ManyRequests is a client portal and client requests management software for creative services.
Starting a creative agency is easy until the imposter syndrome kicks in. The doubt kicks in. The market is too saturated for another agency to get thrown into the mix.
And while you may be right, you should also know that the market is full of opportunities because, as someone said
- There are a lot of mediocre agency owners, and
- Millions of new businesses that need creative agencies.
In the US alone, there's an average of 4.7 million new businesses yearly. These millions of people need your expertise for their website & graphic design, content, and ads needs.
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What's a Creative Agency?
A creative agency is a business that provides creative services like design, content creation, video editing, or digital marketing services to other businesses. These services are delivered through hourly, per-project, or structured productized packages and retainers.
This means working with all kinds of companies or solopreneurs — with a service or product — to increase their business outcomes through your efforts. The usual business outcome is to increase visibility and revenue.
What are the Types of Creative Agencies?
In no particular order, they are:
1. Branding and Identity Agencies:
These creative agencies specialize in creating, refining, or rebranding business identities to improve public perception and brand image.
Services include logo design, brand strategy, naming, style guides, and brand storytelling.
2. Graphic Design Agencies:
These creative agencies focus on visual communication and aesthetic design for businesses.
Services include print materials, digital graphics, infographics, and packaging design.
3. Advertising Agencies:
These creative agencies develop and execute advertising campaigns across multiple channels to increase business visibility to new audiences and convert ready users.
Services include TV commercials, radio ads, social media ads, and programmatic advertising.
4. Marketing Agencies:
These creative agencies provide comprehensive strategies to promote a business’s products or services and increase relevant organic traffic and revenue.
Services include content marketing, social media marketing, email campaigns, and influencer partnerships.
5. Digital Agencies:
These creative agencies specialize in digital-first services such as web and app development to help businesses with navigable and intuitive websites that will attract potential clients.
Services include website design, SEO, UX/UI design, eCommerce platforms, and mobile apps.
6. Video Production and Creative Studios:
These creative agencies create video content for branding, advertising, and storytelling.
Services include video editing, animation, 3D rendering, and VR/AR content.
7. Media Agencies:
These agencies handle media planning and buying for maximum campaign reach.
Services include media placement, audience analytics, and campaign optimization.
8. Public Relations (PR) Agencies:
These agencies focus on managing a business’s public image and media relations to improve public perception and brand message.
Services include press releases, media outreach, crisis communication, and reputation management.
9. Illustration and Art Agencies:
These creative agencies specialize in custom artwork and illustrations for various industries to show their creative side, especially in competitive markets where services like this matter.
Services include storyboarding, custom illustrations, concept art, and caricatures.
10. Event and Experiential Marketing Agencies:
These creative agencies focus on creating memorable live experiences to engage audiences.
Services include event branding, trade shows, product launches, and experiential activations.
11. Niche Creative Agencies
These creative agencies serve specific industries or focus areas.
Examples include fashion branding agencies, healthcare marketing agencies, education marketing, 3D modeling agencies, and architecture firms.
12. Emerging Technology Agencies:
These agencies work on cutting-edge projects involving innovative tech.
Services include metaverse development, NFTs, AI-driven branding, and blockchain marketing.
13. Photography and Imaging Agencies:
These creative agencies create visual assets for businesses and campaigns to improve quality and reflect their product from the best angles.
Services include commercial photography, product photography, and photo retouching.
14. Content Agencies:
These agencies specialize in creating written and multimedia content to educate a business’s target audience and retain existing clients.
Services include copywriting, SEO content, technical writing, social media content writing, and video scripts.
15. Full-Service Agencies
These creative agencies provide a wide range of creative and marketing services under one roof.
Services include branding, advertising, digital, video, and content creation strategy and creation combined.
16. Consulting and Strategy Agencies
These creative agencies focus on planning and ideation rather than execution to help companies with a structure that is 99% certain will work.
Services include creative strategy, marketing consulting, innovation workshops, and design thinking.
How ManyRequests Helps Creative Agencies
ManyRequests is a client portal with project management features to oversee your projects from beginning to end. Some of its most important features for your use case include:
- White-label client portal to onboard your clients (and their team) into your fully branded workspace. You can even use a custom domain to brand your workspace and personalize the experience.
This means that whenever clients are invited to your workplace, you can remove every sign of ManyRequests and replace them with your agency name, logo, color, and font size like Prontto did here:
- Service catalog to show all active services and allow clients to “subscribe” to the service they want based on their budget and needs.
