Becoming a HubSpot Diamond Agency Doesn’t Require a Big Team
HubSpot Diamond Agency Partner sure has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
If you’re a new or aspiring HubSpot agency, you might assume the Diamond tier, the highest agency partner tier offered, is reserved for large agencies with dozens or hundreds of employees. In fact, there are HubSpot agencies that succeed with very small internal teams.
How do they do it?
Put simply, they have learned the value of outsourcing and scaling their team to fit their needs. Becoming a HubSpot Diamond agency requires you to deliver a tremendous amount of value to your clients, but that value doesn’t all have to come from your small team.
Here is how to start small and build a HubSpot Diamond agency that can compete with the major agencies.
Benefits and Requirements of HubSpot Diamond Agency
Before you set off on your goal to become a HubSpot Diamond Agency you should first ask yourself, why do you want it?
Do you need to be a Diamond Agency to be successful? Certainly not. First, set your goals as an agency for how you want to grow and how you want to serve your clients. Then determine if becoming a Diamond Partner will help you achieve those goals.
You can check out all of the benefits of each HubSpot Agency Partner Tier here. The main benefits of the partner program are your channel account manager and channel consultant, listing in the Partner Directory and, of course, the commissions on sales of HubSpot solutions. Higher tiers receive more benefits such as event support, social amplification, access to the Agency Growth Fund and access to additional planning and support resources.
If you’ve looked the benefits over and decided they’ll help your agency, you’ll need to set goals based on HubSpot’s thresholds. Diamond Partners must have $10,000 of sold monthly recurring revenue, clients you brought onto the HubSpot platform, and $50,000 of managed MRR, HubSpot clients you provide services to. In addition to these metrics, HubSpot takes into account retention, software engagement and actual inbound marketing success.
Structuring a Scalable Team
Achieving these revenue goals doesn’t require a large team, but it does require one built for very intentional goals.
Focus on Customer Success
Diamond Agency Partner, Penguin Strategies, has an internal team that is made up primarily of Account Managers rather than writers, graphic designers or developers. The services your agency offers can be easily outsourced, but the ability to manage client projects, nurture relationships and offer strategic guidance can not.
Penguin Strategies was able to become a Diamond agency by outsourcing deliverables and using their internal team to create marketing strategies for their clients and make sure those strategies were being followed through with. Remember that retention, engagement and inbound success are all factors in partner tiers. Your internal team should be built to maximize those metrics.
Focus on Scalability
The first ever Diamond partner, Square 2 Marketing, now has a team of 62 members. They weren’t always that big though. When the agency’s two co-founders Mike Lieberman and Eric Keiles first started bringing on additional employees, they built an organizational structure to handle rapid growth. Their “hive structure” involves a number of smaller core teams that can service all needs for a client. When the hive can’t take on any additional clients, one member is promoted to form a new hive.
No matter what organizational structure you use for your agency, make sure it can handle sudden increases and decreases in client demand. Yes, unfortunately for growing marketing agencies the truth is that at some points the growth will reverse.
While your internal team must be prepared to handle these fluctuations, the best solution for a small agency looking to grow and serve a large number of clients is outsourcing.
Outsourcing Content to Freelance Writers
Freelancers are becoming a major part of agencies as more and more of the talent pool moves to the gig economy. In fact, 95% of businesses now view the freelance workforce as a key element to growing a successful organization.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when building your agency with freelancers:
Consider Freelancers Part of Your Team
One of the unfortunate stigmas around freelance writers is the idea of using an online service to pay some anonymous person a few cents a word to write content for you. In fact, freelancers can be a much larger part of your agency services.
Penguin Strategies uses freelance writers as an extension of their team. The writers they’ve formed a relationship with pitch them ideas specific to their clients, engage directly with clients during strategy calls and generally own the work they perform.
With 20% of agencies already working completely remotely, it should be a stretch for any agency to consider freelancers a part of their remote workforce.
Create Long-term Freelance Relationships
7th Sight focuses on building partnerships with writers, designers and content creators before their services are needed. This allows the agency to offer marketing services they know they can deliver on and build the price of freelancers into their pricing structure. This is especially valuable if you are approaching a new industry you’ve never created content for before.
Look for Subject Matter Experts
Since they have access to a large community of expert writers, HubSpot Platinum Agency Optimize 3.0 is able to sell themselves as expert content creators in a variety of industries and then follow through on those promises with excellent content. While having a few generalist writers in your stable can be useful, having a large team of specialists will result in much higher quality marketing content for your clients. When building out your freelance team, look for experts in your client’s fields and for industries you may need help with in the future.
Make Your Freelance Team Scalable
According to Matt Sunshine, Managing Partner of the HubSpot Platinum Partner Agency LeadG2, their agency had a problem early on with overexpansion. By using freelancers to fill talent gaps they were able to prevent the costly mistake of hiring new employees only to see demand decrease and be forced to let the team member go a few months later.
By using contract workers for as many client services as possible, you are able to rapidly scale your team without the normal growing pains that agencies go through. You can approach new clients without the fear that if you win their business you’ll have to scramble to hire a new employee to handle their account. Instead, you’ll have a pool of freelancers to draw from that have the specific experience that client’s work requires.
Provide Value Through Processes and Strategy
Giving up total ownership of all client deliverables can be a difficult hurdle for many agencies is overcome. This requires an important mindset shift. As a HubSpot agency, the greatest value you can provide your clients is inbound strategy and the carefully organized processes you develop over working with many clients over time.
Marketing services such as content marketing will be a major part of making sure your strategy is successful and your clients are happy, but they also require a large investment of time and resources. By outsourcing these services, you free your internal team up to make the larger strategy moves that will keep your clients happy and lead to more sales.
The HubSpot Diamond Agencies may seem impossible to compete with or join, but they don’t need to be. No matter what the size of your team, you can reach the same level of revenue and success if you organize your agency intentionally, outsource services to capable, expert freelancers, and focus on delivering the best customer experience possible.
Editor’s Note: This post was written by Tim Ludy, one of the top marketing/tech writers in the nDash community. To learn more about Tim — and to have him write for your company — be sure to create a free account on nDash.
