(3863,1,'2018-02-08 13:48:08','2018-02-08 13:48:08','“Calls are the new clicks.”\n\nThat’s the statement used to summarise the findings from a recent <a href=\"http://blog.biakelsey.com/index.php/2016/03/08/analyst-workshop-the-what-and-why-of-call-commerce/\">study conducted by BIA Kelsey</a> on the actions consumers are most likely to take on smartphones.\n\nThe study found that increased adoption of smartphones is leading to “an explosion of phone calls.”\n\nBy 2019, calls to businesses from mobile devices are expected to reach 162 billion globally—a 73% increase since 2015.\n\nAs the importance of digital marketing grows, it’s easy to overlook more traditional inbound channels. But doing so is a mistake. Mobile users are looking for instant answers, and in many cases, the quickest and simplest way to get those answers is to make a phone call.\n\nIf you’re not tracking inbound phone calls, you have a serious gap in your marketing metrics.\n\nClicks, form completions, online conversions—these are all crucial metrics to track, but they’re not comprehensive.\n\nTo paint a complete picture of marketing-driven revenue, you must track inbound phone calls as well as online actions.\n\nTo do this, you’ll need to invest in the best call tracking software.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>What Is Call Tracking Software?</h3>\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3807\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/call-tracking-software-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"call tracking software - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"701\" height=\"438\" />\n\n&nbsp;\n\n<a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/call-tracking/\">Call tracking</a> software allows businesses to track phone call metrics.\n\nMarketers use these metrics to attribute offline phone calls back to the digital channels or campaigns that drove them.\n\nCall tracking software works by generating dynamic phone numbers that appear on your website, digital ads, social media channels, or local business profiles.\n\nAll of the calls are routed to your main business number, but having users dial different phone numbers allows the system to identify and record the source of the call.\n\nThough features vary between call tracking software providers, most include integrations with web analytics and CRM systems.\n\nThese integrations allow marketers to track the full customer lifecycle, attributing conversions made by sales team members all the way back to the very first marketing touchpoint.\n\nCall tracking software provides many benefits:\n<ul>\n 	<li><strong>Close the loop between marketing and sales and online and offline interactions.</strong> Call tracking allows marketers to identify the exact amount of revenue their campaigns are generating, regardless of whether conversions happen via a website cart or through a phone call with a sales rep.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Track all leads in a central tool.</strong> Are your customers self-servicing, or are they reaching out most often by email, phone call, click-to-chat, or social media messaging? A call tracking tool that integrates with your web analytics platform provides a centralised view of all of this data.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Know what leads are interested in before asking the first question.</strong> When sales reps can see what website pages and campaigns prospects viewed before calling, they can form a clearer picture of which products/features that prospect is interested in, allowing for more personalised conversations.</li>\n 	<li><strong>See which profiles, campaigns, and content generate the most leads and revenue.</strong> Adding call tracking to your web analytics paints a complete picture of which marketing initiatives are driving the greatest number of leads and the most revenue for your business or clients.</li>\n</ul>\n&nbsp;\n<h3>What to Look for in Call Tracking Software</h3>\nBefore shopping for inbound call tracking software, it’s important to understand some of the features that are available.\n\nDetermine which are most important for your needs, budget, and business model, and make sure the solution you select has all of the features you identify as critical.\n\nSome common call tracking software features include:\n<ul>\n 	<li><strong>Multi-Channel Call Attribution</strong> – This feature allows you to attribute each phone call back to the marketing campaign or search keyword that generated it.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Unique Phone Numbers</strong> – This feature generates different phone numbers that can be used to track inbound calls from both online and offline campaigns. Place a phone number on a billboard, in a print/digital add, in a television commercial, or on your social media profile, and track how many calls it generates.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Dynamic Number Insertion</strong> – Each visitor to your website is presented with a different phone number to call, allowing you to track not only website-generated leads and revenue overall but also the pre-call actions and views of individual visitors.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Call Recording</strong> – Record inbound phone calls and play them back later. Use the recordings to determine which calls led to conversions, evaluate the quality of leads generated from different campaigns, or find opportunities where your customer service or sales conversations could be improved.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Local or Toll-Free Number Generation</strong> – Provide callers with toll-free numbers for global campaigns, or highlight your business’ nearby location with local phone numbers.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Web Analytics Integration</strong> – <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/new-features/1000-integrations/\">Integrate your call tracking software</a> with your web analytics program to get a centralised view of campaign performance across all channels.</li>\n 	<li><strong>CRM Integration</strong> – Integrate your call tracking software with your CRM to connect revenue back to the marketing campaigns that generated it.</li>\n</ul>\n&nbsp;\n<h3>Getting Started with Call Tracking Software</h3>\nOnce you’ve subscribed to your selected call tracking platform, it’s time to set everything up so you can enjoy the benefits of measuring marketing-generated phone calls.\n\nMake sure to enable integrations with your web analytics and <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/ruler-information/step-by-step-how-to-add-marketing-data-to-pipedrive-crm-deals/\">CRM systems</a>, if available, so that you can track leads, goals, and conversions across all three platforms. Next, set at least one specific goal or KPI to track. Here are some ideas:\n<ul>\n 	<li>Increase incoming calls from Google AdWords call-only ads or call extensions.</li>\n 	<li>Use recorded phone calls to improve customer service.</li>\n 	<li>Generate more phone calls from Google My Business listings.</li>\n 	<li>Calculate marketing-driven revenue from inbound phone calls.</li>\n 	<li>Increase your total number of local customers.</li>\n</ul>\nOnce you’ve set your goals and KPIs, make sure your system is set up to track your progress.\n\nCreate local or toll-free numbers as needed, turn on <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/phone-call-tracking/dynamic-number-insertion-work/\">dynamic number insertion</a>, and update your phone numbers across digital profiles.\n\nIt shouldn’t take too long to get up and running.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>Catering to Analog Behaviours in a Digital World</h3>\nSure, the telephone was invented nearly 150 years ago.\n\nCompared to texting, messaging, and click-to-chat, phone calls are an archaic way of communicating. But the real benefit of technology for consumers is its convenience, not its newness or novelty.\n\nModern consumers have access to all of the information they need, the moment they need it, wherever they are in the world.\n\nThe availability of access to information has created the expectation that answers should come instantly, and email, text messaging, and click-to-chat are slower forms of communication than a phone call.\n\nFor this reason, the prevalence of mobile adoption makes call tracking more important for marketers than ever.\n\nIf you’re not tracking phone call metrics, you’re missing out on a wealth of information about your customers, the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, and the ROI of your company’s or clients’ investments in marketing.\n\n[activecampaign form=16]','What Features to Look for in Inbound Call Tracking Software','','inherit','closed','closed','','3843-autosave-v1','','','2018-02-08 13:48:08','2018-02-08 13:48:08','',3843,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/blog/uncategorised/3843-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3864,1,'2018-02-08 13:49:24','2018-02-08 13:49:24','','click-to-call-ads','','inherit','closed','closed','','click-to-call-ads','','','2018-02-08 13:49:24','2018-02-08 13:49:24','',3844,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/click-to-call-ads.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3865,1,'2018-02-08 13:50:53','2018-02-08 13:50:53','We’ve written before about the benefits of <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/ppc/call-only-ads-adwords/\">AdWords call-only ads and call extensions</a>. These ad types are perfect for driving calls to local businesses, but only when prospects are actively searching for relevant keywords in Google.\r\n\r\nAlthough, what about potential customers who aren’t actively conducting searches on Google? People who are killing time by scrolling through social media feeds at home or at a coffee shop. These people may be interested in finding somewhere to go, something to do, or something to buy—even if they’re not actively searching for options.\r\n\r\nCome through Facebook click-to-call ads.\r\n\r\nFacebook’s solution for local advertising gets your business and promotions in front of passive audiences, boosting awareness and driving phone calls.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What Are Facebook Click-to-Call Ads?</h3>\r\nCatering to businesses with local customers, such as restaurants, attractions, and services. Facebook offers a special type of local awareness ads. These ads display in people’s newsfeeds when they’re near one of your business’ locations.\r\n\r\nUnlike general Facebook ads with a call-to-action that links to a website, local awareness ads have more specific CTAs: “Get Directions,” and “Call Now.”\r\n\r\nFacebook click-to-call ads display the “Call Now” button. When users click it, it opens the dial pad on their phones with your business’ number pre-populated.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Example Use Cases for Click-to-Call Ads</h3>\r\nWhy bother promoting phone calls in an age where all of the information prospects need is at their fingertips? Well, research has shown that increased mobile adoption has led to “an explosion of phone calls.”\r\n\r\nPeople want information instantly. The fastest way to get that information is to call and ask.\r\n\r\nLet’s say one of your clients is a fine dining establishment that requires reservations. A potential customer is scrolling through his Facebook feed while waiting for the workday to end, and he sees an ad for your client’s restaurant.\r\n\r\nSure, he might be willing to go through a long online reservation process, but it’s more likely he’ll want to just call and take care of it quickly.\r\n\r\nOr maybe that same person wants to get their oil changed on the way home from work. He sees a Facebook ad promoting a big discount on oil changes at your client’s auto servicing business, but he wants to call and make sure there’s an opening on the schedule that evening.\r\n\r\nClick-to-call ads also work well for clients with tourist-attraction businesses. Say a woman is sitting in her hotel room, waiting for her husband to finish showering, and filling her time looking on Facebook.\r\n\r\nShe sees an ad for your client’s local attraction and is interested, so she clicks to call and gets all of the information she needs to add that attraction to the day’s itinerary.\r\n\r\nFacebook click-to-call ads can promote general business information, sales, and promotions.\r\n\r\nThey can be targeted to detailed personas and may display to people within a certain distance (ex: within a mile) or your client’s business.\r\n<h3></h3>\r\n<h3>How to Create a Click-to-Call Ad on Facebook</h3>\r\nTo create your first Facebook click-to-call ad, follow the instructions below.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n1. Navigate to Facebook’s Ads Manager dashboard.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3823\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_1.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-1\" width=\"701\" height=\"274\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n2. Select “Reach” in the “Awareness” column.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3824\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_2.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-2\" width=\"700\" height=\"345\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n3. Scroll down, give your campaign a name, and click the “Continue” button.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3825\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_3.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-3\" width=\"539\" height=\"413\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n4. Select the page for the business you’re creating the ad for, and set your targeting options as you would for any ad for that business.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3826\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_4.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-4\" width=\"699\" height=\"567\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n5. Scroll down to the “Placements” section, and select “Edit Placements.”\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3827\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_5.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-5\" width=\"699\" height=\"261\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n6. Under “Device Types,” select “Mobile Only.” Since you’re building a click-to-call ad, there’s not much value in having the ad display to people using desktop computers.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3828\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_6.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-6\" width=\"300\" height=\"116\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">7. Set your budgeting and scheduling options for the ad, then click “Continue.”</span>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3829\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_7.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-7\" width=\"701\" height=\"398\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n8. Create your ad using whatever text, images, etc. are important for the messaging.\r\n\r\n9. When the ad is complete, scroll all of the ways down the page until you see the “Call to Action” drop-down. Select “Call Now,” and enter the business’ phone number in the box that populates below the drop-down.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3830\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_8.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-8\" width=\"701\" height=\"385\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nReview your ad and make sure everything displays as desired, then click the confirm button to begin running your new click-to-call ad.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Call Tracking for Click-to-Call Ads</h3>\r\nNow that your click-to-call ad is up and running, you need a way to measure its effectiveness.\r\n\r\nFacebook provides metrics on ad impressions, total spend, and how many people clicked the “Call Now” CTA.\r\n\r\nAt a glance, that seems sufficient, but these general metrics don’t tell the whole story.\r\n\r\nWhen a user clicks on the “Call Now” button, it doesn’t immediately initiate a call to the business. Instead, it opens the dial pad on the user’s mobile phone with the business’ phone number pre-populated.\r\n\r\nFacebook reports that action as a call, but there’s no guarantee that a call was actually made. The person could just as easily have backed out of the dial pad screen.\r\n\r\nTo truly measure how many calls Facebook click-to-call ads are driving, you need <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/phone-call-tracking/best-call-tracking-software/\">inbound call tracking software</a> like <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/\">Ruler Analytics</a>.\r\n\r\nRuler Analytics provides you with a distinct phone number you can use to <strong>track the actual number of calls your Facebook ads generate.</strong>\r\n\r\nIt also records inbound phone calls, allowing you to listen to calls generated from Facebook ad campaigns and determine how many resulted in revenue for the business.\r\n\r\nWithout an inbound call tracking system, it’s impossible to truly measure the number of leads and amount of revenue generated by Facebook click-to-call campaigns.\r\n\r\nWhat you’re left with is guesswork and hopes instead of a true picture of marketing ROI.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Facebook Click-to-Call Ad Campaign Best Practices</h3>\r\nWhen creating click-to-call ad campaigns on Facebook, there are a few best practices you should keep in mind:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>Target the right prospects. Take advantage of Facebook’s detailed targeting capabilities to display ads to your ideal customers. Also, make sure to utilize location targeting to get your ads in front of people who are near the business you’re promoting.</li>\r\n 	<li>Schedule ads to run at prime times. To do this, you’ll need to establish an ad lifetime budget rather than a daily budget. However, being able to narrow the window when your ads display, such as displaying a restaurant ad a couple of hours before dinner, will help you reach people in the moment that they’re seeking your services.</li>\r\n 	<li>Test multiple versions of ads. Does including an image encourage or discourage more clicks on your call button? What about including a video instead of an image? The only way to find out which versions of your ads generate the most impressions, clicks and calls is to test multiple versions and discover the top performers</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nHowever, the best practice of all is making sure you’re tracking the outcomes of your click-to-call ads. Use a call tracking platform to determine exactly how many calls and how much revenue the ads are generating.\r\n\r\nMaybe click-to-call ads are much more effective than your other campaigns, and you should funnel more budget to that campaign type. Or maybe they don’t perform well at all and should be discontinued. The only way to find out is to track the calls and measure their performance.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Even in This Digital Age, Calls Are Still Crucial</h3>\r\nAs a digital marketer, it’s easy to immerse yourself in mobile apps, digital content, and social media - forgetting the more analogue means of marketing a business. Even old-school methods of communication like phone calls have their merit in an instant-information-seeking society.\r\n\r\nIn truth, making a call is often much simpler than navigating and searching through a website, especially on a mobile device where typing is less convenient and time is often limited. For this reason, local businesses have a lot to gain by encouraging customers to call instead of click. With Facebook click-to-call ads, you can do just that.','Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Click-to-Call Ads','','inherit','closed','closed','','3844-revision-v1','','','2018-02-08 13:50:53','2018-02-08 13:50:53','',3844,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/blog/uncategorised/3844-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3866,1,'2018-02-08 13:52:02','2018-02-08 13:52:02','','How-To-Deal-With-The-Pressures-Of-Scaling-An-Agency-Advice-From-23-Experts-www.ruleranalytics.com_','','inherit','closed','closed','','how-to-deal-with-the-pressures-of-scaling-an-agency-advice-from-23-experts-www-ruleranalytics-com_','','','2018-02-19 14:20:10','2018-02-19 14:20:10','',3845,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/How-To-Deal-With-The-Pressures-Of-Scaling-An-Agency-Advice-From-23-Experts-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3867,1,'2018-02-08 13:53:18','2018-02-08 13:53:18','I must confess.\r\n\r\nInitially, I wanted to create a monster piece that focused on “how to scale an agency”, but when I did a quick search on Google, I found some pretty impressive stuff out there already.\r\n\r\nThere’s so much content on SERPs that provides insight into how agency owners can “increase revenues” or “land new business\".\r\n\r\nI wanted to do something different.\r\n\r\nDuring my research, something that became apparent is that there isn’t much out there that focuses on how agency owners can use practical methods to cope with the pressures of growing their business.\r\n\r\nFrom all of the conversations I have had with our agency partners, it’s clear that growing an agency is an emotional and mental struggle.\r\n\r\nNo matter where you are in the development of your agency, there’s a lot of pressure involved. And I could take a bet that there have been days where you’ve felt like throwing in the towel.\r\n\r\nI spend a lot of time following and interacting with agency owners on <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Katieholmes92\">Twitter</a>. Through this, it’s easy to get the impression that owning an agency, in particular, is like a walk in the park.\r\n\r\nA lot of agencies choose to engage with their audience through the power of social and will approach this by “becoming more relatable”.\r\n\r\nYou know...\r\n\r\nThey might post a picture of their recent ping-pong champion, or document how they’ve recently smashed their record of “the number of teas made in one brew round”.\r\n\r\nI mean, who doesn’t love ping-pong and caffeine - right?\r\n\r\nThing is, although this is making your brand seem more approachable, it can also create this illusion that owning an agency is an easy slog.\r\n\r\nWhen in reality, it’s quite the opposite\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Sometimes Taking Deep Breaths Just Isn’t Enough</h2>\r\nI did find some insightful articles on how business owners can keep their stress levels under control.\r\n\r\nHow taking deep breaths can make the feeling of stress disappear, or how keeping a tidy environment can help maintain a clear mind. And although these practices may be scientifically proven to release stress and can have a major impact on your sanity, they count for nothing if you haven’t got an on-hands approach implemented in the workplace to run alongside.\r\n\r\nIn today’s high-pressure industry, you probably feel as though your business is constantly on the line.\r\n\r\nThat’s natural.\r\n\r\nAs an agency owner, you more or less have the final say on every decision, negotiation or pitch. Empowering as this is, it also carries a lot of emotional burdens which can wear you down.\r\n\r\nYou need to remember this: you’re not alone.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>How Others Are Coping With The Pressures Of Scaling An Agency</h2>\r\nMitchel White, Founder &amp; Managing Director of <a href=\"https://leftmedia.co.uk/\">LeftMedia</a> admitted that he’s “one of those people that worry a lot, but running an agency can put a big pressure on you mentally and physically”.\r\n\r\nWith that said, I thought it would be a good idea to approach a variety of agency owners, all from different cultures, and ask them the following question:\r\n\r\n<strong>“What do you consider is your biggest pressure growing your agency, and what methods have you put in place to reduce/avoid it?”</strong>\r\n\r\nBy doing this, I was able to understand the common pressures that agency owners face on a daily basis and get first-hand, actionable insight into how they’re keeping those troubles at bay in the workplace.\r\n\r\nHopefully, by the end of this article, you will of been able to connect with what our agency experts have had to say and take onboard some of their methods.\r\n\r\n<strong>Please note: </strong>\r\n\r\nThis is a monster 8000+ word practical guide on how to cope with the pressures of scaling your agency. I’ve produced this guide for agency owners at all stages. So with that said, you may find the stuff our agency owners have advised is something you’re doing already.\r\n\r\nKnowing this, I’ve included a quick navigation so you can go straight to the sections that you identify with the most:\r\n\r\n1. <a href=\"#1\">Dealing With The Common Pressure Of Financials</a>\r\n2. <a href=\"#2\">The Challenges Of Recruitment And Hiring The Right Talent</a>\r\n3. <a href=\"#3\">Being Able To Trust And Let Go</a>\r\n4. <a href=\"#4\">Maintaining Standards And Achieving Results</a>\r\n\r\nLet\'s dive in!\r\n\r\nBelow you will find a list of pressures identified by the agency owners I emailed. Plus, the strategies they’re using to keep their tensions to a minimum.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Dealing With The Common Pressure of Financials</h2>\r\n<a name=\"1\"></a>Once I started to receive some feedback, I noticed a clear pattern straight away. Most of the agency owners that I questioned all share the mutual pressure of cash-flow uncertainty, as well as ensuring that they have enough revenue to cover operational costs.\r\n\r\nWas I shocked? Not at all.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3846\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n<small>Image courtesy of <a href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/19705/the-3-biggest-challenges-facing-marketing-agencies.aspx\">Hubspot</a></small>\r\n\r\nA previous survey by Hubspot revealed that two-thirds of agency owners consider unpredictable cash flow one of their top three challenges, and 19% of them called it their top concern.\r\n\r\nMitchel White and Dan Cullen-Shute, CEO &amp; Founder at <a href=\"https://www.creaturelondon.com/\">Creature of London</a>, both share the same pressure which is ensuring that they “keep the lights on”.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this Dan believes that “there are a million pressures that come from running an agency.”\r\n\r\n“The pressure to make every piece of work something you\'d be as proud of in Effectiveness Week as you would in Cannes; the pressure to ensure we don\'t run out of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes on a Monday morning; and the pressure to make sure you\'re both funny AND insightful when asked to supply a quote for somebody else\'s article. Sitting atop ALL of that, though is the pressure to keep everybody’s mortgages paid”, he says.\r\n\r\nDarren Marble, CEO of <a href=\"https://www.crowdfundx.io/\">CrowdfundX</a>, can relate to Dan\'s statement. He also revealed that his biggest pressure is “ensuring that they generate enough revenue to cover salaries and overheads on a monthly basis”.\r\n\r\nWhatever size your agency is or how fast it’s growing, there’s always going to be that uncertainty of cash-flow. Sadly, we can’t see into the future and predict when we’re going to get hit by unexpected costs or experience one of those ‘bad months”.\r\n\r\nFortunately, the agency experts I questioned shared their methods on how to reduce that pressure of uncertainty and provided me with tips on how to manage your finances in a more efficient and reassuring way.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Put An Estimated LTV (Lifetime Value) On Each Client</h3>\r\nJordan Scheltgen, Founder of <a href=\"http://cavesocial.com/\">Cave Social</a>, believes that a lot of agencies are quick to tell their clients to spend big on SEM, SMM, but then don\'t do any of that stuff themselves.\r\n\r\nHe says that “you need to figure out what it costs you to get a client, then put an estimated LTV (Lifetime Value) on that client.”\r\n\r\nJordan believes that putting an LTV on your client is “key to financial growth”.\r\n\r\nAlso known as, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) or Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) - depending on your preference. LTV is a method used by marketers to project the revenue a customer will generate during their lifetime.\r\n\r\n<strong>Lifetime Value (LTV) = Total Customer Revenue – Total Customer Costs</strong>\r\n\r\nJordan demonstrated his belief by using an example of his own, which he shared on <a href=\"https://inbound.org/discuss/any-tips-for-my-new-digital-marketing-agency\">Inbound.org</a>:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3873\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Screen-Shot-2018-01-25-at-16.35.32.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nLTV can determine the financial gain of your of business and is a valuable metric for those running an agency or subscription-based model.\r\n\r\nBy calculating the LTV of your customers, you can reveal where stronger marketing efforts are needed, as well as the long-term financial impact of losing current customers.\r\n\r\nMore importantly, LTV can be used as a premature warning sign to detect defection rates. It identifies in which segments “a problem” originates, so procedures can be put in place to correct the cause. In turn, reducing that dreaded pressure of “cash flow uncertainty”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Switch To A Retainer Based Pricing Model - If You Haven’t Already</h3>\r\nWe heard how Mitchel White’s biggest pressure “is keeping the lights on.”\r\n\r\nHe also told me that, “the additional costs of premises and PAYE (for example) add extra pressures with cash flow being notoriously hard in a traditional agency where fees are project based.”\r\n\r\nOne way Mitchel has tackled this is by increasing the number of his recurring revenue clients. By doing this Mitchel has, “guaranteed monthly income when new projects go a little quiet.\"\r\n\r\nAlthough to receive the true benefits of recurring revenue, you will need to ditch your project-based pricing model in favour of a retainer. In fact, Jordan Scheltgen strongly advises anyone billing hourly to “switch to a retainer pricing model as soon as possible - if you haven’t already”.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, he advises that you should “project your hours (internally), then put forward a price monthly with your deliverables.”\r\n\r\nBy implementing a retainer-based model, you have a predictable source of regular income and clear mechanisms for operational costs.\r\n\r\nMore importantly, you have a clear roadmap for future production and can budget your team\'s time accordingly.\r\n\r\nUsing a retainer model has enabled Ed Leake to factor his average billable working hours and overhead per role, giving him a baseline cost.\r\n\r\nIn a <a href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/agency/start-agency-actually-matter\">previous article</a>, Ed Leake, Founder of <a href=\"https://midasmedia.co.uk/\">Midas Media</a>, revealed how he used to whimper when looking at his overheads, but since implementing the following process he now cherishes them.\r\n\r\nLeake says, “It’s really simple, anyone with a copy of Excel can do it. I use total working hours – holidays – 3 days sick * 70% efficiency, per person.”\r\n\r\nLeake shares with us a quick example of what this process looks like:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3849\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nEd accounts for a person’s wage, the business cost (office, equipment, software tools etc) and any advertising budget.\r\n\r\nNext, he adds in projected hours per service, which gives him a no-nonsense baseline. The spreadsheet then calculates a 20% creep/slack with a 35% profit margin.\r\n\r\nThe end result, an ACCURATE price for the service.\r\n\r\nHere\'s an example:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3850\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-2.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nEd claims this process (in tandem with tight project management) has enabled him to propose retainers to the nearest hour billable.\r\n\r\n“Often our prices look ‘funny’ because of this, we don’t round up or down to get a job – we give exact figures without discount”, he says.\r\n\r\nEd claims this process offers “immediate trust and transparency”.\r\n\r\nRetainers are most efficient when you know a solid, predictable relationship makes sense. They are an effective method for both agencies and clients. Less time is spent on unnecessary paperwork, allowing both parties to focus on what matters the most - achieving results.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, retainers make scheduling easy and simplify your proposal stage. Instead of generating a custom, project-specific proposal for each of your clients. A retainer can help you draw up a template contract, which can come in handy if you receive a lot of proposal requests.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Watch Every Penny - Even When You’re Making Money</h3>\r\nThis may sound obvious, but you\'d be surprised at how crazy some people get once they start to see the money piling up in the bank.\r\n\r\nGo on a spending spree too early, and you’re going receive a backlash of financial pressure.\r\n\r\nFor most people, running an agency doesn’t equate to instant riches.\r\n\r\nEd Leake, Founder of Midas Media believes the best way to manage your finances is to, “be tight and watch every penny – even when you’re making money. This isn’t just in the first few years; you need to do it forever.”