There is a big difference between what a freelancer does and what a WordPress agency does. There is also a difference between a small WordPress business and a full service agency. WordPress agencies have the potential to generate more income than freelancers and small teams. However, this isn’t always obvious. Setting up a WordPress agency is a lot of work if you want to make a profit. So don’t think that hiring a team makes you more productive.
How to Create a WordPress Agency?
Geniez Web is the Best WordPress Development Agency in UK. He believes a public statement is all it takes to pay off the debt. Both you and I know that nothing is easy, both in work and in life. If you want the challenge (and reward) of starting your own agency, start here.
Step 1: Define your Mission
According to a recent FlexJobs survey, the top challenges freelancers face are:
- Find customers
- Create a predictable income stream
- Manage your business independently
When you’re focused on where your next customer comes from or how you coordinate running your business and building your website, it can be difficult to focus on tasks that aren’t related to what’s coming next. This will all change as your WordPress business becomes more mature and will bring some stability to your work. This is when you need to have a solid mission upon which every decision plays out. And it’s what shifts the focus from your struggles to the people you’re trying to help. Codeable is not a WordPress agency, but you can definitely understand how the company’s mission has evolved.
Make Goals
Do you think the market lacks such services or is your target audience largely ignored?
Think about the difference that entering a market can make. Then write a short description that summarizes why you are doing what you are doing.
There is no need to publish the purpose and roadmap for this exercise right now. However, internal teams need to be aware of this and make sure their goals and roadmaps are aligned with those of the institution.
After you define your mission statement, create a formal mission statement, keep it somewhere your team can access it, and come back to it every time you make a decision important to your business.
Step 2: Choose a Service
Now that you know who you’re serving and why, it’s time to figure out what you’re going to do for them and how. Yes, you’re a WordPress agency, but what exactly is it? By defining precisely who to help, we can better choose the services we need to provide. For Itineris this means:
- Advanced web development
- Number symbols
- Media that may be the subject of an offer
Search Engine Optimization
Then there’s WP-Tonic, which specializes in WordPress for LMS and membership sites.
An e-learning company is a special type with the necessary features to support online course registration and integration. Therefore, WP-Tonic has set up a service dedicated to this specific clientele.
- Website development
- Custom designs (WooCommerce checkout, lead generation landing pages, email marketing, sales funnels, etc.)
- Develop custom LMS extensions
- Graphic design
- Search Engine Optimization
- Managed
- Security and backup support
At the end of the day? Stop thinking that a WordPress agency should provide the same services as similar companies. Instead, think about what your customers really need.
Don’t worry if your vision for the institution isn’t necessarily something your current team can support. Having these extra services and products on your shelves will slowly but surely earn you a name in the market. Focus on the basics: what you can offer and what your customers absolutely need. Write a short description of each one and move on to the next step.
Step 3: Set your Price
If you run a small business, you might be reluctant to post your prices online. You want your potential clients to see your value without knowing how much it costs to build a WordPress website. Pricing and value are inherently built into WordPress reseller status. Therefore, there is no reason why this information should not be published.
Plus, by posting development costs and monthly rates on your website, you can quickly weed out potential clients with limited budgets. As you can imagine, this makes conversations with potential customers more meaningful. You don’t have to tap dance to solve pricing problems. This has been established. Instead, you can focus on what they need and how to solve it. As far as how much you charge clients, that’s going to take some work to work out.
Check Market Average
First, find the list of services from the previous step. Next, make sure your main competitors are in the market – people occupying similar niches and making similar offers. You get a baseline.
Then we need to do some internal calculations.
List administrative costs
List each expense and how much you pay each month. Also this:
- Enterprise software
- Business license and insurance
- Pay taxes
- Offices and services
- Equipment and furniture
- Web hosting, domain names and related fees;
- Salary, Benefits, PTO
- Employee trips, events, etc.
Of course, you don’t just have to pay the fee. But to make sure we’re on the right track, we need to see the numbers first.
What Margin do you Need to Make a Profit?
If your monthly overhead costs are about $20,000, how much do you need to make a healthy profit? Is a 30% profit margin ($6,000) enough?
