Which digital marketing tasks should agencies delegate first? If this question has been running through your mind, you’re in the right place. A good starting point in your own agency is considering what doors delegation could potentially open. 

Our guide starts with a story. Every Wednesday morning, Sam Wood blocked out three to four hours to focus on strategy. He hit the ‘do not disturb’ on his phone, kept Slack and email closed, and let his team know to never book anything during this time. 

Even if a client problem or an employee issue came up, someone else was put in charge to handle it. Sam’s reasoning on strategy time was simple: “If you’re not doing it then no one is.” And strategy is one of the key parts of the founder’s role to successfully move the needle.  

We also know how out of reach this can all feel when every fire falls to you. Sam, who grew an eight-figure agency and now coaches other agency owners, shared his framework for getting there in our webinar, Designing Your Way Out of the Weeds. Here’s the key takeaways on what agency delegation for growth looks like in practice.

Designing Your Way Out Of The Weeds

Why does agency delegation for growth start with the founder?

Agency delegation for growth starts with the founder because in truth, the founder is often the bottleneck, and a bottleneck caps how far the agency can go. As Sam stated: “Dependency on you as the founder limits growth.” When everything runs through one person, work slows down and the team never gets the chance to step up and make the hard calls.

Delegation isn’t about doing less. It’s about giving each piece of work a clear owner, so that the founder’s time goes into the roles that directly impact growing a digital marketing agency.

How do you decide what to delegate?

To effectively delegate tasks among your team, compare where your time currently goes with where it should be going, and pinpoint the gap. That gap is exactly where delegation starts. If you’re curious about that process, we cover it extensively in our previous article, Use this agency hiring strategy to decide your next big hire (and what to outsource). 

Sam explains that delegating on a high level can be uncomfortable, especially because people won’t always do things exactly to your standard. Moreso, they may not even do the task well in the beginning, but this is all part of the process and nobody’s failing. 

He recommends not expecting clones of yourself and understanding that your employees have had different lived experiences, so naturally, they will approach things differently. When you need to delegate something, pick someone whose role best umbrellas that task. Make sure to have any necessary conversations to prevent the task from falling to the wayside, especially if the role and KPIs need restructuring.  

Which five digital marketing tasks should agencies delegate first?

When comparing the tasks you’re currently doing with what a founder’s role should be, a few specific areas might emerge. Drawing on Sam’s experience, these role buckets are typically: 

• Operational leadership
• Client service leadership
• Project management
• Marketing 
• Sales support

Based on the above, these five areas are worth handing off first:

• Pitch decks and case studies

Sam is clear that the goal isn’t removing yourself from sales. It’s removing yourself from everything unnecessary. Stay in the room for big-name pitches because people still buy people, especially in an independent agency. What you can hand off is the task of building decks and case studies. 

• Your agency’s own marketing

Sam says that agencies are often weak at executing their own marketing. A few ads aren’t a strategy: “That’s just giving Google and Meta some money and crossing your fingers.” The founder shouldn’t handle the job because something more urgent will always come up, while the delivery team will default to the client work that pays the bills. 

Instead, assign the role to someone whose specialisation is in marketing. This can be a fractional senior marketer who oversees creating a healthy ecosystem while leveraging a white label partner to run the execution.

• Client escalations and senior sponsorship

A founder can’t be the senior sponsor for every client; it’s a massive time-sink. An account director or head of client service can take the escalations that your account managers can’t resolve and act as sponsor on key accounts, which also protects the relationship if a day-to-day contact leaves. 

With the right systems in place, this role can be a huge revenue-driver, effectively growing your client base and supporting scalability. 

• Project and traffic management

For project-heavy agencies, such as web development or brand-centred work, a project or traffic manager is a worthy investment. It’s also a different skill set to client service. One protects the relationship while the other oversees delivery on time and on budget. 

Sam warns that blending the two can cause challenges.

• Operations and admin

This is the work behind the work: systems, coordination and admin. Sam says some of it will stay with the founder, but plenty can go to an ops manager, office manager or admin lead. It’s also a practical place to streamline digital marketing agency operations, by moving repeatable tasks out of your week.

What are the most effective delegation strategies for growing agencies?

When it comes to delegation strategies you can fall back on, Sam’s advice is a great starting point. 

• Build guardrails and avoid scripts. “Rather than saying this is the exact path you need to walk, rather say, this is the road, don’t fall off the cliff.” Define what’s acceptable and what isn’t, then let the new task owner find their ideal workflow. 
• Name an owner. Work you stop doing doesn’t disappear, so pick a person that can handle the job well alongside their current scope. Next, update their role description and KPIs so the task has an official home.
• Make room for error. There will be wobbles when someone is handed a new task, especially at the onset. First attempts may not meet your standard, but don’t panic; it’s totally normal. Guide them until they find their footing. 
• Protect the hours you free. Delegation only pays off if the time goes somewhere. For example, Sam used his Wednesday blocks to redo the agency’s organisational design, analyse the client mix, rework go-to-market messaging and work out how AI would affect the business.

How can white label digital marketing services help you grow your digital marketing agency?

White label services can help significantly by adding delivery capacity without needing to hire someone full-time. The white label partner handles all the execution, giving your team the chance to nurture client relationships, build new ones, and execute high-level strategy.

Agency delegation for growth doesn’t require a massive restructure. Pick one task from your list, communicate your guardrails when assigning it to the best fit for ownership, and protect the hours it frees. Sam’s invaluable Wednesday mornings only worked because someone else handled the fires.

Ready to hand off your first task? Book a free discovery call to see how Globital’s white label digital marketing or virtual assistant services can take the work off your plate, free up your time, and support your agency’s growth journey.