\r\n\r\nHe goes on to say that, “some of the richest people in the world become rich because they keep an eye on their expenses like a hawk.”\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://richhabits.net/\">Tom Corley</a>, an accountant and financial planner, surveyed 233 wealthy individuals. Mostly self-made millionaires, he asked them questions about their daily spending habits.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3851\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nThe majority of wealthy people in Corley’s research said that they save a significant amount of their revenue income. In fact, 80% of the individuals in Tom\'s study didn’t become wealthy until the age of 50.\r\n\r\nCorley recommends that you should put 20% of your monthly income into savings.\r\n\r\nFor example, if you generate £100,000 each month in revenue, try and put £20,000 into savings. By doing this, over time you will start to see your savings account grow.\r\n\r\nIf the recession taught us anything, it’s that the most successful businesses can sometimes encounter financial challenges beyond their control.\r\n\r\nSo, by keeping a cash supply on hand, you can ensure that your business will stay afloat in lean times.\r\n\r\nNot only will this enable you to keep providing services, but you take away that pressure of generating enough revenue to cover operational costs and employee wages.\r\n\r\nFor Mike Ramsey, President of <a href=\"https://niftymarketing.com/\">Nifty Marketing</a>, he has opted for Dave Ramsey’s <a href=\"https://www.daveramsey.com/\">personal financial guidelines</a> for his business and finds it very conservative. Dave Ramsey’s personal financial guide is pretty much in tune with Thomas Corley’s advice.\r\n\r\nHowever, whereas Corley recommends that you put away 20% of your revenue each month. Dave Ramsey suggests that you should have 3-6 months of expenses on hand at all times.\r\n\r\nFor example: at £65,000 per month of expenses, you should have between £195,000-£390,000 in reserves.\r\n\r\nDave admits that this can seem like a lot of money. With that said, if clients unexpectedly drop, or major industry changes necessitate a completely new model, you will have the cash on hand to make good decisions - instead of desperate ones.\r\n\r\nBy following Dave’s advice has put Mike’s agency in a unique position, “we’re growing, but not at a crazy rate.\"\r\n\r\nMike says, “if we lose a client, it’s ok. If we have late payments, that is also ok. I can sleep given I know we have months of float with zero income if needed.”\r\n\r\nHe accepts that his biggest pressure is “false pressure” that he puts on himself that he has to scale at a certain rate each month.\r\n\r\nHe believes this type of thinking can lead to seriously bad long terms decisions and can deplete cash flow rapidly.\r\n\r\n“Greed can build things fast, but can also bring everything down just as quickly. I would rather take my time and play the long game\", Mike says.\r\n\r\nThere’s always a cheaper or more efficient way of achieving your results on a budget, it’s just getting into the habit of finding that cheaper alternative and some strategic planning.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Focus On Building A Solid Process For Getting New Business</h3>\r\nSo, we’ve established that cash flow is easier to calculate and maintain by switching to a retainer pricing model. And that calculating the LTV of your customers will allow you to estimate the financial gain of your business.\r\n\r\nAlthough, before getting to these formulas, you will need to ensure that you have a solid process for getting new business.\r\n\r\nI mean, there’s no math without clients - right?\r\n\r\nSeb Dean, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.imaginaire.co.uk/\">Imaginare Digital</a>, advises that “you should be focusing on building a solid process for getting new business.”\r\n\r\nHe isn’t alone in saying this.\r\n\r\nPreviously, we heard how Darren Marble’s biggest pressure is generating enough revenue to cover salaries and overheads on a monthly basis.\r\n\r\nA common pressure shared by many business owners - I’m sure you will agree?\r\n\r\nTo address this challenge Darren stays “relentlessly focused on new client acquisition and creating reference accounts” which helps him sell against the competition.\r\n\r\nDarren believes that “sales solves all problems” and recommends that you “make it your core focus.”\r\n\r\nBy plotting out his sales process, it’s allowed Seb Dean to accomplish his goals.\r\n\r\nSeb leaves us with a couple of questions which you can ask yourself when building a solid process for getting new business:\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>Think about who your customers are?</li>\r\n 	<li>How are you going to reach them?</li>\r\n 	<li>Where are your leads coming from?</li>\r\n 	<li>How many appointments will you need to have each week to make enough money to pay yourself a wage?</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nIf you’ve asked yourself these questions, and feel as though you have come to a dead-end, then there are other alternative methods you can take to generate new business.\r\n\r\nOliver Gaywood, Founder of <a href=\"http://www.civicwebmedia.com.au/\">Civic Web Media</a>, made sure that everyone in his network knew what he was doing. People he had previously worked with and even his friends. It was this process that allowed Oliver to develop some of his most profitable relationships.\r\n\r\n“Some people wanted help with their content, some referred me to those they knew who needed it and others, even though they didn\'t really know what content marketing was, associated the term with us and would mention us in relevant conversations”, says Oliver.\r\n\r\nIf you feel as though you\'ve exhausted all your personal networks, Josh Ballard, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.paradoxmarketing.com.au/\">Paradox Marketing</a>, says that you can accelerate Oliver’s process by “getting out and networking as hard as you can in your own hometown.”\r\n\r\n“As you meet new people in person make sure that you have a follow-up plan for engaging with them online. Always be adding value and never be sold. You will win more work in the long run by sending through meticulously well-curated content to your prospects than you will by pointing out how their digital presence is not working well\", says Josh.\r\n\r\nAs well as this, you should also build a solid process for your existing accounts too.\r\n\r\nIn my previous roundup, I emailed agency experts to get their perspective on how they scale agency revenues by <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/agency/account-expansion/\">expanding existing accounts</a>.\r\n\r\nIf you run both processes alongside each other in the right way, those pressures of generating enough revenue to cover salaries and overheads with soon evaporate.\r\n\r\nDan Shutes says, “we’ve stuck to winning business whenever possible, which has done us alright so far.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>The Challenges of Recruitment and Hiring The Right Talent</h2>\r\n<a name=\"2\"></a>For Brian Whigham, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.venndigital.co.uk/\">Venn</a>, “raising money has become incredibly easy, especially in the North West.”\r\n\r\nBrian believes this is due to the focus on the Northern Powerhouse, “from government funding, private equity through to crowdfunding, the access to investment has never been so good.”\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/207780664\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe>\r\n\r\n<small><a href=\"https://vimeo.com/207780664\">NPIF What impact will NPIF have?</a> from <a href=\"https://vimeo.com/britishbusinessbank\">British Business Bank</a> on <a href=\"https://vimeo.com\">Vimeo</a>.</small>\r\n\r\nHe claims that the challenge of growing a digital agency is “simply twofold.”\r\n\r\nThe perception that the web is becoming easier and cheaper when in reality, it’s getting harder and more expensive.\r\n\r\n“As marketers, we are flooded with tools and resources that supposedly make our lives easier. In reality, the speed of evolution is creating a storm that every agency and business is trying to compete in”, he says.\r\n\r\nAs a direct consequence, Brian feels “there is a dearth of talent.”\r\n\r\nAlong with the uncertainty of cash flow and revenue, another common issue shared by agency owners is the challenge of recruiting the right talent for their business.\r\n\r\nOn the launch of <a href=\"https://www.seedpublicity.co.uk/\">Seed</a>, Founder Nick-Stuart Miller felt that his biggest pressure would be maintaining the high standards which they set themselves for achieving results.\r\n\r\nAlthough, because they\'ve structured their message to empower team members with self-development and autonomous decision making. Nick soon realised that the challenge is actually hiring the right kind of people to support their existing values.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3852\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-3.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n<small>Image source: The 2017 State of <a href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33820/5-major-challenges-marketers-face-and-how-to-solve-them.aspx\">Inbound Report</a></small>\r\n\r\nHe isn’t alone feeling like this.\r\n\r\nJane Asscher, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.23red.com/\">23red</a> and Kayleigh Toyra, Co-founder of <a href=\"https://seeker.digital/\">Seeker</a> say their biggest challenges revolve around recruiting the right talent, as well as building and maintaining their organisational culture.\r\n\r\nJane believes this is “relatively easy when you’re in startup mode”. Although admits that it gets more difficult as an organisation grows and the owners can no longer be hands on everything.\r\n\r\nAccording to a report by Hubspot, hiring top talent was the eighth biggest challenge marketers faced in 2017.\r\n\r\nSo, why is finding talent such a challenge for agencies?\r\n\r\nIn the past couple of years, there has been a significant shift from outbound to inbound marketing.\r\n\r\nThere seems to be a bigger demand for top talent, but not enough supply out there to cover it.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, the required skills a modern marketer are very different to what they were a decade ago. Nowadays, roles seem to have overlapped and morphed.\r\n\r\nFor example, marketers are needed to oversee marketing activities as well as assist sales to generate new business and drive growth within existing accounts.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3874\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Screen-Shot-2018-01-25-at-16.40.57.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n<small>job description courtesy of <a href=\"https://www.indeed.co.uk/\">Indeed.co.uk</a>.</small>\r\n\r\nTo make matters more complicated. In 2016 it was reported that millennials are actually job-hopping more frequently than previous generations, according to this <a href=\"https://blog.linkedin.com/2016/04/12/will-this-year_s-college-grads-job-hop-more-than-previous-grads\">research</a> conducted by LinkedIn.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3854\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-2.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nCombining all these factors together, it’s no surprise that agency owners consider finding the right talent a challenge.\r\n\r\nIf you’re lucky enough to find that “talent superstar” who has all the required skills and more. There’s no guarantee that they will actually stick around long enough to have an impact on results.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Retain Your Employees and Reduce That Challenge of \'Talent Shortages\'</h3>\r\nTalent shortages seem to be a common issue throughout many industries. Although, it is a significant challenge for those who work in the digital and tech sector.\r\n\r\nEd Leake says that “talented people are your lifeblood” when it comes to agency growth.\r\n\r\nSo, what can you do to reduce that talent shortage and pressure of finding the perfect candidate for your business?\r\n\r\nIt may sound obvious, but the most effective way of counteracting talent shortages is by focusing on getting more out of your existing employees.\r\n\r\nMore than half of employers globally are developing and training their own people in order to overcome recruitment challenges.\r\n\r\nJane Asscher and the team at Red23 have implemented management practices, staff benefits, training and development plans to support their existing staff and combat any recruitment issues.\r\n\r\n“We are looking for people to grab opportunities to learn, develop and share new concepts”, says Jane.\r\n\r\nJane provides her existing employees with a cultural allowance which they can spend on theatre, museum galleries and other events. The aim of this is to help encourage employees to flourish and expand their cultural know-how.\r\n\r\nThis focus on their culture and values has helped Jane attract and retain talent. Ensuring that they have one of the lowest levels of staff turnover in the industry.\r\n\r\nSo, instead of waiting for that “worldie candidate” to come along, who has all the skills you desire and more. Why not invest time into someone who has worked at your side for a while, and demonstrated their dedication to your business already?\r\n\r\nIn this study, Data Freaks discovered that 89% of millennials said that they would stay with the same company for 10+ years if just two criteria were met:1.\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>1. Opportunities for upward career mobility</li>\r\n 	<li>2. Regular increase in compensation.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nIt is this exact method that has allowed Nick Stuart-Miller, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.seedpublicity.co.uk/\">Seed</a>, to alleviate growth challenges.\r\n\r\n“We have made sure every person at Seed feels like they are an important part of our company, and giving them responsibility, accountability and the voice to be heard\", he says.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, Nick has ensured that their leadership team, himself and business partner Robin, are available to the team at all times.\r\n\r\nWith an intrinsic level of openness, Nick communicates with his team to ensure that individual challenges are supported.\r\n\r\nCommunication is key to success. Make time for your employees, and give them the responsibility they\'ve worked so hard for.\r\n\r\nBryan Alston, Senior Director at Los Angeles’ fastest growing digital agency and now as Head of E-commerce at <a href=\"http://www.bamf.media/\">BAMF Media</a>, says “having more two-way conversations between sales and operations is key.”\r\n\r\nNick and Bryan are prime examples of how communication can help cap staff turnover and reduce the challenge of “talent shortage”.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Could We Be Making A Difference To The Talent Shortage?</h3>\r\nIs there something else we could be doing now which will have an impact on our “talent dilemma” in 5-10 years time?\r\n\r\nBrian Whingham believes the main problem with talent crisis is that there isn’t enough focus at the grassroots level in school.\r\n\r\n“Young boys and girls need to be shown the opportunity that online companies present for their career and personal development”, he says.\r\n\r\nPersonally, as a marketer who has experience in SEO, PPC and Content I do struggle to tell friends and family who don’t work in the industry what I do for a living. In my agency days, I found the easiest thing to do was tell others that “I just help other businesses with their online presence”\r\n\r\nPeople outside our industry literally have no idea that our jobs exist. In fact, I’m going to use an example of how unacknowledged our market is:\r\n\r\nI was watching the apprentice final with a friend.\r\n\r\nFor anyone who hasn’t watched the apprentice before. It’s a reality game show in which a group of aspiring entrepreneurs (plant pots) compete against each other in a series of business-related challenges in order to win a £250,000 business investment from Lord Alan Sugar.\r\n\r\nIn this particular final, one contestant pitched their confectionery business and was then followed by another individual who promoted their IT recruitment idea.\r\n\r\nMy friend turned to me and said, “that IT person does what you do!”\r\n\r\nConsidering that SEO, PPC, content and other online marketing activities have been around for over a decade now, the lack of exposure for our industry is quite concerning.\r\n\r\nBrian Whingham believes “once we solve the talent problem, the role of the agency owner will become much easier.”\r\n\r\nPersonally, as a marketer, I feel as though we need to come up with innovative ways on how we can shed more light on what we do.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.liverpoolgirlgeeks.co.uk/\">Liverpool Geek Girls</a> are a perfect example to follow.\r\n\r\nTheir core mission is to tackle the current gender imbalance and skills gap in the technology sector.\r\n\r\nHowever, in my opinion, it’s the fact that they host events, courses and workshops for women and girls of all ages which makes them so important.\r\n\r\nThey’re doing exactly what Brian Whigham says we need to do. They’re targeting youngest and exposing them to the possibilities of the tech sector. Something a lot of us didn’t have access to at an adolescent age.\r\n\r\nA lot of individuals have built a successful career off the back of the marketing and tech industry, but have failed to give back to the community.\r\n\r\nI believe if we take a hint of inspiration from organisations such as Geek Girls, we could break down the barrier on the talent shortage for generations to come.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Take Your Time and Avoid the Cost of a Bad Hire</h3>\r\nAlthough the methods that we’ve just discussed can help decrease staff turnover and “talent shortages”, they won’t completely prevent staff from leaving your business - but that’s okay!\r\n\r\nHiring is hard. Especially when an existing employee leaves your business without any warning.\r\n\r\nA big mistake agency owners do in this circumstance, is get into a panic and advise the job position on a LinkedIn update.\r\n\r\nWe’ve all seen those status updates...\r\n\r\nHiring the wrong person will disrupt the rest of your workforce and can lead to a loss of revenue.\r\n\r\nWhen Kayleigh Toyra started out, she took advice from other agency leaders on how they manage their own recruitment challenges.\r\n\r\n“I\'ve come to realise that taking your time with decisions; and hiring on attitude, not just aptitude, are good strategies\", says Kayleigh.\r\n\r\nWho would you rather choose:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>A candidate with all the desired skills, but a negative attitude towards teamwork?</li>\r\n 	<li>Or a dedicated individual, who has a couple of weakness, but has demonstrated their determination and ability to adapt to your current environment?</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nRather than searching for a candidate when a position becomes available, Kayleigh has remained on the lookout for new talent - even when it’s not required.\r\n\r\n“With growing an agency, you need to constantly be on the lookout for new talent - it\'s an ongoing, rather than a \'stop and start\' process”, says Kayleigh.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Being Able To Trust and Let Go</h2>\r\n<a name=\"3\"></a>For some agency owners, it’s not searching for talent which they consider challenging. It’s the pressure of being able to trust and let go of the responsibilities which they’ve had for so long.\r\n\r\nKyle Racki, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.proposify.com/?utm_source=ruleranalytics\">Proposify</a>, highlighted this in his email to me.\r\n\r\n“The biggest pressure growing an agency is handing over the reigns to other people. As an agency owner, you started as a freelancer where you managed everything: the clients, the projects, the invoicing, the new business”, he says.\r\n\r\nKyle wasn’t the only person who made me aware of this pressure shared by many agency owners.\r\n\r\nWhilst scaling his agency Jamie Huskisson, Managing Director and Founder of <a href=\"https://wearejh.com/\">JH</a>, witnessed first hand how “most people try to do things themselves, finding it hard to let go.”\r\n\r\nMost agency owners do start out as freelancers. So, in the past, they’ve had complete control over client projects.\r\n\r\nHowever, scaling an agency is a whole different ball game, and on the road to success, agency owners must sacrifice that time they use to spend controlling client projects steering the business.\r\n\r\nUnderstandably, this can be a difficult routine to break.\r\n\r\nWhile no one knows your vision or brand better than you, scaling an agency demands a variety of skills at the top. With that said, our agency owners shed some light on how to ease your fears of letting go.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Hire People Smarter Than You</h3>\r\nPreviously, we heard how Ed Leake used to whimper when he looked at overheads, but now he cherishes them.\r\n\r\nHe knows that beneath his numbers is a solid team of experts who save him from mental overload. Experts he can rely on and who clients enjoy working with.\r\n\r\nEd strongly believes that “if you’re the most skilled person in your business, you’re not hiring the right people.”\r\n\r\nSome agency owners have developed this pressure that they need to be the smartest person in the room, or they will lose the respect of their employees. As they’re a leader, they feel as though they should hold all answers.\r\n\r\nThis isn’t true.\r\n\r\nJess Butcher says, “you need to ensure that you\'re hiring good \'managers\' and not just good doers - people potentially better than you at their areas of expertise who you can empower to hire, manage and develop their teams and really \'own\' their areas of the business. You simply cannot scale if you continue to have to have a direct input in everything that the business is doing.\"\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/hire-people-better-you-says-macmillan-marketing-director/1432378\">In this article</a>, Richard Taylor, Fundraising and Marketing Director for Macmillan Cancer Support, says “the secret to success is to bring in people who are better than you at any job that you could ever do.”\r\n\r\nHiring someone who is smarter than you doesn’t necessarily mean that you should bring someone who could step into your role tomorrow.\r\n\r\nBeing smart means that an individual isn’t afraid to use their brain or ask questions. They’re curious, and that’s the type of people you want taking over the reins.\r\n\r\nHiring smart people gives your agency a better chance of success, and makes your role as an agency owner easier.\r\n\r\nTaylor believes hiring smart people “makes you look good.”\r\n\r\nTo become a great leader you must surround yourself with talented people. It is your responsibility to build a team that can bring innovation and unique ideas to the table.\r\n\r\nBusinessman R.H Grant <a href=\"https://www.forbes.com/quotes/7677/\">once said</a>, “when you hire people that are smarter than you, you prove you are smarter than they are.\"\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Preventing The One-Man-Band Syndrome</h3>\r\nThis doesn’t just happen to startup owners. One-man band syndrome can strike when you’re years into the business. For anyone who is unaware what this is, it’s when an MD or founder try and run their whole business by themselves.\r\n\r\nIn the beginning, you generally need to have an understanding of sales, marketing and tech if you want to get your business off the ground.\r\n\r\nHowever, if you adopt one-man band syndrome for too long, the growth of your company will eventually flatline.\r\n\r\nKyle Racki says that “many can’t get out of their own way. It’s essential to not be the star when you run an agency.”\r\n\r\nHe admits in his article on <a href=\"https://www.proposify.com/blog/how-to-start-an-agency\">how to start an agency</a>, that one of the hardest things to do as an agency owner is to step out of the spotlight.\r\n\r\nIf you ever get the temptation to set up your own one-man band. You should ask yourself this question.\r\n\r\n“Is this really in the best interest of our clients, or it is in the best interest of my ego?”\r\n\r\nOne-man band syndrome can demonstrate a lack of trust and lowers team morale. More importantly, it can have a backlash on productivity. Increasing churn rates and igniting that pressure of “future unpredictability.”\r\n\r\nIn his book, <em><a href=\"https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AVWmcx2rCtwC&amp;pg=PA73&amp;lpg=PA73&amp;dq=business+one+man+band+syndrome&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=7BMLVz-RNx&amp;sig=xCxC36OIjhTfagMEWefHEI3mGKI&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjantnpg7zYAhWjKMAKHSGACxE4ChDoAQgyMAA#v=onepage&amp;q=business%20one%20man%20band%20syndrome&amp;f=false\">great from the start: how conscious corporations attract success</a></em>, Author John B Montgomery speaks about how CEO of Semiconductor was a victim of one-man band syndrome.\r\n\r\nThe CEO of Semiconductor was unable to delegate and had no executive team to support him.\r\n\r\nHe made every decision - from hiring new employees to buying paper clips.\r\n\r\nHis inability to surround himself with a strong team of employees prevented his company from scaling to its full potential.\r\n\r\nEventually, Lucent Technologies eventually acquired his company.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Avoid The Trap Of Micromanagement</h3>\r\nComparable to having one-man band syndrome, micromanagement is when leaders give responsibilities to others, but closely observe and control the work of his/her subordinates.\r\n\r\nIt’s so easy for agency owners to fall into that trap and get confused between “leadership” and “Micromanagement”.\r\n\r\nLeading your employees and keeping them accountable is a huge part of scaling an agency.\r\n\r\nI’m sure you’re all aware of the management style of Steve Jobs’.\r\n\r\nHe was progressive, intense and very particular. It’s well-known that Job’s had a slight infatuation with dictatorship, which in the beginning, was an issue at Apple.\r\n\r\nHis micromanagement caused confusion and fear amongst employees, which was having a negative effect on the development of Macintosh.\r\n\r\nMoral of the story here is, by micromanaging your employees, you’re potentially decreasing the chances of agency success.\r\n\r\nAs much as you want to be involved in every aspect of the business, which you built from the ground up, you need to learn how to step back and allow your employees to make key decisions without your input.\r\n\r\nScott Berkun has an insightful analogy for owners and leaders who are guilty of this common habit:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3859\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-5.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nA good way to overcome this habit is by developing awareness of why you’re micromanaging. In most cases, it’s because of an insecurity. Maybe you’re afraid that it will reflect badly on you if your team doesn’t succeed.\r\n\r\nMuriel Maignan Wilkins, the co-author of <a href=\"https://hbr.org/product/own-the-room-discover-your-signature-voice-to-mast/an/10931-HBK-ENG\">Own the Room</a> and Co-founder of <a href=\"http://paravispartners.com/\">Paravis Partners</a>, recommends you ask yourself the following question:\r\n\r\n“what excuses am I using to micromanage?”\r\n\r\nInstead of using excuses such as, “it will save time if I do it myself.” Or “too much much is at stake to allow this to go wrong” Wilkins recommends that you focus on, “the reasons why you should not micromanage?”\r\n\r\nMicromanagement diminishes creativity and innovation. When employees feel like they’re being watched they are less likely to step outside the box.\r\n\r\nBy asking yourself the question of “why you should not micromanage?”\r\n\r\nYou increase the job satisfaction of your employees, ensuring the future of your business.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Integrate Autonomy Into Your Culture</h3>\r\n“Autonomy is the antithesis of micromanagement”, says Joan F Cheverie, Director, Professional Development of <a href=\"https://www.educause.edu/\">EDUCAUSE</a>.\r\n\r\nYour agency needs a leader, not a micromanager, who knows how to give autonomy to employees who can lead the company more effectively in specific areas.\r\n\r\nFor Jamie Huskisson, “one of the most important things when growing an agency, is to give people the power they deserve and provide them with the autonomy, when they can deal with it, to really flourish.”\r\n\r\nJamie recommends that you should “identify your leaders early” and “give them the opportunity to shine as early as you can.”\r\n\r\nAutonomy is crucial for building employee engagement and is believed to decrease the levels of emotional exhaustion felt by employees.\r\n\r\nIn this 2011 study, from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, they found that handing over more autonomy to one “talent superstar” isn’t enough. Other teams members should also have the ability to get involved in important decisions.\r\n\r\nSo, how can you go about giving your employees autonomy they need to succeed?\r\n\r\n<small>Start small.</small>\r\n\r\nIf you’re feeling the pressure of handing over the reins still, start by raising your team’s autonomy slowly. This way, you will be assured that you’re not giving away too much control at once, avoiding any potential backtracking in the future.\r\n\r\nAlso, make sure that you identify the balance between autonomy and structure. Joan Cheverie recommends the following:\r\n\r\n“Stop telling your staff how to do their job and, instead, set the strategic direction deadlines and benchmarks”.\r\n\r\nLet your staff decided how they will accomplish the job, encourage your employees to set their own goals. Cheverie says that this creates a specific kind of motivation called intrinsic motivation - the desire to do something for its own sake.\r\n\r\nBy defining the end result clearly, you can outline any barriers. You\'re giving your employees the autonomy they need, but within a specific perimeter.\r\n\r\nJamie sums it for us, as to why it’s so important to provide your employees with the autonomy they need to succeed:\r\n\r\n“By providing autonomy you\'ll grow quicker because you have more people tackling different tasks at once and you ‘move as one’ as a leadership team internally”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Maintaining Standards and Achieving Results</h2>\r\n<a name=\"4\"></a>Maintaining the standards of your business as you scale is always going to be an uphill challenge. No matter where you are in the development of your agency.\r\n\r\nSome agency owners share the mutual pressure of maintaining their standards as they start to take on more projects and experience sustainable growth.\r\n\r\nBryan Alston considers “the biggest challenge to growing an agency is making sure you have the resources and capabilities to live up to client expectation, and aligning that with the sales team from day 1.”\r\n\r\nOn the one hand, you’re ecstatic with all the business that is coming through the door. On the other hand, you’re worried that when you increase projects, you will dilute the quality that you’ve worked so hard to achieve.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, agencies are constantly having to adapt and change, as the online industry continues rapidly evolve.\r\n\r\nAndy Golpys, Co-Founder of <a href=\"https://madebyshape.co.uk/\">MadeByShape</a>, says in the early days the main pressure is “getting the work.” However, believes his biggest pressure was/is to “keep the standards high all the time.”\r\n\r\nHe admits “this might not sound like your typical pressure” but says, “the standard of our work is our reputation and if that standard drops, it has a knock on effect. We won\'t get as many enquiries or repeat customers, and that creates the pressure of having to bring money in to pay the wages.”\r\n\r\nIn the book, <em><a href=\"https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scaling-up-Excellence-Hayagreeva-Rao/dp/1847940994\">scaling up excellence: getting more without settling for less</a></em>, coauthor Robert I. Sutton says that, “companies grow well and scale badly when they focus on running up the numbers but not the quality. They get bigger and start to look like just any organisation. And there goes the value.”\r\n\r\nIt’s so easy for agency owners to lose sight when it comes to quality control, especially when their business is scaling at a significant pace.\r\n\r\nThe following are just a few practices, recommended by our agency owners, which you can take on board to avoid that dreaded pressure of maintaining standards.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Don’t Be Afraid To Say “No”</h3>\r\nFor all of you out there that did start out as freelancers, you will of been inclined to say “YES” to any project or client that came your way.\r\n\r\nWe’ve all got bills to pay - right?\r\n\r\nIt’s this experience that makes it hard for agency owners to say no to jobs which they simply can\'t accommodate. While cash-flow is crucial, you need to ensure that any work you take on is aligned with your business goals.\r\n\r\nAndy Golpys is a great example of this.\r\n\r\nHis vision was to operate a small studio, and for various reasons, never wants to go past 12 members of staff.\r\n\r\nAndy says, “as an agency grows, there become more difficulties such as, increased volume of projects, tighter deadlines, more staff to manage, more people to deal with, and a lot more travelling which takes up time”.