Studio And Creative Agency
I can’t speak for every creative agency out there because I don’t know how they’re structured I’ve seen. I’ve had the privilege of watching agencies, I would recommend connecting with other creative agencies to see how they do it. I’ve made several friends in the creative space and have had zoom calls and we’ve talked about these types of things.
And one thing that I’ve realized is everybody’s different everybody sets it up slightly different just based on their makeup services offer you, What the leader is good at what the leaders not good at and what their emphasis is, so there’s not like monolithic answer as to how do you set up a creative agency.
Defining Creative Agency
It differs from one agency to the next, I could tell you how we did it for us and me. I never read a book on this I had no understanding or experience of how to do it. Just learned from mistakes and so I just started hiring people. I saw a gap of meaning we were not providing the level of service or care that we wanted to be followed up. Just started hiring people and after several years of iteration figuring out how do I make sense of this. I feel like we’ve landed on a pretty good system or an organizational hierarchy that works for us. And so the way I think about it is um two different teams
Brand Management And Creative Fulfillment
I think of the brand management team and the creative agency fulfillment. They’re the ones primarily talking to the client and they’re managing the brand that we’re working with. and the creative fulfillment team. And so the brand management team is responsible for the client .and these are the people that are doing the creative work.
So they’re doing graphic design, they’re doing videography, they’re doing copywriting and messaging fill in the gap of or in the fill in the blank of whatever creative agency service. And the reason why they’re on the bottom is not of importance it’s just because they’re not talking with the client.
The Creative Agency Strategist
It’s an order of client communication and so at the top in the brand management team. It starts with me the strategist and so there’s the brand strategist. So this is after it’s sold so if you’re working with a bigger team that has a sales team it might start with sales, and then before then’s there’s marketing. I’m not getting into that because right now with me at the butler. I do all the marketing the sales and onboarding and strategy.
So all of that is at the very top so we’ll just say it starts with strategy. this is the person who’s meeting with the client. They’re understanding who they are, what their goals are, who their audience is, what they’re trying to accomplish. And we do this through what we call a discovery session. It’s usually about a half-day facilitated session. I facilitate that with the client’s key stakeholders and we just spent a lot of time. I asked them a ton of questions and so it starts at the top with a strategy I then develop a strategy based on that discovery session. And I meet with my project manager and usually either like a creative director or my marketing director and that’s again we’re all at the top in the brand management team.
Managing The Clients Of Creative Agency
We communicate that to the client. I used to do all of the client communication but once we got to a certain level we were working on more projects .we started selling marketing retainers to where we’re working with more companies consistently. it was just impossible for me to be the one person doing all the client Communication, I ended up being a bottleneck. So my project manager and my marketing director have stepped in to fill that void and so again those are people that my team that’s in the brand management and the brand management team.
They oversee or assign the tasks and make sure that the creative fulfillment is getting done. And so even though a graphic needs to be done, it’s really up to the project manager to make sure that that gets done. I’m reporting to one person or one person rather than reporting to me. In that way, I’m not having to manage all those other pieces and so that’s the way we’ve divided it up is two teams brand management creative fulfillment and we’re just continuing to add to our creative fulfillment team.
A Thought For Solopreneur
If you are a Solopreneur, if you’re working by yourself it’s going to be the same thing. You’re just all alone at the top of brand management. Your job is to onboard the clients’ conduct strategy be the creative director project manager and then you’re working with freelancers and you’re outsourcing the creative fulfillment. but the hierarchy is pretty much the same, that’s pretty much how we structure butler branding.
We’ll just pretend it’s just my project manager and I’m running lead on the creative agency direction so I strategize with my client I say okay this is the actual project. and all of the deliverables that we’re going to have to create. I meet with my project manager who knows my team, and her responsibility is to take this big project split it up into all of the individual phases fill up each of those phases with all of the tasks that need to be done in each phase. And assign those tasks to the creative fulfillment team. And based on that we then come up with our actual timeline and so once we get that timeline.
