What Are Standard Operating Procedures and Why Your Digital Marketing Agency Needs Them?

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are written step-by-step instructions that outline and standardize processes within your agency. Not only are SOPs invaluable for maintaining consistent quality and service delivery. They are essential in every industry to ensure business practices comply with legal, financial, and industry regulations.

Plainly speaking, SOPs are how-to's that cover every aspect of your business. For example, a digital marketing agency may have a step-by-step manuals and checklists for building a website. Or, you may have customer service guides that outline how to deal with customer complaints. An SOP can be anything from a detailed written manual with diagrams to online checklists to be completed each time a job is performed.

Why Your Agency Needs SOPs

SOPs are essential to any digital marketing agency, whether you're a small startup with a handful of team members or a giant corporation with many branches and departments. Here are the reasons SOPs are so important:

Maintaining Quality Standards

SOPs ensure that everyone on your team is on the same page when it comes to production, marketing and sales, and customer service. This ensures a consistent standard of quality throughout your agency. Tasks can be easily delegated to any team member.

Troubleshooting

When problems arise in your agency's daily operation, SOPs provide a roadmap for troubleshooting. Manuals describe how to diagnose and solve problems so that any team member can handle it.

Better Decision Making

When you have clearly defined processes, this prevents your team members or even yourself from making emotional or rash decisions. Problems and conflicts can be solved fairly with no guesswork.

Reduced Learning Curve and Errors

SOPs allow you to train new team members easily. It's like having a plug-and-play system. There's less of a learning curve. As they learn about your business, they'll make fewer errors. This allows new team members to get settled into their role more quickly.

Financial Considerations

Your SOPs make managing finances, handling bookkeeping, and filing taxes much easier.

Finally, SOPs make your agency more dynamic. It's easy to change processes when they're all well documented and easily accessible to your team.

More Value for Your Company

All of the above benefits offer a hidden benefit for your company – they make your company more profitable by making it more efficient. This in turn adds value to your company which is passed on to clients and customers. This added value helps if you choose to sell the company in the future, and it helps you secure funding when you need it. Financial lenders nearly always look at SOPs when considering a company for a loan.

Getting Started with Standard Operating Procedures

If you're like most of the agency owners I've observed lately, you can't find the time or don't know where to start to get all of your processes documented. This can cause your business to stall because you can't take on new clients because you don't have the time to hire and train new team members. The effect is an never ending cycle that impacts your ability to increase revenues and scale your agency.

If you want to break the cycle and get on track to scaling your agency, check out the article I wrote to help you #CloneYourself. Need help getting there? Book an Agency Acceleration Session: meet.tonihogan.com/aas

Keep the discussion going...

Do you have documented Standard Operating Procedures? How have they helped your business?