SPECIALIST AND DIGITAL AGENCIES
Clients love the work. So why doesn't the margin?
Coaching and mentoring for owners of specialist marketing and digital agencies, £500K to £10M turnover.
Performance, SEO, content, PR, B2B and digital agencies of ten to fifty people, where retainers pay the bills, new business arrives in waves, and the account team gives away more time than anyone has counted.
SIGNS OF STRAIN
Does any of this sound familiar?
That doesn't mean something is wrong with the agency. It is what happens when a good agency grows faster than the way it is run.
New business comes in waves: a great quarter, then a quiet one.
You pitch for free, and win too few to justify it.
Retainers creep: a few more hours each month, for the same fee.
Account managers say yes to keep the client happy, and nobody raises the extra work.
One or two clients are too big a share of the fees.
Timesheets are filled in on Friday afternoon, from memory, if at all.
AI is changing what clients will pay for, and your pricing hasn't caught up.
FIVE OF THE TEN KEY AREAS
Where agencies usually start
The SMARTer System looks at ten key areas of the business. In specialist agencies, these five come up most often. They are the usual starting points, not a fixed route: we work only on the two or three that would make the biggest difference to you.
Marketing
A clear specialism and steady visibility with the clients you want, so new business arrives more evenly and on your terms.
Practice behind it: Staying visible to the 95%
Sales
Choosing which pitches to enter, understanding the client's problem before you propose, and less free work that never turns into paid work.
Practice behind it: Diagnose before you propose
Service delivery
Retainers with clear hours and scope, extra work quoted before it's done, and delivery that runs on a process rather than heroics.
Practice behind it: Scope control and change requests; Finding and relieving the bottleneck
Finance and commercial management
Knowing which clients and retainers actually make money, pricing on value rather than hours, and no single client big enough to sink the year.
Practice behind it: Service and client profitability; Reviewing your prices
Systems and technology
Time records people actually keep, a few numbers that show the health of every account, and AI that speeds up delivery without giving the gain away.
Practice behind it: The few numbers that matter
WHY ME
I won't do your work. I'll help you run the business.
I won't advise on your creative, your channels or your campaigns: you know those far better than I do. My work is the business of the agency: winning work, pricing, scope, people and the numbers.
I spent thirty years in frontline commercial roles for Oracle, Infor and Lawson, and I have built three businesses of my own.
My own business also sells a limited number of hours, so the arithmetic of retainers and unpaid extras is familiar from the inside. And I'll always tell you whether you are hearing a question, the evidence, or my own experience.
AN ILLUSTRATION
What this can look like
12 hours
over each retainer, every month
£69,000
of work a year given away
Take an agency of eighteen people with ten retainer clients, each paying £4,000 a month for 50 hours of work. The clients are happy and the team is stretched, yet margin has slipped two years running.
There is one number worth checking: last month, how many hours did each retainer actually take? Suppose six of the ten ran 12 hours over. At £80 an hour, which is what the retainer pays, that is about £69,000 of work a year given away.
Two changes usually help. Each account manager reports hours against the retainer every month. And when a client asks for more, the team quotes for it before doing it. Telling a client the cost up front is good service; surprising them afterwards is not.
Recovering even half of those hours would add around £35,000 a year. Some of the extra work stops altogether once it has a price, because nobody really needed it.
BEFORE YOU BOOK
Questions agency owners ask
Do you need to know marketing?
No. You and your team know the craft. The business questions are the same whatever you deliver: where new business comes from, what each retainer really costs to run, what it is priced at, and how much depends on a few people.
Won't clients leave if we start charging for extras?
Rarely, in practice. Most clients would rather know the cost before the work starts than find out afterwards. The harder conversation is usually inside the agency, with an account team that feels quoting is unhelpful.
Should we stop pitching?
Not necessarily. But most agencies pitch for more than they can win. I'll help you decide which opportunities are worth the effort, and how to understand the client's problem before you propose, which wins more of the pitches you do enter.
We're flat out. When would we find the time?
On the Programme, plan on two to four hours a week, including our sessions. Most of it is time already spent on the problem, such as overruns, unpaid pitches and chasing payment, spent more usefully.
Talk it through
Forty-five minutes to an hour on Zoom. Bring the retainer that keeps running over, or the pitch you lost. No pitch from me, no pressure, and you'll leave with something useful either way.