: agency or freelance? Freedom vs stability? Autonomy vs relationships? Freelance vs Agency: Which One Is Better? There’s no right answer, but here are some pros and cons of each: Freelancing: The Good Let’s start with arguably the biggest benefit of freelancing: flexibility. You can work where you want, when…

“Our bookkeeper is on vacation!” “It must have gotten lost in the mail!” “I never saw that invoice…” Here they come. The never-ending stream of excuses for late checks. Getting your clients to pay you on time is one of the most frustrating and most common issues you will face as an agency owner. But, however annoying it can be to constantly nag clients, managing late invoices comes with the job. If you regularly have to deal with the same group of late-paying clients, it may be time to consider imposing a late fee as part of your pricing model. Chasing checks every month costs you time, which will cost you money…

You can find anything online. From stalking former high school friends to ordering your groceries, we have grown accustomed to accomplishing any task we want on the Internet. With millions of search queries right at our fingertips, we expect to find the information we need in seconds. And, when that information isn’t available, we move on to something else. Case in point: restaurants. I bet that you are more likely to go to a restaurant with 50 Yelp reviews than a restaurant with zero reviews. In the absence of information, we grow suspicious. When information just can’t be found, we immediately start having doubts. [Tweet “The fear of being undercut is an advantage…

Confidence is extremely sexy. Just ask anyone in the dating scene, a mate with confidence is attractive. In fact, a recent survey from Men’s Fitness Magazine found that nearly 80% of women identified self-confidence as the sexiest trait a man can possess. (Men, let’s be careful not confuse confidence with arrogance. One is desirable, the other is repulsive.) Obviously confidence is a big deal in the dating scene. But what does it have to do with running an agency? Turns out, the parallels between developing a romantic relationship and a business relationship are quite similar. That said, it stands to reason that a prospective client wants to see confidence exuding…

Isn’t it funny how much of a difference pricing can make? A t-shirt that costs $12.00 may seem overpriced, but $9.99 seems so much more affordable, even though the actual difference is only two dollars. Pricing is so much more than numbers and monetary value. It can say a lot about quality of services, competition, and value. And, it’s a tricky thing. If you price too low, you may not be able to sustain growth and you’re less likely to go the extra mile. If you price too high, you get beat out by a lower-cost competitor. [Tweet “Pricing is so much more than numbers and monetary value. It can…

Around this time of year, it is easy to make “New Years Resolutions”, but what about resolutions in general? Here is a list of 10 marketing resolutions agencies should consider regardless of the time of year. 1. Make your agency website the authority for prospective clients. 2. Create a content marketing strategy that centers around the client, their needs, their business, and their problems. 3. Get out of the traditional agency advertising mentality. If you need to try something new, do it. Experiment. 4. Always be thinking mobile-friendly (seriously, we still have to talk about this?) 5. Explore new platforms: video, podcast, interviews, skywriting, book publishing, or collaborations. 6. Always be…

How are you doing? No, really. How are you doing? How is your agency doing? Here are 27 metrics for measuring the health of your agency going into the new year: Sales revenue Referrals Pageviews Time on page Bounce rate Page load time Conversion rate Ranking key-phrases Social media advocates Customer attrition / churn Number of blog posts published Mailing list subscribers Premium content offers Employee satisfaction Cost of client acquisition Operating productivity Gross margins Monthly profit / loss Overhead costs Inventory on hand Hours worked per process Client lifetime value Product metabolism (how fast you release updates) Customer support / helpdesk scores Year-Over-Year sales Product revenue percentage Accounts Receivable…

Most agencies have likely performed a SWOT analysis; it seems almost like Business 101, by now. But what about answering the question, “What will kill us?” What does your business truly depend on? What is the root source of your success? While reading Arun Sundararajan compare and contrast the cultural differences between Airbnb and Uber, I was reminded of insane lengths Airbnb will go to for their customers. Adam Jackson discovered that one of his guests had stolen a pizza cutter from his kitchen, so he tweeted about it and Airbnb overnighted a new one to him with this cute apology note. You see, Airbrb understand that their business relies on…