\r\n\r\nBy putting in place simple, but effective methods, Andy has been able to tackle the pressure of maintaining standards head-on.\r\n\r\nAs well as tweaking their “client-side process” to elevate production. Andy has taken a back seat in terms of design to solely concentrate on business development, client and project management.\r\n\r\nAndy says, “this involves planning the diary 3 months in advance, and saying no to projects if the diary is already full.”\r\n\r\nBy saying no to projects, Andy has remained loyal to his initial goal of establishing a small studio specialising in search engine optimisation, web design and development.\r\n\r\nHowever, for some, saying no just doesn’t come naturally. We either can’t face letting people down or refuse to be perceived as a “no person”.\r\n\r\nYou need to remember, it’s not unprofessional to turn down work. By saying no to things you don’t want to do, allows you to say yes to more of the things that you want.\r\n\r\nBefore saying yes to a job, ask yourself the following questions first:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>Will saying yes to this job divert me from my initial goals?</li>\r\n 	<li>Do I want to be known for this type of work?</li>\r\n 	<li>Is it enough to cover operational costs?</li>\r\n 	<li>Do I have the resources to execute the project?</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nWork that pays little in terms of revenue and fulfilment will leave you demotivated. Inevitably, this will lead to lousy standards and more low-quality projects.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Understand Your Businesses Strengths and Weaknesses</h3>\r\nIn order to maintain standards and survive in this ever-changing market, agency owners must set their goals based on their strengths and downplay any weaknesses.\r\n\r\nJess Butcher, Co-Founder and CEO at <a href=\"https://web.blippar.com/\">Blippar</a>, believes “one of the most critical things as a business owner is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses as honestly as you can.”\r\n\r\nWhen identifying your strengths and weaknesses, you need to outline competitive advantages and distinctive qualities your agency does and doesn’t carry.\r\n\r\nMost agency owners adopt for a SWOT analysis and consider it the easiest way to determine internal and external factors which could be having an effect on their standards. SWOT is an acronym and stands for:\r\n\r\n<strong>S</strong>trengths, <strong>W</strong>eaknesses, <strong>O</strong>pportunities, <strong>T</strong>hreats.\r\n\r\nA SWOT analysis is an effective way of identifying any issues that could be crippling your agency. By doing this, you’re able to conduct strategies that will allow you to maintain your standards, as you focus on scaling your business.\r\n\r\nTo remain in control of your SWOT analysis, keep in mind these simple rules:\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>1. Only list four per category <u>max</u>.</li>\r\n 	<li>2. No opinions. Stick to facts to ensure honest information.</li>\r\n 	<li>3. Make weaknesses and opportunities actionable.</li>\r\n 	<li>4. Try and be exact when listing items in each category.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3860\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-3.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n<h4></h4>\r\n<h4>Strengths</h4>\r\nSelf-explanatory, your strengths are what your agency is good at already. Although, the purpose of using a SWOT analysis is to identify these strengths so you can utilise them to meet organisational goals and high-quality standards.\r\n\r\nYou might be a web design and SEO agency that specialises in online marketing for law firms. Straight away you would produce a strategy that would position you as an authority in that specific field.\r\n\r\nAlex Moss, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://firecask.com/\">Firecask</a>, found that his skills in Wordpress helped him and his agency stand out from the crowd.\r\n\r\nMoss says, “because of this skill, I was able to make myself [somewhat] of an authority when it came to WordPress and SEO. Once you have this, work to get yourself as an authority via speaking and through networking.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Weaknesses</h4>\r\nI’m going to put this lightly. We all have weaknesses. In order to maintain quality and scale, you need to minimise your weaknesses or turn them into strengths. The key here is to identify your weaknesses as honestly as you can.\r\n\r\nYou may feel that you’re advertising a lack of services to your clients. You could consider a partnership with another agency or SaaS product to strengthen and compliment your current offering.\r\n\r\nWith that said, it\'s worth mentioning that we offer our own agency partnership program.  You can click through <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/agency-partner/\">here</a> to find out more about how that works. :)\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Opportunities</h4>\r\nAn opportunity to identify external factors which could have a positive impact on your business. This could be something like a change to the current market or growth in technology.\r\n\r\nFor example, in 2016, we saw a record of <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/12/record-80-new-companies-being-born-an-hour-in-2016/\">80 new companies</a> being launched in an hour. So the opportunity here is that eventually, these organisations will likely require online marketing in order to grow.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Threats</h4>\r\nSadly, threats are unpredictable. In most cases, you will need to rely on predictable forecasts and intelligence to gauge the best possible decisions. It’s not feasible to avoid all threats, so what you need to be asking yourself is this: How can I reduce the impact of a threat?\r\n\r\nFor many agencies, they will consider their competitors as one of their biggest threat. To reduce this pressure, you could perform a SWOT on your competitors to identify their strength and weaknesses. By doing this, you know where your agency stands compared to others.\r\n\r\nWith that said, it’s important that you don’t “get too caught up” in what your competitors are doing.\r\n\r\nChris Martin, Head of Marketing at <a href=\"https://www.commontime.com/\">CommonTime</a>, says it’s important that you “don’t get caught up with what your competitors are doing.”\r\n\r\n“It’s very easy to spend a lot of time trying to work out exactly what all of your competitors are doing and how you differentiate yourself\", he says.\r\n\r\nIf you do consider your competitors as a threat, then keep in mind that you’re the unique aspect of your agency.\r\n\r\nChris believes that “your knowledge, experience and insight will be the differentiating factor - that’s something no-one will ever be able to replicate.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Don’t Try And Reinvent The Wheel</h3>\r\nA lot of agency owners put this self-pressure on themselves that they need to come up with innovative ideas otherwise they will fail as a business.\r\n\r\nIt’s time to accept reality.\r\n\r\nCommercial <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising\">advertising</a> and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and Arabia. It’s likely that any idea you come up with now, it’s already been done.\r\n\r\nCraig Wiltshire, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.struto.co.uk/\">Struto</a>, says that it’s OK to “borrow shamelessly from other places.”\r\n\r\nSo with that said, stop putting this unnecessary pressure on yourself to come up with the “next big thing”.\r\n\r\nInstead, find a concept that works, and tailor it to your specific service. It’s this exact process which we’ve adopted here at Ruler.\r\n\r\nFounders Ian and Dan, worked with a lot of agencies previous to Ruler Analytics.\r\n\r\nThey faced the common obstacle of proving the value of their campaigns. The client\'s phones were ringing, but it was difficult to demonstrate <em>where</em> those calls were coming from. Frustrated by some of the limitations of Google Analytics, Ian and Dan went on to develop Ruler Analytics.\r\n\r\nA big focus for Ruler was/still is the <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/call-tracking/\">call tracking</a> software. Despite it being a popular and affordable product, we found it difficult at first to break through the noise being made by other competitors.\r\n\r\nWith that said, we went ahead and evolved our servicing, sales and marketing approach.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3676\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/large.jpg\" alt=\"\" />\r\n\r\nWith call tracking still at the core of our product, we now focus on connecting the dots between Google Analytics, DoubleClick, CRMs between website visits, phone calls and leads.\r\n\r\nBy integrating data with popular CRM tools, marketing teams can get an end-to-end overview of the success of their lead generation based on closed sales, not just contracts.\r\n\r\nMore about that in this <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X5IwoKsUKA\">video</a>:\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/7X5IwoKsUKA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nBottom line here is that call tracking was already around before we entered the market. However, we took the concept of the idea and produced a service that is more engaging with our target audience.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who are at the start of their journey, Craig Wiltshire leaves you with this, “just because you’re starting out doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Just Focus On Doing Great Work</h3>\r\nI’m not an agency owner, but this is one topic I can relate to on a personal level. It’s so easy to let standards slip when your schedule is bursting with tasks. Although, to avoid that dreaded pressure of slipping standards you must continue to stay focused on doing great work at all times.\r\n\r\nIn their book, Sutton and Rao argue that scaling isn’t just about getting bigger. It is also about getting better. They say the best way to know you’ve succeeded is to ask yourself the following question: If I stopped putting energy into this, would it continue to go well?\r\n\r\nIt’s funny. When I emailed my list of agency owners, I received near-identical feedback from both Cathal Saunders, Operations Director of <a href=\"https://converted.co.uk/\">Converted</a> and Kevin Gibbons, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.blueglass.co.uk/\">BlueGlass</a>.\r\n\r\nThey share the same beliefs when it comes to staying focused on doing great work.\r\n\r\nBoth Cathal and Kevin admit that doing great work does “sound obvious”, but it’s an important factor if you want to scale and maintain agency standards.\r\n\r\nAgency owners can spend so much time getting new business trying to prove that they’re good at their profession, they become blind and stop putting energy into existing client campaigns. Inevitably, this can have a negative influence on standards.\r\n\r\nKevin says, “it’s much more important to be doing great work internally than it is to look like you’re doing great work publicly”.\r\n\r\nBy doing great work, it doesn\'t mean you need to work harder and longer. It’s all about working smarter.\r\n\r\nIt just simply boils down to “focusing on delivering outstanding results/value first and foremost”, says Kevin Gibbons.\r\n\r\nI read this article which highlights the chapters in Michael Bungay Steiner book, <a href=\"https://generalassemb.ly/blog/do-more-great-work-book-review/\">do more great work</a>.\r\n\r\nMichael says that you should think back to moments in life where you felt like your best. Where you reached your perception of success, i.e. an award-winning ad campaign or a scenario where you ranked #1 organically for a competitive search term.\r\n\r\nThe aim of this process is to identify commonalities between these moments. It\'s this feeling that will spur you on to do great work.\r\n\r\n“Just remember to keep improving because doing it just once isn\'t enough”, says Alex Moss.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Have We Learnt Here?</span></h2>\r\nWhatever pressures you suffer from, you’re safe in the knowledge that you’re not alone when it comes to scaling an agency.\r\n\r\nMitchel White has been in business for 4 years and has been able to look after himself a little more, physically and mentally.\r\n\r\nDespite going the gym at least 3-4 times a week to relieve tension. The main focus for Mitchel over this time has been to prevent the worries of agency ownership from taking over his life.\r\n\r\nHe admits “that pressure doesn’t ever really go”, but “it what spurs us on to continue doing brilliant and successful things every day.”\r\n\r\nMitchel told me that he recently took a couple of days out for his mental health.\r\n\r\n“I needed to take a couple of days out for my mental health (I posted a <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6328883839607324672/\">LinkedIn post</a> about this) - some people frowned upon it but taking those two days out allowed me to relax, unwind and come back afterwards feeling refreshed and full of energy. The business didn’t fall apart without me in the office either. Win-win.”, he says.\r\n\r\nWhenever you start to get that feeling of pressure, just remember that scaling a successful agency is one of the most rewarding things that you can ever do.\r\n\r\nKyle Racki, leaves us with this simple takeaway:\r\n\r\n“Hire great talent, delegate the work, trust your team to deliver and focus on the big picture - sales and staying profitable.”','How To Deal With The Pressures Of Scaling An Agency (Practical Advice From 23 Experts)','','inherit','closed','closed','','3845-revision-v1','','','2018-02-08 13:53:18','2018-02-08 13:53:18','',3845,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/blog/uncategorised/3845-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3868,0,'2018-02-12 15:49:11','2018-02-12 15:49:11','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3868','','','2018-02-12 15:49:11','2018-02-12 15:49:11','',0,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/blog/nf_sub/3868/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3869,0,'2018-02-12 17:00:58','2018-02-12 17:00:58','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3869','','','2018-02-12 17:00:58','2018-02-12 17:00:58','',0,'http://ruler2018.epicwip.co.uk/blog/nf_sub/3869/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3871,0,'2018-02-17 20:01:27','2018-02-17 20:01:27','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3871','','','2018-02-17 20:01:27','2018-02-17 20:01:27','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3871/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3874,1,'2018-02-17 20:39:47','2018-02-17 20:39:47','The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is new legislation that comes into effect on the 25 May 2018. It replaces the Data Protection Act of 1998 (the “DPA”).\r\n\r\nRuler Analytics is fully compliant with GDPR, if you would like more information please contact us.','GDPR','','inherit','closed','closed','','3800-revision-v1','','','2018-02-17 20:39:47','2018-02-17 20:39:47','',3800,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/3800-revision-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3875,1,'2018-02-17 20:40:45','2018-02-17 20:40:45','','0d6f046c-0e61-11e8-bd3e-ecf4bbcecf12','','inherit','closed','closed','','0d6f046c-0e61-11e8-bd3e-ecf4bbcecf12','','','2018-02-17 20:40:45','2018-02-17 20:40:45','',3790,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/0d6f046c-0e61-11e8-bd3e-ecf4bbcecf12.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3876,1,'2018-02-17 21:14:28','2018-02-17 21:14:28','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3876','','','2018-02-17 21:14:28','2018-02-17 21:14:28','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3876/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3877,1,'2018-02-17 21:34:22','2018-02-17 21:34:22','','Agency','','publish','closed','closed','','agency','','','2018-02-17 21:34:22','2018-02-17 21:34:22','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=3877',6,'nav_menu_item','',0),(3878,0,'2018-02-19 13:00:58','2018-02-19 13:00:58','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3878','','','2018-02-19 13:00:58','2018-02-19 13:00:58','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3878/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3881,3,'2018-02-19 15:19:33','2018-02-19 15:19:33','Data is crucial for marketing agencies today, but it’s only useful if it’s interpreted properly.\r\n\r\nMaking data-based decisions off of bad data or incorrect assumptions could lead to revenue loss and degraded campaign performance.\r\n\r\nIn marketing analytics, one of the most common mistakes is failing to understand the attribution models being used to point conversions back to their originating campaigns.\r\n\r\nDo you know if your data use last-click, linear, position-based, time-decay, or first-click attribution?\r\n\r\nIf not, it’s time to find out what each is and how it impacts your reports.\r\n\r\nHere’s everything you need to know about attribution in digital marketing.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What Is Attribution in Digital Marketing?</h3>\r\nAttribution in digital marketing governs the way that credit for conversions is applied back to marketing touchpoints. It allows you to attribute revenue directly back to marketing campaigns.\r\n\r\nLet’s say, for example, that your agency is in charge of marketing for an eCommerce business.\r\n\r\nYou post updates frequently on Facebook and Twitter, run PPC ads, and send out weekly marketing emails to promote new products, sales, and deals. After a month of executing all of these campaigns, sales increase.\r\n\r\nWith attribution, you can see why sales increased.\r\n\r\nAttribution reports show which specific campaigns and channels generated the most sales during that time period, allowing you to ramp up successful campaigns and slow down or stop those that are less effective.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Common Attribution Models</h3>\r\nIn its most basic form, attribution is a simple concept.\r\n\r\nSomeone clicks an ad and makes a purchase. The revenue from the sale is attributed back to the ad.\r\n\r\nBut the buying journey is rarely so straightforward.\r\n\r\nThe average consumer <a href=\"https://www.knexusgroup.com/show/blog/Five-Omnichannel-Statistics-You-Need-to-Know/\">uses six touchpoints</a> before making a purchase. Users click ads, visit landing pages, read reviews, skim marketing emails, see social posts, and request demos; they collect information from a variety of sources before deciding on and making a purchase.\r\n\r\nThis makes attribution more complicated.\r\n\r\nWhich of those six channels is responsible for the conversion?\r\n\r\nOr are they all responsible, in part, for the conversion?\r\n\r\nTo provide clarification when running the numbers, <a href=\"https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1662518?hl=en\">multiple attribution models</a> are used:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>First-Click Attribution</strong> – 100% of the credit for a conversion is attributed to the very first campaign/channel that the buyer interacted with.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Last-Click Attribution</strong> – 100% of the credit for a conversion is attributed to the final campaign/channel that the buyer interacted with.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Last Non-Direct Click Attribution</strong> – 100% of the credit for a conversion is attributed to the last campaign/channel a buyer interacted with—but ignoring direct website visits.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Linear Attribution</strong> – The credit for a conversion is distributed evenly across each channel a buyer interacted with through the entire buying journey.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Time-Decay Attribution</strong> – The credit for conversions is spread across all touchpoints, but touchpoints nearer the conversion receive more credit than early touchpoints.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Position-Based Attribution</strong> – The first and last touchpoints both receive 40% of the credit for a conversion and the remaining 20% is spread evenly across any touchpoints in the middle of the journey.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nThe table below illustrates how each different attribution model applies credit for the conversion to each touchpoint that preceded the conversion:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3882\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/understanding-first-click-attribution-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png\" alt=\"understanding first click attribution - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"750\" height=\"319\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Why Multiple Attribution Models are Needed</h3>\r\nHere’s the truth about all attribution models: none are perfect.\r\n\r\nFirst-click, last-click, and last non-direct click only provide credit for a single step of the buying journey. Sure, first and last clicks are important. They highlight which campaigns/channels are effective in introducing leads to your brand and bridge the gap between consideration and conversion. But they eliminate the impact all other touchpoints had on the sale.\r\n\r\nLinear, time-decay, and position-based attribution are better in that they take all touchpoints into consideration. But they’re also limited because they applied for credit generically—there’s no way to determine which specific channels and campaigns were the most convincing or compelling in driving the decision to buy.\r\n\r\nAnd while none of the attribution models are perfect, they all provide some value. For example:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>The value of first-click attribution</strong> is that it provides a picture of which campaigns/channels are most effective in increasing awareness of your brand, products, or services. Looking at all of your conversions based on what the initial touchpoint was shows which campaigns/channels are most effective for top-of-the-funnel prospects.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>The value of last-click attribution</strong> is that it provides a picture of which campaigns/channels are most effective in helping prospects make a purchasing decision. Looking at all of your conversions based on what the final touchpoint was shows which campaigns/channels are most effective for bottom-of-the-funnel prospects.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>The value of linear attribution</strong> is that it provides a picture of how many stages are in your buying journey, the process that prospects go through before they make the decision to buy, which campaigns/channels are most-used and most effective in moving prospects along the journey, and the types of information needed at different stages.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nThe bottom line is that relying on a single attribution model is an ineffective way to measure marketing performance.\r\n\r\nTo gather truly actionable data, you need a way to filter data using multiple attribution models.\r\n\r\nMarketing agencies are no longer able to retain clients with surface-level metrics like traffic and brand awareness. To prove the value of clients’ investments in your agency, you have to be able to show exactly how much revenue your efforts are generating.\r\n\r\nLet’s say you’re in charge of social media and content marketing for a client whose owner runs his own PPC campaigns separately.\r\n\r\nYou track conversions using first or last-click attribution, and more often than not, it attributes conversions to PPC ads.\r\n\r\nIt’s difficult to prove the value of what you’re doing because the data shows that PPC is most effective.\r\n\r\nHowever, if you switched the report to show data using a linear attribution model, you could find, for example, that most buyers are reading a lot of content and interacting with a lot of social posts prior to the conversion.\r\n\r\nIt could even be that the ads people are clicking on before making the purchase are brand name bids that buyers mistake for the organic search result.\r\n\r\nBy filtering the data, you can prove that your efforts are contributing to incoming revenue.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, you can use the information you gathered, that the owner is spending too much on clicks for brand name keywords, to suggest cost-savings opportunities that boost revenue even more.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Ruler Analytics Provides a Solution to the Attribution Problem</h3>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/\">Ruler Analytics</a> was built by marketers for marketers with the goal of solving for the data limitations that plague the industry.\r\n\r\nOur system allows you to apply multiple attribution models, first-click, last-click, and linear, to get a complete picture of the effectiveness of different campaigns.\r\n\r\nFurthermore, Ruler has a customer journey mapping feature that provides a complete list of every single interaction that took place between the buyer and the brand before the conversion.\r\n\r\nView interactions across a timeline to see exactly which campaigns and channels comprised the journey for every lead—even anonymous ones.\r\n\r\nFinally, Ruler also allows you to take into account non-digital touchpoints and conversions.\r\n\r\nIt integrates directly with your CRM to make sure sales conversations and conversions are accounted for in marketing’s data, allowing you to track the impact marketing has on generating revenue for both online and offline sales.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Using Data to Make Better Decisions</h3>\r\nMarketing data can tell you exactly what campaigns, content, and channels are most valuable for your brand and your clients, but only if you fully understand how values are calculated and applied.\r\n\r\nThis doesn’t mean you need to be a data scientist to report on the outcomes of your efforts, but it does require the right knowledge and tools.\r\n\r\nWhen you understand the benefits and disadvantages of different attribution models and have a tool that helps you collect and filter that data, you can use it to improve your campaigns, reduce waste, and prove to your clients how your efforts are building revenue for their businesses.','Build More Effective Marketing Campaigns by Understanding Attribution','','publish','closed','open','','understanding-first-click-attribution','','','2018-02-19 15:29:47','2018-02-19 15:29:47','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=3881',0,'post','',0),(3882,3,'2018-02-19 15:02:48','2018-02-19 15:02:48','','understanding first click attribution - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','understanding-first-click-attribution-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-02-19 15:03:02','2018-02-19 15:03:02','',3881,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/understanding-first-click-attribution-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3883,3,'2018-02-19 15:08:08','2018-02-19 15:08:08','','Build More Effective Marketing Campaigns by Understanding Attribution - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','build-more-effective-marketing-campaigns-by-understanding-attribution-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-02-19 15:08:30','2018-02-19 15:08:30','',3881,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Build-More-Effective-Marketing-Campaigns-by-Understanding-Attribution-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3884,0,'2018-02-20 11:22:46','2018-02-20 11:22:46','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3884','','','2018-02-20 11:22:46','2018-02-20 11:22:46','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3884/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3885,0,'2018-02-20 11:23:20','2018-02-20 11:23:20','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3885','','','2018-02-20 11:23:20','2018-02-20 11:23:20','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3885/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3886,0,'2018-02-20 12:42:23','2018-02-20 12:42:23','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3886','','','2018-02-20 12:42:23','2018-02-20 12:42:23','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3886/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3887,0,'2018-02-20 14:09:14','2018-02-20 14:09:14','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3887','','','2018-02-20 14:09:14','2018-02-20 14:09:14','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3887/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3888,0,'2018-02-20 14:09:38','2018-02-20 14:09:38','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3888','','','2018-02-20 14:09:38','2018-02-20 14:09:38','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3888/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3889,3,'2018-02-20 14:17:38','2018-02-20 14:17:38','','scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-02-20 14:17:48','2018-02-20 14:17:48','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3890,3,'2018-02-20 15:38:44','2018-02-20 15:38:44','I must confess.\r\n\r\nInitially, I wanted to create a monster piece that focused on “how to scale an agency”, but when I did a quick search on Google, I found some pretty impressive stuff out there already.\r\n\r\nThere’s so much content on SERPs that provides insight into how agency owners can “increase revenues” or “land new business\".\r\n\r\nI wanted to do something different.\r\n\r\nDuring my research, something that became apparent is that there isn’t much out there that focuses on how agency owners can use practical methods to cope with the pressures of growing their business.\r\n\r\nFrom all of the conversations I have had with our agency partners, it’s clear that growing an agency is an emotional and mental struggle.\r\n\r\nNo matter where you are in the development of your agency, there’s a lot of pressure involved. And I could take a bet that there have been days where you’ve felt like throwing in the towel.\r\n\r\nI spend a lot of time following and interacting with agency owners on <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Katieholmes92\">Twitter</a>. Through this, it’s easy to get the impression that owning an agency, in particular, is like a walk in the park.\r\n\r\nA lot of agencies choose to engage with their audience through the power of social and will approach this by “becoming more relatable”.\r\n\r\nYou know...\r\n\r\nThey might post a picture of their recent ping-pong champion, or document how they’ve recently smashed their record of “the number of teas made in one brew round”.\r\n\r\nI mean, who doesn’t love ping-pong and caffeine - right?\r\n\r\nThing is, although this is making your brand seem more approachable, it can also create this illusion that owning an agency is an easy slog.\r\n\r\nWhen in reality, it’s quite the opposite\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Sometimes Taking Deep Breaths Just Isn’t Enough</h2>\r\nI did find some insightful articles on how business owners can keep their stress levels under control.\r\n\r\nHow taking deep breaths can make the feeling of stress disappear, or how keeping a tidy environment can help maintain a clear mind. And although these practices may be scientifically proven to release stress and can have a major impact on your sanity, they count for nothing if you haven’t got an on-hands approach implemented in the workplace to run alongside.\r\n\r\nIn today’s high-pressure industry, you probably feel as though your business is constantly on the line.\r\n\r\nThat’s natural.\r\n\r\nAs an agency owner, you more or less have the final say on every decision, negotiation or pitch. Empowering as this is, it also carries a lot of emotional burdens which can wear you down.\r\n\r\nYou need to remember this: you’re not alone.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>How Others Are Coping With The Pressures Of Scaling An Agency</h2>\r\nMitchel White, Founder &amp; Managing Director of <a href=\"https://leftmedia.co.uk/\">LeftMedia</a> admitted that he’s “one of those people that worry a lot, but running an agency can put a big pressure on you mentally and physically”.\r\n\r\nWith that said, I thought it would be a good idea to approach a variety of agency owners, all from different cultures, and ask them the following question:\r\n\r\n<strong>“What do you consider is your biggest pressure growing your agency, and what methods have you put in place to reduce/avoid it?”</strong>\r\n\r\nBy doing this, I was able to understand the common pressures that agency owners face on a daily basis and get first-hand, actionable insight into how they’re keeping those troubles at bay in the workplace.\r\n\r\nHopefully, by the end of this article, you will of been able to connect with what our agency experts have had to say and take onboard some of their methods.\r\n\r\n<strong>Please note: </strong>\r\n\r\nThis is a monster 8000+ word practical guide on how to cope with the pressures of scaling your agency. I’ve produced this guide for agency owners at all stages. So with that said, you may find the stuff our agency owners have advised is something you’re doing already.\r\n\r\nKnowing this, I’ve included a quick navigation so you can go straight to the sections that you identify with the most:\r\n\r\n1. <a href=\"#1\">Dealing With The Common Pressure Of Financials</a>\r\n2. <a href=\"#2\">The Challenges Of Recruitment And Hiring The Right Talent</a>\r\n3. <a href=\"#3\">Being Able To Trust And Let Go</a>\r\n4. <a href=\"#4\">Maintaining Standards And Achieving Results</a>\r\n\r\nLet\'s dive in!