The One-Man Digital Marketing Agency
My name is Kevin Veitia and I run a one-man marketing agency. I’ve been doing it for the past 11 years ever since I created my first ‘agency’ in 2012.
Wait, Kevin, aren’t you just a freelancer or a consultant? Isn’t the whole point of an agency that it’s made up of many different people? Isn’t that what differentiates it from freelancers and consultants, to begin with?
Well, yes, but I’m trying to make a point. The point is that as technology develops our individual output increases and, now with AI Chatbots at our disposal, we can easily replicate the output of an entire agency without ever needing to get involved with hiring employees, payroll taxes, and the increasing complexity that owning an agency would engender.
How To Start a One-Man Digital Marketing Agency
Start with an honest assessment of your own abilities as a marketer. What channels are you most comfortable managing? What niche do you want to go after? What are your limitations? Perhaps, for example, you don’t know how to produce a high-quality video. Or, perhaps you aren’t a good copywriter. Take note of your strengths and weaknesses.
When I first started in 2012 I had to outsource anything I wasn’t particularly good at in order to maintain my ‘one-man agency’. Luckily for me, this usually consisted only of hiring freelance videographers when a particularly complex video project arose.
Nowadays, however, you have seemingly hundreds of AI services that promise to fill in any gaps in your skill set. Regardless of what you think your weak point is as a marketer, there’s bound to be an AI product out there that can help you deliver without relying on others.
The Unscaled/Upscaled Effect
Earlier this year I started reading a book called ‘Unscaled’ by Hemant Taneja. The book details the impact new technology is having on business, describing an effect by which industries become ‘unscaled’ with new companies coming up with hyper-niche targeted solutions that allow them to create tailored products. Throughout the book, Taneja explains that AI development will accelerate the rate at which industries become unscaled, creating a ‘decentralizing’ effect.
Interestingly enough, nowhere has then been seen the most then in the recent AI boom itself. There are now hundreds if not thousands of software companies that have sprung out, each one with a different hyper-niche user needs that they address.
What Taneja only hints at in the book is the corollary to this ‘unscaled’ effect – what I’m calling the ‘upscale effect’ – as businesses ‘unscale’, individuals will ‘upscale’. With AI filling in the gaps in our knowledge, digital creatives like marketers will finally be able to own the entire ideation-to-launch marketing/ad campaign process without ever needing to consult anyone else (Find out how I’m using AI as a marketer)
The One-Man Digital Marketing Agency Avoids Complexity & Maximizes Revenue
One of the most appealing reasons to never scale your marketing agency is the fact that you can keep complexity at bay. Simplicity is undervalued in our world. Simplicity allows us to maintain focus and deliver our best work. Introducing complexity taxes our mental bandwidth and prevents us from being as creative and high-performing as we can be.
Imagine that you’re in your office having to struggle between delegating tasks, processing employee payroll, and knowing that you need to be at your creative best in order to create an appealing new ad concept for a client’s upcoming product launch. Do you think that you’ll do your best work? Can you count on your subordinates to perform at their best at such a critical time?
What if they don’t pull through? You have a deadline. Can you trust them with this? Do you really want to go through the meeting you’ll have to have with a client in case what your employees produced isn’t up to snuff? What about the hit to your reputation? Your ability to get future clients?
The One Man Marketing Agency doesn’t need to worry about any of that. You’re self-reliant and operating at peak performance. You don’t need to deal with any of the issues that come from additional people being involved.
And I haven’t even gotten into the revenue part of why it makes sense to keep complexity at bay. You see, the agency model suffers from an issue with scaling. Since the agency model relies on maintaining high levels of client satisfaction and building close relationships, your agency employees can only work on so many accounts. Bringing in new work means that you need to hire someone another marketer. A skilled marketer who can maintain high levels of client satisfaction and build close relationships – e.g someone expensive. Since marketing professionals who are actually good at their jobs are expensive, this means your margins will be thin.
Isn’t it better to keep 100% of the revenue? Why go through all the hassle just to see yourself dealing with more headaches and stress?
While the one-man marketing agency can’t scale past a certain point (every attempt at scale, whether performed by an individual or an agency has an ‘upper limit’) – the fact is that you’ll be able to compensate with a lower revenue ceiling with additional time, energy levels, and fulfilling work. After all, isn’t the work of actually creating marketing and advertising what drew you to marketing to begin with? No one was drawn to this profession so that they could become managers. In fact, is anyone truly drawn to ‘management’ as the end all be all anyways?
The Marketing Ronin Methodology
Over the past 10 years as a one-man agency, I developed the Marketing Ronin methodology. This is a methodology that covers the frameworks necessary to maximize your productivity, creative output, and ability to achieve consistent success for yourself or your clients. It’s the very same methodology I used to outperform an entire marketing agency!
Sign up via the newsletter form below and I’ll send you a one-pager detailing the methodology and the first steps you can take to start achieving success today.
