Growing a successful digital marketing agency begins with building a successful team.
Your employees are the backbone of your company. They keep your day-to-day processes running, interact directly with clients, and provide the deliverables that keep those clients coming back for more.
So, how do you build a team of talented, driven individuals who can help your agency climb the ladder of success? It all starts with your hiring process. Our agency coaches have put together this expert guide to hiring and building a successful team in your agency.
1. Recruiting the Right People
Employees are often trainable and malleable. Workers you initially hired for one position may grow and blossom into another position with the right guidance. But if you want to have a truly successful, self-driven marketing agency, you need to start by hiring the right talent.
As a digital marketing agency owner, you know all about the sales process. You should be treating your recruitment process almost the exact same way. Your job postings should “sell” the position, tell a story, and inspire the right candidates to apply.
Start by posting on multiple platforms, such as LinkedIn and Indeed. If you’re recruiting locally, look for local job boards in your area. But remember that expanding your search to remote employees — or even a global talent pool — could improve your chances of finding the right person.
No matter where you post the job listing, expect to vet a large number of candidates to find the best ones.
2. Evaluating Candidates
Finding candidates with resumes that match your job posting is an excellent starting point for building a successful team. But to truly evaluate a candidate’s potential within your digital marketing agency, you must implement other measures to assess their talents.
Aside from examining a candidate’s experience, focus on evaluating their:
- Emotional intelligence
- Drive
- Follow-through
- Negotiation skills
- Team collaboration and relationship-building skills
Candidates don’t necessarily need agency experience to be successful in your company. But having sales skills in general will certainly help them engage and retain clients while they’re starting out.
Focus on evaluating these soft skills during your initial interactions with candidates. This can help you narrow down the pool to those you would like to interview.
3. Conducting Interviews and Assessments
The interview process is your opportunity to get to know candidates on a deeper level and assess how they would perform within your agency as a whole and in the position you want to hire them for. The questions you ask in the interview are key to understanding candidates’ talents and personalities.
Use these tips to help assess candidates in the interview stage:
- Invite candidates to imagine certain scenarios and detail how they would respond to them. You can even bring up client issues your agency has encountered in the past.
- Use spontaneous roleplay to evaluate how candidates would respond to sudden challenges.
- Ask the same questions to all candidates to ensure consistency. This allows you to properly evaluate candidates against each other.
Either during interviews or between them, you can give candidates assessments that allow you to further evaluate their skill sets. Use tools like the DiSC job assessment to understand candidates’ interpersonal behaviors and success goals.
Finally, take all of the information you have gleaned from interviews and assessments to rank your candidates. Then, extend the offer to the candidates one by one, and be prepared to negotiate to secure your top candidate.
4. Onboarding and Training Talent
Onboarding and training new hires are perhaps even more important than choosing the right candidates when it comes to building a successful team. Your new hires may be perfect for the job, but that doesn’t mean they will instantly start forming real partnerships with clients and supplying top-tier deliverables. Setting new hires up for success involves providing expert guidance through processes like:
- Roleplay
- Progressive onboarding
- Recorded training sessions
New hires need intensive support while they are learning the ropes. Check in frequently to ensure they have the support they need and are meeting your agency’s standards. Remember that the onboarding process can also impact employee satisfaction, which affects how long your new hires stick around.
Join the Seven Figure Agency Team Today
Building a successful team and boosting team efficiency is just one of the many steps involved in running a profitable digital marketing agency.
We help digital marketing agencies reach seven figures and beyond. Schedule your free strategy call today to learn more, then check out the Seven Figure Agency podcast for additional resources.
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