Remember: If you want to provide top-notch deals to your clients and take care of the team that runs your show, you need to invest in your business.Find your ideal profit margin and set it as your monthly sales target.
Set your Own Price
Divide your target income by the number of projects you can reasonably afford in a month.
Then compare the cost per item to the mid-market price. If low prices are your biggest differentiator, you need to rethink your business. Running is not a good strategy and rarely works. As long as you make enough money to make a profit and your customers walk away with something of value, you can commit to that price.
When you’re done, create a price list and post the prices on your website when you’re ready.
Remember to re-evaluate your costs and prices annually. These numbers should change as services become more powerful and products more complex.
Step 4: Pick a Name
This sounds like the first thing you should do, but I think it’s important to understand what your business offers and the level of products you offer before you settle on a name.
Once you’ve established your brand identity, choose a name.
- If you don’t want to be the face of the company and participate in every project, remove your name from the company.
- Concise.
- Simplify pronunciation.
- State your unique value proposition and strengths.
- Use made-up words rather than words that may already have strong associations in the client’s mind.
- Make sure no other company owns it or its variants.
Once you’ve decided on a few options, share them with others, including your employees, former clients, and social media followers. Evaluate how they feel about it. Since they aren’t as close as you are, they are more likely to notice if something is ‘wrong’. Once you have your name set, start creating your logo and other branding elements.
Step 5: Create a new Website
The agency’s website must be able to handle this. In other words, before potential clients can see your portfolio, they need to see your website as proof of your expertise. Your website doesn’t just provide information. I want him to do as much work as possible to be like another team member.
Here are some ways to achieve this:
- Switch to managed WordPress hosting
- We all know that managing web hosting can be time consuming, especially as traffic increases.
- This is why you should outsource your web hosting. The last thing you want is a slow-loading website distracting you from the work you need to do for your paying customers.
- If you haven’t already, now is a great time to put your website on managed WordPress hosting from Kinsta.
Enjoy the benefits of a fast and secure backup site without having to manage it yourself. But if you want to see what’s going on behind the scenes and take control of your server performance, MyKinsta makes it super easy. Managed WordPress hosting not only gives you peace of mind, but also ensures that your website always looks its best to potential customers who visit.
Additionally, various MyKinsta user roles give you complete control over user access to your developed website. Kinsta’s improved site transfer tool makes it easy to deliver completed projects to clients.
You can also transfer your website to a non-Kinsta account – all you need is an email address. This allows you to focus on other important tasks such as managing and growing your agency.
Present your Most Impressive Work
Your website has everything you need for a small WordPress site. However, your portfolio should impress potential clients. Consider using the WordPress Portfolio plugin to let the latest and most relevant examples shine. And don’t be afraid to create a portfolio that deviates from expectations. Explore the Neuralab product portfolio (see case study here).
Neuralab adds custom details to your portfolio. At first glance, it looks like a standard mesh-based wallet. However, this feature reveals details like item types and stats like Behance views.
Introduce your Team
If you run a small business, it’s easy for your customers to see your team members face-to-face and get to know them on a personal level. Building an agency makes it difficult for teams to grow and build human connections with so many contributors. Introducing your team through your website is one way to limit the potential sense of connection your customers may feel. The presentation of the team in this way takes place in two stages. You can introduce your customers to the people behind the scenes. But it’s also a kind of false humility.
You’re not just sitting on the other end of a phone call or email, so you can give potential customers as many ways to reach out to them as they need.
- Company telephone number.
- Your email address (or a different address for each service).
- Application form.
- Live chat or chatbot.
- Support portal.
- Social networking (if you want to provide answers and support).
Just because you can provide all of these touchpoints doesn’t mean you have to include them all on your website. Check out Red Factory (read the case study here). Red Factory has a contact form and google map on the contact page. The agency only has a contact form and a Google map with the address. There is always the potential for you and your team to be overwhelmed, so only choose the means of communication that make the most sense.
Automate the Conversion Process
Even if you have multiple people in charge of sales, let your website handle the more mundane tasks. For example, if you offer custom services but want to capture prospects by phone for a discovery call first, use a WordPress booking plugin to let them book appointments themselves. Once you start selling recurring services, your prospects may feel comfortable signing up without telling anyone first.In this case, you can avoid the middleman (aka sales call) by equipping your website with a “Buy Now” button and a command of your choice, such as SkyrocketWP (read the case study here). .
