Growing a digital agency happens through many different channels, but our approach has been the same with each. Deliver solutions that make life easier for our clients, consistently improve our own processes as technology evolves in sales & marketing and be flexible enough to branch into new responsibilities as clients request them from us. This ability to move quickly, and adapt to new environments with our clients has been instrumental in our growth.
These are the same traits I maintained as a freelancing marketing and sales consultant prior to starting Big Presence, which is what made partnering with HubSpot a priority for us from the beginning. HubSpot’s leadership has been following this same set of principles as a sales & marketing platform, and helping agencies like Big Presence rapidly adopt next-generation technologies without requiring us to hire specialized talent to manage overly complex tools.
This week, Big Presence, after 3 years as a Gold HubSpot Agency Partner reached the next tier in the partner program, becoming one of the smallest (by headcount) teams to reach Platinum Partner status, placing us in the top 200 of over 4,500 HubSpot Partner Agencies worldwide, and confirming that our approach and partnerships continue to deliver value to our clients.
The Future of Big Presence
We’ve been in a constant state of evolution since we opened our doors, but the past 9 months have brought so much clarity to where we’re headed as an agency. We see our role within our clients’ business as one of leadership, guidance, and improved visibility into what drives their businesses forward. To do that we’ve shifted our attention to placing an emphasis on clearly defining the value we’re providing for clients, by tasking ourselves with clearly presenting reporting & analytics in a single pane of glass alongside work in progress and company priorities for each of our clients.
Our goal is to simplify the relationship and workflows between the agency and client to the degree that we’re no longer focused on delivering retainer services based on hours-per-month or some kind of abstract point system, and shifting our relationships to performance-based or responsibility-based agreements, where our clients can set targets for their sales & marketing, and rely on Big Presence to do all that’s necessary to hit those targets, so that our clients can stay focused on running their business.
How We Do It
Partnerships with platforms like HubSpot, Shopify, Databox, Salesforce, Facebook, Google and many others have allowed us to compile our client’s data into a single dashboard that lives on the Big Presence website, for each individual client that accurately paints a picture of what’s driving the business forward, and ultimately what may be holding it back.
By bringing all of our client/agency data into the same view as the reporting on what’s working in marketing, we’re able to have very clear conversations on what the priorities should be from week to week or month to month, and more quickly identify problems in the many different systems that contribute to sales in today’s world, without having to guess randomly and hope a new approach is the solution.
Here’s an example of an ecommerce client doing a lot to scale their online revenue in 2018, that we can view holistically through a client dashboard on BigPresence.com, as an example of what it’s like to work with our team.
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- The first thing every BP client sees on their dashboard is a live gage showing how many hours they have left in their retainer for the month with us. This gives clients clarity on how much they’re utilizing our team, and know what’s “left in the tank” for new needs that may come up from day-to-day.
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- Below retainer status and marketing document links, BP clients can engage with any work in progress via a Google Sheet that we use to track ongoing tasks and campaigns. Commenting between BP and clients happens within that Google Sheet, keeping all of our communications within a single system for better tracking.
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- Big Presence has worked with Databox to pull in all relevant data from websites, marketing, sales, ecommerce etc in a way that can easily be customized to the needs of our clients, and how they want to visualize different parts of their business.
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- By allowing our customers to dictate how they need reporting displayed, we can cater to all levels of the business, including simplifying the reporting for less technical viewers such as a Board of Directors or investors.
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- Meeting revenue goals and relating that success to the proper channels allows BP clients to know which levers to pull and buttons to press to keep growth moving.
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- combining data sources into one databoard provides us with an opportunity to evaluate marketing channels side-by-side, and know where we as the agency of record can better support our clients, even if we’re not the ones managing that responsibility full-time.
The Ultimate Goal for 2019
We want our clients to feel like digital marketing is getting easier, not more complex. It’s why we built Belch.io, and why we look to simplify the tools our clients use to execute on marketing campaigns. Taking that experience and moving it up the chain to the C-suite seems like the next most important move for us as an agency. We plan to continue to roll out these kinds of client dashboards for all new clients, and change the way companies are looking at their sales & marketing, for the better.
Imagine running your sales & marketing from one page on your mobile phone, while you’re playing at a company golf event, or from the comfort of a beach somewhere.
We’re already doing it.
