Podcast / interview · Jun 4, 2022 # How To Grow A Digital Marketing Agency (#163) Online [Book this talk](https://www.alexmelen.com/contact/) Video: [How To Grow A Digital Marketing Agency (#163)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDkKLdGwOMs) Alex Melen joins Anatolii Ulitovskyi on the UNmiss podcast, Believe you can because you can!, to talk about starting and growing a digital marketing agency: finding a focus, pricing, hiring, processes, keeping clients, and what AI will change. In brief In this 2022 interview on the UNmiss podcast, Alex Melen explains how SmartSites went from trying everything to three core services, and what he would tell someone starting an agency now. His advice is to work out where you add value, master that before adding services, and avoid competing on price. He covers why hiring had become the hardest part of running an agency, why growth depends on delegation and written processes, how the agency keeps clients, and why he expects AI to remove busy work and make the strategic work matter more. Key points - Alex started T35 Hosting at 13 in 1997, later ran digital for Samsung and Walmart at a Publicis agency, and co-founded SmartSites in 2011 to bring that level of marketing to small and mid-sized businesses. - Working with his brother works because their skills barely overlap. Alex handles numbers and finance; his brother runs the areas Alex does not want. - SmartSites tried many things early on, including its own online store, then cut back to what it did best: web development, SEO and pay-per-click. - Selling websites for about a thousand dollars left no budget for quality checks. The sites were poor, the agency made almost nothing, and clients were unhappy. - There is no obvious gap in the agency market now. A new agency has to test a few things, or think hard about its strengths, to find where it adds value. - A team of five cannot be good at everything. Master one service, then add others. For what you do not do well, refer the client to a partner. - At an agency the employees are the product, so hiring, motivation and culture come first. In 2022 hiring for digital roles was the most competitive he had seen. - Growth depends on delegating to the right managers and on written processes, so that a new hire can take over an account and know what to do. - Remote work makes culture problems harder to notice early, and they are much harder to fix once they have spread. - To keep clients: contact them more often than they ask for, send reports on a fixed monthly schedule, have a second team check every account, and deliver more than was promised. - Take work off the client instead of asking them to write content or fix their own meta tags. On AI, his example is Google Ads bidding: machine learning removed the manual adjustments and made conversion values and strategy the real job. Questions this talk answers **How do you start a digital marketing agency in a crowded market?** Alex Melen’s advice is to find where you add value, either by testing a few services or by thinking through what your team does best, and to master that before adding more. He warns against competing on price: SmartSites’ early thousand-dollar websites left no room for quality and made clients and staff unhappy. **How does an agency keep its clients?** By communicating more often than clients ask for, sending reports and holding check-ins on a fixed monthly schedule, having another team review each account, delivering more than was promised, and taking as much work off the client as possible. Alex notes that an unhappy client who leaves also leaves a review. **Will AI replace marketing agencies?** Alex expects AI to take over much of the busy work, as machine-learning bidding did in Google Ads, and to make strategic work more important: deciding which conversions matter, what they are worth, and how to test. Date Jun 4, 2022 Location Online Format Podcast / interview Speaker [Alex Melen](https://www.alexmelen.com/about/) Show Believe you can because you can! (UNmiss), episode 163 More like this - [Digital Marketing Intelligence for Shopify: Ask the Experts by NGAGGE – Alex Melen](https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking-engagements/digital-marketing-intelligence-for-shopify-ask-the-experts-by-ngagge-alex-melen/) Nov 1, 2022 · Paramus, NJ - [Brand Loyalty is Dying. Why That's Great for Your Business @ Garlic Marketing Show](https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking-engagements/brand-loyalty-is-dying-why-thats-great-for-your-business-garlic-marketing-show/) Jul 15, 2022 · Online - [“Adtastic” with Alex Melen from SmartSites @DailyAdBrief.com](https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking-engagements/adtastic-with-alex-melen-from-smartsites/) Apr 8, 2022 · Paramus, NJ - [From Building Websites In Middle School to Managing a $100M/Year Advertising Agency with Alex Melen](https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking-engagements/from-building-websites-in-middle-school-to-managing-a-100m-year-advertising-agency-with-alex-melen/) Jan 27, 2022 · Austin, TX - [Mastering SEO, Optimize Google My Business with Alex Melen](https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking-engagements/mastering-seo-optimize-google-my-business-with-alex-melen/) Jan 5, 2022 · Cleveland, OH ## Bring Alex to your next event. Keynotes, breakouts, and workshops on AI search, digital marketing, and scaling a business. Tell him about your audience and he will come back with a talk built for the room. [Check availability](https://www.alexmelen.com/contact/) [Speaker kit](https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking/#kit) --- Source: https://www.alexmelen.com/speaking-engagements/how-to-grow-a-digital-marketing-agency-with-alex-melen-163/ · Markdown version of this page for AI agents and LLMs. Site guide: https://www.alexmelen.com/llms.txt