\r\n\r\nBelow you will find a list of pressures identified by the agency owners I emailed. Plus, the strategies they’re using to keep their tensions to a minimum.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Dealing With The Common Pressure of Financials</h2>\r\n<a name=\"1\"></a>Once I started to receive some feedback, I noticed a clear pattern straight away. Most of the agency owners that I questioned all share the mutual pressure of cash-flow uncertainty, as well as ensuring that they have enough revenue to cover operational costs.\r\n\r\nWas I shocked? Not at all.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3846\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n<small>Image courtesy of <a href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/19705/the-3-biggest-challenges-facing-marketing-agencies.aspx\">Hubspot</a></small>\r\n\r\nA previous survey by Hubspot revealed that two-thirds of agency owners consider unpredictable cash flow one of their top three challenges, and 19% of them called it their top concern.\r\n\r\nMitchel White and Dan Cullen-Shute, CEO &amp; Founder at <a href=\"https://www.creaturelondon.com/\">Creature of London</a>, both share the same pressure which is ensuring that they “keep the lights on”.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this Dan believes that “there are a million pressures that come from running an agency.”\r\n\r\n“The pressure to make every piece of work something you\'d be as proud of in Effectiveness Week as you would in Cannes; the pressure to ensure we don\'t run out of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes on a Monday morning; and the pressure to make sure you\'re both funny AND insightful when asked to supply a quote for somebody else\'s article. Sitting atop ALL of that, though is the pressure to keep everybody’s mortgages paid”, he says.\r\n\r\nDarren Marble, CEO of <a href=\"https://www.crowdfundx.io/\">CrowdfundX</a>, can relate to Dan\'s statement. He also revealed that his biggest pressure is “ensuring that they generate enough revenue to cover salaries and overheads on a monthly basis”.\r\n\r\nWhatever size your agency is or how fast it’s growing, there’s always going to be that uncertainty of cash-flow. Sadly, we can’t see into the future and predict when we’re going to get hit by unexpected costs or experience one of those ‘bad months”.\r\n\r\nFortunately, the agency experts I questioned shared their methods on how to reduce that pressure of uncertainty and provided me with tips on how to manage your finances in a more efficient and reassuring way.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Put An Estimated LTV (Lifetime Value) On Each Client</h3>\r\nJordan Scheltgen, Founder of <a href=\"http://cavesocial.com/\">Cave Social</a>, believes that a lot of agencies are quick to tell their clients to spend big on SEM, SMM, but then don\'t do any of that stuff themselves.\r\n\r\nHe says that “you need to figure out what it costs you to get a client, then put an estimated LTV (Lifetime Value) on that client.”\r\n\r\nJordan believes that putting an LTV on your client is “key to financial growth”.\r\n\r\nAlso known as, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) or Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) - depending on your preference. LTV is a method used by marketers to project the revenue a customer will generate during their lifetime.\r\n\r\n<strong>Lifetime Value (LTV) = Total Customer Revenue – Total Customer Costs</strong>\r\n\r\nJordan demonstrated his belief by using an example of his own, which he shared on <a href=\"https://inbound.org/discuss/any-tips-for-my-new-digital-marketing-agency\">Inbound.org</a>:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3889\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"731\" height=\"198\" />\r\n\r\nLTV can determine the financial gain of your of business and is a valuable metric for those running an agency or subscription-based model.\r\n\r\nBy calculating the LTV of your customers, you can reveal where stronger marketing efforts are needed, as well as the long-term financial impact of losing current customers.\r\n\r\nMore importantly, LTV can be used as a premature warning sign to detect defection rates. It identifies in which segments “a problem” originates, so procedures can be put in place to correct the cause. In turn, reducing that dreaded pressure of “cash flow uncertainty”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Switch To A Retainer Based Pricing Model - If You Haven’t Already</h3>\r\nWe heard how Mitchel White’s biggest pressure “is keeping the lights on.”\r\n\r\nHe also told me that, “the additional costs of premises and PAYE (for example) add extra pressures with cash flow being notoriously hard in a traditional agency where fees are project based.”\r\n\r\nOne way Mitchel has tackled this is by increasing the number of his recurring revenue clients. By doing this Mitchel has, “guaranteed monthly income when new projects go a little quiet.\"\r\n\r\nAlthough to receive the true benefits of recurring revenue, you will need to ditch your project-based pricing model in favour of a retainer. In fact, Jordan Scheltgen strongly advises anyone billing hourly to “switch to a retainer pricing model as soon as possible - if you haven’t already”.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, he advises that you should “project your hours (internally), then put forward a price monthly with your deliverables.”\r\n\r\nBy implementing a retainer-based model, you have a predictable source of regular income and clear mechanisms for operational costs.\r\n\r\nMore importantly, you have a clear roadmap for future production and can budget your team\'s time accordingly.\r\n\r\nUsing a retainer model has enabled Ed Leake to factor his average billable working hours and overhead per role, giving him a baseline cost.\r\n\r\nIn a <a href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/agency/start-agency-actually-matter\">previous article</a>, Ed Leake, Founder of <a href=\"https://midasmedia.co.uk/\">Midas Media</a>, revealed how he used to whimper when looking at his overheads, but since implementing the following process he now cherishes them.\r\n\r\nLeake says, “It’s really simple, anyone with a copy of Excel can do it. I use total working hours – holidays – 3 days sick * 70% efficiency, per person.”\r\n\r\nLeake shares with us a quick example of what this process looks like:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3891\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/pressure-scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png\" alt=\"pressure scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"399\" height=\"163\" />\r\n\r\nEd accounts for a person’s wage, the business cost (office, equipment, software tools etc) and any advertising budget.\r\n\r\nNext, he adds in projected hours per service, which gives him a no-nonsense baseline. The spreadsheet then calculates a 20% creep/slack with a 35% profit margin.\r\n\r\nThe end result, an ACCURATE price for the service.\r\n\r\nHere\'s an example:\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3892\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/pressure-scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.png\" alt=\"pressure scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"800\" height=\"90\" />\r\n\r\nEd claims this process (in tandem with tight project management) has enabled him to propose retainers to the nearest hour billable.\r\n\r\n“Often our prices look ‘funny’ because of this, we don’t round up or down to get a job – we give exact figures without discount”, he says.\r\n\r\nEd claims this process offers “immediate trust and transparency”.\r\n\r\nRetainers are most efficient when you know a solid, predictable relationship makes sense. They are an effective method for both agencies and clients. Less time is spent on unnecessary paperwork, allowing both parties to focus on what matters the most - achieving results.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, retainers make scheduling easy and simplify your proposal stage. Instead of generating a custom, project-specific proposal for each of your clients. A retainer can help you draw up a template contract, which can come in handy if you receive a lot of proposal requests.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Watch Every Penny - Even When You’re Making Money</h3>\r\nThis may sound obvious, but you\'d be surprised at how crazy some people get once they start to see the money piling up in the bank.\r\n\r\nGo on a spending spree too early, and you’re going receive a backlash of financial pressure.\r\n\r\nFor most people, running an agency doesn’t equate to instant riches.\r\n\r\nEd Leake, Founder of Midas Media believes the best way to manage your finances is to, “be tight and watch every penny – even when you’re making money. This isn’t just in the first few years; you need to do it forever.”\r\n\r\nHe goes on to say that, “some of the richest people in the world become rich because they keep an eye on their expenses like a hawk.”\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://richhabits.net/\">Tom Corley</a>, an accountant and financial planner, surveyed 233 wealthy individuals. Mostly self-made millionaires, he asked them questions about their daily spending habits.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3851\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" />\r\n\r\nThe majority of wealthy people in Corley’s research said that they save a significant amount of their revenue income. In fact, 80% of the individuals in Tom\'s study didn’t become wealthy until the age of 50.\r\n\r\nCorley recommends that you should put 20% of your monthly income into savings.\r\n\r\nFor example, if you generate £100,000 each month in revenue, try and put £20,000 into savings. By doing this, over time you will start to see your savings account grow.\r\n\r\nIf the recession taught us anything, it’s that the most successful businesses can sometimes encounter financial challenges beyond their control.\r\n\r\nSo, by keeping a cash supply on hand, you can ensure that your business will stay afloat in lean times.\r\n\r\nNot only will this enable you to keep providing services, but you take away that pressure of generating enough revenue to cover operational costs and employee wages.\r\n\r\nFor Mike Ramsey, President of <a href=\"https://niftymarketing.com/\">Nifty Marketing</a>, he has opted for Dave Ramsey’s <a href=\"https://www.daveramsey.com/\">personal financial guidelines</a> for his business and finds it very conservative. Dave Ramsey’s personal financial guide is pretty much in tune with Thomas Corley’s advice.\r\n\r\nHowever, whereas Corley recommends that you put away 20% of your revenue each month. Dave Ramsey suggests that you should have 3-6 months of expenses on hand at all times.\r\n\r\nFor example: at £65,000 per month of expenses, you should have between £195,000-£390,000 in reserves.\r\n\r\nDave admits that this can seem like a lot of money. With that said, if clients unexpectedly drop, or major industry changes necessitate a completely new model, you will have the cash on hand to make good decisions - instead of desperate ones.\r\n\r\nBy following Dave’s advice has put Mike’s agency in a unique position, “we’re growing, but not at a crazy rate.\"\r\n\r\nMike says, “if we lose a client, it’s ok. If we have late payments, that is also ok. I can sleep given I know we have months of float with zero income if needed.”\r\n\r\nHe accepts that his biggest pressure is “false pressure” that he puts on himself that he has to scale at a certain rate each month.\r\n\r\nHe believes this type of thinking can lead to seriously bad long terms decisions and can deplete cash flow rapidly.\r\n\r\n“Greed can build things fast, but can also bring everything down just as quickly. I would rather take my time and play the long game\", Mike says.\r\n\r\nThere’s always a cheaper or more efficient way of achieving your results on a budget, it’s just getting into the habit of finding that cheaper alternative and some strategic planning.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Focus On Building A Solid Process For Getting New Business</h3>\r\nSo, we’ve established that cash flow is easier to calculate and maintain by switching to a retainer pricing model. And that calculating the LTV of your customers will allow you to estimate the financial gain of your business.\r\n\r\nAlthough, before getting to these formulas, you will need to ensure that you have a solid process for getting new business.\r\n\r\nI mean, there’s no math without clients - right?\r\n\r\nSeb Dean, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.imaginaire.co.uk/\">Imaginare Digital</a>, advises that “you should be focusing on building a solid process for getting new business.”\r\n\r\nHe isn’t alone in saying this.\r\n\r\nPreviously, we heard how Darren Marble’s biggest pressure is generating enough revenue to cover salaries and overheads on a monthly basis.\r\n\r\nA common pressure shared by many business owners - I’m sure you will agree?\r\n\r\nTo address this challenge Darren stays “relentlessly focused on new client acquisition and creating reference accounts” which helps him sell against the competition.\r\n\r\nDarren believes that “sales solves all problems” and recommends that you “make it your core focus.”\r\n\r\nBy plotting out his sales process, it’s allowed Seb Dean to accomplish his goals.\r\n\r\nSeb leaves us with a couple of questions which you can ask yourself when building a solid process for getting new business:\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>Think about who your customers are?</li>\r\n 	<li>How are you going to reach them?</li>\r\n 	<li>Where are your leads coming from?</li>\r\n 	<li>How many appointments will you need to have each week to make enough money to pay yourself a wage?</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nIf you’ve asked yourself these questions, and feel as though you have come to a dead-end, then there are other alternative methods you can take to generate new business.\r\n\r\nOliver Gaywood, Founder of <a href=\"http://www.civicwebmedia.com.au/\">Civic Web Media</a>, made sure that everyone in his network knew what he was doing. People he had previously worked with and even his friends. It was this process that allowed Oliver to develop some of his most profitable relationships.\r\n\r\n“Some people wanted help with their content, some referred me to those they knew who needed it and others, even though they didn\'t really know what content marketing was, associated the term with us and would mention us in relevant conversations”, says Oliver.\r\n\r\nIf you feel as though you\'ve exhausted all your personal networks, Josh Ballard, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.paradoxmarketing.com.au/\">Paradox Marketing</a>, says that you can accelerate Oliver’s process by “getting out and networking as hard as you can in your own hometown.”\r\n\r\n“As you meet new people in person make sure that you have a follow-up plan for engaging with them online. Always be adding value and never be sold. You will win more work in the long run by sending through meticulously well-curated content to your prospects than you will by pointing out how their digital presence is not working well\", says Josh.\r\n\r\nAs well as this, you should also build a solid process for your existing accounts too.\r\n\r\nIn my previous roundup, I emailed agency experts to get their perspective on how they scale agency revenues by <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/agency/account-expansion/\">expanding existing accounts</a>.\r\n\r\nIf you run both processes alongside each other in the right way, those pressures of generating enough revenue to cover salaries and overheads with soon evaporate.\r\n\r\nDan Shutes says, “we’ve stuck to winning business whenever possible, which has done us alright so far.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>The Challenges of Recruitment and Hiring The Right Talent</h2>\r\n<a name=\"2\"></a>For Brian Whigham, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.venndigital.co.uk/\">Venn</a>, “raising money has become incredibly easy, especially in the North West.”\r\n\r\nBrian believes this is due to the focus on the Northern Powerhouse, “from government funding, private equity through to crowdfunding, the access to investment has never been so good.”\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/207780664\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe>\r\n\r\n<small><a href=\"https://vimeo.com/207780664\">NPIF What impact will NPIF have?</a> from <a href=\"https://vimeo.com/britishbusinessbank\">British Business Bank</a> on <a href=\"https://vimeo.com\">Vimeo</a>.</small>\r\n\r\nHe claims that the challenge of growing a digital agency is “simply twofold.”\r\n\r\nThe perception that the web is becoming easier and cheaper when in reality, it’s getting harder and more expensive.\r\n\r\n“As marketers, we are flooded with tools and resources that supposedly make our lives easier. In reality, the speed of evolution is creating a storm that every agency and business is trying to compete in”, he says.\r\n\r\nAs a direct consequence, Brian feels “there is a dearth of talent.”\r\n\r\nAlong with the uncertainty of cash flow and revenue, another common issue shared by agency owners is the challenge of recruiting the right talent for their business.\r\n\r\nOn the launch of <a href=\"https://www.seedpublicity.co.uk/\">Seed</a>, Founder Nick-Stuart Miller felt that his biggest pressure would be maintaining the high standards which they set themselves for achieving results.\r\n\r\nAlthough, because they\'ve structured their message to empower team members with self-development and autonomous decision making. Nick soon realised that the challenge is actually hiring the right kind of people to support their existing values.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3893\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"524\" height=\"319\" />\r\n<small>Image source: The 2017 State of <a href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33820/5-major-challenges-marketers-face-and-how-to-solve-them.aspx\">Inbound Report</a></small>\r\n\r\nHe isn’t alone feeling like this.\r\n\r\nJane Asscher, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.23red.com/\">23red</a> and Kayleigh Toyra, Co-founder of <a href=\"https://seeker.digital/\">Seeker</a> say their biggest challenges revolve around recruiting the right talent, as well as building and maintaining their organisational culture.\r\n\r\nJane believes this is “relatively easy when you’re in startup mode”. Although admits that it gets more difficult as an organisation grows and the owners can no longer be hands on everything.\r\n\r\nAccording to a report by Hubspot, hiring top talent was the eighth biggest challenge marketers faced in 2017.\r\n\r\nSo, why is finding talent such a challenge for agencies?\r\n\r\nIn the past couple of years, there has been a significant shift from outbound to inbound marketing.\r\n\r\nThere seems to be a bigger demand for top talent, but not enough supply out there to cover it.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, the required skills a modern marketer are very different to what they were a decade ago. Nowadays, roles seem to have overlapped and morphed.\r\n\r\nFor example, marketers are needed to oversee marketing activities as well as assist sales to generate new business and drive growth within existing accounts.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3894\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-4.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 4\" width=\"701\" height=\"455\" />\r\n<small>job description courtesy of <a href=\"https://www.indeed.co.uk/\">Indeed.co.uk</a>.</small>\r\n\r\nTo make matters more complicated. In 2016 it was reported that millennials are actually job-hopping more frequently than previous generations, according to this <a href=\"https://blog.linkedin.com/2016/04/12/will-this-year_s-college-grads-job-hop-more-than-previous-grads\">research</a> conducted by LinkedIn.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3895\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-2.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 2\" width=\"700\" height=\"468\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nCombining all these factors together, it’s no surprise that agency owners consider finding the right talent a challenge.\r\n\r\nIf you’re lucky enough to find that “talent superstar” who has all the required skills and more. There’s no guarantee that they will actually stick around long enough to have an impact on results.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Retain Your Employees and Reduce That Challenge of \'Talent Shortages\'</h3>\r\nTalent shortages seem to be a common issue throughout many industries. Although, it is a significant challenge for those who work in the digital and tech sector.\r\n\r\nEd Leake says that “talented people are your lifeblood” when it comes to agency growth.\r\n\r\nSo, what can you do to reduce that talent shortage and pressure of finding the perfect candidate for your business?\r\n\r\nIt may sound obvious, but the most effective way of counteracting talent shortages is by focusing on getting more out of your existing employees.\r\n\r\nMore than half of employers globally are developing and training their own people in order to overcome recruitment challenges.\r\n\r\nJane Asscher and the team at Red23 have implemented management practices, staff benefits, training and development plans to support their existing staff and combat any recruitment issues.\r\n\r\n“We are looking for people to grab opportunities to learn, develop and share new concepts”, says Jane.\r\n\r\nJane provides her existing employees with a cultural allowance which they can spend on theatre, museum galleries and other events. The aim of this is to help encourage employees to flourish and expand their cultural know-how.\r\n\r\nThis focus on their culture and values has helped Jane attract and retain talent. Ensuring that they have one of the lowest levels of staff turnover in the industry.\r\n\r\nSo, instead of waiting for that “worldie candidate” to come along, who has all the skills you desire and more. Why not invest time into someone who has worked at your side for a while, and demonstrated their dedication to your business already?\r\n\r\nIn this study, Data Freaks discovered that 89% of millennials said that they would stay with the same company for 10+ years if just two criteria were met:1.\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>1. Opportunities for upward career mobility</li>\r\n 	<li>2. Regular increase in compensation.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nIt is this exact method that has allowed Nick Stuart-Miller, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.seedpublicity.co.uk/\">Seed</a>, to alleviate growth challenges.\r\n\r\n“We have made sure every person at Seed feels like they are an important part of our company, and giving them responsibility, accountability and the voice to be heard\", he says.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, Nick has ensured that their leadership team, himself and business partner Robin, are available to the team at all times.\r\n\r\nWith an intrinsic level of openness, Nick communicates with his team to ensure that individual challenges are supported.\r\n\r\nCommunication is key to success. Make time for your employees, and give them the responsibility they\'ve worked so hard for.\r\n\r\nBryan Alston, Senior Director at Los Angeles’ fastest growing digital agency and now as Head of E-commerce at <a href=\"http://www.bamf.media/\">BAMF Media</a>, says “having more two-way conversations between sales and operations is key.”\r\n\r\nNick and Bryan are prime examples of how communication can help cap staff turnover and reduce the challenge of “talent shortage”.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Could We Be Making A Difference To The Talent Shortage?</h3>\r\nIs there something else we could be doing now which will have an impact on our “talent dilemma” in 5-10 years time?\r\n\r\nBrian Whingham believes the main problem with talent crisis is that there isn’t enough focus at the grassroots level in school.\r\n\r\n“Young boys and girls need to be shown the opportunity that online companies present for their career and personal development”, he says.\r\n\r\nPersonally, as a marketer who has experience in SEO, PPC and Content I do struggle to tell friends and family who don’t work in the industry what I do for a living. In my agency days, I found the easiest thing to do was tell others that “I just help other businesses with their online presence”\r\n\r\nPeople outside our industry literally have no idea that our jobs exist. In fact, I’m going to use an example of how unacknowledged our market is:\r\n\r\nI was watching the apprentice final with a friend.\r\n\r\nFor anyone who hasn’t watched the apprentice before. It’s a reality game show in which a group of aspiring entrepreneurs (plant pots) compete against each other in a series of business-related challenges in order to win a £250,000 business investment from Lord Alan Sugar.\r\n\r\nIn this particular final, one contestant pitched their confectionery business and was then followed by another individual who promoted their IT recruitment idea.\r\n\r\nMy friend turned to me and said, “that IT person does what you do!”\r\n\r\nConsidering that SEO, PPC, content and other online marketing activities have been around for over a decade now, the lack of exposure for our industry is quite concerning.\r\n\r\nBrian Whingham believes “once we solve the talent problem, the role of the agency owner will become much easier.”\r\n\r\nPersonally, as a marketer, I feel as though we need to come up with innovative ways on how we can shed more light on what we do.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.liverpoolgirlgeeks.co.uk/\">Liverpool Geek Girls</a> are a perfect example to follow.\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/u8VWBEqFOTc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nTheir core mission is to tackle the current gender imbalance and skills gap in the technology sector.\r\n\r\nHowever, in my opinion, it’s the fact that they host events, courses and workshops for women and girls of all ages which makes them so important.\r\n\r\nThey’re doing exactly what Brian Whigham says we need to do. They’re targeting youngest and exposing them to the possibilities of the tech sector. Something a lot of us didn’t have access to at an adolescent age.\r\n\r\nA lot of individuals have built a successful career off the back of the marketing and tech industry, but have failed to give back to the community.\r\n\r\nI believe if we take a hint of inspiration from organisations such as Geek Girls, we could break down the barrier on the talent shortage for generations to come.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Take Your Time and Avoid the Cost of a Bad Hire</h3>\r\nAlthough the methods that we’ve just discussed can help decrease staff turnover and “talent shortages”, they won’t completely prevent staff from leaving your business - but that’s okay!\r\n\r\nHiring is hard. Especially when an existing employee leaves your business without any warning.\r\n\r\nA big mistake agency owners do in this circumstance, is get into a panic and advise the job position on a LinkedIn update.\r\n\r\nWe’ve all seen those status updates...\r\n\r\nHiring the wrong person will disrupt the rest of your workforce and can lead to a loss of revenue.\r\n\r\nWhen Kayleigh Toyra started out, she took advice from other agency leaders on how they manage their own recruitment challenges.\r\n\r\n“I\'ve come to realise that taking your time with decisions; and hiring on attitude, not just aptitude, are good strategies\", says Kayleigh.\r\n\r\nWho would you rather choose:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>A candidate with all the desired skills, but a negative attitude towards teamwork?</li>\r\n 	<li>Or a dedicated individual, who has a couple of weakness, but has demonstrated their determination and ability to adapt to your current environment?</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nRather than searching for a candidate when a position becomes available, Kayleigh has remained on the lookout for new talent - even when it’s not required.\r\n\r\n“With growing an agency, you need to constantly be on the lookout for new talent - it\'s an ongoing, rather than a \'stop and start\' process”, says Kayleigh.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Being Able To Trust and Let Go</h2>\r\n<a name=\"3\"></a>For some agency owners, it’s not searching for talent which they consider challenging. It’s the pressure of being able to trust and let go of the responsibilities which they’ve had for so long.\r\n\r\nKyle Racki, Founder of <a href=\"https://www.proposify.com/?utm_source=ruleranalytics\">Proposify</a>, highlighted this in his email to me.\r\n\r\n“The biggest pressure growing an agency is handing over the reigns to other people. As an agency owner, you started as a freelancer where you managed everything: the clients, the projects, the invoicing, the new business”, he says.\r\n\r\nKyle wasn’t the only person who made me aware of this pressure shared by many agency owners.\r\n\r\nWhilst scaling his agency Jamie Huskisson, Managing Director and Founder of <a href=\"https://wearejh.com/\">JH</a>, witnessed first hand how “most people try to do things themselves, finding it hard to let go.”\r\n\r\nMost agency owners do start out as freelancers. So, in the past, they’ve had complete control over client projects.\r\n\r\nHowever, scaling an agency is a whole different ball game, and on the road to success, agency owners must sacrifice that time they use to spend controlling client projects steering the business.\r\n\r\nUnderstandably, this can be a difficult routine to break.\r\n\r\nWhile no one knows your vision or brand better than you, scaling an agency demands a variety of skills at the top. With that said, our agency owners shed some light on how to ease your fears of letting go.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Hire People Smarter Than You</h3>\r\nPreviously, we heard how Ed Leake used to whimper when he looked at overheads, but now he cherishes them.\r\n\r\nHe knows that beneath his numbers is a solid team of experts who save him from mental overload. Experts he can rely on and who clients enjoy working with.\r\n\r\nEd strongly believes that “if you’re the most skilled person in your business, you’re not hiring the right people.”\r\n\r\nSome agency owners have developed this pressure that they need to be the smartest person in the room, or they will lose the respect of their employees. As they’re a leader, they feel as though they should hold all answers.\r\n\r\nThis isn’t true.\r\n\r\nJess Butcher says, “you need to ensure that you\'re hiring good \'managers\' and not just good doers - people potentially better than you at their areas of expertise who you can empower to hire, manage and develop their teams and really \'own\' their areas of the business. You simply cannot scale if you continue to have to have a direct input in everything that the business is doing.\"\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/hire-people-better-you-says-macmillan-marketing-director/1432378\">In this article</a>, Richard Taylor, Fundraising and Marketing Director for Macmillan Cancer Support, says “the secret to success is to bring in people who are better than you at any job that you could ever do.”\r\n\r\nHiring someone who is smarter than you doesn’t necessarily mean that you should bring someone who could step into your role tomorrow.\r\n\r\nBeing smart means that an individual isn’t afraid to use their brain or ask questions. They’re curious, and that’s the type of people you want taking over the reins.\r\n\r\nHiring smart people gives your agency a better chance of success, and makes your role as an agency owner easier.\r\n\r\nTaylor believes hiring smart people “makes you look good.”\r\n\r\nTo become a great leader you must surround yourself with talented people. It is your responsibility to build a team that can bring innovation and unique ideas to the table.\r\n\r\nBusinessman R.H Grant <a href=\"https://www.forbes.com/quotes/7677/\">once said</a>, “when you hire people that are smarter than you, you prove you are smarter than they are.\"\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Preventing The One-Man-Band Syndrome</h3>\r\nThis doesn’t just happen to startup owners. One-man band syndrome can strike when you’re years into the business. For anyone who is unaware what this is, it’s when an MD or founder try and run their whole business by themselves.\r\n\r\nIn the beginning, you generally need to have an understanding of sales, marketing and tech if you want to get your business off the ground.\r\n\r\nHowever, if you adopt one-man band syndrome for too long, the growth of your company will eventually flatline.\r\n\r\nKyle Racki says that “many can’t get out of their own way. It’s essential to not be the star when you run an agency.”\r\n\r\nHe admits in his article on <a href=\"https://www.proposify.com/blog/how-to-start-an-agency\">how to start an agency</a>, that one of the hardest things to do as an agency owner is to step out of the spotlight.\r\n\r\nIf you ever get the temptation to set up your own one-man band. You should ask yourself this question.\r\n\r\n“Is this really in the best interest of our clients, or it is in the best interest of my ego?”\r\n\r\nOne-man band syndrome can demonstrate a lack of trust and lowers team morale. More importantly, it can have a backlash on productivity. Increasing churn rates and igniting that pressure of “future unpredictability.”