How To Start A Digital Marketing Agency - Adam McChesney - Hite Digital

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story Podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Frost. Adam McChesney, welcome to the show, dude.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hey, thanks for me having me on, man. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Excited to have you here, man. Finally got you uh pinned down for a minute here so we can have a conversation about what you got going on over there uh with the in the digital marketing world. Uh you and I met um exactly a year ago, uh, because it's almost time for traffic and conversions again. We had quickly found out we're in the same mastermind that we had just recently joined. And then um, of course, our our direct correlation was uh was the great folks over there at Height Digital and uh what uh what they're building over there, which is clearly just a great model doing some really, really cool things. But um, you know, I like to tell people's stories. So, you know, a lot of us aren't weren't doing what we're doing today, you know, prior to we had a different career path, different stuff going on. So what I know you got a you know a gro on uh a growing digital agency there in uh St. Louis, right? St. Louis, Red City? Okay, cool. I almost said Columbus. Uh but what were you doing prior to to becoming a franchisee with with high digital and opening your own agency there in St. Louis?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, so my background's in medical device sales. I did that for five years uh between two different companies. So did that up until uh really the midst of the pandemic. Got into digital marketing prior to that, kind of on the side as a side hustle, trying to make some extra money, but really didn't need the money, but really wanted to uh to have my own business, right? Never never saw myself doing anything outside of medical device sales in corporate America, but at the end of the day, just kind of had that itch to go and do my own thing, kind of write my own paycheck, work my own hours, et cetera. So in 2018, took a couple courses to learn digital marketing, the ins and outs, so web design, search engine optimization, and paid ads. And then with the pandemic, I went from traveling, you know, all over the state of Missouri to being cooped up in my home. So just really doubled down on that side hustle and ran my own agency full time from July 2020 up until April 2021 when I made that shift over to height digital. And uh, yeah, the rest has kind of been history. Merged my existing agency into the franchise model, and uh, we've grown immensely over the last uh year plus.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

That's great, man. So um what what kind of things do you do to help uh businesses with their digital marketing strategy? Are you primarily focused just in the St. Louis area or are you working nationwide?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah, so we in our franchise, we have about a hundred and plus accounts that we're working with right now. I'd say 90 plus percent are not in St. Louis. So the cool thing about obviously what we do is we're not pinned down to a specific location. We're in uh or I'm in a lot of networking groups as you are, things like Apex. And so have really uh grown my clientele virtually, which has been awesome. Um, but yeah, really anyone with a business, we work with a lot of local service-based businesses. So people from contractors to dentists, chiropractors, um, veterinarians, even we're bringing on a client. So just anyone that that wants to get connected in the right place with their ideal client when they're at the point of purchase.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

So what and what kind of stuff are you doing for businesses? Like kind of break it down for me. If I'm if I was a prospect and I'm like, hey, I got a local business and I'm I'm not doing any marketing at all. How can you help me?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah, absolutely. So we have the kind of the foundational aspect, which is everything from your logo design to branding, that could be your colors, your messaging, just how people physically can see your uh company information, whether that's a logo, uh flyers, anything like that. And then also comes with their website as well. So we redesign or design first websites all of the time. And that's kind of the foundation. You really can't have the second aspect, which is the lead generation, if you don't have that first foundational part uh tied down. So once we have solidified that, or you know, someone comes over to us and they already have those things in order, we'll go into the lead generation aspect. So that's going to be search engine optimization. So focusing very heavily on that organic traffic that comes in. It's basically uh, as I like to call it, your digital real estate. So that's your Google business listing. That is your website. So making sure that everything is kind of buttoned up there and that you're doing some ongoing uh search engine optimization, things like blogs, adding location pages to your website, and uh taking care of backlinks, press releases, things like that. And then we also service the paid ad side. So a lot of our clients are on Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, and YouTube as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Awesome. So are so the goal of this of these campaigns you're running for them is to obviously get more business in the door for them. Is that really your uh offering outside of you know the pro the services that you're offering?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, I'd say about 95% of our campaign is lead generation focused, with maybe 5% around branding. So if someone's relaunching a brand or rebranding, um, or they're just a new business or a product or a service, things like that, then we might go some on the branding side. But yeah, very focused on that lead generation aspect.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

