6 Steps to Start a Marketing Agency in 2025

Marketing agencies are excellent businesses because they don’t require any money to start, and you make money more or less immediately. 

This is the step-by-step blueprint for starting a marketing agency, even if you have zero experience. 

1.) Select One Service For One Industry/Avatar

If you have an issue with your heart, you’ll want to speak to a cardiologist – not a general doctor. 

Even if the cardiologist charges more, you’ll probably go them rather than the general doctor.

Why?

A cardiologist is much more experienced with heart issues than a general doctor and can therefore give you better advice. 

You don’t really want to make a gamble with your heart health.

The same is true for great marketing agency clients. 

They don’t want to make a gamble. They want to hire a true expert who understands their industry and has a proven solution for their problem.

If you position yourself as a specialist in a particular subset of marketing, you’re actually more likely to stand out to clients looking for the particular service you offer, and you can also charge more for your services.

As your agency grows and you can hire more talented experts, you can expand to offer more services. 

However, pick just one service as you’re getting started.

Here are some examples of marketing agency services you can offer:

• Personal branding/social media ghostwriting
• SEO
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media content creation
• Influencer marketing
• Paid advertising

For broader services, like “influencer marketing” or “paid advertising,” you can get even more specific.

For example, instead of specializing in influencer marketing, you could specialize in influencer marketing for Instagram. 

Secondly, pick just one industry/avatar to serve.

Here are a few examples of very specific avatars:

• D2C companies in health and wellness 
• B2B SaaS companies 
• Entrepreneurs with companies worth $10 million plus

Those examples are very specific. You could broaden your avatar a little (e.g., “D2C companies with 10+ employees” rather than D2C companies specifically in health and wellness).

However, the more you match the characteristics of your prospects, the more compelling you’ll appear to prospects because they’ll believe that your system was designed specifically for their nuanced problems.

2.) Build Case Studies

The golden rule of building a marketing agency is this:

Produce great results for clients.

The good news is that this isn’t too difficult – even for beginners.

If you spend a few months studying and executing the service, you’ll robably be better than about 90% of people.

But there is one problem. 

If you have no experience, how do you get your first job to practice and build experience?

Most people will turn you down even if you offer to work for free.

It’s too risky. What if you tank the marketing strategy?  

For example, you’d probably prefer to pay an experienced surgeon for open heart surgery than accept a free open heart surgery from a college student with no experience.

The good news is that there are a few different ways around this problem.

1. Offer to bring in world class mentorship.

Let’s say you want to offer SEO for ecommerce. 

You could go onto a platform like MentorPass, look at all of the Shopify SEO experts, and then pitch your target brands that you’ll pay to take a call with one of those world-class experts to create and execute a strategy for their brand. 

From the brand’s perspective, they’re getting feedback from world-class experts and someone to execute it – all for free!

Here’s an example of pitch I sent:

This strategy does require you to put some cash up for the initial coaching call, but you could work out a deal where the company pays for future coaching calls. 

And, assuming you do a great job, you’ll probably close the new client. So it’s more like a customer acquisition cost.

Even if you don’t close the brand you pitched, the mentor you work with might be impressed with your work and give you referrals for free. 

If nothing else, you’ll learn a lot doing the coaching call and execution, and the call is still probably cheaper than a college course!

2. Sign up for an apprenticeship program.

Acadium is a platform that matches new marketers with businesses that need services. 

For example, if you want to do SEO for ecommerce, you can sign up for Acadium and request to be matched with an ecommerce company that wants help with SEO. 

These businesses don’t expect you to have a lot of experience and (unlike businesses you’d be cold pitching) are willing to put in the time to train you.

Each apprenticeship contract is 3 months and you’ll be expected to dedicate about 10 hours per week to the project. 

3. Send completed work.

Instead of telling someone you’ll do the work for free, just send them the completed work.

This strategy doesn’t work for every marketing service, but it does for some. 

Here’s an example of how you could create free samples for a D2C store:

• Social media marketing: Create a sample instagram reel or post for the company.
• Video marketing: Create a free YouTube video featuring their product. 
• SEO: Create a blog post targeting a keyword that’s critical to them.
• Copywriting: Write/adjust a sales page for their product.

