In the Agency Navigator course by Iman Gadzhi, you learn how to start and scale your own digital marketing agency. The difference between this course and his 2 previous courses (Six Figure SMMA & Agency Incubator), is that he provides you with all the tools, templates, funnels and more that you can put to work immediately for your own agency. In this Agency Navigator review, we're going to find out the top 3 issues digital marketing agencies face, what Iman Gadhzi's story is, what you learn in each of the phases in this course, if there are any student success stories, if starting a digital marketing agency is worth it in 2024, and how starting an agency compares to the popular local lead generation business model that allows you to earn a passive income each month without having to overwork yourself.
Pros
Iman has generated over $25 million in revenue in his time as an online entrepreneur
You're given access to 25 custom built website templates you can put to work immediately
They provide you with funnels you can use for your clients
Live, hour-and-a-half coaching calls every Tuesday
Once you buy the course, they give your profile access to a financial planner, revenue calculators, outreach tracker, and more tools built by Iman's team
Cons
Running a digital marketing agency won't pay you passively because of all the moving parts involved
Paid traffic is expensive to run, whether you're trying to get leads for your agency or for your clients. This is because of all the competition flooding all ad platforms.
Price:
Agency Navigator costs $1,499
Refund Policy:
14-day guarantee
Training:
Over 50 hours of training videos; 8 modules with complementary material, Q&A recordings
Group:
Private agency owners community; forum style
Origin:
Iman released Agency Navigator in 2021
Reputation:
Many of Iman's students have nothing but positive things to say about this course
Top 3 Issues Digital Marketing Agencies Face
1. Competing with Thousands of Marketers
One of the main issues digital marketing agencies have to deal with is the increase in competition. According to IBISWorld, there are about 87,712 digital marketing agencies in the United States alone. Even though there are millions of small businesses, that is still a large number of agencies your ad agency has to compete with. You're competing with them for clients and the attention of your audience. To become competitive and set yourself apart, you've got to go above and beyond what everyone else is doing. You need to do more prospecting, provide better results for your current clients, pay more money for ads and invest more into growing your team to help your business scale. Competition in the digital marketing world is expensive and you need to be prepared for it.
2. Not knowing How to Price their Services
Many new marketers with small agencies don't know how to price their services. This comes down to not knowing the value of the services they're offering. Another reason for this is that a new agency owner may not have enough confidence in their services because they simply don't have enough experience. Even if they have a good sales funnel, fulfillment is another beast. They're also impatient and desperate to get as many clients as possible that they think offering the lowest price will allow them to get more clients. That mentality attracts the cheapest clients who are a hassle to deal with because they want the best results for next to nothing. If you give into these types of clients, you're going to feel as if you're in a prison. You're going to be over-working yourself and not making enough profits.
3. Paid Ads are Expensive
The COVID-19 pandemic is at fault for the most recent rise in ad cost across all ad platforms. Everyone realized that the only way to survive the pandemic was to have a social media presence and not just organically. To compete, paid traffic was necessary. In 2021, when the economy recovered, more advertisers competed for ad space. Meta's (previously Facebook) CPM (cost per thousand) increased by 61% each year. Google's display CPM has increased 75%. TikTok's CPM has increased 185% each year, and it's the newest ad platform marketers are flooding. It's still the cheapest of all ad platforms, but the cost is rising quickly. It's important to monitor your campaigns so you can spot any changes in ad cost and budget accordingly.
Iman Gadzhi's Story
Iman is Russian born and London raised. As a 14-year-old, he made around $10K buying and selling Instagram pages. He dropped out of high school at 17. After searching how to make money online, he came across Tai Lopez's social media marketing course. In 2015, Iman learned about personal training and realized he could make money with his newfound skills. He ended up selling training packages to his friends' parents and made $10K doing so.