Step 6: Address Legal Issues
After your branding elements are in place, remove the legal elements before you start attracting customers.
It’s not the most fun part of building a WordPress agency, but it’s the most important. You never know when and where legal issues may arise. So it’s best to put all the pieces of the puzzle away now, in case you need them.
- Register your business.
- Register your logo.
- Purchase a domain name.
Your business may not need this support right now, but once you start the process, things will pass quickly, and you don’t want to overlook these support systems that are so vital to keeping you and your business safe.
Step 7: Complete the Team
To run a successful WordPress agency, you first need to stop wearing multiple hats. In fact, don’t wear a hat that doesn’t fit you. Write down all the activities you do. Write down everything you love in the “Keep” column and do it better than anyone else. Put any tasks you don’t want to do or that take too long in the Delegate column.
Next, decide who to delegate the task to. For example:
- Send customer onboarding emails to project managers.
- Delegate billing and follow-up to office assistants.
- Contribution of SNS entrusts advertisement.
When you’re faced with a task that isn’t quite the right fit, that’s when you know there’s a new role to fill, and when you do, you’ll know it’s time. Looking at the list of services and products we offer, it’s clear which roles are important. These people are usually web designers, web developers, copywriters and project managers.
If you haven’t already, make sure you have employees and contractors to fill out.
Also, make sure you have enough budget to pay your team members competitive salaries. If you’re having trouble doing this, something is wrong. Maybe your service isn’t priced high enough, or maybe you want to get your team up and running quickly. Before continuing, take a step back and figure out where the cut is.
Additional Service Staff
Once the agency is very lean and has the ability and budget to do more, start adding roles to new departments and opportunities such as:
- Search engine optimization
- The guests
- User Experience Writer
- Take responsibility for our client’s success
- Team leaders such as CTO, CMO
If you look at the pages of major WordPress agencies like WebDevStudios, you’ll see that hiring a department head has become even more important.
WebDevStudios Core Team Roles
Don’t start adding letters just for the sake of adding letters. You should hire more people only if there is a need and the numbers show it is good for your bottom line.
Step 8: Create a Toolbox
It may seem counterintuitive, but if you want to make more money, you should spend your money on a better kit.
So you should do the following:
- Evaluate your current toolbox.
- If you currently use any commercial tools or software, please list everything you use and for what purpose.
- Then review the capabilities of these tools and answer the following questions honestly.
- If not, consider removing it.
- You need tools that enable you and your team to act faster and more efficiently than ever before. This is the only way to provide proper service and generate revenue.
- fill in the blanks
- It could be a tool you’ve been putting off buying or a tool you don’t think you’re ready to buy yet.
For example:
- Stock photo site membership
- Transfer tool between designers and developers
- Premium WordPress plugins or premium themes
- SEO control software
- Time tracking software
Funnel Tool
Don’t just see what you need. Consider your team’s needs. What makes them perform best at that level and offer better offers to their clients? Once you have a list of all tools that need to be added, updated, or removed, it’s time to get to work. Once your agency is up and running, there is no need to worry or switch to another agency.
Step 9: Create and Document your Process
Your agency needs a lot of structure. This is beneficial for many reasons. First, a well-documented process helps us deliver consistent results to our clients. Second, it makes it easier for new employees to start work. Again, it’s about improving the company’s speed, agility and accuracy. And the established system will be.
There are no secrets to the process by which our team builds websites for our clients.
Internally, institutions may have documents detailing each step of the process. Additionally, the process may be complemented by various software automations, checklists and templates.
Organizational Process
Make a list of the processes your company currently uses, just like you did with your toolkit.
Are they obsolete or invalid? Please update them before doing anything else. So take a step back and think about how other processes should be approached. If you add a new service (or recurring subscription or product), add a similar process to your master list.
What about Lead Tracking and Monitoring?
There are many things to consider now. That’s why it’s so important to step away from her actual web development work to monitor the big picture and allow her agency to operate like a well-oiled machine. Create separate documents for each process and store them in a secure, centralized location. It could be some kind of team Dropbox, Google Drive, or a project management platform.