“What if they don’t post/use my work?”

First, you can always just tweak the sample and send it to their competitors.

If you don’t get a response to your first cold pitch to competitors, you can even send a follow up asking them to at least give you a “no” as you’ll send it to their competitor (but mention you would really like to work with them).

Even if their competitors don’t accept the work, you’ll have gained excellent experience and will have developed systems and processes that you can use to pitch future clients.

You can also add it to your portfolio.

4. Do the marketing for yourself.

My favorite strategy is simply doing the work for yourself and using it as a case study. 

I love this method because it allows you to experiment and find what does and does not work. You can also post about your experiences on social media, which will help you build an audience and make valuable connections.  

For example, if you want to offer SEO services, start a website in any niche and document the process of growing it. 

I realize that paid ads might not be feasible if you don’t have any money to spend making the case study.

However, services like content marketing, ghostwriting, SEO, design, and web development are all easy for you to start doing for yourself today.

3.) Get Your First Paying Customer

Now that you have a few case studies and glowing reviews from people you worked with for free, closing your first paying customer will be much easier. 

Here are some of the best ways to get your first marketing agency customers in 2025.

Partnerships

Partnerships have been one of my most profitable client acquisition strategies. Many larger agencies only deal with clients with an enterprise budget, and you can work out a referral deal where they give you some of their lower budget prospects.

I don’t recommend pricing your services cheap, but you can position yourself as a premium provider for smaller companies that can’t realistically afford some of the larger agencies.

Alternatively, you could partner with some of the smaller agencies that have parallel specialties.

For example, if you specialize in YouTube influencer marketing, you could partner with an agency that specializes in Instagram influencer marketing. This expands their service capabilities, making it a win-win.

B2B Influencers

Once you’re confident in your capabilities, consider reaching out to some B2B influencers (LinkedIn/X) and ask if you can do some work for them for free. If they like the work, offer to pay them to write a post about your services. 

For example, Andrew Wilkinson occasionally promotes other companies on his Twitter account:

To make B2B influencer promotions work, your services must be truly outstanding. Otherwise, the influencer probably won’t agree to promote it, and you could get a negative reputation before you even really get started.

Ask For Referrals

If you’ve already worked for someone for free building case studies, ask if they have friends looking for the same service. If you’ve done a great job for them, they’ll likely be more than happy to help. 

Now, many people say they’ve tried asking for referrals, and it hasn’t resulted in any new business.

Referral strategies fail if the asker (you) puts the work on the other person (your client) to make the referral.

Instead, do the work for them by writing out the text for a LinkedIn or Twitter post they can immediately publish.

You could also write out a list of ideal prospects who you know they know and ask if they’ll make the intro to those specific people.  

If you just ask, “Can you give me a referral?” they’ll probably agree, but won’t do anything. They won’t want to take the time to think of who might want your services or what to write on social media.

Do some cold outreach

Cold outreach still works if you do it correctly. 

These are the three core ingredients to cold email success:

1. Demand: The company must fit your avatar and be looking for a service provider who offers what you offer.
2. Person: You must reach out to the right person (i.e., the person with the power to hire for that position.)
3. Pitch: A short, compelling pitch with proof you can deliver what they need.

These three ingredients may seem simple, but they’re remarkably difficult to achieve. 

The first pillar (demand) is particularly challenging. 

Even if the company fits your ideal customer profile, they might either already have an agency doing the service you offer and therefore aren’t interested. Or they might simply not be interested in the service you offer. 

There are two options to navigate this:

1. Pitch companies currently hiring for this position: This will give you a better response rate, but you might find it difficult to identify companies hiring for the service you’re offering. You can start on AngelList or LinkedIn to find companies hiring for that position. For example, if you’re offering influencer marketing, reach out to companies hiring influencer marketers.  
2. Pitch a high volume of companies that show interest in your service: Unfortunately, a very small percentage of companies are currently advertising that they’re hiring for the service you offer. So, it’s often still worthwhile to pitch any company that fits your avatar and is currently investing in your service. 

It may seem counterintuitive to pitch companies already doing the service you offer – if they have a service provider, why would they hire me? 