By January 2017, Iman started a social media marketing agency and began helping businesses in Europe. Because of his marketing efforts, he grew his agency to over $200K in revenue. He also started the Six Figure SMMA online course that taught people how to start a social media marketing agency. That course was updated and called the Agency Incubator.
Today, Iman has generated over $25 million in sales and is the founder of IAG Media. His company is responsible for helping many businesses scale past 6 figures.
Agency Navigator Module Breakdown
In the first module, Iman talks about how to discover your ideal niche, how to choose the specific service you're going to provide businesses in that niche, and the tools you'll need to get the job done.
Each video in module 2 is over 30 minutes long and Iman dives into the mindset you should have as an entrepreneur.
In module 3, Iman dives into pricing. He shows you how to price your services for local businesses, ecommerce business, and online businesses.
He also shows you how to attract A1 clients, how to handle your business finances (taxes & accounting), and what system to put in place to get paid by your clients.
Phase 4 covers all the ways you can generate leads for your agency to then set up meetings. Iman talks about creating an irresistible offer to attract leads, how to store and organize their information, and how to re-activate leads.
These are the lead generation methods Iman touches on.
- Paid strategies
- Cold email
- Cold calling
- Instagram outreach
- LinkedIn outreach
- UpWork
Iman also shows you how to leverage the Loom extension when doing cold email outreach.
Iman focuses on sales in phase 5. He uncovers what the "Cardinal Sins of Sales" are. These are mistakes marketers make when trying to close deals that ends up costing them.
You'll learn the difference between trying to close deals on the first call as opposed to doing it in 2 calls and he provides you with a sales script for each framework. Iman also explains how to deal with objections when talking to a potential client.
There is even a one hour long sales breakdown, which is footage of Iman closing deals.
They split Phase 6 up into 4 sections and here is everything you learn in each one.
Fundamentals
Iman starts things off in the first section by showing you how to set up onboarding calls with your potential clients. He shows you how to get setup with Facebook ads, Google ads, TikTok ads, and SnapChat ads. You'll learn how to avoid getting your Facebook Business Manager account suspended, how to set up your funnels, how to craft your ad copy, how to split test, and more.
One video that stood out was where Iman's copywriter, Ciaran Anderson, gives you an over the shoulder view of how he creates his copy for IAG Media.
How to Advertise
Iman teaches covers a myriad of topics with advertising online. He touches on...
- What traffic warmth is
- The different interest sizes and how to find the best ones for you
- Testing audiences (lookalike & custom)
- Campaign budget optimization
- Re-targeting
Local Business
In the 3rd section of this phase, you learn about the difference between Facebook native ads and a lead generation funnel. You're taught how to increase your lead flow and how to automate the lead flow. You're also provided with a list of the best offers to promote by niche to help make your offer selection process easier and 8 funnels for lead gen you can implement right away.
Iman finishes this section off by providing you with industry specifics for niches like real estate, gyms, chiropractors, and dentists. These are beneficial because if you land a client in any of those niches, you'll be able to have a blueprint ready to dominate for your clients and provide results without having to figure it out on your own.
Advanced Strategies
This last section is where you learn advanced strategies with advertising on all ad platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Google. Iman covers how to deal with the iOS move to privacy and the implications of it.
Topics covered in module 7 are...
- Finding, training and managing media buyers (hiring a team to handle fulfillment)
- Referrals and strategic partnerships
- Bolstering bottom-line, and more
This final module is full of bonus material that is updated often and 3 times per year, Iman invites speakers into the program to teach a variety of topics.
This is a bonus program with over 15 in-depth training videos, all about accounting and taxes.
Agency Navigator Success Stories
Jackson is 18 years old and one of Iman's students that found immediate success with Agency Navigator. A month after finishing the course, he was able to close his first client. He says that the course has the best softwares, the best community for support and accountability, and more. Jackson mentioned that purchasing this course has changed his life and is currently looking to continue scaling his digital marketing agency.
