[Top Agency Series] Mastering Niches and Agency Growth Strategies With Shamil Shamilov

Shamil Shamilov is the Founder of dNOVO Group, a digital marketing agency dedicated to growing legal, medical, and home services businesses. With over 13 years of experience in business development and online lead generation, he has successfully helped scale numerous businesses and retained long-term clients across various niches. Shamil holds a background in political science, having studied in Ireland, but found his calling in the business world, leading to the establishment of his agency.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:04] Shamil Shamilov discusses how dNOVO Group help its clients 
• [05:54] How Shamil got into the agency world
• [07:55] Insights on making amicable business breakups and partnerships
• [09:46] How Shamil navigated business challenges during the pandemic
• [11:28] The evolution of niching at dNOVO Group
• [15:58] The strategic narrowing of offerings at dNOVO Group
• [17:52] Agency growth models and their impact 
• [26:02] The potential of equity partnerships in the agency business
• [32:30] Shamil’s favorite tools and resources for agency success

In this episode…

In the rapidly changing environment of digital marketing, agile adaptation is essential. Finding your niche while offering diverse services requires strategic foresight and cultivating strong client relationships. How can agencies survive and thrive in this dynamic landscape by reframing unexpected obstacles as opportunities for innovation and growth?

A well-seasoned internet marketing professional, Shamil Shamilov shares his journey of transforming a general digital marketing agency into a specialized powerhouse, focusing on legal, medical, and home improvement industries. He recounts his experiences overcoming the challenges of a business split and the pandemic shortly after. Shamil navigated this rocky period by retaining key clients and staff, emphasizing the importance of relationships and resilience. He discussed the strategic choice of not turning away clients from other sectors, enabling his agency to build robust case studies and adapt to the changing demands of the digital marketing world.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Shamil Shamilov, Founder of dNOVO Group, about mastering agency evolution and niche adaptation. Shamil discusses how dNOVO Group helps its clients, how to make amicable business breakups and partnerships, the evolution of niche focus and services at dNOVO Group, and agency growth models.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Shamil Shamilov on LinkedIn
• dNOVO Group

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• The Jordan Harbinger Show
• HubSpot
• Trello
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• CallRail
• MailChimp

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Starting From Scratch and Rebuilding with Jordan Harbinger Host of The Jordan Harbinger Show” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Cloning Minds With Dara Ladjevardian of Delphi” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments: 

• “To really make an impact, you gotta, frankly speaking, make some money.”
• “When your back is to the wall, you kind of overcome and grow the most.”
• “People can’t be good at everything — they’re looking for companies that niche out.”
• “I enjoy the people aspect of it a lot — I don’t want to be the guy behind the scenes.”
• “The reason I love being somewhat hands-on in my business is because I love the relationships.”

Action Steps: 

1. Leverage relationship building: By focusing on developing these connections, businesses can ensure long-term loyalty and gain valuable referrals, which are crucial for sustainable growth in the competitive agency space.
2. Specialize in niche markets: Specialization allows businesses to become experts in particular fields, offering tailored solutions and improving their credibility and market position.
3. Adapt and innovate with industry trends: Staying informed and adapting to these trends can help businesses maintain a competitive edge and explore new growth opportunities, especially in fast-evolving markets.
4. Utilize effective project management and CRM tools: Implementing the right technology can streamline operations, improve team collaboration, and enhance client service delivery.
5. Embrace geographic market dynamics: Businesses should tailor their strategies to fit the local context, maximizing opportunities for growth and client acquisition in each market.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Shamil Shamilov. You can check them out at dnovogroup.com. Shamil, before I introduce you formally, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the top agency series, we had on Kevin Hourigan. Kevin Hourigan Run spin attack. He had an agency Shamil since 1995 so it was really interesting to hear the evolution of the agency space, the internet and business over that time period, and just hearing some of the ups and downs during the different decades.

Another really interesting one was Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair agencies with private equity. He helps sell agencies, and he calls it. He has a Second Bite Podcast, a Second Bite Podcast, because he found that when private equity sells or buys the company, and when they sell again, sometimes the founder made more on the second bite than they did on the first. And it was really interesting to hear again valuation M&A the agency space, that was a really good one too. So check more out on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution.

