The AltAgency training platform by Greg Hickman teaches you how to grow and scale your online business, no matter the size. You'll learn how to package your services to promote simplicity within your business, implement systems that will help you grow, and leverage automation to help save you time in your business. In this AltAgency review, we're going to cover the two programs you can join in AltAgency, which one is best suited for you, 5 reasons people fail at digital marketing, if starting a digital marketing agency is worth it in 2024, how running a digital marketing agency compares to the local lead generation business model which could have greater passive income potential, and more.
Pros
Greg has earned over 8-figures as an entrepreneur
They provide excellent support within each of the AltAgency programs through email and chat.
These programs help you change old working systems into reliable frameworks to use when engaging with leads or clients.
There is continued education and extra support once you scale past $10K per month with the Academy Program
Cons
They don't mention the additional costs involved when buying and taking part in these programs.
You need to jump through hoops to get "accepted".
Starting a digital marketing agency doesn't provide you with a predictable income unless you own some kind of digital property
Price:
The course appears to be offered as a subscription service according to their Terms & Conditions page but the price is not clear.
Refund:
No refund
Training:
6-week training program; Work books, exercises and templates are available.
Origin:
AltAgency was started in 2017.
Group:
Private Forum-style community
Reputation:
Greg has successfully promoted world-class organizations across all industries, which has contributed to him earning 8-figures
5 Reasons People Fail at Digital Marketing
1. Not focusing on Income-Producing Activities (Sales)
The number one reason people fail in digital marketing is that they aren't focusing on sales activities. If you aren't learning about sales, talking to businesses every day, or networking, you won't make any sales. There are also agency owners who, once they land their first client, stop trying to close more deals. This is because of the onboarding process, which can sometimes take weeks to complete, especially if you're a one-man team.
2. Over-Analyzing
Some agency owners will get their funnel and campaign started and just watch it until something happens. This is not a productive activity. Why? You're not letting your marketing strategy work. If you sit and over-analyze, you're going to continue making changes if you don't see results every minute of every day. This is counter-productive and only slows you down from closing more deals.
3. Expect Referrals
After agency owners get their first client, they hope to get referrals. According to a poll taken by SignPost, 82% of small businesses claim referrals as their primary source of new business. Referrals can become a large portion of your income. The problem is that this takes time. You need to provide results to your clients first. You need to realize that giving referrals is not something that is always present in someone's mind. If you wait around, you will not make any money when you need to. If your client leaves you, then you end up with no clients. As an agency owner, you must always stay productive in closing more deals and providing results.
4. Wanting Things to be Perfect From the Start
Another reason people fail at digital marketing is that many new agency owners who take an online course waste time trying to be perfect from the start. If you don't have any clients, you won't learn exactly how to deal with clients or how your business works. An online course will teach you the basic steps, but you'll only gain experience by doing.The so-called, "Analysis Paralysis", will cause your business to suffer because you won't be getting any clients or gaining any valuable experience.
5. Bad Customer Service
Why get into business if you won't go above and beyond for your clients? There are agency owners who barely follow up with their clients after closing a deal. If you're disconnected from them, it's going to be easier for them to go with the next best offer they hear. If you can build a rapport with them, have a good relationship, and always provide value, the probability of them leaving you is very low. Of course, to keep them you must provide them with results. If your customer service is on point, you'll have a better chance at having a long business relationship with your clients. Excellent customer service also ends up bringing you more referrals.
Who is Greg Hickman?
Greg Hickman is the CEO and Founder of AltAgency who went to Millburn Senior High School in New Jersey. He got his Bachelors in Science and Business Management from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. After graduating, he worked as an Account Executive at TracyLocke and Mobile Marketing Manager at The Concept Studio promoting companies such as Walmart, Sams Club, Pepsi, EA Sports, The New York Jets, and more.
From 2007 to 2009, as the Director of Sales & Strategy, he generated $1 million in new business for companies like American Express, SC Johnson, Huggies, The North Face, and more. From 2009 to 2012, he was the CEO of the ThumbFound marketing agency, and managed the execution of mobile marketing campaigns for a network of shopping centers in the United States. A year later, in 2013, he became the Mobile Marketing Manager at Cabela's and launched their SMS pilot program as well as planned their national launch for 2014.
Greg was far from done with success. In July 2015, he founded System.ly to help marketers create reliable marketing systems to maximize profits. 2017 is when Greg founded the AltAgency, where today, he continues to help agency owners, freelancers, and service providers scale their businesses without overworking themselves.
