The core issue many small agencies face is that they think the way to get hired is by being substantially cheaper than anyone else or substantially cheaper than an in-house resource. For a certain segment of customers, people who don’t appreciate the hard work and difficulty of marketing, that price leadership might actually be the winning ticket, but most small agencies aren’t set up to be the cost leader because they’re facing a lot of friction around building process and scale.
Think about why people buy. It’s not about price. People buy because you can do something better, or faster, or cheaper than they can do it themselves. It doesn’t have to be all three.
It’s much more effective for a growing agency to put their stock, their value, in being better or faster. If you’re cheaper, you’re not valuing the work that you do and the expertise that you bring.
When you’re smaller, you’re likely to charge less than bigger agencies, but you don’t have to worry about being the cheapest because that’s not where your value is. Cost isn’t the driving force. It’s about you learning to position yourself as being able to execute a better marketing campaign or being able to help clients achieve their results more rapidly.
