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I work for a social media marketing company and I love what I do, so much so that I would really like to start up my own marketing agency. I know there is currently a big need for app developers to get their apps noticed in the app store, so I would like to start up an app marketing agency to help solve this need. I just don't know how or where to start.

I am wondering how to go about starting my own agency and also how I can break into the mobile app world.

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I did the same for the web development world and can share with you my experiences. I too loved what I did so much that I, and several other developers, got together to form a web development agency.

We started out by:

  1. Quitting our jobs, so there was no conflict of interest, though the others retained part-time contracts until our revenue stream was stronger.
  2. Contacting our network to look for clients. We did this before we even had a website or logo, though we did come up with a name.
  3. Contacting our network to look for more developers. Once we found our first client, we started building out our team with people we knew & trusted.

It wasn't until we secured our first client did we start doing all of the other formal steps, such as design a logo, incorporate as a business entity, build a web presence, formalize a pricing strategy, formalize a sales strategy, formalize a recruiting strategy, formalize a development process, etc.

The reason for this was to determine if our services were marketable & desirable. We initially thought the market would be saturated with web development agencies. This proved that, yes, there was a need that we could fill. And fortunately, we've been profitable since then.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

P.S. It also helped that I had co-founders and a division of roles. I focused on business development and project management (though we later hired a dedicated project manager). Another co-founder focused on streamlining our development process. The third focused on being a technical lead for our client projects, to ensure quality. It may not be necessary to have co-founders, or such a division, but for our situation, it helped.

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Thanks so much for you advice Mike. I already have a co-founder so that should work out great. Maybe when we're ready for a website, I'll contact you :) – App Marketer Jun 6 '10 at 17:35
Great, good luck! – Mike Lee Jun 8 '10 at 23:44
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It's a tough industry out there. Every mother, brother, secretary and kid with a computer thinks they can put together a web site and/or marketing materials. I've been doing it for 10 years and have seen a lot of ups and downs. Careful with quitting your job until you have at least a dozen clients! This is an industry where companies looking for marketing continually settle for low-quality product - primarily because they don't have a budget (and, sometimes because they don't know any better).

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