He started the Greg Hickman YouTube channel which has over 13K subscribers to share his strategies, tips and tools for scaling by systemizing and automating everything.
Greg even started a podcast, The AltAgency Show, where he shared even more content about scaling businesses. He and his team have worked with thousands of successful entrepreneurs such as Dan Martell and Betty Rocker and to date, have taken on over 150+ agency owners.
Let's find out what you can expect from taking one or both of AltAgency's course's.
What are the two AltAgency Programs?
AltAgency Foundations
Greg created the AltAgency Foundations program for service providers, agency owners, consultants, experts, and more who want to package their expertise into productized services and digital products.
Business owners that buy into this program have many of following issues:
The AltAgency Foundations course will help you...
- Package your services in a way that's easier to sell
- Deliver your packaged services easily
- Attractively promote your products and charge a premium for them ($5K+)
- Grow your social media following and build your authority in your niche
- Turn potential clients into clients without using a proposal
- Reducing the hours you work through automation and hiring VAs
AltAgency Academy
The AltAgency Academy is a 12-month coaching and implementation program that is only available once you complete the Foundations program and after you've already reached a monthly revenue of $10K in your agency. The goal is to get you to package your IP (Intellectual Property) into scalable solutions and help you build a 6 or 7-figure business.
On your kickoff call, the AltAgency team meets with you to map out the next 12 months of work. You're then given access to their entire library of training that includes training on the latest strategies, frameworks, and playbooks on things such as acquiring clients, delivering your products, and more.
Every week, there are live Zoom coaching sessions that cover topics like strategy, sales, content, and more. Each month, you'll also get checked up on by your success coach to hold you accountable. You'll even be invited to three, 2-day workshops per year which are geared to helping you continue growing your business. Throughout the year, they invite expert coaches to help you in different aspects of your business.
The AltAgency Academy Program will help you...
- Expand your revenue streams profitably
- Structure and build a digital training/consulting program
- Generate paid traffic profitably for your agency and brand
- Install your business operating system to manage your team
AltAgency Success Stories
Chris Baylis is from Ontario, Canada. After working with AltAgency for 4 months, and creating his Signature Service, he had sold $30-35K in revenue. 3-4 months later, he grew to $100K just for one service. After a full 12 months of being in the Academy program, he hit $1 million in sales. He thanks Greg Hickman and his team for guiding him to this level of success by productizing his services. Chris now travels 42 weeks out of the year and continues to scale his business.
It's important to note that the $1 million in cash collected is revenue, not profit. When you run paid ads for clients, the profit margin is usually 10-20%. That is completely different than if you made $1 million with digital real estate. Local lead generation with free traffic means 95% profit margins.
Emmanuel Lao is from Los Angeles, California and is the owner of Square 1 Group. Before joining AltAgency, he tried many ways to scale his business but couldn't find a way of doing so. When he joined the Foundations program, his goal was to get 10 wins. After just 90 days, he reached his goals and had generated $40K in sales. What he found valuable in the program was seeing how everything should be structured so that things can easily scale. It made all the difference for Emmanuel.
Testimonial Hero CEO Shares How He Built a $3 Million Business
Sam Shepler's Background and Story
Sam Shepler started video production right after college. He launched a generalist video agency during his college years. Over time, he encountered significant challenges in scaling the business, primarily because he needs to be 100% hands-on with the business. In 2016, Sam made a strategic move by selling his agency to a PR firm, and then ventured into software development. However, this new endeavor in software wasn't successful either.
Towards the end of running his agency, Sam Shepler learned about productized services and was inspired by Brian Castle and the book "The Pumpkin Plan" by Mike Michalowicz. He chose to focus on creating video testimonials because they were valuable and scalable. This led him to start Testimonial Hero, a company focused on making high-quality video testimonials for B2B marketing teams.
How Sam Shepler’s Business (Testimonial Hero) is Doing Today
In 2021, Testimonial Hero nearly tripled its revenue. The company successfully introduced remote video creation during the COVID-19 pandemic. By February 2024, its annual revenue reached over 3 million dollars. Despite facing tough times in the B2B SaaS market, Sam remains positive about the future of Testimonial Hero and the agency industry overall.
