Agency Achieves 177% Year-over-Year Growth by Scaling Their Offerings with Vendasta
The Challenge
Before partnering with Vendasta in 2021 Light Switch Media struggled to grow. They lacked the tools and technology needed to effectively serve and expand their client base.
Unlocking your agency’s ability to scale with the tools you need to sell and find success;
Background
Brian Davidson spent more than two decades in the direct mail industry before he decided to forge his own path, founding Light Switch Media in 2018. As President, he began to carve out his niche in the marketing industry with his own offering of comprehensive website and digital services. However, like many small to medium-sized agencies, Davidson struggled to achieve meaningful growth.
After getting his agency started, leveraging an inferior provider, Davidson began to conduct research on the Vendasta platform after learning about its features from another marketing industry colleague.
He was drawn to Vendasta’s comprehensive platform, which offers a full suite of marketing tools and resources. The deciding factor was Vendasta’s ability to provide scalable solutions that could support his agency’s growth and deliver top-notch results for his clients.
Objectives
With Vendasta, the Light Switch Media team aimed to:
The approach
Learning the platform to find success
While getting started with Vendasta’s all-in-one platform, Davidson relied on support from his dedicated account managers and learning resources in the Vendasta Conquer Local Academy to bring him up to speed to find success with the platform.
“Before committing to learning the platform, I wasn’t hitting my head against a wall. I was hitting it against a door and it just hadn’t unlatched yet. Now that the door’s unlatched, it’s ready to swing open.”
Bundling high-margin digital packages for a comprehensive offering
After some trial and error, Davidson began to narrow down which set of solutions would best meet his clients’ needs. He started selling high-margin digital packages.
“We work with local businesses, and our goal is to help them increase their digital sales by making them more easily discoverable in a Google search,” explains Davidson.
To achieve this, Davidson offers clients his “get found online” package composed of foundational Vendasta offerings such as a single sign-on client portal, reputation management software, SEO white-label services, PPC solutions, and higher functioning websites to help them generate traffic and drive more leads.
Fine-tuning the agency’s sales strategy
Once Davidson had learned how to use Vendasta effectively and landed on what to sell to best serve his clients, it was time to dig deeper and refine his sales approach.
“[Our account manager] Arpit has been phenomenal in helping me fine-tune and pitch. He was seeing the success that I wasn’t necessarily seeing. He has been instrumental,” Davidson says.
With his account manager’s assistance, Davidson can take a more data-driven approach, examining metrics to identify what’s working well for his clients. He adds that Arpit has also helped him refine his sales pitch and look for good opportunities to cross-sell clients as well.
Execution
Bridging a gap between digital and physical marketing
More recently, Davidson has started consulting for and reconnecting with contacts from his days in the direct mail world, identifying an entirely new market.
“We’re uniquely positioned as the only digital agency in the greater Toronto area that actually has direct mail operating experience. And we’re now communicating and working with those direct mail businesses,” Davidson explains.
“We are essentially bridging a gap between the digital world and the physical world, by providing them with white-label partnerships so that they can offer digital marketing services to their direct mail clients through Light Switch.”
Connecting with prospects through community and education
Another strategy that has helped Light Switch Media expand their client base has been a community-led approach.
“A client who needed websites also happened to be a community owner. She is a coach to professional organizers to help them grow,” Davidson says.
By connecting with community owners, Brian offers his expertise to co-host a series of educational webinars on digital marketing trends. The content of the webinars is purely educational but, by default, they serve as a funnel for attracting new and interested prospects that need support with digital marketing.
“You’re educating them and providing them options. I have not walked away from one yet without landing a new client.”
Getting to know the agency’s ideal buyer
Finally, Davidson says another factor to their recent success has been identifying exactly what their ideal buyer looks like, so they can sell to the right prospects, instead of all prospects.
“It was harder to sell a starter social media solution for $49 than it was to sell a $1,000 comprehensive digital marketing package charged monthly to established businesses. It’s all about finding the right contacts and communities to connect with.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to do these things without Vendasta. We would’ve been plugging along doing 25-30% year-over-year growth, it’s a tough slog. I wouldn’t have been able to pitch this client without the Vendasta platform; I wouldn’t be able to service that client. There’s only one of me, so it’s really allowed us to scale.”
Brian Davidson
PRESIDENT, LIGHT SWITCH MEDIA
Light Switch Media’s best-selling products:
The conclusion
Light Switch is on track to achieve a 177% year-over-year growth rate. With new opportunities stemming from Davidson’s roots in the direct mail world, however, Brian aims to grow Light Switch to achieve as much as a 340% growth rate year-over-year.
Davidson and the team are excited to continue expanding their team, their client base, and their revenue in the coming years, in partnership with Vendasta.
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