The Ultimate Method Proven to Increase Margins in Your Small Agency
In 2020, it's fair to say that agencies saw much more intense pressure to remain successful than ever before. It's common for businesses facing a financially challenging time to look for areas to cut back, and it can often be marketing or ad spend on the chopping block. If your small agency has managed to navigate 2020, first of all we want to say a massive well done. As an unlimited design company based in Manchester, we work with a lot of agencies who felt the impact of COVID-19 and we understand how difficult a year it was for many. However, with the world now taking steps towards a post-pandemic era, we're sure you're raring to go and make your agency grow at unprecedented rates. It's logical that the way to do this is to access higher margins, higher quality, more complex services and still offer more affordability than ever, right? If you agree with that statement, keep reading to see a brief overview of the steps you need to take to see all that happen overnight in your agency.
Evaluate your graphic design workflow
The first step is to take a step back. That sounds counterintuitive, but you need to stop and see the bigger picture happening in your agency. It can be really easy to think that the way your workflow is right now is the only way for success because, well, it's what's gotten you to where you are. To progress however, would you agree that you need to continue to fine-tune the processes in your agency? Because we're a graphic design subscription service, we wanted to take a closer look at the average graphic design workflow in an agency. In all likelihood, you either have an internal designer, a marketer acting as a designer or you are outsourcing your design work. To evaluate your graphic design workflow thoroughly, you need to consider the pros and cons of each of these different avenues. One underlying consequence of all of these methods is that you'll find it difficult to expand your creative content in a budget-friendly way. The average wage of a graphic designer in the UK is £25,000 per year, so hiring a team in-house to scale up your content isn't viable in most cases. Freelancers charge on average around £30-£50 an hour, meaning that they again aren't the best choice when wanting to access larger volumes of graphic design.
So, how does all that relate to increasing margins in your small agency? Well of course, it matters how much work you can offer to clients. The capability to scale up your creative content will mean that you can generate more revenue, but can you also switch up how you outsource to save budget and access higher margins on the work you already do? The answer is really simple, you can with Design Cloud.
Outsource your graphic design wisely
To raise margins in your agency overnight, switch to a Design Cloud plan. This is a tested and true method for the agencies we already work with, but why should you also consider joining the growing audience of Design Cloud subscribers? Because you can access premium quality design at a lower hourly rate, which means you can start accessing those higher margins you've been looking for! According to the Wow Benchpress report on agencies under £1m for 2020, if an agency has junior or mid level staff they'll charge clients between ¬£51-¬£100 per hour for their time. If you're outsourcing your graphic design for as little as £549pm, that means that you will access astronomically higher margins on your existing jobs. In addition to this, your customers will be receiving design work from UK-based designers that have at least 3 years commercial experience and have been carefully selected to be part of our in-house team. Because our plans give you access to a wider scope of more complex design tasks like professional presentation design, UI design, newsletter design and even web design, you can even improve the amount of services you offer to clients. Say goodbye to competing with small agencies, Design Cloud puts you in play for competing with the biggest agencies in your field overnight.¬†
Chat to a service expert about your design workflow
If you're a bit unsure as to whether our graphic design subscription plans would work for your particular agency, why not jump on a quick call with on of our service experts? They can give you an in-depth graphic design workflow consultation (completely free of charge) and let you know if Design Cloud would work for you, honestly. If you're struggling to get through a growing list of graphic design demands right now or want to free up your teams time, get in touch now.