Lessons Sam Shepler Learned on the Biggest Challenges
Focus on High-Quality Delivery: Sam stresses the necessity of evolving processes, technology, and staffing to deliver top-notch, productized services for a high-end market.
Understanding the Market and Productization: Sam highlights the need to adapt to the changing buyer research behavior and align social proof with buyer personas. He emphasized the need to focus more on customer transformation than just product features.
Gross Margin and Business Economics: Sam underlines the significance of maintaining a minimum 50% gross margin for the sustainability and growth of a business.
What's not mentioned in the interview: According to a report by McKinsey, service-based businesses often struggle with scalability because of changing service quality as the business grows. The problem with this business is it is too reliant on key clients. Over-reliance on key clients can account for as much as 28% of companies experiencing sudden financial decline.
Is AltAgency worth it?
AltAgency is worth it because they offer large agency owners and service providers a handful of programs and strategies that can help them grow and evolve their businesses instead of staying stuck. This is something that so many digital marketing agency owners have problems doing, even if they don't admit it. Within AltAgency, there is also constant support that's available from the coaches and the private community.
They help digital agency owners and service providers speed up their growth by packaging their services. This helps you avoid having to run around spending time and energy on creating custom packages for each client. AltAgency's goal is to get you to work smarter, not harder.
My problem isn't with this course, though. Greg has a fantastic history of success helping some of the largest brands and organizations in the world to better market themselves. His numbers speak for themselves.
I'm not against Greg, I'm just not sold on starting a digital marketing agency in 2024.
AltAgency Alternative
AgencyBox by Dylan Vanas is a digital marketing mentorship program and software that was created for entrepreneurs looking to run an SMMA through one system in an organized way. In the software, you can manage your clients paid traffic campaigns, social media marketing, and more. If you need any more help and support, you can leverage their private Facebook group at any time.
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
The ASK Method Masterclass by Ryan Levesque is an online training program that opens for enrollment only twice each year. Ryan reveals how you to find what your clients need by asking a series of specific questions. When you join, you get access to 9 core video lessons divided into 3 phases, which include 3 lessons each. There is also a private Facebook group for support.
Price: The ASK Method Masterclass costs $1,999.
More Info: The ASK Method Masterclass Review
Is starting a digital marketing agency worth it in 2024?
Starting a digital marketing agency isn't worth it in 2024. For one, it's an uphill battle trying to find new clients. No one wants to be bugged by marketers trying to convince them they can bring in more business. To gain new clients as an agency owner, you almost always end up offering free just says no after the free trial and you're left with no ROI.
If you run PPC ads, you're going to spend money on creating ads and split testing them, which is expensive to do if you're learning paid traffic.
You also don't own any digital property as an agency owner. This means that all the work you do is for nothing if your client stops working with you. Then you have to start all over again with the next client.
Another reason starting a digital marketing agency isn't worth it is because it is more competitive than only a few years ago. Other agencies are using the same methods and strategies in their marketing campaigns, which only equates to things like Facebook ad cost increasing. Facebook advertising costs rise 90% each year, which means your clients won't want to pay you more for ads. To make up for it, you may end up having to cut into your profits just to keep a client. Is it really worth it at that point?
A digital marketing agency can make you money, just like many other online business models will, but it just doesn't have the benefits local lead generation does.
Final Thoughts
Local lead generation is a digital marketing business model that allows you to always be in control of what you do, who you work with, how much money you make, and more.
You build a simple website that offer services like plumbing, pool cleaning, asphalt paving, tree care, etc. and rank those sites on the first page of Google like I did with this tree care site
Once you've performed search engine optimization and ranked your lead generation sites, you exclusively forward the leads that are generated to a local business owner whose online presence needs help and who's looking to take on more work each month. All you do is collect your commission each month on autopilot.
That one tree care site pays me $2000 per month and has been since 2014-2015. It's one of over 50 lead gen sites I've ranked and continue to rent today.
The coaching program I joined in 2014 now has over 7400 students who understand the importance of building out these digital properties.
This business model supports the growth of local businesses, fosters relationships with them, and there's not nearly the same level of competition when you start a digital marketing agency that offers all kinds of services. With local lead generation, you're only competing against 10-15 local businesses. As an agency, you're competing against much more, which will not allow you to scale easily.
Scaling your lead gen business is as easy as building out more sites and you can even hire VAs to do it, perform offsite SEO, and more.
If you're interested in becoming financially free, check out the local lead generation training program.
