Honing Your Ideal Niche and Having Confidence to Raise Agency Prices with Matt Banker | Ep #649
Have you nailed down your agency's ideal niche? Are you attracting clients that ignite your agency's growth? Could you be standing in the way of your ability to raise agency prices? After years as a generalist agency, today’s guest decided to turn his business into a dual agency launching a niche firm alongside his broad shop. This calculated risk revealed his true north while preserving the existing revenue streams. Now their work inside the niche outpaces the generalist division of the agency. He talks about the decision to create two agencies and his revelation to let go of limiting thinking in order to raise prices.
Matt Banker is the owner of Banker Creative, a business he calls a dual agency since it has two different brands under one agency. Matt shares his experience running two brands, Banker Creative and Benchmark Growth, which specialize in web design and marketing for accounting firms, respectively. He discusses the benefits of having a niche focus and the importance of building processes to delegate tasks to his team. Tune in to learn from his insights and strategies for growing and scaling an agency.
In this episode, we'll discuss:
Shedding your limiting mindset in order to raise agency prices.
Building a dual agency to explore the ideal niche.
Who is the first hire you should make as a new agency?
Sponsors and Resources
E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.
What is the First Hire You Should Make as a New Agency?
Matt's career began in consulting, but he craved solving business challenges hands-on. He moved to an agency, seeking a consultative versus task-driven role. However, it wasn’t the greatest experience. Ready to merge his design and storytelling skills on his terms, Matt built a web design shop.
In the early days, Matt advertised his services on Craigslist and charged around $1,500 for his first websites. He quickly realized the need to hire additional help to handle the growing workload and started with a part-time designer. It was an area he knew well enough that he could hand it off to someone else and still manage that process.
If he could do it over again, Matt would hire an operations manager sooner. However, he fell into the trap of hiring help to support him in whatever projects he was taking on. As the agency continued to grow, he made a crucial shift in his mindset and focused on building out processes and handing off tasks to his team. Once he stepped back and trusted his team, he started to have the freedom to focus on sales and business development.
Initially, delegating proved difficult. Matt's hands-on interest complicated empowering his team. But as momentum grew, he realized it was time to “become more boring as a company” and create efficient systems and workflows. Structure and trust paved the path to scale.
How to Stop a Limiting Mindset and Raise Agency Prices
Looking back on that initial $1,500 fee, Matt sees what held him back from raising prices sooner was just his own mindset. To him, running an agency is 30% being good at the thing you're selling. The other 70% is learning things you didn't think you needed to know and dealing with self-worth issues. You start to doubt yourself when asking: How much do I deserve to make for this project? Those are limiting factors. Your agency will only grow to the level that you as the owner, are at, so you need to always find ways to keep leveling up.
With time, Matt realized he and his team were gaining more knowledge and providing amazing value to their clients. If they were to charge based on performance, they could definitely get paid more. He raised his prices and soon realized in most cases he was more price-sensitive than his clients. They had no trouble paying what his agency was worth and he was the one standing in his own way.
Currently, he puts his pricing on his website as a form of self-accountability. To him, having the price out there means making one decision in advance instead of making it on every single call. This, however, could deter bigger clients from working with him, as they could be expecting to pay much more than is announced on his website and assume his agency lacks the experience they want.
Building a Dual Agency to Explore Their Ideal Niche
Matt's agency has since expanded to include two brands. Banker Creative, specializes in web design using the StoryBrand framework, and Benchmark Growth focuses on marketing for accounting firms. The decision to niche down and target accounting firms was a strategic one, influenced in part by the agency's name, "Banker Creative." While they have worked with banks and other financial professionals, they found that accountants are the ideal niche for their services.
The first five years after creating the agency Matt had no clear idea of exactly what they did. That was a big part of why they ended up splitting into two different brands. They wanted to niche down and offer more marketing services but realized they couldn't build a repeatable system for an unlimited number of businesses. On the other hand, they knew they could run website projects for any type of business.
As a result, they decided to build a system for one type of business, accounting firms. Then they split the company to focus on one client type while still not turning off the faucet on the website work. At the time, this is what was paying the bills. In just two years, it was the other way around. Now most of their business is coming through the accounting firm niche.
With a defined niche, Matt can now refer clients who aren't a good fit to other people. He has found that the willingness and the ability to refer work away is freeing because it allows him to be picky with clients. Furthermore, it builds a good referral network for his agency.
The Who Framework to Find Your Audience and Build Scalability
Building systems for scalability is a crucial aspect of growing a business. As the owner, Matt initially found himself involved in every aspect of the business. However, he recognized that in order to grow and scale, he needed to let go and trust his team to handle these responsibilities.
By doing so, he was able to focus on the parts of the business that he truly enjoyed and that gave him energy. There are certain aspects of the business that agency owners won’t necessarily want to delegate and that’s okay. The end goal is to be able to pick and choose the things that you want to do. However, you have to build a business where you don’t HAVE to do it, just choose to. In this sense, Jason recommends leveling up by answering 3 important questions of WHO:
Who do you need to hire?
And, who do you need to become?
Once you create a framework, you’ll be able to identify your ideal team and clients much faster and create more freedom for yourself. The more you’re able to build repeatable systems, the more willing you’ll be to refer work and trust your team can handle it.
Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?
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