This is a valid point, and in many cases, they won’t. 

However, I usually see a better response rate from companies that are already investing in the service for two reasons:

1. They recognize the value of the service, so you don’t have to convince them that it’s valuable.
2. They clearly have the capital to invest in it.

The second ingredient is pitching the right person. 

Send the email to the person with the power to hire for that position. 

This might be the CMO, VP of Marketing, or Head of Brand for smaller companies and the head of the department (e.g., SEO) for larger companies (200 plus employees).

A quick LinkedIn search can reveal who this person is:

Then, you can use a tool like Hunter to find that person’s email address.

The third step is crafting the pitch.

I typically use the subject line “Working with (brand name).”

It’s relatively vague, but the brand name should pique their curiosity enough to click. Remember that hiring and partnerships are probably a major part of this person’s responsibilities, so they’ll likely open the email.

However, it’s also truthful, so they won’t feel like it was clickbait once they open the email.

As for the pitch itself, try to keep it to three lines.

My first line is usually something about the product itself. For example, I typically try to pitch brands whose products I’ve actually used. That first line is then me giving them feedback on the product.

C suite executives love this information.

My last line is some kind of proof. 

Here’s an example of an email I might send to a protein bar company that I’m pitching influencer marketing to:

“Hi (name),

I’ve been looking for a protein bar that’s keto friendly and under 200 calories. Finally tried (brand) and haven’t had any other protein bars since 😉

I learned about it through your brand through (influener name) but it took me 7 months to decide to try it. 

Can I share what turned me off about it? I also have some ideas to improve general campaign performance.

P.S. I’ve 10xed the influencer marketing ROI for other D2C companies like (X), and (X).”

Now, I won’t lie. This level of personalization is very hard to scale. 

Another option is to simply state how you discovered the brand. For example, if you’re pitching to offer influencer marketing as a service, mention a specific influencer whose campaign you saw.

For example:

“Hi name, 

I just learned about (brand) through (influencer).

I have a few ideas on how to improve your campaign. Can I share?

P.S. I’ve 10xed the influencer marketing ROI for other D2C companies like (X), and (X).”

This is definitely easier to scale, though it probably won’t be as effective. 

My philosophy has always been quality over quantity. Figure out who you want to work with and then laser target them. 

I also follow up with each brand two to three times. 

Cold email is one of the fastest ways to get clients for your marketing agency, but be sure to also carve out time to practice executing the work itself (either for yourself or for free).

If you spend all of your time sending cold emails and none of your time doing the work itself, you won’t be able to move on to the next step, which is one of the most important.

4.) Build a Personal Brand

Whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been in business for a while, getting clients is always one of the biggest challenges agency owners face.

A personal brand solves this problem by allowing you to build an audience of people who need your marketing help.

Once you have an engaged following, you’ll notice that you consistently have a handful of people message you asking for services organically.

So, how do you build a personal brand?

We have a separate resource that goes into more detail on building a personal brand and outlines the steps my business partner, Charles Miller, used to grow his LinkedIn and X accounts to over 100,000 followers.

However, I’ll breifly go over the basic steps below.

Step 1: Niche Selection

The niche you choose should be the marketing service you offer for your target customer.

Step 2: Create a Professional Brand Identity

You don’t need to pay an expensive branding agency for this, but the fonts and color scheme for your website, LinkedIn, and X profiles should be the same. 

Here’s an example of Charles Miller’s LinkedIn profile and website:

Step 3: Content Creation

People follow you to read your content, so this is arguably the most important stage of the process. To attract the right people, write about the pain points you solve for your target audience. 

For example, if you offer SEO for SaaS companies, write about common SEO problems you see SaaS companies make and how to fix them. 

Some content formats that tend to perform well on social media include talking about case studies, how you’ve overcome failures, and tools/tips you use. 

Step 4: Content Repurposing

One of the problems with social media content is that it’s only relevant for a few hours, so you have to consistently publish to stay relevant.

The good news is that you can maximize your efforts with content republishing. Here’s the exact content repurposing I use on social media to post simultaneously to Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, LinkedIn and X.

Step 5: Content Distribution

Getting engagement when you’re first starting out can be hard, as algorithms will limit your reach. 