\r\n\r\nIn his book, <em><a href=\"https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AVWmcx2rCtwC&amp;pg=PA73&amp;lpg=PA73&amp;dq=business+one+man+band+syndrome&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=7BMLVz-RNx&amp;sig=xCxC36OIjhTfagMEWefHEI3mGKI&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjantnpg7zYAhWjKMAKHSGACxE4ChDoAQgyMAA#v=onepage&amp;q=business%20one%20man%20band%20syndrome&amp;f=false\">great from the start: how conscious corporations attract success</a></em>, Author John B Montgomery speaks about how CEO of Semiconductor was a victim of one-man band syndrome.\r\n\r\nThe CEO of Semiconductor was unable to delegate and had no executive team to support him.\r\n\r\nHe made every decision - from hiring new employees to buying paper clips.\r\n\r\nHis inability to surround himself with a strong team of employees prevented his company from scaling to its full potential.\r\n\r\nEventually, Lucent Technologies eventually acquired his company.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Avoid The Trap Of Micromanagement</h3>\r\nComparable to having one-man band syndrome, micromanagement is when leaders give responsibilities to others, but closely observe and control the work of his/her subordinates.\r\n\r\nIt’s so easy for agency owners to fall into that trap and get confused between “leadership” and “Micromanagement”.\r\n\r\nLeading your employees and keeping them accountable is a huge part of scaling an agency.\r\n\r\nI’m sure you’re all aware of the management style of Steve Jobs’.\r\n\r\nHe was progressive, intense and very particular. It’s well-known that Job’s had a slight infatuation with dictatorship, which in the beginning, was an issue at Apple.\r\n\r\nHis micromanagement caused confusion and fear amongst employees, which was having a negative effect on the development of Macintosh.\r\n\r\nMoral of the story here is, by micromanaging your employees, you’re potentially decreasing the chances of agency success.\r\n\r\nAs much as you want to be involved in every aspect of the business, which you built from the ground up, you need to learn how to step back and allow your employees to make key decisions without your input.\r\n\r\nScott Berkun has an insightful analogy for owners and leaders who are guilty of this common habit:\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3896\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-5.png\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"650\" height=\"530\" />\r\n\r\nA good way to overcome this habit is by developing awareness of why you’re micromanaging. In most cases, it’s because of an insecurity. Maybe you’re afraid that it will reflect badly on you if your team doesn’t succeed.\r\n\r\nMuriel Maignan Wilkins, the co-author of <a href=\"https://hbr.org/product/own-the-room-discover-your-signature-voice-to-mast/an/10931-HBK-ENG\">Own the Room</a> and Co-founder of <a href=\"http://paravispartners.com/\">Paravis Partners</a>, recommends you ask yourself the following question:\r\n\r\n“what excuses am I using to micromanage?”\r\n\r\nInstead of using excuses such as, “it will save time if I do it myself.” Or “too much much is at stake to allow this to go wrong” Wilkins recommends that you focus on, “the reasons why you should not micromanage?”\r\n\r\nMicromanagement diminishes creativity and innovation. When employees feel like they’re being watched they are less likely to step outside the box.\r\n\r\nBy asking yourself the question of “why you should not micromanage?”\r\n\r\nYou increase the job satisfaction of your employees, ensuring the future of your business.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Integrate Autonomy Into Your Culture</h3>\r\n“Autonomy is the antithesis of micromanagement”, says Joan F Cheverie, Director, Professional Development of <a href=\"https://www.educause.edu/\">EDUCAUSE</a>.\r\n\r\nYour agency needs a leader, not a micromanager, who knows how to give autonomy to employees who can lead the company more effectively in specific areas.\r\n\r\nFor Jamie Huskisson, “one of the most important things when growing an agency, is to give people the power they deserve and provide them with the autonomy, when they can deal with it, to really flourish.”\r\n\r\nJamie recommends that you should “identify your leaders early” and “give them the opportunity to shine as early as you can.”\r\n\r\nAutonomy is crucial for building employee engagement and is believed to decrease the levels of emotional exhaustion felt by employees.\r\n\r\nIn this 2011 study, from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, they found that handing over more autonomy to one “talent superstar” isn’t enough. Other teams members should also have the ability to get involved in important decisions.\r\n\r\nSo, how can you go about giving your employees autonomy they need to succeed?\r\n\r\n<small>Start small.</small>\r\n\r\nIf you’re feeling the pressure of handing over the reins still, start by raising your team’s autonomy slowly. This way, you will be assured that you’re not giving away too much control at once, avoiding any potential backtracking in the future.\r\n\r\nAlso, make sure that you identify the balance between autonomy and structure. Joan Cheverie recommends the following:\r\n\r\n“Stop telling your staff how to do their job and, instead, set the strategic direction deadlines and benchmarks”.\r\n\r\nLet your staff decided how they will accomplish the job, encourage your employees to set their own goals. Cheverie says that this creates a specific kind of motivation called intrinsic motivation - the desire to do something for its own sake.\r\n\r\nBy defining the end result clearly, you can outline any barriers. You\'re giving your employees the autonomy they need but within a specific perimeter.\r\n\r\nJamie sums it for us, as to why it’s so important to provide your employees with the autonomy they need to succeed:\r\n\r\n“By providing autonomy you\'ll grow quicker because you have more people tackling different tasks at once and you ‘move as one’ as a leadership team internally”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>Maintaining Standards and Achieving Results</h2>\r\n<a name=\"4\"></a>Maintaining the standards of your business as you scale is always going to be an uphill challenge. No matter where you are in the development of your agency.\r\n\r\nSome agency owners share the mutual pressure of maintaining their standards as they start to take on more projects and experience sustainable growth.\r\n\r\nBryan Alston considers “the biggest challenge to growing an agency is making sure you have the resources and capabilities to live up to client expectation, and aligning that with the sales team from day 1.”\r\n\r\nOn the one hand, you’re ecstatic with all the business that is coming through the door. On the other hand, you’re worried that when you increase projects, you will dilute the quality that you’ve worked so hard to achieve.\r\n\r\nIn addition to this, agencies are constantly having to adapt and change, as the online industry continues rapidly evolve.\r\n\r\nAndy Golpys, Co-Founder of <a href=\"https://madebyshape.co.uk/\">MadeByShape</a>, says in the early days the main pressure is “getting the work.” However, believes his biggest pressure was/is to “keep the standards high all the time.”\r\n\r\nHe admits “this might not sound like your typical pressure” but says, “the standard of our work is our reputation and if that standard drops, it has a knock on effect. We won\'t get as many enquiries or repeat customers, and that creates the pressure of having to bring money in to pay the wages.”\r\n\r\nIn the book, <em><a href=\"https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scaling-up-Excellence-Hayagreeva-Rao/dp/1847940994\">scaling up excellence: getting more without settling for less</a></em>, coauthor Robert I. Sutton says that, “companies grow well and scale badly when they focus on running up the numbers but not the quality. They get bigger and start to look like just any organisation. And there goes the value.”\r\n\r\nIt’s so easy for agency owners to lose sight when it comes to quality control, especially when their business is scaling at a significant pace.\r\n\r\nThe following are just a few practices, recommended by our agency owners, which you can take on board to avoid that dreaded pressure of maintaining standards.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Don’t Be Afraid To Say “No”</h3>\r\nFor all of you out there that did start out as freelancers, you will of been inclined to say “YES” to any project or client that came your way.\r\n\r\nWe’ve all got bills to pay - right?\r\n\r\nIt’s this experience that makes it hard for agency owners to say no to jobs which they simply can\'t accommodate. While cash-flow is crucial, you need to ensure that any work you take on is aligned with your business goals.\r\n\r\nAndy Golpys is a great example of this.\r\n\r\nHis vision was to operate a small studio, and for various reasons, never wants to go past 12 members of staff.\r\n\r\nAndy says, “as an agency grows, there become more difficulties such as, increased volume of projects, tighter deadlines, more staff to manage, more people to deal with, and a lot more travelling which takes up time”.\r\n\r\nBy putting in place simple, but effective methods, Andy has been able to tackle the pressure of maintaining standards head-on.\r\n\r\nAs well as tweaking their “client-side process” to elevate production. Andy has taken a back seat in terms of design to solely concentrate on business development, client and project management.\r\n\r\nAndy says, “this involves planning the diary 3 months in advance, and saying no to projects if the diary is already full.”\r\n\r\nBy saying no to projects, Andy has remained loyal to his initial goal of establishing a small studio specialising in search engine optimisation, web design and development.\r\n\r\nHowever, for some, saying no just doesn’t come naturally. We either can’t face letting people down or refuse to be perceived as a “no person”.\r\n\r\nYou need to remember, it’s not unprofessional to turn down work. By saying no to things you don’t want to do, allows you to say yes to more of the things that you want.\r\n\r\nBefore saying yes to a job, ask yourself the following questions first:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>Will saying yes to this job divert me from my initial goals?</li>\r\n 	<li>Do I want to be known for this type of work?</li>\r\n 	<li>Is it enough to cover operational costs?</li>\r\n 	<li>Do I have the resources to execute the project?</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nWork that pays little in terms of revenue and fulfilment will leave you demotivated. Inevitably, this will lead to lousy standards and more low-quality projects.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Understand Your Businesses Strengths and Weaknesses</h3>\r\nIn order to maintain standards and survive in this ever-changing market, agency owners must set their goals based on their strengths and downplay any weaknesses.\r\n\r\nJess Butcher, Co-Founder and CEO at <a href=\"https://web.blippar.com/\">Blippar</a>, believes “one of the most critical things as a business owner is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses as honestly as you can.”\r\n\r\nWhen identifying your strengths and weaknesses, you need to outline competitive advantages and distinctive qualities your agency does and doesn’t carry.\r\n\r\nMost agency owners adopt for a SWOT analysis and consider it the easiest way to determine internal and external factors which could be having an effect on their standards. SWOT is an acronym and stands for:\r\n\r\n<strong>S</strong>trengths, <strong>W</strong>eaknesses, <strong>O</strong>pportunities, <strong>T</strong>hreats.\r\n\r\nA SWOT analysis is an effective way of identifying any issues that could be crippling your agency. By doing this, you’re able to conduct strategies that will allow you to maintain your standards, as you focus on scaling your business.\r\n\r\nTo remain in control of your SWOT analysis, keep in mind these simple rules:\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>1. Only list four per category <u>max</u>.</li>\r\n 	<li>2. No opinions. Stick to facts to ensure honest information.</li>\r\n 	<li>3. Make weaknesses and opportunities actionable.</li>\r\n 	<li>4. Try and be exact when listing items in each category.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3897\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-3.jpg\" alt=\"scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 3\" width=\"700\" height=\"322\" />\r\n<h4></h4>\r\n<h4>Strengths</h4>\r\nSelf-explanatory, your strengths are what your agency is good at already. Although, the purpose of using a SWOT analysis is to identify these strengths so you can utilise them to meet organisational goals and high-quality standards.\r\n\r\nYou might be a web design and SEO agency that specialises in online marketing for law firms. Straight away you would produce a strategy that would position you as an authority in that specific field.\r\n\r\nAlex Moss, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://firecask.com/\">Firecask</a>, found that his skills in Wordpress helped him and his agency stand out from the crowd.\r\n\r\nMoss says, “because of this skill, I was able to make myself [somewhat] of an authority when it came to WordPress and SEO. Once you have this, work to get yourself as an authority via speaking and through networking.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Weaknesses</h4>\r\nI’m going to put this lightly. We all have weaknesses. In order to maintain quality and scale, you need to minimise your weaknesses or turn them into strengths. The key here is to identify your weaknesses as honestly as you can.\r\n\r\nYou may feel that you’re advertising a lack of services to your clients. You could consider a partnership with another agency or SaaS product to strengthen and compliment your current offering.\r\n\r\nWith that said, it\'s worth mentioning that we offer our own agency partnership program.  You can click through <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/agency-partner/\">here</a> to find out more about how that works. :)\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Opportunities</h4>\r\nAn opportunity to identify external factors which could have a positive impact on your business. This could be something like a change to the current market or growth in technology.\r\n\r\nFor example, in 2016, we saw a record of <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/12/record-80-new-companies-being-born-an-hour-in-2016/\">80 new companies</a> being launched in an hour. So the opportunity here is that eventually, these organisations will likely require online marketing in order to grow.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Threats</h4>\r\nSadly, threats are unpredictable. In most cases, you will need to rely on predictable forecasts and intelligence to gauge the best possible decisions. It’s not feasible to avoid all threats, so what you need to be asking yourself is this: How can I reduce the impact of a threat?\r\n\r\nFor many agencies, they will consider their competitors as one of their biggest threat. To reduce this pressure, you could perform a SWOT on your competitors to identify their strength and weaknesses. By doing this, you know where your agency stands compared to others.\r\n\r\nWith that said, it’s important that you don’t “get too caught up” in what your competitors are doing.\r\n\r\nChris Martin, Head of Marketing at <a href=\"https://www.commontime.com/\">CommonTime</a>, says it’s important that you “don’t get caught up with what your competitors are doing.”\r\n\r\n“It’s very easy to spend a lot of time trying to work out exactly what all of your competitors are doing and how you differentiate yourself\", he says.\r\n\r\nIf you do consider your competitors as a threat, then keep in mind that you’re the unique aspect of your agency.\r\n\r\nChris believes that “your knowledge, experience and insight will be the differentiating factor - that’s something no-one will ever be able to replicate.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Don’t Try And Reinvent The Wheel</h3>\r\nA lot of agency owners put this self-pressure on themselves that they need to come up with innovative ideas otherwise they will fail as a business.\r\n\r\nIt’s time to accept reality.\r\n\r\nCommercial <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising\">advertising</a> and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and Arabia. It’s likely that any idea you come up with now, it’s already been done.\r\n\r\nCraig Wiltshire, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.struto.co.uk/\">Struto</a>, says that it’s OK to “borrow shamelessly from other places.”\r\n\r\nSo with that said, stop putting this unnecessary pressure on yourself to come up with the “next big thing”.\r\n\r\nInstead, find a concept that works, and tailor it to your specific service. It’s this exact process which we’ve adopted here at Ruler.\r\n\r\nFounders Ian and Dan, worked with a lot of agencies previous to Ruler Analytics.\r\n\r\nThey faced the common obstacle of proving the value of their campaigns. The client\'s phones were ringing, but it was difficult to demonstrate <em>where</em> those calls were coming from. Frustrated by some of the limitations of Google Analytics, Ian and Dan went on to develop Ruler Analytics.\r\n\r\nA big focus for Ruler was/still is the <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/call-tracking/\">call tracking</a> software. Despite it being a popular and affordable product, we found it difficult at first to break through the noise being made by other competitors.\r\n\r\nWith that said, we went ahead and evolved our servicing, sales and marketing approach.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3676\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/large.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"807\" height=\"355\" />\r\n\r\nWith call tracking still at the core of our product, we now focus on connecting the dots between Google Analytics, DoubleClick, CRMs between website visits, phone calls and leads.\r\n\r\nBy integrating data with popular CRM tools, marketing teams can get an end-to-end overview of the success of their lead generation based on closed sales, not just contracts.\r\n\r\nMore about that in this <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X5IwoKsUKA\">video</a>:\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/7X5IwoKsUKA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nBottom line here is that call tracking was already around before we entered the market. However, we took the concept of the idea and produced a service that is more engaging with our target audience.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who are at the start of their journey, Craig Wiltshire leaves you with this, “just because you’re starting out doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel.”\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Just Focus On Doing Great Work</h3>\r\nI’m not an agency owner, but this is one topic I can relate to on a personal level. It’s so easy to let standards slip when your schedule is bursting with tasks. Although, to avoid that dreaded pressure of slipping standards you must continue to stay focused on doing great work at all times.\r\n\r\nIn their book, Sutton and Rao argue that scaling isn’t just about getting bigger. It is also about getting better. They say the best way to know you’ve succeeded is to ask yourself the following question: If I stopped putting energy into this, would it continue to go well?\r\n\r\nIt’s funny. When I emailed my list of agency owners, I received near-identical feedback from both Cathal Saunders, Operations Director of <a href=\"https://converted.co.uk/\">Converted</a> and Kevin Gibbons, Managing Director of <a href=\"https://www.blueglass.co.uk/\">BlueGlass</a>.\r\n\r\nThey share the same beliefs when it comes to staying focused on doing great work.\r\n\r\nBoth Cathal and Kevin admit that doing great work does “sound obvious”, but it’s an important factor if you want to scale and maintain agency standards.\r\n\r\nAgency owners can spend so much time getting new business trying to prove that they’re good at their profession, they become blind and stop putting energy into existing client campaigns. Inevitably, this can have a negative influence on standards.\r\n\r\nKevin says, “it’s much more important to be doing great work internally than it is to look like you’re doing great work publicly”.\r\n\r\nBy doing great work, it doesn\'t mean you need to work harder and longer. It’s all about working smarter.\r\n\r\nIt just simply boils down to “focusing on delivering outstanding results/value first and foremost”, says Kevin Gibbons.\r\n\r\nI read this article which highlights the chapters in Michael Bungay Steiner book, <a href=\"https://generalassemb.ly/blog/do-more-great-work-book-review/\">do more great work</a>.\r\n\r\nMichael says that you should think back to moments in life where you felt like your best. Where you reached your perception of success, i.e. an award-winning ad campaign or a scenario where you ranked #1 organically for a competitive search term.\r\n\r\nThe aim of this process is to identify commonalities between these moments. It\'s this feeling that will spur you on to do great work.\r\n\r\n“Just remember to keep improving because doing it just once isn\'t enough”, says Alex Moss.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Have We Learnt Here?</span></h2>\r\nWhatever pressures you suffer from, you’re safe in the knowledge that you’re not alone when it comes to scaling an agency.\r\n\r\nMitchel White has been in business for 4 years and has been able to look after himself a little more, physically and mentally.\r\n\r\nDespite going the gym at least 3-4 times a week to relieve tension. The main focus for Mitchel over this time has been to prevent the worries of agency ownership from taking over his life.\r\n\r\nHe admits “that pressure doesn’t ever really go”, but “it what spurs us on to continue doing brilliant and successful things every day.”\r\n\r\nMitchel told me that he recently took a couple of days out for his mental health.\r\n\r\n“I needed to take a couple of days out for my mental health (I posted a <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6328883839607324672/\">LinkedIn post</a> about this) - some people frowned upon it but taking those two days out allowed me to relax, unwind and come back afterwards feeling refreshed and full of energy. The business didn’t fall apart without me in the office either. Win-win.”, he says.\r\n\r\nWhenever you start to get that feeling of pressure, just remember that scaling a successful agency is one of the most rewarding things that you can ever do.\r\n\r\nKyle Racki, leaves us with this simple takeaway:\r\n\r\n“Hire great talent, delegate the work, trust your team to deliver and focus on the big picture - sales and staying profitable.”','How To Deal With The Pressures Of Scaling An Agency (Practical Advice From 23 Experts)','','inherit','closed','closed','','3845-autosave-v1','','','2018-02-20 15:38:44','2018-02-20 15:38:44','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/3845-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3891,3,'2018-02-20 14:19:58','2018-02-20 14:19:58','','pressure scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','pressure-scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-02-20 14:20:10','2018-02-20 14:20:10','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/pressure-scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3892,3,'2018-02-20 14:21:32','2018-02-20 14:21:32','','pressure scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','pressure-scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com-2','','','2018-02-20 14:22:09','2018-02-20 14:22:09','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/pressure-scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3893,3,'2018-02-20 14:23:22','2018-02-20 14:23:22','','scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com-2','','','2018-02-20 14:23:29','2018-02-20 14:23:29','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(3894,3,'2018-02-20 14:24:08','2018-02-20 14:24:08','','scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 4','','inherit','closed','closed','','scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com-copy-4','','','2018-02-20 14:24:16','2018-02-20 14:24:16','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-4.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3895,3,'2018-02-20 14:25:18','2018-02-20 14:25:18','','scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 2','','inherit','closed','closed','','scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com-copy-2','','','2018-02-20 14:25:29','2018-02-20 14:25:29','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-2.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(3896,3,'2018-02-20 14:48:40','2018-02-20 14:48:40','','scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 5','','inherit','closed','closed','','scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com-copy-5','','','2018-02-20 14:48:52','2018-02-20 14:48:52','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-5.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3897,3,'2018-02-20 14:50:24','2018-02-20 14:50:24','','scaling an agency - www.ruleranalytics.com copy 3','','inherit','closed','closed','','scaling-an-agency-www-ruleranalytics-com-copy-3','','','2018-02-20 14:50:37','2018-02-20 14:50:37','',3845,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/scaling-an-agency-www.ruleranalytics.com-copy-3.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(3899,3,'2018-02-20 17:32:58','2018-02-20 17:32:58','5 Minute Read.\r\n\r\nThis article explains the problem with measuring online lead generation, why Google Goals are not enough, how to close the loop to get your lead and sales revenue and how to get the revenue back into Google AdWords &amp; Analytics automatically.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Do Any Of The Following Sound Familiar?</h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>You’re driving plenty of leads but want to turn more into business?</li>\r\n 	<li>Your boss or client asks you how real sales you have generated – not how many leads?</li>\r\n 	<li>The number of leads you get doesn’t match with what Google AdWords or Analytics says?</li>\r\n 	<li>Your leads are high value and expensive to get, but you don’t know which campaigns or keywords are driving them?</li>\r\n 	<li>You are struggling to measure the ROI of your campaigns so you have to estimate?</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>There Is The Fundamental Problem With Marketing For Lead Generation</h3>\r\nLeads, by their nature, are not sales. At least not yet. Your leads could be high value, or worthless.\r\n\r\nThey could close into a sale tomorrow, next year or not even close at all.\r\n\r\nYour analytics might not even be telling you a true picture of where your leads are originating from as people will visit your site on multiple occasions from different channels.\r\n\r\nThe industry standard for tracking online marketing methods is Google Analytics which does a good job of tracking E-Commerce but can only count the number of form fills as Goals.\r\n\r\nWhilst most people track form fills, other leads can also come through mediums such as phone calls and live chat and go unattributed.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Goal Completions Are Not Enough</h3>\r\nGoal completions are not enough – different traffic sources, keywords and ads produce different revenue per lead and different lifetime values.\r\n\r\nWithout this insight it’s impossible to accurately calculate ROI from different marketing sources and optimise your campaigns accordingly.\r\n\r\nIf you’re running a marketing campaign and measuring success based on leads only, you have a gap in the insight that is stopping you improving results.\r\n\r\nWhilst tyre kicker, top of the funnel and research keywords may appear to be creating cost-effective leads and making your campaign look great if there isn’t any revenue coming out at the other end you’re going to run into a problem.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/types.png\" alt=\"Ruler Close The Loop Diagram\" width=\"800\" height=\"492\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>A Common Example – Sales &amp; Marketing Are Disconnected</h3>\r\nTake for example a client who we are working with who relies on lead generation from their website for their business and spends a significant on online marketing to generate them,\r\n\r\nLooking at their AdWords and assume Analytics accounts would leave you to believe that performance was great.\r\n\r\nThey were acquiring leads and they were making (some) money.\r\n\r\nBut that middle bit is what makes the difference.\r\n\r\nLike many others, their sales and marketing were disconnected, they were failing to link their marketing activities directly to revenue, knowingly leaving a chasm in their insight.\r\n\r\nAs an exercise to prove the value of this process we took a sample of 20 calls from various campaigns to track what the outcome of the calls was.\r\n\r\n12 of the calls came from Google AdWords where they make a significant investment.\r\n\r\nOf the 12 calls, 9 were poor quality, not qualified or a salesperson.\r\n\r\nHowever, 3 of the calls turned into sales. 2 of the sales were relatively low value but acceptable but the final call was worth over 10 times the amount of others.\r\n\r\nThis process allowed them to see the real value of their campaigns and keywords and to optimise and report more effectively.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThe Solution: Optimise For Revenue, Not Leads\r\n\r\nThe solution?\r\n\r\nEvaluating your campaigns the same way you evaluate business: by the amount of revenue it generates.\r\n\r\nTo find out if leads are turning into real sales and creating revenue, you need a process to track them and then match them with the marketing campaign or keyword that created them.\r\n\r\nThis added insight is what will drive your campaign to the next level.\r\n\r\nThere are few steps to get this right but once they are in place they should produce the data you need each time.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"\" style=\"max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/large.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"352\" />\r\n<h3>The Process - Tagging, Tracking, Matching &amp; Integration</h3>\r\nNOTE: Manual revenue tracking can be complicated and time-consuming. You can use Ruler Analytics to speed up and automate this process and more.\r\n<h4>Step 1 – Tagging – Identifying the Traffic Source</h4>\r\nThe first step is making sure the traffic coming to your website is tagged correctly so that you can see the exact source and any other variables associated such as campaign, keyword or advert reference. This commonly done using UTM tags which allow you to add specific labels to the landing pages (more info in our guide here.) It is also recommended that you capture fields specific to the products you are using such as GCLID for Google AdWords.\r\n<h4>Step 2 – Tracking – Capture the Lead</h4>\r\nThe next stage is to ensure that the data captured is at visitor level so you are able to match with the marketing source and to a closed sale later. Most leads come in the form of an enquiry form, live chat or phone call so you may need some additional marketing analytics or call tracking software at this stage but you can also pass UTM tag values in your forms.\r\n<h4>Step 3 – Matching – Match the Lead with the Source in CRM</h4>\r\nOnce you have captured the lead with the applicable marketing source there needs to be a feedback loop to see which leads closed into business and just as importantly which leads didn’t.\r\n\r\nThis can be done manually in a spreadsheet, to begin with, to get used to the workflow and prove the business case. However, this could be cumbersome at higher volumes so ideally they should be automatically matched where you handle leads, for instance in CRM.\r\n<h4>Step 4 – Integration – Passing the data to other products</h4>\r\nFinally, now that you have the leads and marketing source matched, once the sale is completed you are able to pass this into your products. Most products have an API or a manual CSV upload.\r\n\r\nFor instance, Google AdWords supports uploading the GCLID along with revenue value.\r\n\r\nOnce you have this process in place it allows you to see where the real conversions and revenue come from, measure ROI definitively and optimise your campaign accordingly.\r\n<h4>Next Steps</h4>\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>Request a free assessment of your marketing attribution and see how you can close the loop.</li>\r\n 	<li>You can download a step-by-step breakdown of how to implement revenue tracking, including tracking templates, here...</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n[activecampaign form=18]','How to Close the Loop Between Offline Sales from Online Leads','','inherit','closed','closed','','3675-autosave-v1','','','2018-02-20 17:32:58','2018-02-20 17:32:58','',3675,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/3675-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3900,3,'2018-02-22 11:08:17','2018-02-22 11:08:17','Managing PPC campaigns for a single business is time-consuming and potentially costly. But for marketing agencies who manage PPC campaigns for multiple clients, those risks increase exponentially.\r\n\r\nPPC software minimises those risks in two ways: it automates many of the more time-consuming tasks of managing PPC campaigns, and it provides insights that help agencies maximise the ROI of their ad campaigns. But not all PPC software is designed to be used by agencies.\r\n\r\nSince you need to manage and report on various client accounts across multiple searches and social networks, you need to invest in PPC software that’s designed specifically for agencies.