Here’s an example of the productized service feature from Teamtown, a client of ManyRequests:
Whenever prospects click “Get Started,” they’re directed to this page, which is powered by ManyRequests:
- In-built invoicing and billing system. ManyRequests lets you generate automatic invoices, so you don’t have to write manual invoices for every deliverable. This is because every client is subscribed to a specific service category with its pricing: 50% upfront, payment after the project, or hourly pricing. It all depends on your choices; ManyRequests manages how you get paid.
You don’t need to integrate another billing software to manage payments, either. ManyRequests has Stripe embedded in the platform, so clients can pay directly to your account through the checkout option, as seen above.
- Automated onboarding workflow. You can embed videos of some text
- Your operational process,
- A guide on how to use the portal, or
- A link to your knowledge base and
- Your client’s point of contact if you have multiple managers managing different clients.
The onboarding feature is an easy way to welcome clients to your agency and the platform. Here’s an example from our client, 55Knots:
- Project management feature. You can use ManyRequests to track time, see all active and completed tasks, assign tasks to team members (or contractors), set deadlines, and see progress statuses in one dashboard.
- Messaging. Use the direct messaging feature to chat with clients. This replaces Slack and Email and centralizes everything in your client portal.
- Design annotation and markup tool. This shows precise areas a client wants you to edit with precise comments on what they want and how they want it. You can see the example here.
The impressive thing about this feature is that each comment on a design also appears in the task box, and you can click on it to go to specific feedback, as seen below. You can also tag different team members on each comment, especially if you need their expertise or insights.
How to Choose the Right Creative Agency for Your Skill
There's no linear path to starting an agency or knowing which services to start with. Here are 10 lessons from successful agency owners:
1. Identify a Problem You Have the Skill Set to Solve
Vince Opra started a YouTube agency around 2020. He focused on helping YouTubers with video ideation, editing, adding thumbnails, and uploading on YouTube. All his clients needed to do was to record the video.
To get his first client, he says he messaged about 50 to 100 people he watched on YouTube and said something along the lines of:
Look, I am a huge fan of your show; I am a huge fan of your channel. I would love to make some short-form clips for you for Instagram”
One of them said Yes.
In his case, he knew these YouTubers could do better with their content to increase their reach, and he phrased his offerings around the need.
Greg Digneo from Content Guppy had the same story.
He created a spreadsheet of 50 potential clients 15 minutes after he was fired from his full-time job on a Friday. These contacts were people he had connections with from:
- His 7-8 years in marketing and SEO,
- Internet communities (Facebook groups, Slack channels),
- Previous email exchanges,
- Some friends who ran companies.
His pitch was something around:
“Hey, at Time Doctor we built a process that got us 400,000 visitors/month and $10M revenue. I want to deploy this across other companies. Would you like to be a client?”
That was the social proof he needed to get started, and it helped him launch and attract clients across B2B services like martech, HR, accounting, remote work, productivity, and project management.
The summary is: You don't need to have it figured out from the start. But you need to have seen a problem that you have the right skill set for because there's no agency without the skill set to execute ideas or help business owners.
2. Niche down
Brett, the founder of a $1.3 million a year agency, says that regardless of the industry that you are in, find the things you are good at and niche down. This is an offshoot of the first point and is exactly what Greg from Content Guppy did.
Greg’s agency started by offering content writing and link-building services, but they struggled to succeed. "We were very average at best," he admits. After losing clients due to subpar content and link quality, he focused on link building.
Niching down changed his business. He focused on five sectors, built relationships and expertise, and delivered better results.
"When you niche down, you'll have built-in advantages," Greg explains.
The lesson? Don't try to be everything to everyone. Pick a specific service or industry where you can excel and build your reputation. Your expertise in a niche will often prove more valuable than being a generalist, especially when there's a lot of competition, and you need to differentiate yourself.
That's what Karl did in the next point.
3. Start with your Existing Network
Karl Hughes from Draft.dev was a CTO at an early-stage startup before he started his agency. The company started running out of cash and placed engineers on half-time to save money.
The uncertainty of the 2020 pandemic pushed him to choose between finding another job or starting a business.
Since he had previous experience writing technical content as a side gig, he started Draft.dev, a technical content marketing agency. He’s a software developer who has talked at tech conferences, so he contacted companies who might need his services.
He also spoke to his developer friends, who can create quality content for the clients he first landed.
The timing was right.
Many tech companies that invested their marketing budgets in conferences and events shifted to content marketing during COVID-19. The first 6 months generated enough revenue to pay his bills. Then, in the first full year of operation (2021), he made $1 million in revenue, followed by $2.5 million the next year.
You can do the same and start as small as you can. Unlike Vince, who did free work for the first month with his first client, Karl charged from day one but scaled up as he continued.
4. Engage in Online Communities
Contributing to discussions in online communities can also help you find clients faster than you think.
