An Interview with George Thomas McCormick — What does running a digital agency really involve?
I interviewed George Thomas McCormick, the founder of a digital marketing agency known as SOAR. I interviewed George to find out what makes his agency tick and if there was anything he could attribute to his success that other aspiring agency owners could use.
So, first of all, can you give us a bit of background about you personally?
Well, I’m 23 years old, born and raised in London UK. Since my early teens, I’ve been running small online businesses and have always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit. I even sold sweets and drinks to other students when I was at school. As I got older, I decided that going to university wasn’t really for me and I didn’t have much interest to pay a fortune for further education when I could be investing in a business. So with that in mind, I ran my own online mentoring and education business to teach small business owners how to reach more customers online. This was using all the self-taught methods I’d picked up since I was a child and building my first websites at the age of 11.
Aside from my business ventures, I do lots of sports and play regular competitive hockey for Potters Bar Hockey Club. I also enjoy going to the gym or working out at home when I get a chance.
How did you come to be an agency owner in the first place?
So as I mentioned, I ran an online mentoring business, which actually became much more successful than I thought it would. I ended up with over 5000 students globally. The problem was, many of these business owners simply didn’t have the time to implement the strategies I had been teaching them. So I saw the opportunity to set up a digital agency and do all of their marketing for them.
What does your agency actually do?
We’re a full-funnel digital marketing agency. So what that means is we have a huge range of skills in house to accommodate the client's needs. For example, our main specialty is running Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns for our clients. However, some clients don’t even have a website yet or any kind of branding. So what we would do is take care of those things first, before running them a successful campaign.
We’ve also expanded into the PR industry to manage the online reputation of some of our higher profile clients.
What are the challenges of running your own agency?
With any business or industry, there’s going to be a lot of challenges. I’d say the biggest one is being able to manage up to 500 clients at once, without losing your head. Now, of course, I’m not a one-man agency and do employ a lot of freelance staff, but that doesn’t mean I like to take a hands-off approach with my clients. Managing a freelance team can also be tricky sometimes since we are a 100% remote agency. We do have daily video calls and catchups, but sometimes it can seem like a struggle compared to face to face meetings.
What piece of advice would you give to aspiring agency owners?
The biggest piece of advice I would give to any agency is to focus on the quality of work they are giving to clients. There are thousands of agencies out there, so why should they use you? Is your offering different?
If you can give your clients something they can’t get anywhere else, word of mouth promotion will soon flood your business with as many clients as you can handle. So rather than trying to scale up really quickly, get to know your audience, what their needs are and then over-deliver in every imaginable way!
What is your focus for 2020 and beyond?
The focus for us in 2020 is really to help our clients overcome the struggles of COVID-19. The coronavirus is impacting every business around the world and some are struggling to survive right now. Consumer confidence has also dropped massively, so the way we structure our marketing campaigns for clients’ businesses has rapidly evolved.
We’ve even waived our agency fees for some of our clients to help them battle through this challenging time. So in short, our focus is to make sure our clients are still in business during 2020 and beyond. We’re committed to helping them in every way we can.