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h2>The Benefits of PPC Management Software for Agencies</h2>\r\nWhen investing in the right PPC management software, marketing agencies enjoy many benefits.\r\n\r\nFirst, PPC software saves you time. For example, one of the most time-consuming tasks of managing PPC campaigns is keyword research.\r\n\r\nThe best PPC software does the keyword research for you, providing you with a long list of both high-volume and long-tail keywords to choose from.\r\n\r\nSecond, PPC software allows agencies to manage ads across multiple channels from a single view.\r\n\r\nInstead of having to build and manage ads individually in AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, and Bing Ads systems, manage PPC campaigns on all channels from a central interface.\r\n\r\nFinally, most PPC software applications have many tools designed to boost the ROI of PPC campaigns. Common PPC software features include ad performance grading and high- and under-performing keywords identification—both of which can boost ad campaign ROI.\r\n\r\nBut not all PPC software is designed to support the complex needs of agencies. When shopping for the right tool for your agency, you need to know what to look for.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What Agencies Should Look for When Buying PPC Software</h3>\r\nThere are multiple features agencies should look for when choosing a PPC management tool:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>Multi-User Support:</strong> Since several people at your agency will likely work on ad campaigns for different clients, make sure to choose a tool that supports multiple users.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Multi-Account Support:</strong> Since you will run the ad campaigns for multiple clients, look for a tool that allows you to segregate accounts so you can manage and report on ad performance by the client.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Cross-Platform Management:</strong> Take advantage of the time-saving benefits of integration by selecting a tool that allows you to build and manage ad campaigns for multiple channels—Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, etc.—from a central source.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>A/B Testing:</strong> Discover what headlines, copy, and/or images perform best by finding a tool that supports A/B ad testing.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Keyword Research and Recommendations:</strong> Get keyword recommendations—including keywords shouldn’t target—in minutes with a PPC tool with keyword research features.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Ad Scheduling:</strong> Choose what days and times to run ads based on historical ad campaign performance for different clients on different channels.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Simple Reporting:</strong> Look for a tool that allows you to build custom, white-labelled reports that you can deliver to clients to communicate campaign statuses and ROI.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Custom Rules:</strong> Automate starting, pausing, reducing bids, and stopping ads with custom rules that allow you to set very granular if/then conditions on ad performance.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Ad Grading:</strong> Find out in a glance how well ads on different networks and for different clients and campaigns are performing with scores that indicate ad performance.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nTo find the right PPC software for your agency, determine which of the above features you need—and which of those needs are the most important. Next, take a look at the recommended software below to find the perfect solution for your agency.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>The Best PPC Software for Agencies</h3>\r\nThe following six PPC tools are each designed specifically for use by agencies and have many of the features listed in the previous section:\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>1. AdStage</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.adstage.io/agencies/\">AdStage</a> may be the best choice for agencies who need to create ads for different clients across multiple search and social channels. Agencies can create ads on Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Better yet, create ads in bulk and A/B test them to identify the highest and lowest performers.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3712\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"700\" height=\"343\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>2. Reportgarden</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://reportgarden.com/\">Reportgarden</a> handles all aspects of client PPC management. Use it to manage and automate PPC accounts, create proposals for new clients, invoice existing clients, and manage approvals. The software also has SEO tools for agencies who handle all types of search engine marketing campaigns.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3714\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-1.png\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"699\" height=\"340\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>3. Marin Software</h4>\r\n<a href=\"http://www.marinsoftware.com/industries/agencies\">Marin</a> provides a solution for agencies who need to track more than just PPC ads. The system provides tracking for search, social, and display ads, allowing agencies to track all different ad types for their clients to determine which perform best. Marin also supports PPC advertising on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3715\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-1.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"702\" height=\"343\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>Acquisio</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.acquisio.com/\">Acquisio</a>’s top feature is Acquisio Turing, a bid and budget management tool that helps agencies use 100% of clients’ ad budgets 100% of the time. Acquisio Turing uses fast and advanced optimisation techniques that increase clicks and conversions while keeping you from ever overspending or underspending.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3720\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-3.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"700\" height=\"287\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>WordStream Advisor</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.wordstream.com/agencies\">WordStream Advisor</a> has the basic features agencies need, supporting unlimited users and providing segregation for tracking different client accounts. The tool’s best features are keyword research and ad scoring, which save time and boost ROI. The only downside is that it only supports Google, Bing, and <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Facebook\" href=\"http://zero.facebook.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage noopener\">Facebook ads</a>.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3721\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-4.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"701\" height=\"389\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>adCore</h4>\r\nOne of the most interesting features of <a href=\"https://www.adcore.com/\">adCore</a> is that its keyword tool generates suggestions based on a website’s content. This is an excellent feature for new and potential clients. Instead of spending hours determining what keywords to use, simply plug in the client’s web address and get a list of recommendations automatically.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3727\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-2.png\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"701\" height=\"438\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Notable Mentions</h3>\r\nInstead of providing a full suite of features like the software above, the following PPC tools provide unique features that can be used in combination with or instead of the above tools:\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>1. NinjaCat</h4>\r\nIf what you’re looking for is less of a PPC automation tool and more of a way to combine data from multiple platforms into a central report, <a href=\"https://www.ninjacat.io/\">NinjaCat</a> may be the best solution. NinjaCat connects with more than 750 platforms and tools, using the data from all integrations to create comprehensive, white-labelled reports for clients.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3724\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-6.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"701\" height=\"355\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>2. SEMrush</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.semrush.com/features/advertising-research/\">SEMrush</a> is best used in conjunction with another PPC automation tool, but it’s worth considering because it allows you to perform competitive research on ads. Find out what keywords your clients’ competitors are targeting, and how much they’re spending, to create ads that outperform the competition.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3725\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-7.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"700\" height=\"405\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>3. Unbounce</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://unbounce.com/agencies/\">Unbounce</a> helps agencies build personalised and custom landing pages that can be used for PPC campaigns. Instead of sending users to a sales page that may or may not have the information they’re looking for, create individual landing pages for each PPC campaign that are targeted and personalised to boost conversions.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3726\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ppc-software-for-agencies-8.gif\" alt=\"ppc software for agencies\" width=\"701\" height=\"440\" />\r\n<h4></h4>\r\n<h4></h4>\r\n<h4>4. Captivise</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.captivise.com/\"><span class=\"il\">Captivise</span></a> is an easy-to-use PPC management software, developed by an award-winning digital marketing agency, for real-world use on Google AdWords Campaigns. Their aim was to create a simple, yet effective bid management app focused on maximising profitability and ROI, by ensuring the correct CPC is used to achieve this.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3902\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/PPC-Software-for-Agencies-1.png\" alt=\"PPC Software for Agencies\" width=\"899\" height=\"282\" />\r\n<h3>Using PPC Software + Web Analytics to Determine ROI</h3>\r\nIn the end, optimising clicks and bids for PPC ads is a means to an end, and that end should be increased revenue. To measure the ROI of PPC, you need a tool that captures visitor actions after they click on a PPC ad.\r\n\r\nDo customers who click on ads go on to convert? Or do they leave the site, only to come back and convert at a later date?\r\n\r\nThese questions are more important to determine which ads perform best than any bids, clicks, or form completion metrics.\r\n\r\nWith Ruler Analytics, you can track what PPC-driven leads do after arriving on a client’s site.\r\n\r\nFind out what pages they visit, which become leads, which request a demo, and which convert.\r\n\r\nUse anonymous visitor tracking to capture conversions that happen later than the initial visit.\r\n\r\nPPC ads are only effective if they’re driving more revenue than spend, so the final, and most important, consideration for agencies is determining in advance how you’ll attribute revenue back to clients’ PPC campaigns.','PPC Software for Agencies: 9 Tools That Boost Ad Campaign ROI','','inherit','closed','closed','','3840-autosave-v1','','','2018-02-22 11:08:17','2018-02-22 11:08:17','',3840,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/3840-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3901,0,'2018-02-22 10:39:43','2018-02-22 10:39:43','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3901','','','2018-02-22 10:39:43','2018-02-22 10:39:43','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3901/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3902,3,'2018-02-22 10:50:21','2018-02-22 10:50:21','','PPC Software for Agencies','','inherit','closed','closed','','ppc-software-for-agencies-2','','','2018-02-22 10:50:35','2018-02-22 10:50:35','',3840,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/PPC-Software-for-Agencies-1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3903,3,'2018-02-22 11:32:01','2018-02-22 11:32:01','Establish a greeting to use when answering the phone.\r\n\r\nSmile while talking to callers.\r\n\r\nSay “please” and “thank you.”\r\n\r\nWhen looking for tips on how to convert more callers, there’s no lack of general information to read online. But if you’ve been working in sales for a while, these are all things you already know.\r\n\r\nThey’re common sense. You’re looking for techniques that will help you stand out.\r\n\r\nThese five unique inbound phone sales techniques may be just what you’re looking for.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>1. Ditch the IVR</h4>\r\nLet’s be honest: there’s nothing more impersonal, and occasionally frustrating, than calling a company and being forced to interact with its IVR.\r\n\r\nForcing inbound prospects to wander through a complex IVR menu before connecting with a sales rep doesn’t exactly leave them with a great first impression of your company and customer service.\r\n\r\nInbound sales calls should be answered by a human—not a computer.\r\n\r\nAt the very least, have a receptionist on hand to answer all calls and route them to the right representative, or use a professional answering service.\r\n\r\nEven better, have sales reps themselves answer inbound calls.\r\n\r\nHere’s how to do it:\r\n<ol>\r\n 	<li>1. Create unique phone numbers for marketing campaigns that are designed to drive inbound calls.</li>\r\n 	<li>2. Then, use a routing service to send calls using those numbers directly to sales representatives.</li>\r\n</ol>\r\nThis creates a great first impression of the type of customer service your company provides and prevents lost sales due to frustrations with an IVR.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>2. Avoid Putting People on Hold</h4>\r\nThe other advantage of sending inbound callers directly to sales representatives is it prevents them from sitting on hold for too long.\r\n\r\nNo one wants to listen to hold music, and too-long wait times encourage prospects to hang up and take their business elsewhere.\r\n\r\nBut even if you need to use a receptionist or professional answering service, it’s possible to limit long wait times.\r\n\r\nMake sure that the receptionist checks in with the caller every 60 seconds or so while they’re waiting.\r\n\r\nThis lets the caller know that they haven’t been forgotten, and it also provides an opportunity for the receptionist to collect contact information that a sales rep can use to call the prospect back at a better time.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>3. Make Important Information Easy to Access</h4>\r\nIf all of your sales reps have been with your company for a long time and know your products inside and out, then all of the information they need to make the sale is probably housed in their own heads.\r\n\r\nOtherwise, you need a way for sales reps to access information instantly.\r\n\r\nThere are two types of information sales reps need to know, or have access, to make more sales.\r\n\r\nThe first is how to respond to common objections. Naturally, there will be recurring objections that prospects trend toward.\r\n\r\nYour best sales reps will have discovered effective rebuttals to those objections. Record those rebuttals and make them widely available.\r\n\r\nThe second type of information is the types of questions and concerns common for prospects in different roles and industries. The things that someone in IT needs to know will naturally be different than the things someone in marketing needs to know. Document the differences in the types of customers who call in, and make sure all reps have access to that information.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>4. Uncover Prospect’s Interests Without Asking</h4>\r\nOne of the quickest ways to frustrate inbound callers is by bombarding them with dozens of questions before asking why they called. But this is problematic because you want to personalize the conversation, and that’s impossible if you know nothing about the person who’s calling.\r\n\r\nBy connecting your marketing analytics platform with your CRM, it may be possible to gather data on callers’ interests without asking. By simply asking for a caller’s name or business name, you may be able to see the marketing materials the prospect interacted with before calling.\r\n\r\nAs much as 90% of the buyer’s journey is complete before prospects reach out to a sales rep. Being able to view the research prospects have done before making a call allows you to personalize the conversation without peppering prospects with a thousand questions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>5. Learn from Completed Calls</h4>\r\nConducting a call retrospective is an important part of improving your skills as a sales rep. Or if you’re leading a group of inbound sales professionals, listening to completed calls provides evidence of who’s doing well and who needs additional training—as well as great examples of how to handle difficult calls and questions.\r\n\r\nRecord all inbound sales calls and listen to them later. This will help you identify mistakes, create plans for improvement, and document effective practices that can be shared with the rest of the team.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>4 Tools That Make It Easy to Adopt These Techniques</h3>\r\nOf course, these techniques are very difficult—if not impossible—to incorporate without the right tools. The following four tools offer the features you need to make these techniques work for you and your sales team.\r\n<h4>1. Dialpad</h4>\r\nThe days of sales reps sitting at a desk all day have passed. Today’s sales reps are mobile. They work in the office, at home, and while travelling.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"https://www.dialpad.com/\">Dialpad</a> allows sales teams take calls from anywhere. It’s a phone system that works just like outdated desk phones, except calls can be answered on a laptop or mobile device from anywhere.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3906\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Inbound-Phone-Sales-Techniques-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"Inbound Phone Sales Techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"702\" height=\"439\" />\r\n\r\nDialpad helps by making sure sales reps are available to accept inbound phone calls, allowing you to provide coverage for inbound calls at any time of the day—and when everyone\'s away from their desks.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>2. Ruler Analytics</h4>\r\nOur own platform, <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/call-tracking/\">Ruler Analytics</a>, provides many of the features you need to implement the techniques listed above:\r\n\r\nRecord all inbound phone calls and listen to completed calls later to identify great approaches, failed approaches, and team members who need additional training.\r\n\r\nCreate custom phone numbers for different marketing campaigns and have those phone numbers connect directly to expert sales reps who can handle the calls without putting prospects on hold or forcing them to interact with an IVR.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3907\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/inbound-phone-sales-techniques-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png\" alt=\"inbound phone sales techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"802\" height=\"294\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nSend all marketing data to your CRM. Find out what campaigns and content prospects viewed prior to calling. Ruler connects directly with your CRM to make all marketing data available instantly to sales reps in the system they use during calls. Learn more.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>3. Calendly</h4>\r\nCalendly is a calendar sharing platform that your receptionists can use to book calls on sales reps’ calendars. Say a prospect calls in but there’s no one to take the call immediately. Instead of leaving that prospect on hold for who knows how long, the receptionist can offer to schedule a meeting with one of the sales reps.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3908\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Calendly-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"inbound phone sales techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"799\" height=\"478\" />\r\n\r\nUsing <a href=\"https://calendly.com/\">Calendly</a>, sales reps list their availability on their calendars, and the receptionist can book the call during an open slot. This lets the sales rep know that they have a prospect they need to call and prevents losing customers due to long waits when all sales reps are busy.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h4>4. Guru</h4>\r\n<a href=\"https://www.getguru.com/\">Guru</a> is a knowledge management tool that provides all of your sales reps with the information they need instantly. Using a browser extension or Slack bot, sales reps can search multiple information sources such as, their inboxes, CRM system, department wiki, to find the information they’re looking for instantly.\r\n\r\nDon’t know the answer to a prospect’s question about a product? Ask Guru and see how other sales reps have answered the same question before. Not sure what types of concerns IT executives have about your products or services? Ask Guru to see how other sales reps have addressed those concerns successfully.\r\n\r\nGuru basically allows sales teams to combine all of their collective knowledge and techniques, and access that information instantly during sales calls to inspire more conversions.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Modern Inbound Phone Sales Techniques Require the Right Tools</h3>\r\nWith the right tools, your sales team can overcome some of the biggest obstacles to conversion.\r\n\r\nSure, you’ll still want to have a dedicated greeting and be polite during calls. But to really excel and increase revenue, and your own commissions, adopt techniques and technologies that allow you to stand out with incredible knowledge and impeccable customer service.','Unique Inbound Phone Sales Techniques (+4 Tools That Help)','','publish','closed','open','','inbound-phone-sales-techniques','','','2018-02-22 14:52:42','2018-02-22 14:52:42','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=3903',0,'post','',0),(3904,3,'2018-02-22 11:41:23','2018-02-22 11:41:23','','Inbound Phone Sales Techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','inbound-phone-sales-techniques-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-02-22 11:41:49','2018-02-22 11:41:49','',3903,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Inbound-Phone-Sales-Techniques-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3905,3,'2018-02-22 14:45:21','2018-02-22 14:45:21','Establish a greeting to use when answering the phone.\n\nSmile while talking to callers.\n\nSay “please” and “thank you.”\n\nWhen looking for tips on how to convert more callers, there’s no lack of general information to read online. But if you’ve been working in sales for a while, these are all things you already know.\n\nThey’re common sense. You’re looking for techniques that will help you stand out.\n\nThese five unique inbound phone sales techniques may be just what you’re looking for.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>1. Ditch the IVR</h4>\nLet’s be honest: there’s nothing more impersonal, and occasionally frustrating, than calling a company and being forced to interact with its IVR.\n\nForcing inbound prospects to wander through a complex IVR menu before connecting with a sales rep doesn’t exactly leave them with a great first impression of your company and customer service.\n\nInbound sales calls should be answered by a human—not a computer.\n\nAt the very least, have a receptionist on hand to answer all calls and route them to the right representative, or use a professional answering service.\n\nEven better, have sales reps themselves answer inbound calls.\n\nHere’s how to do it:\n<ol>\n 	<li>1. Create unique phone numbers for marketing campaigns that are designed to drive inbound calls.</li>\n 	<li>2. Then, use a routing service to send calls using those numbers directly to sales representatives.</li>\n</ol>\nThis creates a great first impression of the type of customer service your company provides and prevents lost sales due to frustrations with an IVR.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>2. Avoid Putting People on Hold</h4>\nThe other advantage of sending inbound callers directly to sales representatives is it prevents them from sitting on hold for too long.\n\nNo one wants to listen to hold music, and too-long wait times encourage prospects to hang up and take their business elsewhere.\n\nBut even if you need to use a receptionist or professional answering service, it’s possible to limit long wait times.\n\nMake sure that the receptionist checks in with the caller every 60 seconds or so while they’re waiting.\n\nThis lets the caller know that they haven’t been forgotten, and it also provides an opportunity for the receptionist to collect contact information that a sales rep can use to call the prospect back at a better time.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>3. Make Important Information Easy to Access</h4>\nIf all of your sales reps have been with your company for a long time and know your products inside and out, then all of the information they need to make the sale is probably housed in their own heads.\n\nOtherwise, you need a way for sales reps to access information instantly.\n\nThere are two types of information sales reps need to know, or have access, to make more sales.\n\nThe first is how to respond to common objections. Naturally, there will be recurring objections that prospects trend toward.\n\nYour best sales reps will have discovered effective rebuttals to those objections. Record those rebuttals and make them widely available.\n\nThe second type of information is the types of questions and concerns common for prospects in different roles and industries.\n\nThe things that someone in IT needs to know will naturally be different than the things someone in marketing needs to know. Document the differences in the types of customers who call in, and make sure all reps have access to that information.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>4. Uncover Prospect’s Interests Without Asking</h4>\nOne of the quickest ways to frustrate inbound callers is by bombarding them with dozens of questions before asking why they called. But this is problematic because you want to personalize the conversation, and that’s impossible if you know nothing about the person who’s calling.\n\nBy connecting your marketing analytics platform with your CRM, it may be possible to gather data on callers’ interests without asking. By simply asking for a caller’s name or business name, you may be able to see the marketing materials the prospect interacted with before calling.\n\nAs much as 90% of the buyer’s journey is complete before prospects reach out to a sales rep. Being able to view the research prospects have done before making a call allows you to personalize the conversation without peppering prospects with a thousand questions.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>5. Learn from Completed Calls</h4>\nConducting a call retrospective is an important part of improving your skills as a sales rep.\n\nOr if you’re leading a group of inbound sales professionals, listening to completed calls provides evidence of who’s doing well and who needs additional training, as well as great examples of how to handle difficult calls and questions.\n\nRecord all inbound sales calls and listen to them later. This will help you identify mistakes, create plans for improvement, and document effective practices that can be shared with the rest of the team.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>4 Tools That Make It Easy to Adopt These Techniques</h3>\nOf course, these techniques are very difficult, if not impossible, to incorporate without the right tools.\n\nThe following four tools offer the features you need to make these techniques work for you and your sales team.\n<h4>1. Dialpad</h4>\nThe days of sales reps sitting at a desk all day have passed. Today’s sales reps are mobile. They work in the office, at home, and while travelling.\n\n<a href=\"https://www.dialpad.com/\">Dialpad</a> allows sales teams take calls from anywhere. It’s a phone system that works just like outdated desk phones, except calls can be answered on a laptop or mobile device from anywhere.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3906\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Inbound-Phone-Sales-Techniques-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"Inbound Phone Sales Techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"702\" height=\"439\" />\n\nDialpad helps by making sure sales reps are available to accept inbound phone calls, allowing you to provide coverage for inbound calls at any time of the day—and when everyone\'s away from their desks.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>2. Ruler Analytics</h4>\nOur own platform, <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/call-tracking/\">Ruler Analytics</a>, provides many of the features you need to implement the techniques listed above:\n\nRecord all inbound phone calls and listen to completed calls later to identify great approaches, failed approaches, and team members who need additional training.\n\nCreate custom phone numbers for different marketing campaigns and have those phone numbers connect directly to expert sales reps who can handle the calls without putting prospects on hold or forcing them to interact with an IVR.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3907\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/inbound-phone-sales-techniques-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png\" alt=\"inbound phone sales techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"802\" height=\"294\" />\n\n&nbsp;\n\nSend all marketing data to your CRM. Find out what campaigns and content prospects viewed prior to calling. Ruler connects directly with your CRM to make all marketing data available instantly to sales reps in the system they use during calls. Learn more.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>3. Calendly</h4>\nCalendly is a calendar sharing platform that your receptionists can use to book calls on sales reps’ calendars. Say a prospect calls in but there’s no one to take the call immediately. Instead of leaving that prospect on hold for who knows how long, the receptionist can offer to schedule a meeting with one of the sales reps.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3908\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Calendly-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"inbound phone sales techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"799\" height=\"478\" />\n\nUsing <a href=\"https://calendly.com/\">Calendly</a>, sales reps list their availability on their calendars, and the receptionist can book the call during an open slot. This lets the sales rep know that they have a prospect they need to call and prevents losing customers due to long waits when all sales reps are busy.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h4>4. Guru</h4>\n<a href=\"https://www.guru.com/\">Guru</a> is a knowledge management tool that provides all of your sales reps with the information they need instantly. Using a browser extension or Slack bot, sales reps can search multiple information sources—their inboxes, CRM system, department wiki, etc.—to find the information they’re looking for instantly.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3909 \" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/inbound-phone-sales-www.ruleranalytics.com_-e1519310688450.jpg\" alt=\"inbound phone sales - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"802\" height=\"485\" />\n\nDon’t know the answer to a prospect’s question about a product? Ask Guru and see how other sales reps have answered the same question before. Not sure what types of concerns IT executives have about your products or services? Ask Guru to see how other sales reps have addressed those concerns successfully.\n\nGuru basically allows sales teams to combine all of their collective knowledge and techniques, and access that information instantly during sales calls to inspire more conversions.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>Modern Inbound Phone Sales Techniques Require the Right Tools</h3>\nWith the right tools, your sales team can overcome some of the biggest obstacles to conversion.\n\nSure, you’ll still want to have a dedicated greeting and be polite during calls. But to really excel and increase revenue, and your own commissions, adopt techniques and technologies that allow you to stand out with incredible knowledge and impeccable customer service.