Customer Management Process
Don’t forget the process of finding, welcoming and managing clients. As you take on more clients, it becomes difficult to keep track of everything if your systems aren’t in place. Do you have a customer relationship management system?How about a user-friendly communication and project management tool?What is the process of creating a custom WordPress dashboard to give your website customers easy access to her CMS? This allows you to move prospects from your sales pipeline to your active project queue as quickly as possible.
Workforce Management Process
The same is true for recruiting, testing, and onboarding employees. When you’re starting out in business, you might want to take a breather and ask someone you know to recommend you or post a job posting on a website. But when it comes to agencies, there’s more to think about.
Then you need to think about how to find people.
- Get a professional job at your company.
- People who want to grow with the organization in the long term.
- Fits into your company culture.
There really is no room for compromise as one weak link can ruin everything. Prepare the interview and hiring process to find the right candidates. And once they join your team, you’ll need a process to help them succeed within your institution. Another thing to consider is involving your employees in developing and documenting your processes.
Once you have a solid workforce, put them in control of their own processes and documents. The more you can get them involved in the design of your institution, the more committed they will be to your long-term mission.
Step 10: Set up Internal Reporting
As your business grows, your customer list grows, and your team grows, it can become difficult to keep track of everything. However, educational institutions need access to this data to make smarter business decisions.
You have to spend time looking at the data, but the actual reporting can be automated. • Use Google Analytics (or one of its alternatives) to track site traffic, referral sources, bounce rate, conversion rate, and other key performance indicators.
- CRM can understand leads entering the sales pipeline, conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and projected revenue.
- Project or task management software to check project status, bottlenecks, inefficient workflows, and more. Here is a complete guide comparing the two most popular tools. Trello and Asana, or other alternatives.
- Communication software, Slack or Microsoft Teams, is ideal for fast and efficient communication with colleagues. See how Slack and Teams compare.
- Time tracking system for team performance monitoring, target drift monitoring, and more.
- Bug and issue tracking logs for tracking open bugs, recurring issues, missed customer service opportunities, and more.
- Online reviews and customer feedback reports to identify winning teams and identify areas for improvement.
Automatically generate these reports to rally your team to celebrate a big win, work with team leaders to fix a buggy process, or decide to cut an unpopular service. You can spend more time taking action, even if you are
How to size your WordPress agency?
Creating a WordPress agency is a lot of work. But once you have a well-oiled machine up and running, it’s time to crank it up. Check out Kinsta. Moving from a web development company to managed WordPress hosting in 2013 took a lot of courage. They continue to grow their business into the seven-figure range and above while maintaining the quality of products their customers know and love.
This is no coincidence. The same applies to your own WordPress business. Once you’re ready, you can start scaling in several ways. Many WordPress agencies have found a niche selling web development services. The only problem is that it’s its own service. This can make revenue difficult to predict and can waste your efforts to acquire new customers.
However, a regular stream of income can bring great stability and scale to your cash flow.
Here are some common ways WordPress agencies increase recurring revenue for their business.
- Website maintenance service
- Managed WordPress Hosting
- Affiliate marketing
- Best-in-class information products such as courses, webinars.
- Developing Themes or WordPress Extensions
Some of these benefits are that you don’t have to manage the process if you don’t want to (for example, if you outsource maintenance and charge your clients a profit margin). Like everyone else, you can benefit from building your own project. You need to keep your product supported and up-to-date, but the heavy lifting is done up front.
Become a Content Generator
Agents should not look for clients. At this point in the game, your client should be very eager to work with you. What’s the best way to achieve this? Build your online presence and authority through high-quality, actionable, and long-lasting content.
- Publish blog posts at least 2-3 days a week.
- Post daily on social media: Talk less about yourself (~20%) and ask others to share useful tips and insights (~80%).
- Guest blogging on reputable sites with readers and peers.
- Podcasts of related shows (Here’s how to start a podcast in WordPress).
- Create downloadable lead her magnets that call your website visitors to action.
- Create a repository of long-form documents or video content (live or pre-recorded).
Influence your content and you’ll find yourself never looking for a client (or business partner!) ever again.
