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Soft Launching The Promethean Research ShopToday, we're soft launching a one-stop shop for all your digital agency research needs! The first 100 people to check out and use code PRNEWSLAUNCH will get $95 off each item in their cart (excluding already free reports). "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." Reid Hoffman I'd love feedback on this since I'm really taking Ried's quote to heart on it. New Research: Bending, Not Breaking: The State of Digital Services 2024Participants received their copy yesterday, but if you missed the survey, you can get yours here! Here are some highlights and excerpts from the report: Oof. We could tell 2023 was tough while we were in it, but now that the numbers are in, it’s clear that it was the most difficult year for agency growth since we began tracking back in 2015. Some firms avoided this general downturn and managed to grow 2-3x faster than average. The first section of the report explores the patterns those fast-growing firms shared. Things like realigning services, specializing, using their pricing power, optimizing pricing methods, targeting the right client mix, and shifts in project sizes. Once again, specialists are showing out. The massive increase in specialized shops we saw in 2022 has remained steady in 2023 with 83% of agencies specializing by service mix or industry. Of that, 79% specialize by service mix, and 51% specialize by industry. Agencies that specialized grew faster than their generalist counterparts, but the gains were more pronounced in those that specialized by services vs. industry. Agencies that specialized by service mix grew 70% faster than generalists, while those that specialized by industry grew 40% faster. Specializing by both service mix and industry yielded the best growth rate. Agencies that specialized by both grew 93% faster than the pure generalists. The general level of sophistication in the industry has risen dramatically since we began work in this space almost a decade ago. A solid proxy for measuring this is the percentage of agencies that are measuring beyond surface-level metrics. One of these is utilization. Both firm-wide, and by functional group. Currently, two-thirds of agencies have utilization targets for their production teams. This is highly correlated with agency size, as larger firms are more likely to have utilization targets. The average utilization target for production teams was 72%. This is up slightly from the 68% we saw in 2022 and could account for some of the improvement in net margins since then.
New Event: Leadership Live from the Bureau of DigitalOur good friends at the Bureau of Digital are hosting Leadership Live in Las Vegas on Sept. 25th and 26th, and it looks like it'll be another fantastic event! Use my code NicksGuest to knock $200 off the ticket price. Leadership Live is for owners and leadership teams who feel they’ve hit a wall they can’t get past. Come meet leaders who’ve been where you are and crossed the chasm to steady growth, healthy cultures, and stability.
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The latest research, insights, tools, and resources that make managing a digital shop easier,
TL;DR Many agencies go through a kind of boom-and-bust cadence where leaders need to periodically jump in and reignite leadgen and sales. The boom-bust cycle many agencies endure makes it challenging to forecast, wreaks havoc on morale, and forces shops to hold a bigger cash/credit buffer than they’d otherwise need. There are multiple paths to stability, and they can include things like: consistent leadgen, account management expertise, increasing revgen velocity, growing your agency,...
TL;DR Share the Agency Web Dev / Design Survey with your team's devs and designers and get access to the full report when it's live! An agency’s ability to reliably generate new leads has a waterfall effect on just about every other aspect of running a shop. The more effective your leadgen is, the faster you’ll be able to grow. Knowing your level of leadgen today unlocks your ability to accurately forecast tomorrow. Any misstep in leadgen flows right to forecasting, which translates to poor...
TL;DR NEW SURVEY OPPORTUNITY: Agency Web Dev/Design Survey! This one's for your devs and designers to take. UPDATED RESEARCH: Digital Agency Industry Report We’ve updated our Digital Agency Industry Report with the latest data on digital shops. Since 2015, digital agencies have grown at an average rate of 13% and earned an average net margin of 15%. We have room for two Revgen Reviews in September. If you’d like help dialing in your agency’s revgen strategy, let’s chat. NEW SURVEY...