\n\n&nbsp;','Unique Inbound Phone Sales Techniques (+4 Tools That Help)','','inherit','closed','closed','','3903-autosave-v1','','','2018-02-22 14:45:21','2018-02-22 14:45:21','',3903,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/3903-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3906,3,'2018-02-22 11:46:22','2018-02-22 11:46:22','','Inbound Phone Sales Techniques - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','inbound-phone-sales-techniques-www-ruleranalytics-com-2','','','2018-02-22 11:46:31','2018-02-22 11:46:31','',3903,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Inbound-Phone-Sales-Techniques-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(3907,3,'2018-02-22 11:48:09','2018-02-22 11:48:09','','inbound phone sales techniques - 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00:25:33','2018-03-08 00:25:33','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3942','','','2018-03-08 00:25:33','2018-03-08 00:25:33','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3942/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3943,0,'2018-03-08 13:43:03','2018-03-08 13:43:03','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3943','','','2018-03-08 13:43:03','2018-03-08 13:43:03','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3943/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3944,0,'2018-03-08 13:43:48','2018-03-08 13:43:48','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3944','','','2018-03-08 13:43:48','2018-03-08 13:43:48','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3944/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3945,0,'2018-03-08 13:46:06','2018-03-08 13:46:06','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3945','','','2018-03-08 13:46:06','2018-03-08 13:46:06','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3945/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3946,0,'2018-03-08 13:46:42','2018-03-08 13:46:42','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3946','','','2018-03-08 13:46:42','2018-03-08 13:46:42','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3946/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3948,3,'2018-03-09 16:49:46','2018-03-09 16:49:46','Marketo’s <a href=\"https://www.marketo.com/analyst-and-other-reports/the-state-of-engagement/\">2017 State of Engagement</a> report presented some interesting findings of how effective marketers are at engaging their target customers and prospects:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">82% of marketers believe they have a deep understanding of their audiences, but half of consumers think brands could do a better job of engaging them.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">72% of B2B consumers say brands must have a deep understanding of their needs in order to successfully engage them.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">66% of B2B consumers expect all interactions with brands to be personalised.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">65% of B2B consumers say brands could do a better job aligning engagement activities with their preferences.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The number-one reason why B2B consumers don’t engage with brands more often is because brands send too much irrelevant content.</span></li>\r\n</ul>\r\nWhat this means is that although B2B marketers feel like they’re doing a great job of engaging with prospects in a meaningful and effective way, they could be doing better. To inspire better engagement in 2018, B2B marketers should consider the benefits of account-based marketing.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What Is Account-Based Marketing?</h3>\r\nMarketers typically define their ideal customers using fictional personas. Though those personas are often developed from market research, they represent the needs, values, and pain points of a category of prospects—not those of specific, individual customers.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3952\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/account-based-marketing-ruler.png\" alt=\"account based marketing ruler\" width=\"700\" height=\"656\" />\r\n\r\nAn example buyer persona from <a href=\"https://www.brightspark-consulting.com/b2b-buyer-personas/\">Brightspark Consulting</a>.<small></small>\r\n\r\nEssentially, most marketing consists of casting a wide net. Whether you’re targeting a broad group like “marketers” or a highly specific one like “marketers at businesses with fewer than 500 employees with a headquarters in the UK,” you’re targeting a group and not individuals.\r\n\r\nAccount-based marketing (ABM) takes the opposite approach. Instead of targeting general groups of prospects, B2B marketers that use ABM target specific, individual companies.\r\n\r\nIn an ABM model, all sales and marketing are focused on a set of target accounts—specific, hand-selected companies that meet criteria you established upfront. In this way, buyer personas are unnecessary. They’re replaced with detailed sheets describing real stakeholders at companies you believe will eventually invest in your products/services.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>How ABM Solves the Engagement Problem</h3>\r\nIf you look back that the statistics in the intro of this piece, the benefits of account-based marketing become clear. B2B consumers expect brands to have a deep understanding of their needs and to engage with relevant and personalised messaging that matches their preferences.\r\n\r\nThe bottom line: this is very difficult to achieve when you’re targeting general buyer types.\r\n\r\nNo two prospects are exactly alike. They have different pain points, different needs, and different communication preferences. For example, some prefer receiving communications by email, and some prefer talking to an account manager over the phone.\r\n\r\nWith account-based marketing, marketers and sales teams focus on learning exactly what individual businesses and stakeholders want and need. Then, they cater all campaigns to match the unique preferences of each target account. This allows ABM marketers to deliver the types of relevant, targeted, and personalised messages that truly engage B2B consumers.\r\n\r\nFor this reason, B2B marketers looking to increase engagement in 2018 should seriously consider adopting ABM.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>That’s All Great in Theory, But What About in Practice?</h3>\r\nFrom our own experience here at Ruler Analytics, we can attest to the benefits of narrowing your focus when it comes to sales and marketing.\r\n\r\nLast year, we noticed our performance was higher in one specific sector than any others. So we decided to go all-in on that segment—to focus on it 100%. The result: our revenue grew 2.5 times faster in the two months after making that decision than the two months prior.\r\n\r\nFocusing sales and marketing efforts was a very effective approach, but the changes we made weren’t nearly as focused as most ABM campaigns. For companies that have implemented ABM, 87% say it delivers a higher ROI than any other type of marketing.\r\n\r\nOther benefits of ABM include:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>It strengthens your relationship with customers.</strong> In ABM, target accounts are your number-one priority. This allows you to send more personalised communications, predict customer’s needs, and provide better service. Essentially, you become a partner to the customer and not just another service provider.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>It shortens the sales cycle.</strong> Large companies with many stakeholders are notoriously slow to get full alignment and make purchasing decisions. With ABM, you target each stakeholder, increasing the likelihood of gaining alignment on the purchase more quickly.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>It strengthens your value proposition.</strong> When prospects see that you’re fully focused on them, it makes your business stand out among the other products they’re considering. Prospects will be drawn to the company that’s catering its communications to their preferences over those that follow up with generic information.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>There’s less waste.</strong> Since you’re no longer targeting mass groups of potential customers, you can spend less on advertising. Say you’ve been advertising on Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter but discover your target accounts prefer engaging over email. You’ll save a significant amount of your marketing budget by reducing your ad spend.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Getting Started with Account-Based Marketing</h3>\r\nIf you decide that account-based marketing is an approach your company should pursue this year, you should know that implementing is much more complex than just making the decision.\r\n\r\nThere are a number of things you’ll need to do before jumping into ABM:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>Align marketing and sales.</strong> In order for an ABM approach to succeed, marketing and sales must be closely aligned. This means that all sales and marketing data and insights must be accessible to both teams so that both can cater their approaches based on what each team has learned about target accounts.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Select your target accounts.</strong> Data plays an important part in this process. You’ll need to understand what types of companies you’ve had the most success with before, what companies are already considering your product but haven’t made a final decision, and which of your existing customers may be interesting in making additional commitments.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Learn more about your target accounts.</strong> Before you can launch an ABM program, you’ll need to develop a number of personalised and targeted campaigns. This requires a lot of upfront research. Google and LinkedIn should be your best friends in helping you learn everything you can about target accounts, their needs, and their stakeholders.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Identify your optimal channels.</strong> Again, this requires research. Review your marketing email analytics to see if your target accounts interact with the emails you’ve sent in the past. Check and see if they’re active on social (and which channels they’re active on). Find out which companies have reviewed content on your website.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Define your goals and KPIs.</strong> Yes, 87% of marketers who use ABM say it delivers higher ROI, but that doesn’t mean the approach is guaranteed to work for you. As with any marketing initiative, it’s important to start by defining what success will look like so you can measure efforts over time and validate the effectiveness of the approach.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nAlso, remember that having the right tools is an important part of an effective ABM implementation. Do your research and find out what tools you need; social listening, analytics, and marketing automation tools are all popular options.\r\n\r\nFor example, Ruler Analytics is a great tool for teams that use ABM. Use it to automatically sync marketing and sales data across both your analytics platform and CRM, find out which companies, and which individuals from those companies, have visited your website and viewed your campaigns, and see what specific information they were most interested in.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>2018: The Perfect Time to Consider ABM</h3>\r\nFor many verticals, businesses have more options than ever when it comes to making a purchase or investing in a service.\r\n\r\nThe winners will be those that stand out, those that offer something no one else does. In many cases, that something will be personalised service.\r\n\r\nAccount-based marketing allows companies to provide the type of personalised service that’s needed to stand out.\r\n\r\nWith targeted and personalised communications and interactions, marketers can inspire engagement. And with engagement comes customer loyalty, brand advocacy, and higher profits.','Here\'s Why You Should Consider Account-Based Marketing in 2018','','publish','closed','open','','account-based-marketing-2018','','\nhttps://www.brightspark-consulting.com/b2b-buyer-personas/','2018-03-21 12:12:07','2018-03-21 12:12:07','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=3948',0,'post','',0),(3950,3,'2018-03-09 16:34:52','2018-03-09 16:34:52','','account-based-marketing-2018','','inherit','closed','closed','','account-based-marketing-2018-2','','','2018-03-09 16:35:02','2018-03-09 16:35:02','',3948,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/account-based-marketing-2018.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3952,3,'2018-03-09 16:39:47','2018-03-09 16:39:47','','account based marketing ruler','','inherit','closed','closed','','account-based-marketing-ruler','','','2018-03-09 16:40:15','2018-03-09 16:40:15','',3948,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/account-based-marketing-ruler.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(3954,3,'2018-03-21 12:08:53','2018-03-21 12:08:53','Marketo’s <a href=\"https://www.marketo.com/analyst-and-other-reports/the-state-of-engagement/\">2017 State of Engagement</a> report presented some interesting findings of how effective marketers are at engaging their target customers and prospects:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">82% of marketers believe they have a deep understanding of their audiences, but half of consumers think brands could do a better job of engaging them.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">72% of B2B consumers say brands must have a deep understanding of their needs in order to successfully engage them.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">66% of B2B consumers expect all interactions with brands to be personalised.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">65% of B2B consumers say brands could do a better job aligning engagement activities with their preferences.</span></li>\r\n 	<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The number-one reason why B2B consumers don’t engage with brands more often is because brands send too much irrelevant content.</span></li>\r\n</ul>\r\nWhat this means is that although B2B marketers feel like they’re doing a great job of engaging with prospects in a meaningful and effective way, they could be doing better. To inspire better engagement in 2018, B2B marketers should consider the benefits of account-based marketing.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What Is Account-Based Marketing?</h3>\r\nMarketers typically define their ideal customers using fictional personas. Though those personas are often developed from market research, they represent the needs, values, and pain points of a category of prospects—not those of specific, individual customers.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3952\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/account-based-marketing-ruler.png\" alt=\"account based marketing ruler\" width=\"700\" height=\"656\" />\r\n\r\nAn example buyer persona from <a href=\"https://www.brightspark-consulting.com/b2b-buyer-personas/\">Brightspark Consulting</a>.<small></small>\r\n\r\nEssentially, most marketing consists of casting a wide net. Whether you’re targeting a broad group like “marketers” or a highly specific one like “marketers at businesses with fewer than 500 employees with a headquarters in the UK,” you’re targeting a group and not individuals.\r\n\r\nAccount-based marketing (ABM) takes the opposite approach. Instead of targeting general groups of prospects, B2B marketers that use ABM target specific, individual companies.\r\n\r\nIn an ABM model, all sales and marketing are focused on a set of target accounts—specific, hand-selected companies that meet criteria you established upfront. In this way, buyer personas are unnecessary. They’re replaced with detailed sheets describing real stakeholders at companies you believe will eventually invest in your products/services.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>How ABM Solves the Engagement Problem</h3>\r\nIf you look back that the statistics in the intro of this piece, the benefits of account-based marketing become clear. B2B consumers expect brands to have a deep understanding of their needs and to engage with relevant and personalised messaging that matches their preferences.\r\n\r\nThe bottom line: this is very difficult to achieve when you’re targeting general buyer types.\r\n\r\nNo two prospects are exactly alike. They have different pain points, different needs, and different communication preferences. For example, some prefer receiving communications by email, and some prefer talking to an account manager over the phone.\r\n\r\nWith account-based marketing, marketers and sales teams focus on learning exactly what individual businesses and stakeholders want and need. Then, they cater all campaigns to match the unique preferences of each target account. This allows ABM marketers to deliver the types of relevant, targeted, and personalised messages that truly engage B2B consumers.\r\n\r\nFor this reason, B2B marketers looking to increase engagement in 2018 should seriously consider adopting ABM.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>That’s All Great in Theory, But What About in Practice?</h3>\r\nFrom our own experience here at Ruler Analytics, we can attest to the benefits of narrowing your focus when it comes to sales and marketing.\r\n\r\nLast year, we noticed our performance was higher in one specific sector than any others. So we decided to go all-in on that segment—to focus on it 100%. The result: our revenue grew 2.5 times faster in the two months after making that decision than the two months prior.\r\n\r\nFocusing sales and marketing efforts was a very effective approach, but the changes we made weren’t nearly as focused as most ABM campaigns. For companies that have implemented ABM, 87% say it delivers a higher ROI than any other type of marketing.\r\n\r\nOther benefits of ABM include:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>It strengthens your relationship with customers.</strong> In ABM, target accounts are your number-one priority. This allows you to send more personalised communications, predict customer’s needs, and provide better service. Essentially, you become a partner to the customer and not just another service provider.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>It shortens the sales cycle.</strong> Large companies with many stakeholders are notoriously slow to get full alignment and make purchasing decisions. With ABM, you target each stakeholder, increasing the likelihood of gaining alignment on the purchase more quickly.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>It strengthens your value proposition.</strong> When prospects see that you’re fully focused on them, it makes your business stand out among the other products they’re considering. Prospects will be drawn to the company that’s catering its communications to their preferences over those that follow up with generic information.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>There’s less waste.</strong> Since you’re no longer targeting mass groups of potential customers, you can spend less on advertising. Say you’ve been advertising on Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter but discover your target accounts prefer engaging over email. You’ll save a significant amount of your marketing budget by reducing your ad spend.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Getting Started with Account-Based Marketing</h3>\r\nIf you decide that account-based marketing is an approach your company should pursue this year, you should know that implementing is much more complex than just making the decision.\r\n\r\nThere are a number of things you’ll need to do before jumping into ABM:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>Align marketing and sales.</strong> In order for an ABM approach to succeed, marketing and sales must be closely aligned. This means that all sales and marketing data and insights must be accessible to both teams so that both can cater their approaches based on what each team has learned about target accounts.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Select your target accounts.</strong> Data plays an important part in this process. You’ll need to understand what types of companies you’ve had the most success with before, what companies are already considering your product but haven’t made a final decision, and which of your existing customers may be interesting in making additional commitments.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Learn more about your target accounts.</strong> Before you can launch an ABM program, you’ll need to develop a number of personalised and targeted campaigns. This requires a lot of upfront research. Google and LinkedIn should be your best friends in helping you learn everything you can about target accounts, their needs, and their stakeholders.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Identify your optimal channels.</strong> Again, this requires research. Review your marketing email analytics to see if your target accounts interact with the emails you’ve sent in the past. Check and see if they’re active on social (and which channels they’re active on). Find out which companies have reviewed content on your website.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Define your goals and KPIs.</strong> Yes, 87% of marketers who use ABM say it delivers higher ROI, but that doesn’t mean the approach is guaranteed to work for you. As with any marketing initiative, it’s important to start by defining what success will look like so you can measure efforts over time and validate the effectiveness of the approach.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nAlso, remember that having the right tools is an important part of an effective ABM implementation. Do your research and find out what tools you need; social listening, analytics, and marketing automation tools are all popular options.\r\n\r\nFor example, Ruler Analytics is a great tool for teams that use ABM. Use it to automatically sync marketing and sales data across both your analytics platform and CRM, find out which companies, and which individuals from those companies, have visited your website and viewed your campaigns, and see what specific information they were most interested in.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>2018: The Perfect Time to Consider ABM</h3>\r\nFor many verticals, businesses have more options than ever when it comes to making a purchase or investing in a service.\r\n\r\nThe winners will be those that stand out, those that offer something no one else does. In many cases, that something will be personalised service.\r\n\r\nAccount-based marketing allows companies to provide the type of personalised service that’s needed to stand out.\r\n\r\nWith targeted and personalised communications and interactions, marketers can inspire engagement. And with engagement comes customer loyalty, brand advocacy, and higher profits.','Here\'s Why You Should Consider Account-Based Marketing in 2018','','inherit','closed','closed','','3948-autosave-v1','','','2018-03-21 12:08:53','2018-03-21 12:08:53','',3948,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/3948-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3955,0,'2018-03-10 04:37:08','2018-03-10 04:37:08','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3955','','','2018-03-10 04:37:08','2018-03-10 04:37:08','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3955/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3956,0,'2018-03-10 04:37:54','2018-03-10 04:37:54','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3956','','','2018-03-10 04:37:54','2018-03-10 04:37:54','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3956/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3957,0,'2018-03-10 16:25:01','2018-03-10 16:25:01','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3957','','','2018-03-10 16:25:01','2018-03-10 16:25:01','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3957/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3958,0,'2018-03-11 00:15:51','2018-03-11 00:15:51','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3958','','','2018-03-11 00:15:51','2018-03-11 00:15:51','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3958/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3959,0,'2018-03-12 01:03:57','2018-03-12 01:03:57','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3959','','','2018-03-12 01:03:57','2018-03-12 01:03:57','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3959/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3960,0,'2018-03-12 01:04:55','2018-03-12 01:04:55','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3960','','','2018-03-12 01:04:55','2018-03-12 01:04:55','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3960/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3961,0,'2018-03-12 12:46:18','2018-03-12 12:46:18','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3961','','','2018-03-12 12:46:18','2018-03-12 12:46:18','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3961/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3962,0,'2018-03-12 12:46:55','2018-03-12 12:46:55','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3962','','','2018-03-12 12:46:55','2018-03-12 12:46:55','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/nf_sub/3962/',0,'nf_sub','',0),(3963,1,'2018-03-12 14:32:48','0000-00-00 00:00:00','<h3>What is a single source of truth in sales and marketing?</h3>\nThe problem with big data is that it can be rather overwhelming.\n\nIt\'s possible to end up with large silos of information and analytics, with no consistent identifiers and no clear pathway to use all that data for a focused business growth strategy.\n\nThe advances in software and analytical skills to make sense of big data are expanding exponentially, of course. We can now strip down, formulate, collate, categorise, measure, monitor and manipulate data to a micro level.\n\nIn particular, technology has provided some excellent tools and methodologies for monitoring and measuring digital sales and marketing data.\n\nHowever, it can still sometimes be a case of too much information to make sense of. Companies can find it problematic if clear results are hard to extrapolate. It’s not just about accuracy and alignment either. You can have a wealth of granular data in your organisation, and still have difficulties in creating meaningful collaboration and communication between different departments. Or, even disjointed dialogue between different teams within your sales and marketing functions.\n\nAll of which means you may find that business strategies lose momentum due to contradictory or confusing intel, lack of clarity or duplication of effort.\n\nMost companies now have multiple ways to capture and measure leads, and the customer pipeline. But how many have a single source of truth, to reconcile and clarify it all? Can you line up your marketing and sales activities with revenue implications in an accurate and consistent way?\n\n&lt;b&gt;Going back to basics&lt;/b&gt;\n\nThe currency of business growth is leads. The holy grail of marketing and sales is developing the capabilities to treat each lead as an individual selling opportunity, nurturing it to a positive conclusion.\n\nDigital sales channels can support this brilliantly, offering organisations the potential to personalise their marketing and sales activities like never before. Each marketing channel can be configured to appeal to different target audiences or formulated to work together to create an unmissable incentive and call to action to buy.\n\nWeaving this all together in a structured and sustained way means generating up to the minute insights and having absolute control. Only then can your entire organisation – including inbound marketing teams, sales personnel and call centres – be orchestrated effectively.\n\nThis is far from straightforward, without a single source of truth to measure and analyse leads from beginning to end.\n\n&lt;b&gt;Anaytical and data gathering – the lead tangle&lt;/b&gt;\n\nAmong the marketing channels available to UK businesses are Google AdWords, paid for content on social media and, of course, their own website enquiry forms and other calls to action.\n\nEach offers its own analytical tools and opportunities; such as Google Analytics and LinkedIn Analytics. Don’t be fooled by the fact that some of these metrics have similar names – they are potentially measuring data for very different perspectives.\n\nMarketing automation software such as HubSpot and Marketo have made it easier to orchestrate all marketing channel activity and to engage with prospects and create actionable insights. Granular data can then be extracted and stored in your CRM.\n\nThe problem with that is that each CRM system defines a lead in a different way. The most commonly used is Salesforce. However, there are around 100 to choose from, including, for example, NetSuite, Zoho, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive and Oracle.\n\nThen, of course, you may have leads stored both in your marketing automation system and CRM, at different points of the buying cycle. How this lead is qualified may also be different according to its origin. When, where and how the data was collected could affect its categorisation, as well as the fields, settings and processing of each of your marketing and sales tools.\n\nA conversion tracking pixel tool could measure every engagement as a lead. A form submitted via your website could be classed as a lead. Each may have different filters to qualify these.\n\nAlso, as each of these enquiries and engagements go off to the sales team, they apply their own sets of criteria for how valuable these leads are in terms of conversion potential. In fact, within your own company, different owners and departments can easily slip into using different sources or criteria to chart leads. You could even face a situation in which teams are pulling in different directions using partial or out of date data.\n\nYou may end up with partial information on numerous systems, and trying to analyse data from various angles, using inconsistent data fields. Multiple sets of data across multiple systems are not conducive to an accurate and actionable sales pipeline.\n\nAlongside the difficulty in setting qualification criteria comes the problem of attribution. It is not always clear-cut how you should assign revenue impact to leads from different sources.\n\nHaving more than one version of “truth” in your company clearly leads to confusion, but the worse case scenario is that it will also result in paralysis or even bad decision making.\n\n&lt;b&gt;Duplication of leads&lt;/b&gt;\n\nThe systems you can use to sift through and measure lead generation, include, for example, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and LinkedIn Analytics and your own CRM software - each has its own purpose and values. However, duplication between the different tools is also entirely possible.\n\nFor example, a customer responds to a Facebook ad with a click. To check your credentials as a company, they may also research you on LinkedIn. Then later, they decide to take things further and visit your website. Potentially they give your product some thought, before returning - as a separate process – to complete your enquiry form on your website or place an order.\n\nEvery one of those interactions with your marketing channels could well be measured as a unique lead and then a conversion.\n\nThis can inflate your numbers and lead to confusion in measuring your pipeline efficiency. Double or multiple counting can also distort the analysis of how effective each marketing channel is proving in lead generation and qualification. It also makes it even harder to be accurate in attributing revenue.\n\nThis is another way in which having no single source of truth for marketing and sales data can devalue the effectiveness of all of your analytics, which in turn makes it harder to create growth strategies. How can you create the right marketing mix, when you can’t be sure which channel is working the most efficiently?\n\nHow can you create a single source of truth, to deal with these issues?\n\n&lt;b&gt;The attribution solution&lt;/b&gt;\n\nThe terms single source of truth and single version of the truth are complementary concepts.\n\nIn a nutshell, sales and marketing teams need to create one system to collate and store data, that renders it entirely accurate and actionable. Anyone can extract what they need from this single source of truth.\n\nThe view each separate company department and team then has of marketing and sales data, from any location, is a single version of the truth. Trusted insights can be a relied on by decision makers, as a basis for business strategies.\n\nHaving one single storage system is not always easy to build, without it collapsing under the weight of the data it needs to hold and sort. And many attempts to collate and manage disparate data can fall far short of their aims.\n\nFor many organisations, the single source of truth is having a CRM system sophisticated enough to close the loops and get data streamlined and efficiently sorted with their marketing automation system.\n\nYour organisation certainly needs technology that gathers together information from all marketing channels, including all offline and online marketing and sales activity, pulling leads into a centralised attribution solution. Every email click, Live Chat engagement, telephone call and social media response should be funnelling through this one system, alongside analytical input.\n\nThis single source of truth would cut through all levels of your marketing funnel, and be able to show outcomes and revenue in one streamlined process. It would also eliminate duplication and double counting.