Track your agency’s profitability
Don’t make the same mistake most first-time entrepreneurs make: always track agency profitability. To know how profitable your agency is you have to know the difference between your net income and gross income.
Gross profits show you how much money is available to you after taking your revenue and subtracting how much it costs your company to produce its services. Net profits show what cash you have leftover from your gross profits after you subtract your expenses.
To keep your agency profitable you can increase your net profit margin (and profitability) by reducing costs and increasing revenue. Keep in mind, increasing your revenue doesn’t always mean you’re increasing your profitability at the same time. That’s why you need to keep track of both gross and net profit.
Digital Marketing: Most Wanted After Agencies
Digital marketing includes strategies and technologies that rely on the Internet to help businesses become more recognizable. Among the most commonly used are Google Analytics and AdWords, PPC ads, and SEO.
Why are you looking for digital marketing? Simple: the Internet. The Internet provides access to a global audience, making it easier to connect with potential customers than traditional marketing methods. The idea is to create engaging content that will convince people in your target market to buy your product and connect with people who can help you get to know them better across all industries.
This is why companies are always looking for services like content marketing, email marketing, and copywriting. Rather than providing these services separately, it would be wiser to combine them, since together they serve the same purpose.
Choosing a digital marketing agency will open up a huge list of leads and growth opportunities. Focus on identifying why your agency is better than others and clients will turn to you.
Few Tips In Creating A Creative Agency Like Graphic Designing
The very first question that comes to all of our minds that should you generalize as a graphic designer for a creative agency. This means should you offer your services everywhere or should we focus on one specific subject and area and work upon it to become the best in that area. Consider an example, if you have a problem with your foot and want to consult a doctor and there are two doctors one who knows about everything and one of has a specialization in the foot. To which one d you go?
Obviously, you will go to the specialized doctor because he knows everything related to that subject. The same happens with a graphic designer. If anyone wants to create a shoemaking logo for his company then, he will definitely hire a specialized logo maker in the shoe-making subject. Because he is the one who knows all the relevant design and creativeness needed in that particular logo making. You can then create websites for that and can go to Facebook, groups, communities, etc. It is an endless process. You can then do one you hone in on who is your target audience. It does not mean that you are not going to other areas.
Know The Basic Specialization
Try to know the basic specialization which suits you the most and brings out the best work from you. This will make clarity of aspects needed to do. It will also go to make your job as a designer marketing. This will help your services so much easier because it will help you to find your ideal clients. It will figure out what type of person I want to design for.
If you choose the only logo then, try to know the possible aspects to whom you are going to market your services or that naturally magnetize to your style.
If you choose only the beauty industry and you love doing package design for them and promotion for them then, you know your target audience is the people who are selling the beauty products. This makes it so much better than you can find and hone your craft in one area. And go and become an expert and go-to person for that whole field you are going to market them, solve their problems and try to find out everything that they need help with. This is a key component to then layout your content marketing strategy because you can give them tips and tools and show your best work in this area.
That’s the cool thing about this is that when you specialize in an area people will see that you are an expert. And will assume and get to know that you are an expert in other areas too. So, you may be getting people from other industries or asking for other types of design and if you want, you can service them. But you are going to be known as an expert in a particular area.
Wrapping Up
The good thing about having a specific niche is that 80% of your clients will be going to be recurring clients. So, you become a master in that field and they will keep coming back and will refer you to new clients. Then turn into recurring clients and will continue to snowball the process.
For staying on the edge of design trends try to use Pinterest. It is very useful in generating traffic for your website. All you need to do is search the stuff you need to get into the Pinterest search tab, you will get a list of suggested keywords there. Then try to make a logo for that keywords and write a blog for your website with that and publish it. You need to do this weekly and in a few months ‘ time, you will get a lot of traffic to your website which you have not expected. The same things can be done from other top sites too. All you need to do this consistency and hard work for doing this.