So you guys, so you said you're working with a hundred clients right now, that that's just your agency? Yes, that is correct. Awesome. So what and what's been the you know, the the number one way that you guys um acquire new clients?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, so it's pretty much all through my network and my personal branding. So I focused uh coming up on two years now since I went out full time very heavily on that personal brand. You know, as digital marketers, we're a dime a dozen. So there's so many of us out there. Very few actually know what they're doing. The reason why I transitioned over to height is because I know everything inside the business in terms of building websites, doing that SEO work, and then also the paid ad side, which is pretty unique to the space. A lot of people will white label someone else's product, or they'll have an entire uh virtual assistant team and things like that. Height really offered those processes and systems and then also the fulfillment aspect that was even at a higher level than what I was providing. So between just talking about our case studies, the results that we're getting for our clients, and then producing good content around entrepreneurship and then growing businesses just in general has really helped me solidify kind of our brand in the digital marketing space and allowed for us to uh acquire clients that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

And do you and do you get a lot of referral business too once you start acquiring some of these clients and you're starting to deliver them?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, absolutely. We have an amazing referral program where we actually send someone $500 uh a V uh $500 Amazon gift card 30 days after someone's doing an ongoing service with us. That's uh obviously a nice perk. But a lot of our clients are connected in, for example, we have a ton of clients in both the roofing and junk removal space. So I'm getting tagged all day long in other people's posts in those industry specific groups, as well as just on generic Facebook profiles when their buddies are are like, hey, we're also working with Adam. Here's what he's been able to do for us. So yeah, our current clients uh are some of our best referral partners as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Awesome. So, what would you say has been some of one of the one of the most difficult parts of the startup process?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Yeah, absolutely. So it's really uh getting myself out of the bottleneck within our company. So uh because I know how to do a lot of the work doesn't necessarily mean that's a good thing. And until I made the transition to height, I really kind of strongholded that process. So it kind of kept us from growing in the capacity that we need to do. Since joining Height, we've grown like a wildfire, but it's been finding those right people that can replace me inside the business. And so now we're up to seven full-time team members, including myself at Height Digital St. Louis. And uh it's been a journey trying to find, you know, the right people, people that sync up and understand and are connected to the core values and understanding the mission of what we're trying to accomplish along with the vision. Um, but that's honestly been the hardest part is removing myself from the business so that way I can work on instead of in it, and then finding the right people to take my vision, to take our mission and to be able to have it as their own and build it out from there.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Awesome. And what would you say has been the best part?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