\n\nThis means your whole organisation would be speaking in the same data language, rather than having myriad different systems and criteria. Each team would then be working from the same baselines and attribution fields, creating a far more effective pipeline and clearer revenue mapping.\n\nIt would be far easier to see which channels are being the most productive in generated qualified leads, and the absolute sources of completed transactions. Each customer journey would have a clear beginning and end, from first contact to transaction or disengagement.\n\nThis can all be particularly vital if your organisation is working across multiple marketing channels and running numerous campaigns at once.\n\nBeing able to drill down on what is and what isn’t working – and how much revenue that equates to - is a commercial imperative. Otherwise, marketing and sales spend can quickly get “out of control” and resources can be wasted on ineffectual activities.\n\nTo find your organisation’s single source of truth – and get your teams and business strategies tuned in to a single version of the truth – contact Ruler Analytics. Our systems close the loop between leads and revenue, putting your organisation in firm control of its own data.','What is a single source of truth in sales and marketing?','','draft','closed','open','','','','','2018-03-12 14:32:48','2018-03-12 14:32:48','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=3963',0,'post','',0),(3964,1,'2018-03-12 16:30:09','2018-03-12 16:30:09','Our team are delighted to have received your request and will be in touch shortly.\r\n\r\nIf you know what time you are available, you can book directly into my calendar <a href=\"https://ruleranalytics.24sessions.com/peteallcock\">here</a>.\r\n\r\nSpeak soon!\r\n\r\n','Thank You!','','inherit','closed','closed','','2328-autosave-v1','','','2018-03-12 16:30:09','2018-03-12 16:30:09','',2328,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/2328-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(3965,0,'2018-03-12 22:36:25','2018-03-12 22:36:25','','','','publish','closed','closed','','3965','','','2018-03-12 22:36:25','2018-03-12 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11:17:04','0000-00-00 00:00:00','','Auto Draft','','auto-draft','closed','open','','','','','2018-03-21 11:17:04','0000-00-00 00:00:00','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=4010',0,'post','',0),(4011,3,'2018-03-21 11:53:27','2018-03-21 11:53:27','CRM tools started off as a sort of enhanced Rolodex.\r\n\r\nInstead of sales teams filling out paper index cards with names, contact information, and any notes about leads/customers, they began digitising the information on CRM platforms so the information was accessible to everyone.\r\n\r\nAlthough, over time, prospect and customer preferences evolved.\r\n\r\nToday’s buyers expect more personalised and cohesive service.\r\n\r\nProviding it means that marketing, sales, and customer service teams must collaborate and share information.\r\n\r\nAs a result, the role of the CRM in marketing expanded, and today it plays a crucial role in increasing, and tracking, marketing-generated leads and revenue.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What is a CRM?</h3>\r\nCRM is an acronym for customer relationship management, a strategy for managing relationships with leads and customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle.\r\n\r\nThe acronym is also frequently used to refer tools that enable teams to build and execute on a CRM strategy.\r\n\r\nCRM tools provide sales, marketing, and customer service teams with a platform for organising, sharing, and synchronising lead and customer information.\r\n\r\nHere are a few examples:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>A CRM collects information about the marketing materials and campaigns that leads interacted with prior to requesting a sales call, providing sales teams with more information about the products, features, and use cases leads are interested in.</li>\r\n 	<li>A CRM collects all notes that sales teams take when talking to leads and customers. Using these notes, marketing teams can see what prospects are/aren’t interested in, using that information to create more personalised and targeted campaigns.</li>\r\n 	<li>Sales and marketing teams can also access customer service information collected from existing customers to identify possible upsell opportunities or monitor accounts for signs of risk of non-renewal.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nEssentially, CRMs collect information about how leads and customers interact with the company across every channel—websites, social media, phone, live chat, etc.—giving sales, marketing, and service teams a 360° view of customer preferences, concerns, and purchase histories.\r\n\r\nThe big-name CRM tool providers include <a href=\"https://www.salesforce.com/crm/\">Salesforce</a>, <a href=\"https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/\">Microsoft</a>, <a href=\"https://www.oracle.com/applications/customer-experience/crm/index.html\">Oracle</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.sap.com/products/crm-commerce.html\">SAP</a>, but in recent years, a lot of smaller companies have become leaders in the field by catering non-enterprise businesses. These include <a href=\"https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm\">HubSpot</a>, <a href=\"https://close.io/\">Close.io</a>, <a href=\"https://getbase.com/\">Base</a>, and the CRM tool we use here at Ruler Analytics—<a href=\"https://www.pipedrive.com/en-gb\">Pipedrive</a>.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>CRM vs. Marketing Automation</h3>\r\nOften, the terms CRM and marketing automation are used synonymously, but they’re really two different types of tools. Marketing automation tools are focused on top-of the funnel activities like lead generation and nurturing, such as automating ad, email, and social campaigns.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4012\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/expanding-role-of-the-CRM-in-marketing-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"expanding role of the CRM in marketing - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"485\" height=\"413\" />\r\n\r\nImage Source: <a href=\"https://blog.capterra.com/whats-difference-between-crm-and-marketing-automation-software/\">Capterra</a>\r\n\r\nAnd while some marketing automation tools provide CRM-like functions like lead scoring, most often marketing automation data is transferred to a CRM for bottom-of-the-funnel, one-on-one activities like sales calls, demos, service requests, and renewal/upsell activities.\r\n\r\nSo from a surface-level view of marketing automation and CRM tools, it seems like marketers should work in a marketing automation tool and sales/service should work in a CRM. However, marketers who ignore the information contained in a CRM miss out on valuable opportunities.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>How Marketing Benefits From CRM Data</h3>\r\nThe idea that marketing automation tools are for marketing teams and CRMs are for sales and service teams is flawed. The reality is that marketers benefit significantly from accessing and using the data collected in a CRM. Here’s how:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li><strong>Continue nurturing leads that failed to convert.</strong> Using CRM data, marketers can identify which leads spoke with sales but didn’t convert. Using the details recorded from that conversation, marketing teams can build personalised campaigns designed to continue nurturing the lead in hopes of an eventual conversion.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Identify marketing-generated revenue.</strong> Marketers who use <a href=\"http://www.ruleranalytics.com\">Ruler Analytics</a> can connect their analytics program and preferred CRM, <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/analytics/close-loop-offline-sales-online-leads/\">closing the loop</a> between marketing and sales. This allows you to track and report on marketing-generating leads and revenue, providing leadership with detailed figures on marketing’s ROI.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Bring hot leads to the attention of sales.</strong> Most CRMs include a feature that scores each lead’s likelihood to convert. When marketing and sales team members are both monitoring this information, it increases the likelihood that key prospects don’t slip through the cracks and boosts the amount of revenue marketing generates.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Stop wasting time on cold leads.</strong> Another benefit of lead-scoring tools is the ability to identify cold leads. If you know which customers—or which types of customers—are unlikely to convert, you can stop wasting time nurturing those customers and divert your attention to the leads that are more likely to result in revenue.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Gather valuable information for ABM campaigns.</strong> If your team is running an <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/inbound-marketing/account-based-marketing-2018/\">account-based marketing</a> program, your CRM is your best friend. It helps you identify possible cross-sell and upsell opportunities for existing customers and create targeted campaigns designed to highlight the benefits of additional products to target accounts.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Identify renewal marketing opportunities.</strong> CRMs contain valuable renewal marketing data like subscription expiration dates and service call conversations, allowing marketing teams to build lists of existing customers at risk for non-renewal that should be targeted by renewal marketing campaigns.</li>\r\n 	<li><strong>Discover gaps in the customer journey.</strong> The ability to review what questions leads ask when working with sales or customer service provides valuable data that can be used to strengthen your customer journey, come up with ideas for new types of content to publish, and build a more effective funnel.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nAs customers demand more personalised service and expect more cohesive experiences, the ability for marketing, sales, and service to work from a centralised information repository becomes more and more crucial.\r\n\r\nBeyond all of these benefits, centralising customer data in a CRM leads to a better customer experience, which increases customer loyalty.How Companies Benefit from Using a CRM\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>How Companies Benefit from Using a CRM</h3>\r\nWe’ve looked at some of the ways that marketing, sales, and service teams benefit from a CRM, but what about the company overall?\r\n\r\nThe benefits for companies are compelling as well. According to Salesforce, companies that adopt a CRM <a href=\"https://www.salesforce.com/crm/what-is-crm/\">see impressive results</a>:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>30% increase in conversions</li>\r\n 	<li>35% increase in customer satisfaction</li>\r\n 	<li>38% decrease in time-to-decision</li>\r\n 	<li>25% increase in revenue</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nA CRM helps teams provide better service throughout the customer lifecycle, improving customer loyalty and inspiring brand advocacy. This is crucial because marketing today is more difficult than ever, word-of-mouth referrals produce the highest-quality leads, and it’s significantly less expensive to retain an existing customer than onboard a new one.\r\n\r\nAs your company grows, you’ll see one of the biggest benefits of a CRM - its scalability. Regardless of the number of leads you generate each month, a CRM gives everyone onboard access to important marketing, sales and service data which they can use to help accelerate revenue growth.','The Expanding Role of the CRM in Marketing (+7 Benefits)','','publish','closed','open','','crm-in-marketing','','https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/analytics/close-loop-offline-sales-online-leads/\nhttps://blog.capterra.com/whats-difference-between-crm-and-marketing-automation-software/\nhttps://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/inbound-marketing/account-based-marketing-2018/','2018-03-22 09:18:23','2018-03-22 09:18:23','',0,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/?p=4011',0,'post','',0),(4012,3,'2018-03-21 11:22:48','2018-03-21 11:22:48','','expanding role of the CRM in marketing - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','expanding-role-of-the-crm-in-marketing-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-03-21 11:22:58','2018-03-21 11:22:58','',4011,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/expanding-role-of-the-CRM-in-marketing-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4013,3,'2018-03-21 11:52:13','2018-03-21 11:52:13','','expanding role of the CRM in marketing - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','expanding-role-of-the-crm-in-marketing-www-ruleranalytics-com-2','','','2018-03-21 11:52:28','2018-03-21 11:52:28','',4011,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/expanding-role-of-the-CRM-in-marketing-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(4014,3,'2018-03-22 09:14:07','2018-03-22 09:14:07','CRM tools started off as a sort of enhanced Rolodex.\n\nInstead of sales teams filling out paper index cards with names, contact information, and any notes about leads/customers, they began digitising the information on CRM platforms so the information was accessible to everyone.\n\nAlthough, over time, prospect and customer preferences evolved.\n\nToday’s buyers expect more personalised and cohesive service.\n\nProviding it means that marketing, sales, and customer service teams must collaborate and share information.\n\nAs a result, the role of the CRM in marketing expanded, and today it plays a crucial role in increasing, and tracking, marketing-generated leads and revenue.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>What is a CRM?</h3>\nCRM is an acronym for customer relationship management, a strategy for managing relationships with leads and customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle.\n\nThe acronym is also frequently used to refer tools that enable teams to build and execute on a CRM strategy.\n\nCRM tools provide sales, marketing, and customer service teams with a platform for organising, sharing, and synchronising lead and customer information.\n\nHere are a few examples:\n<ul>\n 	<li>A CRM collects information about the marketing materials and campaigns that leads interacted with prior to requesting a sales call, providing sales teams with more information about the products, features, and use cases leads are interested in.</li>\n 	<li>A CRM collects all notes that sales teams take when talking to leads and customers. Using these notes, marketing teams can see what prospects are/aren’t interested in, using that information to create more personalised and targeted campaigns.</li>\n 	<li>Sales and marketing teams can also access customer service information collected from existing customers to identify possible upsell opportunities or monitor accounts for signs of risk of non-renewal.</li>\n</ul>\nEssentially, CRMs collect information about how leads and customers interact with the company across every channel—websites, social media, phone, live chat, etc.—giving sales, marketing, and service teams a 360° view of customer preferences, concerns, and purchase histories.\n\nThe big-name CRM tool providers include <a href=\"https://www.salesforce.com/crm/\">Salesforce</a>, <a href=\"https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/\">Microsoft</a>, <a href=\"https://www.oracle.com/applications/customer-experience/crm/index.html\">Oracle</a>, and <a href=\"https://www.sap.com/products/crm-commerce.html\">SAP</a>, but in recent years, a lot of smaller companies have become leaders in the field by catering non-enterprise businesses. These include <a href=\"https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm\">HubSpot</a>, <a href=\"https://close.io/\">Close.io</a>, <a href=\"https://getbase.com/\">Base</a>, and the CRM tool we use here at Ruler Analytics—<a href=\"https://www.pipedrive.com/en-gb\">Pipedrive</a>.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>CRM vs. Marketing Automation</h3>\nOften, the terms CRM and marketing automation are used synonymously, but they’re really two different types of tools. Marketing automation tools are focused on top-of the funnel activities like lead generation and nurturing, such as automating ad, email, and social campaigns.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4012\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/expanding-role-of-the-CRM-in-marketing-www.ruleranalytics.com_.jpg\" alt=\"expanding role of the CRM in marketing - www.ruleranalytics.com\" width=\"485\" height=\"413\" />\n\nImage Source: <a href=\"https://blog.capterra.com/whats-difference-between-crm-and-marketing-automation-software/\">Capterra</a>\n\nAnd while some marketing automation tools provide CRM-like functions like lead scoring, most often marketing automation data is transferred to a CRM for bottom-of-the-funnel, one-on-one activities like sales calls, demos, service requests, and renewal/upsell activities.\n\nSo from a surface-level view of marketing automation and CRM tools, it seems like marketers should work in a marketing automation tool and sales/service should work in a CRM. However, marketers who ignore the information contained in a CRM miss out on valuable opportunities.\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>How Marketing Benefits From CRM Data</h3>\nThe idea that marketing automation tools are for marketing teams and CRMs are for sales and service teams is flawed. The reality is that marketers benefit significantly from accessing and using the data collected in a CRM. Here’s how:\n<ul>\n 	<li><strong>Continue nurturing leads that failed to convert.</strong> Using CRM data, marketers can identify which leads spoke with sales but didn’t convert. Using the details recorded from that conversation, marketing teams can build personalised campaigns designed to continue nurturing the lead in hopes of an eventual conversion.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Identify marketing-generated revenue.</strong> Marketers who use <a href=\"http://www.ruleranalytics.com\">Ruler Analytics</a> can connect their analytics program and preferred CRM, <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/analytics/close-loop-offline-sales-online-leads/\">closing the loop</a> between marketing and sales. This allows you to track and report on marketing-generating leads and revenue, providing leadership with detailed figures on marketing’s ROI.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Bring hot leads to the attention of sales.</strong> Most CRMs include a feature that scores each lead’s likelihood to convert. When marketing and sales team members are both monitoring this information, it increases the likelihood that key prospects don’t slip through the cracks and boosts the amount of revenue marketing generates.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Stop wasting time on cold leads.</strong> Another benefit of lead-scoring tools is the ability to identify cold leads. If you know which customers—or which types of customers—are unlikely to convert, you can stop wasting time nurturing those customers and divert your attention to the leads that are more likely to result in revenue.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Gather valuable information for ABM campaigns.</strong> If your team is running an <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/inbound-marketing/account-based-marketing-2018/\">account-based marketing</a> program, your CRM is your best friend. It helps you identify possible cross-sell and upsell opportunities for existing customers and create targeted campaigns designed to highlight the benefits of additional products to target accounts.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Identify renewal marketing opportunities.</strong> CRMs contain valuable renewal marketing data like subscription expiration dates and service call conversations, allowing marketing teams to build lists of existing customers at risk for non-renewal that should be targeted by renewal marketing campaigns.</li>\n 	<li><strong>Discover gaps in the customer journey.</strong> The ability to review what questions leads ask when working with sales or customer service provides valuable data that can be used to strengthen your customer journey, come up with ideas for new types of content to publish, and build a more effective funnel.</li>\n</ul>\nAs customers demand more personalised service and expect more cohesive experiences, the ability for marketing, sales, and service to work from a centralised information repository becomes more and more crucial.\n\nBeyond all of these benefits, centralising customer data in a CRM leads to a better customer experience, which increases customer loyalty.How Companies Benefit from Using a CRM\n\n&nbsp;\n<h3>How Companies Benefit from Using a CRM</h3>\nWe’ve looked at some of the ways that marketing, sales, and service teams benefit from a CRM, but what about the company overall?\n\nThe benefits for companies are compelling as well. According to Salesforce, companies that adopt a CRM <a href=\"https://www.salesforce.com/crm/what-is-crm/\">see impressive results</a>:\n<ul>\n 	<li>30% increase in conversions</li>\n 	<li>35% increase in customer satisfaction</li>\n 	<li>38% decrease in time-to-decision</li>\n 	<li>25% increase in revenue</li>\n</ul>\nA CRM helps teams provide better service throughout the customer lifecycle, improving customer loyalty and inspiring brand advocacy. This is crucial because marketing today is more difficult than ever, word-of-mouth referrals produce the highest-quality leads, and it’s significantly less expensive to retain an existing customer than onboard a new one.\n\nAs your company grows, you’ll see one of the biggest benefits of a CRM - its scalability. Regardless of the number of leads you generate each month, a CRM gives everyone onboard access to important marketing, sales and service data which they can use to help accelerate revenue growth.','The Expanding Role of the CRM in Marketing (+7 Benefits)','','inherit','closed','closed','','4011-autosave-v1','','','2018-03-22 09:14:07','2018-03-22 09:14:07','',4011,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/uncategorised/4011-autosave-v1/',0,'revision','',0),(4016,3,'2018-03-21 12:06:30','2018-03-21 12:06:30','','account based marketing 2018 - www.ruleranalytics.com (2)','','inherit','closed','closed','','account-based-marketing-2018-www-ruleranalytics-com-2','','','2018-03-21 12:06:51','2018-03-21 12:06:51','',3948,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/account-based-marketing-2018-www.ruleranalytics.com-2.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(4017,3,'2018-03-21 12:19:40','2018-03-21 12:19:40','','facebook click-to-call ads - www.ruleranalytics.com','','inherit','closed','closed','','facebook-click-to-call-ads-www-ruleranalytics-com','','','2018-03-21 12:19:49','2018-03-21 12:19:49','',3844,'https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/facebook-click-to-call-ads-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(4018,3,'2018-03-21 12:20:11','2018-03-21 12:20:11','We’ve written before about the benefits of <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/ppc/call-only-ads-adwords/\">AdWords call-only ads and call extensions</a>. These ad types are perfect for driving calls to local businesses, but only when prospects are actively searching for relevant keywords in Google.\r\n\r\nAlthough, what about potential customers who aren’t actively conducting searches on Google? People who are killing time by scrolling through social media feeds at home or at a coffee shop. These people may be interested in finding somewhere to go, something to do, or something to buy—even if they’re not actively searching for options.\r\n\r\nCome through Facebook click-to-call ads.\r\n\r\nFacebook’s solution for local advertising gets your business and promotions in front of passive audiences, boosting awareness and driving phone calls.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>What Are Facebook Click-to-Call Ads?</h3>\r\nCatering to businesses with local customers, such as restaurants, attractions, and services. Facebook offers a special type of local awareness ads. These ads display in people’s newsfeeds when they’re near one of your business’ locations.\r\n\r\nUnlike general Facebook ads with a call-to-action that links to a website, local awareness ads have more specific CTAs: “Get Directions,” and “Call Now.”\r\n\r\nFacebook click-to-call ads display the “Call Now” button. When users click it, it opens the dial pad on their phones with your business’ number pre-populated.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Example Use Cases for Click-to-Call Ads</h3>\r\nWhy bother promoting phone calls in an age where all of the information prospects need is at their fingertips? Well, research has shown that increased mobile adoption has led to “an explosion of phone calls.”\r\n\r\nPeople want information instantly. The fastest way to get that information is to call and ask.\r\n\r\nLet’s say one of your clients is a fine dining establishment that requires reservations. A potential customer is scrolling through his Facebook feed while waiting for the workday to end, and he sees an ad for your client’s restaurant.\r\n\r\nSure, he might be willing to go through a long online reservation process, but it’s more likely he’ll want to just call and take care of it quickly.\r\n\r\nOr maybe that same person wants to get their oil changed on the way home from work. He sees a Facebook ad promoting a big discount on oil changes at your client’s auto servicing business, but he wants to call and make sure there’s an opening on the schedule that evening.\r\n\r\nClick-to-call ads also work well for clients with tourist-attraction businesses. Say a woman is sitting in her hotel room, waiting for her husband to finish showering, and filling her time looking on Facebook.\r\n\r\nShe sees an ad for your client’s local attraction and is interested, so she clicks to call and gets all of the information she needs to add that attraction to the day’s itinerary.\r\n\r\nFacebook click-to-call ads can promote general business information, sales, and promotions.\r\n\r\nThey can be targeted to detailed personas and may display to people within a certain distance (ex: within a mile) or your client’s business.\r\n<h3></h3>\r\n<h3>How to Create a Click-to-Call Ad on Facebook</h3>\r\nTo create your first Facebook click-to-call ad, follow the instructions below.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n1. Navigate to Facebook’s Ads Manager dashboard.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3823\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_1.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-1\" width=\"701\" height=\"274\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n2. Select “Reach” in the “Awareness” column.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3824\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_2.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-2\" width=\"700\" height=\"345\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n3. Scroll down, give your campaign a name, and click the “Continue” button.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3825\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_3.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-3\" width=\"539\" height=\"413\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n4. Select the page for the business you’re creating the ad for, and set your targeting options as you would for any ad for that business.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3826\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_4.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-4\" width=\"699\" height=\"567\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n5. Scroll down to the “Placements” section, and select “Edit Placements.”\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3827\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_5.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-5\" width=\"699\" height=\"261\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n6. Under “Device Types,” select “Mobile Only.” Since you’re building a click-to-call ad, there’s not much value in having the ad display to people using desktop computers.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3828\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_6.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-6\" width=\"300\" height=\"116\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">7. Set your budgeting and scheduling options for the ad, then click “Continue.”</span>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3829\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_7.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-7\" width=\"701\" height=\"398\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n8. Create your ad using whatever text, images, etc. are important for the messaging.\r\n\r\n9. When the ad is complete, scroll all of the ways down the page until you see the “Call to Action” drop-down. Select “Call Now,” and enter the business’ phone number in the box that populates below the drop-down.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3830\" src=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Create_Click_to_Call_Ad_8.jpg\" alt=\"Create-Click-to-Call-Ad-8\" width=\"701\" height=\"385\" />\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nReview your ad and make sure everything displays as desired, then click the confirm button to begin running your new click-to-call ad.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Call Tracking for Click-to-Call Ads</h3>\r\nNow that your click-to-call ad is up and running, you need a way to measure its effectiveness.\r\n\r\nFacebook provides metrics on ad impressions, total spend, and how many people clicked the “Call Now” CTA.\r\n\r\nAt a glance, that seems sufficient, but these general metrics don’t tell the whole story.\r\n\r\nWhen a user clicks on the “Call Now” button, it doesn’t immediately initiate a call to the business. Instead, it opens the dial pad on the user’s mobile phone with the business’ phone number pre-populated.\r\n\r\nFacebook reports that action as a call, but there’s no guarantee that a call was actually made. The person could just as easily have backed out of the dial pad screen.\r\n\r\nTo truly measure how many calls Facebook click-to-call ads are driving, you need <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/phone-call-tracking/best-call-tracking-software/\">inbound call tracking software</a> like <a href=\"https://www.ruleranalytics.com/\">Ruler Analytics</a>.\r\n\r\nRuler Analytics provides you with a distinct phone number you can use to <strong>track the actual number of calls your Facebook ads generate.</strong>\r\n\r\nIt also records inbound phone calls, allowing you to listen to calls generated from Facebook ad campaigns and determine how many resulted in revenue for the business.\r\n\r\nWithout an inbound call tracking system, it’s impossible to truly measure the number of leads and amount of revenue generated by Facebook click-to-call campaigns.\r\n\r\nWhat you’re left with is guesswork and hopes instead of a true picture of marketing ROI.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Facebook Click-to-Call Ad Campaign Best Practices</h3>\r\nWhen creating click-to-call ad campaigns on Facebook, there are a few best practices you should keep in mind:\r\n<ul>\r\n 	<li>Target the right prospects. Take advantage of Facebook’s detailed targeting capabilities to display ads to your ideal customers. Also, make sure to utilize location targeting to get your ads in front of people who are near the business you’re promoting.</li>\r\n 	<li>Schedule ads to run at prime times. To do this, you’ll need to establish an ad lifetime budget rather than a daily budget. However, being able to narrow the window when your ads display, such as displaying a restaurant ad a couple of hours before dinner, will help you reach people in the moment that they’re seeking your services.</li>\r\n 	<li>Test multiple versions of ads. Does including an image encourage or discourage more clicks on your call button? What about including a video instead of an image? The only way to find out which versions of your ads generate the most impressions, clicks and calls is to test multiple versions and discover the top performers</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nHowever, the best practice of all is making sure you’re tracking the outcomes of your click-to-call ads. Use a call tracking platform to determine exactly how many calls and how much revenue the ads are generating.\r\n\r\nMaybe click-to-call ads are much more effective than your other campaigns, and you should funnel more budget to that campaign type. Or maybe they don’t perform well at all and should be discontinued. The only way to find out is to track the calls and measure their performance.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<h3>Even in This Digital Age, Calls Are Still Crucial</h3>\r\nAs a digital marketer, it’s easy to immerse yourself in mobile apps, digital content, and social media - forgetting the more analogue means of marketing a business. Even old-school methods of communication like phone calls have their merit in an instant-information-seeking society.\r\n\r\nIn truth, making a call is often much simpler than navigating and searching through a website, especially on a mobile device where typing is less convenient and time is often limited. For this reason, local businesses have a lot to gain by encouraging customers to call instead of click. 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