On today’s episode of Word on the Street, Katie speaks to Freia Muehlenbein, Owner and Agency Consultant at Be Reyt Agency Advisory.

With more than a decade in operational leadership and strategic roles, she helps agencies understand their barriers to growth and translate them into simple action, and is a strong believer that a successful agency strategy needs clarity of direction and a focused approach to implementation.

Starting her agency career in 2010, Freia scaled a digital content marketing and online PR offering from 0-100 staff, delivering global campaigns across 40 markets. Later she worked with the Board to deliver the company strategy and change programmes for one of the most successful digital marketing agencies in the UK. Maintaining clarity and focusing on the right priorities meant that she implemented some of the biggest changes undergone in the agency which led to substantial and sustainable growth. She uses her experience to help agencies make the right decisions faster, and avoid some of the pitfalls she has experienced herself.

In this episode you will hear:

• The dos and don’ts of stakeholder management
• The importance of involving the team in your journey
• Why client feedback is essential for growth
• Overcoming burnout

There were so many amazing takeaways from today’s episode, and these were just a few of our favourites.

Overcoming burnout

Freia explains that agency owners need to have willingness, understanding, and acceptance that things will constantly change, and they need to have focus and alignment with that change in order to avoid burnout.

By nature, all agencies are fast paced but it’s important to set realistic goals that are achievable, recognise where your focus needs to be and where your biggest gains are. It’s not effective to try and tackle everything at the same time, but instead perfect one area, implement and embed it before you move on to the next thing.

The importance of involving the team in your journey

In order to grow, there needs to be a member of the team in each agency who is dedicated and accountable for the company strategy and hot on ensuring the details of the strategy so it is delivered in an effective way in order to achieve long-term goals. Keeping each other accountable and focused using a calm and collected approach will stop you from burning out and trying to do too many things that aren’t realistic.

Why client feedback is essential for growth

Focus on who your agency is actually for, you cannot be everything for everyone!

In order to generate the right type of leads, you need clarity and focus on the client types that are right for your agency. What is your client type? Being clear on this will help you to convert more leads. Is your proposition correct? If you have evolved your message as a business, you need to evolve your message to the market also, otherwise, you will attract leads that aren’t right for you.

Take a step back and look at everything that is going on, which type of clients do you want to attract in order to grow? Do you have different client types? Split your ideal client types into different categories and choose who you want to target and convert.

Links & references

Katie Street: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
Freia Muehlenbein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freiamuehlenbein/

Want to learn more from Freia? She’s put together an amazing course on over on Tanba where she shares the pitching mistakes you might be making and how to avoid them: https://tanba.io/courses/pitch-mistakes-we-all-make-and-how-to-avoid-them/

Our Sponsor

Series 6 of Word on the Street is sponsored by Tanba, The Agency New Business Academy, is a brand-new initiative aimed at equipping agencies of all sizes with the knowledge, content, partnerships, and opportunities needed to accelerate agency growth by optimising their new business ‘engine’. Tanba is an on-demand and affordable solution for agencies looking to upskill their team via training courses, content and insights delivered by our panel of industry experts, leaders, and partners.

The academy is all about empowering agency teams to get noticed, attract opportunities, increase conversion rates, and reduce the costs associated with the sales process. Visit https://tanba.io/ to find out more and start empowering your agency.