When you announce that you’ve quit your day job at Facebook and are setting up your own business there’s something disconcerting about being met with ‘Wow, that’s brave’ or ‘are you sure? As if this was a decision made at a Sector 29, Gurgaon bar, the previous night.

Those reactions were no huge surprise. We were almost unknown and were setting up a new company doing what hundreds of capable firms do each day, which is to provide performance marketing solutions.

As with any business, starting an ad agency at any time is laughably stressful. Every day your mind goes through a sea of varied emotions; one second, you’re a brand saviour, the next you’re an imposter about to get called out. Adding to this, the process of setting up a company, administration, finding the right talent, training teams, new business pitches, day to day client work can get exhausting. 

Yet it’s almost addictively rewarding. The rush of a new business, the passion in the work, the adventure of creating your own brand, discovering exciting talent – all this reminds you why you’re doing it. 

A year on and today we celebrate our first anniversary. So, what have we learnt so far? Instead of boring you about my ‘killer’ morning routines that involve getting up at 5 AM, or a list of all the self-help books I bought at airports and never read, I want to share some of the more helpful tips, with a few observations I wish someone had told us a year ago.  

DO NOT OVERHYPE YOURSELF

It’s so easy to get excited early on. The wave of support from family and friends, the inspiring words from people you’ve worked with and the unnecessary validation of social media, could derail you from your true focus. Of course, it means nothing until you start winning business and creating work for your teams, and while that surge of enthusiasm for what you’re doing drives you at the start, sooner or later the voices fade, and you’re left with nothing to do but prove yourself. Or so we thought.

About 3 months and a couple of logos into this business, my co-founder and I had our first argument over someone wanting to already buy us out, thankfully we politely declined, and continued to keep our head down and focus on our plan, do good work, and the clients will come. 

Lesson: The excitement early on will do a great job of drowning out the self-doubt and fear, but stay grounded. Focus on solving the real problems and don’t get swept up in the industry hype, whether that be award fantasies, media hype or from people inexplicably trying to buy you before you even know who you are.

TAKE PRIDE IN SAYING NO

Resist the temptation to work with anyone willing to pay you; doing this has been one of the best things about our first year.

Early on, we found ourselves pitching to anyone and everyone, brand or agency who had a lead for us. These can be really eye-opening conversations with people with little or no understanding of media, creativity or performance marketing, asking for barters, telling us they see this as a “long-term” partnership. I’m proud that we walked away. If we’d worked with them, I’m convinced we’d have shut shop by now.

Lesson: Don’t be seduced by every opportunity, work out quickly whether you really want to work with the brand and the people that work there. Identify their budgets for media and for you as an agency and be clear on your retainer expectations, if this doesn’t seem to be aligned, pick up and move on, if you dodge a bullet, celebrate. 

NO FLUFF POLICY

Most brands in India have started to discover that the large holding companies in the business may not have the best performance marketing teams, and I used to accompany many of these agencies to pitches where I would see them shower clients with jargons, sucking up any so-called trend that the tech world flushed down to media agencies.

Increasingly and thankfully, there seems to be a renewed focus on simplicity and transparency. Speak to emerging brands who have a totally different approach to marketing and you quickly realise there is zero-tolerance for fluff. What we do at Blackcoffee Media should be simple to comprehend; it should be exciting and make business sense. 

Lesson: Be an idealist. It’s your business so aim for both intelligence and practicality, we ditched PowerPoints and now pitch to clients with simple excel sheets by auditing their businesses, 10/10 clients we have managed to retain till date have joined us because of those audits. 

KEEP RE-ITERATING YOUR FOCUS

During our set-up period, self-belief was as reliable as the porta-potty on the 3rd day of Sunburn in Goa. What’s more essential during these times is an unwavering belief in your business model and your focus. It’s extremely tempting to tell brands that you can do what you actually can’t, and in order to win business, we too made these promises and learnt quickly that we got this wrong. 

Lesson: Ruthlessly keep re-defining your focus area with your internal and external stakeholders, for us it was performance marketing, not creative, not social, purely performance. Of course, you can look to add muscle for complementing workstreams but do in time with the right amount of research and skill set in the house. 

LOOK BEYOND THE OBVIOUS

It’s easy to forget the foundations of what we do, especially when the likes of Facebook and Google have turned advertising into a maze and punishment for brands rather than a creative canvas. I know every small and medium business entrepreneur in India is giving a standing ovation to that first line as they switch back the tab to Facebook support where they’ve been waiting on a query for 14 years now. 

We started to look at publisher platforms outside the duopoly and so far, in the little time have seen early signs of success, and it reassures our clientele that we are not dependent on a platform and their unexplainable “Algorithms” which seem to be a convenient excuse for every dip in performance. 

Lesson: If you start out, look at what’s worked before as well as what’s new and exciting and must definitely be experimented with. 

SUMMARY

There hasn’t been a better time to start a digital marketing agency, the old guard is weak, and the digital marketing ecosystem has reset itself in every way possible. We started as 3 individuals out of our respective bedrooms in August 2020 and today we have 20 employees across 3 cities servicing 10 well-meaning and respectful clients. We believe the worst is behind us, and as a team can’t wait to scale new heights together. 

Onwards and Upwards,
Sid & Team Blackcoffee Media