Paul Cox grew Church Co by becoming an active member in Facebook groups where church tech volunteers gathered. However, he didn't go on a spam spree to promote his services. He offered website design advice and answered questions.
People loved him and hired him to provide their design services. "Now if someone asks what they should use for their Church website in one of those Facebook groups, there's like hundreds of our customers in that group that are just recommending us," Paul explains.
Greg from Content Guppy used a similar approach. One of the ways he built his initial client base was through internet communities, where he'd been active in marketing and SEO discussions. When launching his agency, he reached out to people he knew through these communities and converted many into his first clients.
The truth is that this strategy will only pay off if you're consistent. So, don't give up when you're not seeing results. Brett from Design Joy says he gets clients whenever he tweets, and that's because his revenue is connected to his visibility.
5. Create a Productized Service
Brett from Design Joy discovered a graphic design agency providing productized services while working his 9-5 job. The model is simple:
You convert your services into standard packages with clear deliverables and fixed pricing like this:
He said, "Instead of charging hourly or having to quote individual projects and write proposals, I have off-the-shelf packages that people can choose from.”
He used this model to build a business on a Saturday. According to him, it took him 6-7 hours to:
- Create a one-page website via Webflow,
- A Trello board structure, and
- To launch on Product Hunt.
He kept his full-time job for 3.5 years and resigned when he reached $80,000 in monthly revenue.
Like him, you don't always need to niche down or change what you're doing. All you need to do is package your skills into sellable services and attract clients through any tactic that works for you.
🔥 Tip: Read more on how to get SEO clients. The tips are helpful for any niche.
And when you decide on the type of creative agency you want to start, use ManyRequests’ project management and client portal to manage all client projects and communicate with clients faster.
So, Why do Businesses Work with Creative Agencies?
- Their skills and expertise.
- They get the work done faster.
- It is expensive to hire in-house experts. Think employee salaries, benefits, insurance, and software costs.
- They can grow faster with agencies because they can scale up or down based on market needs.
How to Scale Your Creative Agency
According to Vince Opra and other agency owners, here are some tips that worked for them:
- Find someone who can help with your work and do it for less than you charge your clients.
- Don’t outsource work until you can’t take more clients or complete their tasks effectively.
- Hire talents you trust can help you work faster.
- Set your gross margin as you scale. When you start outsourcing, you must have a reasonable gross margin.
- Build processes before expanding your team. Ben from Edit Crew says that once you reach 15-20 people, you need solid systems because "people are people, with emotions, wants, needs, and desires,” and you must manage them.
- Build a process that can help you assess quality work. This includes having a style guide that fits your clients' requirements.
- Hire people who understand your niche. Paul from Church Co explains that team members who understand the industry provide better service. His team members either worked at or volunteered in churches, so they understand client needs.
- Focus on quality control as you grow. Ben emphasizes that quality became even more crucial with high-paying clients. They had to "put a lot more procedures in place to ensure video quality and make sure our hiring was super on point."
- Know when to bring in operational help. Ben hired an operations manager with experience managing creative teams after his team was up to 20. This person helped develop their HR processes and hiring systems.
- Consider cash flow, not just profits. Greg from Content Guppy says that "profitability on paper does not equal money in the bank." He recommends charging upfront and being selective about clients who consistently pay late.
This model is what Brett from Design Joy does as well.
- Scale gradually based on capacity. You can also scale up or down— it all depends on your workload. This is why it's best to work with contractors over full-time employees.
Conclusion
A creative agency solves business problems through design, content, or marketing services. You can lean on your existing skills to start one. Pick a niche. Focus on one service. Build from there.
To start, look for ways to package your services into clear, fixed-price offerings. Then, start small; lean on existing connections and online communities to get your first clients. And when you start, sign up for ManyRequests’ 14-day free trial to manage your clients, projects, and billing in one place.
FAQs:
How does a creative agency differ from an advertising agency?
Advertising agencies focus on creating paid media advertisements for specific campaigns, while creative agencies provide services that cover all aspects of creativity in marketing. This can include branding, video and written content creation, and graphic design.
How can I start a creative agency in 2025?
Choose a niche, create a simple plan for your business model and operations, find clients, launch the business, and hire more talent to help if you can’t handle the workload alone. Register your business when you’ve validated your idea. Read more about how to start a creative agency here.
What are the types of creative agencies?
Creative agencies typically fall into these main categories:
- Branding agencies (logos and identity management),
- Design agencies (visual content design),
- Marketing agencies (content and optimization of marketing channels),
- Digital agencies (websites and apps),
- Production agencies (video and photography), and
- Specialized agencies (focused on specific industries or technologies).
For a simpler breakdown, think of creative agencies as either specialized (focused on one area like web design, video production, or content writing) or full-service (offers multiple creative services).