You wouldn’t have got into business in the first place if your ears didn’t prick up at the sheer mention of fast growth.
But unfortunately, as you may know, all too well, scaling is extremely difficult.
In fact, scaling too fast is one of the biggest business killers – the number one reason most new companies fail.
As a services business, you face unique challenges as you try to scale. You’re not just selling more of an off-the-shelf product. To grow your business needs more people delivering outcomes for clients. You need the headcount, and headcount is expensive and riddled with skills-based risks and challenges.
The harsh reality of the agency world is that most marketing services companies won’t scale effectively. They may reach 10, 20, or even 50 clients with the processes and people they started with, but beyond that things get a little tricky.
If you try to scale without the right internal systems, client processes, and experienced people in place, then you’ll fall flat. Any cracks in your approach to client delivery will be exposed and your attempt to scale will turn into a firefighting expedition where the walls of your agency’s infrastructure are far from fireproof.
So, then, what does this all have to do with white label PPC?
A white label PPC partner also provides the right talent. Everything they do is laser-focused on PPC management, which makes their depth of campaign knowledge and knack for optimizing your clients’ campaigns unmatched. Hiring a PPC manager in-house with similar experience is going to be expensive, not to mention they are entitled to sick days and vacation leave. Your white label provider will be there when you need them to be because they are not reliant on any one individual.
What does it look like to scale with a white label PPC partner?
Depending on the size and services offered by your agency, your white label needs will differ. And despite being intrigued by white label services, you may find it hard to visualize exactly how an external party will fit into your current business model.
To help you bridge the gap between theory and reality we have pulled together two examples of partner agencies who have used our white label PPC service to scale their client base and revenue. The names have been withheld for confidentiality reasons.
Partner A
This partner is a small SEO agency based in Colorado. Their expertise is with SEO, but naturally, their SEO clients would regularly ask about Google Ads and PPC.
To satisfy the continual requests from clients about PPC, expand their growth potential, and reduce the risk of clients moving to a full-service agency, they started offering PPC services.
It became evident that, despite their best efforts, they weren’t seeing good results from the PPC campaigns they were managing. These underwhelming results were beginning to have an adverse effect on the way clients perceived their other services, so they needed to act quickly.
After talking this through with one of our PPC experts it was clear that the problems they were facing could be attributed to both their client delivery processes AND the experience of their PPC managers. Basically, they didn’t have the PPC knowledge and experience to deliver results – they were plumbers trying to build a staircase.
We started slowly with three PPC clients who were currently on their books. The first year was designed to establish a working relationship and get used to how both teams would collaborate together. Once we were comfortable things started to get interesting. They soon grew their PPC client list to eleven, and what used to be a secondary service offering became a core ingredient of their sales conversations.
Partner B
In the first PPC partner example, we discussed an SEO agency who were looking to expand their service offering by outsourcing to experts. This case study is a little different.
Partner B is a full-service marketing agency based in Arizona. When they came to us, PPC was already a core offering of the business. But they were finding it hard to scale their PPC operation because they didn’t have the talent to make it happen. And, they couldn’t find and hire the right talent quickly enough. Their scalability was restricted by headcount and human resources.
The partnership started with nine PPC clients, where our white label team managed the set-up, delivery, optimization, and landing page design for all of their campaigns. Over a two-year period, this agency grew the revenue they were generating from PPC by over 1000%! Now that’s scalability.
Wrap up
Scaling a marketing agency is by no means an easy task. The sheer nature of a service-based business is restrictive to growth because to manage more clients you need more people. More people simply add risks and costs to the business before you can guarantee an increase in revenue.
By working with a white label provider, be it for PPC, SEO, or something else, you enable your business to scale without hiring dedicated specialists. It’s a risk-free and far more economically effective way to achieve your growth targets.
The two partner success stories discussed in this article are typical examples of how agencies can work with white label providers to scale. It’s all about outsourcing the parts of your business where there are growth opportunities and you lack the skills or people power to service those opportunities effectively.
The success of a white label partnership comes down to the alignment of processes, clear and well-documented communication guidelines, and choosing the right provider.