To solve this problem, engage with other industry leaders on LinkedIn and build genuine relationships.

Over time, they may agree to share and engage with your content. 

Alternatively, you can also pay these influencers for engagement. However, I recommend honing your content creation skills organic first and then expand to paying for engagement. 

Step 6: Create an Offer and Simple Funnel

Once you have a following, you need to give them an offer to become customers. 

So on your LinkedIn and X profiles, create two offers:

1. Free Resource (Lead Magnet): A lead magnet might be a free checklist or templates your audience can download in exchange for their email address. For example, “The 10 Best D2C Facebook ads we ran in (previous month).” By collecting email addresses, you can remarket to peopleon a more personal level. Free resources are great for people who aren’t quite ready to buy yet, but may buy from you in the future.
2. Done for you service: This is for people who have been following you for a while now. They already like you and are willing to hire you immediately.

Step 7: Stay Consistent

Building a personal brand really just comes down to consistency. 

Everyone has their own strategies for staying consistent, but I find the best approach is carving out time for content creation each week.

For example, schedule content creation from 8-10 am each Monday.

Building a personal brand takes time, and you probably won’t see results overnight. However, you will find that it’s one of the most effective ways to create steady demand for your services.

5.) Document Your Processes

Customers go to chain restaurants because they can expect the same quality each time.

This is because chain restaurants have documented processes. It doesn’t matter who is making the food. The end result is always the same because they use the same documented process. 

Marketing agency clients also want consistent, high quality work. 

Creating documented processes ensures consistent work quality, even as you start hiring other people to help you.

Even as you’re getting started, write out a process for every task you do more than once.

For example, if you’re running an SEO agency, here are a few repetitive processes to document:

• Backlink outreach processes
• Content writing process
• On page optimization process
• Keyword research processes

I recommend creating a Notion template or document for all of your processes. 

There are a few additional benefits to creating processes:

1. Sales Tool: Having documentation makes you immediately more appealing to potential clients. They’ll assume that if your process worked for another similar company, it will also work for them. 
2. Save Time: If you have documented processes, you’ll never have to explain the same process twice, which saves you time and expedites the onboarding process.

6.) Invest in Great Talent

It’s time to hire when you can’t take on any more client work.

The next step is to decide which role you want to hire for. 

First, hire assistants and offload as much administration work as possible.

You can also look into AI solutions to automate as many manual processes as possible. 

Once you’ve automated as much of the administrative work as possible and you’re ready to hire real marketing talent, create the following matrix:

Hire for the fourth quadrant first. 

For example, if you’re a Facebook ads agency and don’t enjoy designing the ad creative and aren’t very good at it, hire someone to design the ad creative.  

Many of your early hires can also be part-time or freelance hires. For example, you can hire a designer on Dribbble to do your ad creative work. 

You can also look on Upwork for simple freelance work.

These platforms are great for early hires. Look for people who have a high rating and have made several thousand dollars:

Start by giving these freelancers small test projects and see if they follow directions, complete the work on time, and are easy to work with. 

You can give them larger projects and more responsibilities as they prove themselves.

Some of them might even grow into full-time hires.

However, don’t skimp on quality when you are ready to make a full-time hire. 

Wait until you can afford great talent that has repeatedly produced outstanding results.

The best way to find great talent is to look on LinkedIn for people who have produced the results you need not once but twice. 

Ideally, you want people who have been promoted internally several times, as they’re clearly top performers.

You’ll also want to start thinking about building a company culture and core values, as this will be key to building a sustainable company that lasts over time.

Get More Help Building Your Marketing Agency

This is the step-by-step playbook on how to start a marketing agency in 2025. It’s simple, but not necessarily easy. It can also be lonely, as most of your friends probably don’t really understand what you’re trying to do.

If you want support from a group of other like-minded people working towards a similar goal, consider joining Copyblogger Academy. 

It’s a course and community run by two seven-figure entrepreneurs – myself and Charles Miller. 

Inside, you’ll have access to courses on SEO, email marketing, content marketing, personal branding, and everything you need to start your marketing agency. You’ll also be able to attend accountability sessions and ask questions in the community.