How To Add Reputation Management to Your Digital Marketing Agency

Do you know the secret? 

The simple way to 2x your agency’s revenue? There’s a straightforward method you can use to boost your agency’s income on demand. A way to attract new clients and increase the repeat business you receive. 

I’m talking about a gateway service. 

A gateway service is an introductory service that enables you to sell more services to a client. Reputation management as a gateway service bypasses your client’s filters and resistance, increasing your agency’s average order values systematically over time. 

Why Reputation Management Boosts Your Average Order Values

You’ve just made a prospect an irresistible offer.

You’ll provide your prospect with XX leads in 30 days – free of charge. If you succeed, they agree to hire your agency to manage their online review and reputation management campaigns. Your offer costs nothing upfront and it will provide your client with a steady stream of new customers. 

You assume all the risks. 

Assuming you’ve structured the deal correctly, it sort of sells itself, doesn’t it? This is the kind of deal that boosts average order values dramatically. It attracts hungry clients who are willing to pay whatever it takes to get your help. Even better, I’ll show you how to structure the deal, so it’s more appealing to clients while producing more revenue for you.

Here’s the problem.

Your agency doesn’t currently offer online reputation management services. In fact, you’re not sure how to add that offering to the list. No worries, we can do that together. Let’s dive in now. 

Step #1: Build a Reputation Framework

If you’re going to offer reputation management services in your digital marketing agency, you’ll want to make sure it’s a scalable service you can handle. The absolute worst thing you can do is multiply your workload. You’re already working too hard.

A framework makes reputation management systematic and repeatable.

Why Does That Matter?

A systematic and repeatable process is something you can train others to manage on your behalf. The results you achieve are in direct proportion to the amount of upfront time you invest in your framework.

Here’s a shortlist of the items you’ll need:

• Your Service Offerings: What specifically does your service include? What sort of results are reasonable for prospects/clients to expect? How long will it take? What are your responsibilities? Your client’s responsibilities? What happens if you fail to produce results? What happens if your clients sabotage the process?
• To-Do Templates: A list of to-dos employees (or contractors) follow to produce consistently amazing results. If you bring on reputation management clients, these to-do items are automatically added. 
• Timelines and Milestones: You should have a general idea of how long each to-do or series of to-dos will take to complete. You also need a list of milestones and the time frames for each.
• Deliverables: This includes files, assets, credentials and intellectual property. If you’ve offered clients the irresistible offer I mentioned above, you’ll need to determine who owns what ahead of time.
• Service Fulfillment: Who will do the actual work? Employees in your agency? Freelancers (i.e., nearshore contractors)? A combination of the two? How will you handle excess demand and task overflow? Do your best to answer these questions ahead of time.
• Legalities: Agreements are still a good idea – even if you’re offering prospects a free trial upfront. You want to ensure your legal ducks are in a row.

If you’re unsure about your service offerings, look at top performers in the industry; read through their website and marketing materials. Study them to learn then, find a measurable way to differentiate yourself from them. Your offer can also perform double duty as your to-do list template. 

Here’s a sample list:

• Create, claim and optimize all review, social media and local search profiles

• Create review request templates (e.g., email, SMS, direct mail, etc.)

• Create/optimize your client’s review funnel (via software)

• Create/optimize irresistible offers for client

• Claim free Bing and Google ad vouchers 

• Use vouchers to drive traffic to client review profiles via top performing keywords

• Use irresistible offers to lure traffic to landing pages.

• Collect visitor information then, send the leads to your client

There may be additional sub-steps required, but you get my point. This eight-step process is a simple way to generate leads using agency skills you already have. You’ll probably focus most of your attention on your client’s online review portfolio.

Step #2: Get Clients to Confirm

Reach out to a trusted client (or a few). Ask if they’d be willing to share their feedback on the data you have from step one — you’re looking for trends, patterns, inconsistencies and red flags.

Statements are a problem.

If you share what you have so far with your clients and their overall response is some variation of “that’s nice” or “that sounds interesting, “it’s generally an indication that you have more work to do. If they’re asking questions (e.g., “what’s the catch, how are you able to do that,” or “is that even real?” – any questions signifying a request for more information – you’ve hit pay dirt.

If they’re interested in learning more, it’s an indication that your offer is developed enough to attract interest and create desire.

That’s what you want.

It’s okay if this process takes a few tries. If you take the time to do the upfront work required, it’ll pay off handsomely in the end.

Step #3: Launch Your Reputation Pilot Program

You’re ready to launch a reputation pilot program for your prospects. Creating a solid structure for your pilot programs ensures that you’re able to generate high-quality leads for your clients.

Here’s why this is important.

A pilot program identifies whether your prospects are actually willing to follow your instructions and listen to your advice. While pilot programs like these seem like a whole lot of free work and extra headaches, the opposite is true. These programs expose ideal/problem clients ahead of time.

Once your pilot program is successful, you’ll have the trust, credibility and authority you need to win a coveted retainer agreement with your client. Sure it’s profitable, but it doesn’t fully reward you for your hard work and extra effort. If you’re more comfortable with retainers, you can easily 2x your business with add-on services (e.g., copywriting, marketing, design and development services).

What If You Want More?

What if you want to 2x, 4x and even 10x your business from a few profitable clients? That’s easy. Just switch clients to a pay-per-lead model at the end of their free trial. Clients love this option because they only pay for results. This option makes you more money because your income potential is essentially unlimited.

What If You’re Not Comfortable with Your Skillset?

Sign clients up using the retainer model; use this model to identify and test the strategies and tactics that work best for clients in a particular industry or niche. Then, once you have the bugs ironed out, switch your clients to a pay-per-lead model. 

This strategy is how you use a few profitable clients to 2x, 4x and even 10x your business.

Reputation Management is the Gateway

Reputation management is a gateway service you can use to boost your agency’s average order values. It’s a straightforward way to sell add-on services. 

You just need a few ingredients.

Approach prospects with an irresistible offer. Create the right framework. Confirm that framework with your clients and, finally, launch your pilot program. Reputation management, as a gateway, bypasses your client’s filters and resistance – a simply way to 2x your agency’s revenues.

If you’re ready to take the next step and add reputation management as a brand new service offering, check out the Grade.us pricing review management guide.