Alex is another of Iman's students. Before joining Agency Navigator, Alex had gone to college and moved to London to pursue a career in digital marketing. While in London, he invested in several social media marketing courses with the purpose of better servicing his clients. None of the other courses provided him with much value. When he came across Iman Gadzhi, he says he was blown away by what he learned. He even applied what he learned to his paid advertising job, where he's gotten phenomenal results.
Is Agency Navigator worth it?
Agency Navigator is worth it if you want to start a digital marketing agency and want legitimate guidance. In Iman's course, you get many templates, funnels and tools that you can copy and paste for your agency and clients. It's a fairly priced course for everything you get and Iman shares in-depth content in each of the modules. Few digital or social media marketing courses provide the level of value that Iman does.
There's even a private community for support which helps in case you need any help and the copywriting training is one of the best you'll come across.
Agency Navigator Alternatives
AgencyBox by Dylan Vanas is a mentorship program that helps you scale your digital marketing agency through the use of the AgencyBox platform. In it, you can manage all aspects of your SMMA, like running paid ads, managing social media accounts, campaigns, and more. There is a private Facebook group where you can get any help and guidance you need.
Price: AgencyBox has three pricing tiers. The Base Software costs $997 per year. The Premium Software costs $4,997 per year. For pricing of the premium software along with coaching, you must get on a call with the AgencyBox team.
More info: AgencyBox Review
AltAgency by Greg Hickman is another training course that also helps you grow your agency. The way Greg teaches you to scale is to package your products or services into one offering. This way, your life is made easier by not offering so many things. The point is to simplify your entire business. Greg offers 2 different programs, which are the Foundations program and the Academy program. The Foundations course is a 6-week training program and there is a private community for support. The Academy program is a year-long program for more advanced agencies looking to scale to 7-figures.
Price: They offer subscription pricing and price is in the low to high thousands
More info: AltAgency review
Is starting a Digital Marketing Agency worth it in 2024?
Starting a digital marketing agency is not worth it in 2024 because there are too many moving parts you need to pay attention to. As I mentioned earlier in this Agency Navigator course review, running paid ads on Facebook, Google, YouTube and even TikTok is expensive because of the increase in competition. The same goes for split testing different ad creatives, offers, images, calls to action and ad copy to see what will convert well enough. Ad exhaustion is also real. You've got to innovate if you want any kind of longevity in the marketing game and you need capital.
If you have enough capital to hire a team to handle things like prospecting and fulfillment, then you'll be fine. Most people, though, can't do that and have to take on all the work by themselves. This leaves them little time to provide excellent customer service and focus on scaling the business through closing more deals.
The biggest issue with starting a digital marketing agency is that you don't own any assets and you can get fired easily. This is because you're doing work on a digital property that your client owns. It's their asset. They can fire you when they don't feel like they need you anymore or if they're having a few rough months in their business and they have to cut costs. They can justify many reasons to let you go because you already did all the work. You are easily replaceable because you're simply a service provider.
Along with the other online business models, starting a digital marketing agency can be lucrative, but it requires far too much work, and it doesn't offer the same benefits that a local lead generation business does.
Final Thoughts
Local lead generation offers you more control than if you run a digital marketing agency because you own your digital asset.
With this business model, your client can't fire you because if they did, they would lose all the traffic you're generating them overnight. You are the one who controls where the leads get sent to by using a digital tracking phone number.
Owning the digital asset ensures your clients keep paying you month after month, because if they don't, they will lose all the leads you're sending them, which you send easily send to their competitor.
That has been the case with this tree care site, which I built and ranked over 7 years ago. Ever since then, it's paid me $2000 every month on autopilot.
As long as you rank your sites at the top of the local search results in the niche you choose, they will continue to be your cash-cows. Business owners understand leads are the lifeline of a business. If you can send them exclusive leads every month, they won't think twice to pay you what you want or more.
To learn what over 7400 students from around the world are doing to get paid a passive income each month with their digital real estate, check out the local lead generation training program.