I think the best part is just what the impact that we've been able to have. So when I when for example, when I started out um almost two years ago, you know, we had six ongoing clients. Now we're up to over a hundred. So the impact that we're having in these local markets for these businesses, their employees, their families, some of the stories that I've heard, you know, people take in vacation for the first time in 10, 15 plus years, then being able to be able to add more people or buy new trucks and just seeing what digital marketing has opened up for them as a company and the impact trickle down. You know, you'll never know the true impact, but just hearing those types of things is really what inspires me to get up each and every single day and uh to continue living that impact through and through.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Yeah, that's what it's all about. Being able to make sure you're making an impact, you're doing work uh, you know, that matters and keeping people uh, you know, excited about being a client with you. I think that marketing is always uh that that's always uh you know a hit or miss. It either it's if if it works, great. Uh, and if it doesn't, well, you know, you suck and and we're not we're never gonna do business together again. I mean so when you when you've got something where you can actually sell something you can deliver on, you know, with tangible results, it you know, it makes it, you know, just just that much easier. So um, so what do you guys got going on got on the radar for the rest of uh of 2022? I mean, I know you're growing rapidly. I was, I mean, I'm like, you said a hundred clients. I mean, we haven't talked in a minute because I was like a hundred clients. Wow. Not that that's not achievable, but like, dude, for a digital agency, you know, within a year to scale to that is absolutely bananas. I blame the model, really, because you know, you know, not having to, you know, set selling the selling the services are one thing, fulfilling them are a whole different ballgame. And that's really what's unique about the height model is that you've got that entire back-end support handling that fulfillment. Would you say that really is what you you'd attribute a lot of this, you know, rapid growth to?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Yeah, absolutely. So the nice thing about me as a franchisee of height digital is I don't have to worry about the fulfillment hiring process. So I don't have to forecast to understand how many web designers I'm gonna need, how many SEO people I'm gonna need, and so on. It's really managing, obviously, the clients, managing the prospecting uh on our end, and then managing my immediate team. So I have a VP, I have a director of client success, four full-time account managers. Uh, and we did just bring on uh an appointment setter as well. So it's really managing that core team, which that's a lot easier than trying to manage a multiple uh, you know, seven-figure agency, which height uh fulfillment in the franchise or uh side of it does. Uh, you know, but from us, you know, we went uh so basically in a year's time, we went from about 30 clients up to 100. Uh we crossed this year already uh the seven-figure agency mark, where a lot of digital marketing agencies two years in don't get anywhere near that. And if they do, uh most of the time they're adding the ad spend of their clients into that seven-figure number. So we've been able to do that 100% uh just by revenue through the door with retainers, one-time projects, et cetera. So I'm excited to continue uh, you know, to build that. Ideally hit 2 million in 2023. Um, but really it's about building up our team. It's about building up our team and again, trying to remove myself even further from the business. So uh I've been handling the sales up until this point. Our director of client success is about six weeks in. And so she's starting to take a lot of those things off of my plate. So it'll be really interesting to see how we can continue to grow with me, you know, being the true face and the CEO of the company, but not being the one handling, you know, our prospecting funnel, signing up clients and things like that. So that's kind of our next biggest challenge because, you know, for me, uh, I've already started speaking on some stages, podcast is going, YouTube channel, all that stuff, really producing more content and getting some of those uh, you know, MA opportunities and consultant uh gigs is really what I see my future uh and I'm excited about doing.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, man, I'm excited for you, dude. It's really cool that well, it's number one, it's fun to see your friends win. Um, but number two, um it's it's it's uh it's encouraging to see these you this is an unconventional model that Height has of being able to say, hey, listen, start it start a fr start an agency as part of our franchise program. Uh it's your job to grow the agency, it's our job to do all the fulfillment on the end. And one thing is so much easier when you've got the other on there. So well, man, uh I I'm sure next time we talk, you'll have 500 clients um based on the growth that you're experiencing now, man. It's been good to uh you know to catch up to you and also it's been great to see you win uh from afar, even though we don't get to hang out as much as uh I think last time we saw each other was Dallas back in June. Um so but I'm sure our roads are gonna our our paths will or roads and paths will cross uh soon enough. But dude, keep rocking. If you're listening to this right now and you're like, you know what, I need a digital marketing solution. I need somebody who can actually sell me something that they can fulfill on and get me results, then reach out to me, reach out to Adam. I'll put his uh contact info in the uh show notes of this episode. Any final thoughts for our listeners pertaining to the world of digital marketer, marketing, rather?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, Sebastian, thanks for having me on, man. Always great chatting with you. And and likewise on that, you've been absolutely crushing it and uh definitely inspiring to see all your posts and see everything you're doing. Um, you know, when it comes to digital marketing, there's so many different directions that you can go into. Just do your research. You know, for us, what we like to do with our clients uh and even prospective clients is take them through kind of an entire digital audit where one, we make sure that we can help you. Two, we make sure that we've done it before or know how to do it. And then three, we like to pertain any site type of strategy for your local market. Because what right root work for someone that's a roofing company here in St. Louis is definitely not going to work in Dallas. There are certain things that you will take from a campaign here and put it in there, but you have to make sure that you're very familiarized, not only with the industry, but the market itself. So that'll be uh kind of the last things that I will uh will leave you with. You can go to adammacches.com as well, and you can find all the information about Height Digital, podcasts, YouTube channel, all that good stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Amazing. Thanks again, Adam. I really appreciate your time, and we'll have to have you back on sometime to get an update on how things are going there at Height Digital St. Louis. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. We're sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.