Whether you’re running a growing business or launching a startup, you’re likely hearing the same question from decision-makers or investors: “Does it scale?” For service-based marketing agencies in a creative industry, scaling can be difficult — when your revenue grows, your expenses tend to grow with it. Learn how Samantha Kramer, Director of Marketing Services at Thomas, worked with her marketing team to automate, package and scale their processes while their new customer base grew by 67% in 1 year.

1. Samantha Kramer
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING SERVICES,
THOMAS
SAN FRANCISCO ~ MAY 23 – 24, 2019 | DIGIMARCONSILICONVALLEY.COM
#DigiMarConSiliconValley
Scaling the Unscalable:
How to Automate and Grow
Your Marketing Services
KEYNOTE

2. Data + Marketing
for industrial companies.
Network Marketing
Services
Product Data

3. Thomas Marketing Services

4. The “S” Word

5. Scale

6. SaaS
Investors
Marketing
agencies

8. What’s wrong with that?
✓ Good services
✓ Profitable
✓ Smart staff

9. Our revenue & staff was growing,
but our net profit wasn’t.

10. We were stuck.

11. Problem #1

12. eBlasts Nurture Emails Landing Pages
Webinars Videos Infographics
eBooks Blogs LinkedIn
Facebook Twitter SEO
PPC Website A/B tests
“Tell us your goals and budget — we’ll create a
custom program just for you.”
Mugs

13. Problem #2
When your revenue grows, your
expenses tend to grow with it.
10 accounts 10-20 accounts 20-40 accounts

14. Costs Revenue

15. Problem #3

18. Crazy Idea #1
What if we made it easy to
sell AND easy to onboard?

19. Old Program
We do all the things!
New Program
We have these 5 packages.
Website
SEO
SEO+PPC
SEO+LeadGen
Full Inbound
SEO
Blogs
Emails
Social Media
Strategy
Press
Releases eCommerce
Trade show
materials
Advertising

20. Sales Onboarding Upsell/Renew
Everything got easier and faster.

21. How we got there: Start at tactical level.
SEO
Low domain
authority backlinks
Excess content
“Lipstick on the
pig” websites
Pillar pages
Multimedia content
Optimized source
code

22. SEO
SEO+PPC
SEO+LeadGen
Full Inbound
Can add tactics,
but can’t subtract.

23. How else we got there: Saying “No.”
Can we try a 3-
month program?
Can we do less written content and more videos?
Can you do social media
a la carte for us?
Can you pitch press
releases for us?
Can you build a custom
configurator?
No.
?
? ?
? ?
?

24. You can’t master everything if you want to scale.

25. Crazy Idea #2
What if we templated
repeatable processes?

26. Repeatable Products

27. Repeatable Processes

28. Repeatable Processes

29. Repeatable Onboarding

30. Repeatable Reporting

32. Crazy Idea #3
What if we kept our most
creative tasks with our
most creative people?

33. Step 1: Identify employee bandwidth*
Month 1
Deliverable Time *involves Math

34. Step 2: De-specialize
Specialist

35. Search Manager
Search Team Lead Search Team Lead
Search Analyst Search Analyst Search Analyst Search Analyst

36. In-House
Step 3: Outsource repeatable work
Sitemap
Wireframe
Design mockups
Edits & QC
Build based on
framework
Outsourced
Fixed Costs Variable Costs

38. Make it easy to
sell and
renew.
No a la carte menus!
Key takeaways
Template &
automate.
Don’t forget about
onboarding.
De-specialize
& outsource.
Beware of bunk
desks.

39. The technology:
GPS + RFID
Samantha Kramer
Director of Marketing Services
Thank you!
Connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me your story.