5 Common Challenges Agencies Face + How to Solve Them

Running an agency is no easy task. While you want to do everything in your power to make your clients successful, it’s equally important to keep your business profitable and healthy. With more than 6,000 digital marketing agencies in the United States, what are you doing to stand out? 

Within this blog, we’ll dive into common everyday challenges agencies face in marketing and provide solutions to match. These solutions will help your agency outshine the competition while also satisfying your clients’ needs. Before jumping into it, let’s review multi-location marketing statistics, further emphasizing the need for a streamlined marketing strategy.

1. Managing Clients With Numerous Business Locations 

Many agencies manage clients with multiple business locations, adding an extra challenge. Multi-location businesses often require your agency to manage each location’s local search or social channels, which can become time-consuming and tedious. 

For instance, if a client has 80 locations and wants a social media presence for each location, how will your agency manage this? We’ve found that localized content performs 12X better than non-localized content for leading brands. 

But when you have multiple clients and accounts, curating localized content for each location takes time and effort. What if there was a tool that allowed you to mass schedule and manage content across 100s to 1,000s of business locations? 

SOCi does precisely this! While we’ll get into the details soon, it’s essential to know that tools are available to help your agency manage larger clients with numerous business locations. Don’t let a lack of the right technologies hold you back from accepting multi-location businesses into your client base.

2. Optimizing Return on Investment 

First and foremost, every marketer considers profit and return on investment (ROI) a top priority. While ROI is always a priority, it can also create a challenge. Ensuring that your agency is earning  the most revenue possible for each client is easier said than done. 

While you likely know what ROI means, let’s ensure we’re on the same page. ROI is the profits made from  your investments, otherwise known as the amount of money spent compared to the amount gained. A positive ROI means you’re making more money than you’ve spent, which is always the goal. 

To understand your agency’s current ROI, you must determine the amount of money spent on each client compared to what you bring in. Once you know where your ROI stands, you can begin to take measures to improve it. 

This blog on marketing ROIs provides a full breakdown of tips and tactics your agency can leverage to boost your localized marketing ROI. 

3. Finding the Right Technologies 

When was the last time you evaluated your agency’s marketing tech (MarTech) stack? If you’re unfamiliar, a MarTech stack is a set of tools or solutions marketers use to manage, execute, and analyze their marketing efforts. For instance, agencies may need a social media scheduling software or reputation management platform included in their MarTech stack. Often, agencies will continue renewing their subscriptions to these tools without considering other options. 

Set aside time to look through various options and ensure you make the best choice for your agency. While it can seem daunting to switch marketing technologies, ultimately it is well worth the effort. 

Similarly, you might find that consolidating your tools into a single marketing platform checks all the boxes mentioned above, but we’ll get more into consolidation later in this blog! 

4. Maintaining Efficiency 

Many agencies often run into difficulties when it comes to efficiency. Efficiency can often be challenging to achieve for clients with numerous business locations. But with inflation on the rise, maintaining efficiency is crucial.

Efficiency can come in various forms. For instance, are your employees spending time logging into various local search and social platforms to manage a client’s marketing strategy? Are there some manual processes your team could automate? What about analytics and reporting? Are they being provided by the platforms you’re using? These are all questions to consider when assessing efficiency.

We previously called out consolidation as a critical component of efficiency. When evaluating your marketing technologies, examine whether or not multiple platforms cost more than a single platform that allows you to manage all of your marketing efforts in one place. 

Having only one platform also saves your employees time. Rather than learning how to use multiple tools and constantly logging in and out of them, they can focus on one streamlined solution. 

SOCi is the only centralized platform built to scale marketing efforts across multiple accounts and locations. SOCi has every tool your agency needs to effectively manage your clients’ marketing strategy, including reporting and analytics. If your agency is looking for the best way to reduce workload, maintain current headcount, and save time and effort, look no further than SOCi. 

While finding the right tools is essential, so is building the right marketing plan for each client. Our Ultimate Localized Marketing Template for Multi-Location Brands can help! Inside, you’ll find which local search, local social, and reputation management efforts to focus on, as well as checklists, to guide you through developing your strategy for each client — again helping improve efficiency. 

5. Staying On Top of Industry Trends 

Last but not least, many agencies find it challenging to monitor the latest industry trends. Agencies are busy helping their clients navigate constantly evolving search and social platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Apple. While platform updates and new features are released regularly, it’s also worth noting that not all of these changes are newsworthy. 

How can your team keep a pulse on what’s important? That’s where SOCi comes in! Written by Damian Rollison, SOCi’s Director of Market Insights, SOCi releases the Local Memo every Monday. The Local Memo provides the latest localized marketing news in an easy-to-digest blog. To receive the Local Memo in your inbox weekly, subscribe here! 

Dominate Your Agency’s Marketing Efforts 

While it’s no secret that agencies face quite a few challenges when it comes to marketing, hopefully, these solutions can help! Whether you’re looking to boost ROI, find a tool that allows you to manage multiple business locations at once, or increase your efficiency, SOCi has you covered. As mentioned above, SOCi is the only centralized platform built to scale efforts across multiple accounts and locations. 

SOCi has every tool your agency needs to crush your client’s marketing efforts, from local social to reputation management, and beyond. Every agency seeks a way to stand out from competitors, and SOCi could be your secret to success. Request a demo today for more insight into how SOCi can help your agency!

Infographic sources: SOCi | BrightLocal | Best Writing