Shamil, we are talking about this a little bit. We’re like kind of the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host, so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships. Most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should, if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. We were talking about this Shamil that you hit it on the head before we hit record. Actually, you’re like, This is great to feature your partners and develop relationships. And I 100% agree with you that could be for any industry, whether it’s mortgage brokerage, real estate or whatever it is. You know what I mean.

Shamil Shamilov 2:46 

I feel like it’s a great idea, and it’s a great — it’s trendy, but at the same time, I’m always about providing value. And I feel like when you do it, you have to provide value, because you can kind of see how anything trendy that happens out there, whether it’s Bitcoin or AI, there’s a billion people that jump on it, but very few provide values. And it’s a first people kind of to have that unique approach that really make an impact. We could talk about Joe Rogans of the world, and there’s a billion guys that try to do what he does now, but he’s so far ahead of him, but definitely, definitely a good avenue.

Jeremy Weisz 3:27 

So I’m going to formally introduce you. Shamil Shamov is the CEO of dNOVO Group. He has over 13 years of experience in business development, online lead generation, and actually is really focused on the vision and strategy and implementation and helps generate leads in business for other companies and businesses. So we’ll check it out at dnovogroup.com. And if you’re listening to the audio, there is a video piece I’m going to share my screen here, but Shamil talk about dNOVO Group and what you do.

Shamil Shamilov 4:04 

We’re a digital marketing agency. Interesting story. So I started as a partner at another agency. We worked together for about seven, eight years, and we parted ways, and we kind of had to reinvent themselves. We had a bunch of law firms that we didn’t work for, although that wasn’t exclusively our clients. So we initially pivoted towards legal. We had some medical and home improvement, home services clients. We kind of focus on those niches. Again, back in the early days, 10 years ago, we did videos, social media management, right? And we kind of, I think you and I spoke about this before we started the podcast, the agency space was a lot more all-encompassing before, right now, people are kind of focusing on specific avenues.

And what we pride ourselves in is that, because we have experience in those niches, we target and kind of, we’ve done it, and we have successful case studies in all three of those. And we focus on those businesses exclusively. We get leads, and referrals from other vertices, so to speak, but we try to get a stick to our guns, simply because we’ve scaled businesses there and we have clients have been with us for close to 10 years.

Jeremy Weisz 5:36 

You’ve been doing this agency thing for a while. How did you get into you? What’s interesting is you really study kind of political science and government, right? So, how did you even get into and stumble into being an agency owner?

Shamil Shamilov 5:54 

I went to Ireland to do my master’s degree. And where for my undergrad, it was interesting in Dublin. I realized that, while I love studying it, I was surrounded by a bunch of people who, I’m sorry to say this, were idealistic, or more idealistic than I was. I realized that to really make an impact, you got to frankly speaking, make some money, right? And I moved back to Canada after Ireland, and through a friend, met my former business partner and started working for him, and in a year, he kind of offered me partnership in the firm. He was already had it for a couple of years, and we rock and roll for seven, eight years. He was kind of a mentor at a certain point in terms of strategy, sales, people management, right? And then, fortunately or not, we kind of split ways, and we had to reinvent ourselves. Denovo with the E in there in Latin, it’s a legal term I knew, right? So the other agency was called Nova solutions, right? So it’s like NOVA again, I started the journey.

Jeremy Weisz 7:16 

I’m curious, just for a quick second on I hear of a lot of stories and people part ways, right? What’s things that you wish you would have known, or things that you are glad that you did to make that kind of an amicable and a good break, right? Because people, it is like a marriage, right? When people get into these things. So what do you wish you would have known? Or what did you think went well that you want other people to know when something happens, that maybe they’re forced to part ways?

Shamil Shamilov 7:55 

Stressful period at the time for sure, a lot of kind of unanswered questions, some doubt of what’s the next correct way, what’s the next step? Now, looking back at it, it wasn’t necessarily, immediately a clean break, but looking back at it, we are on good terms, and he’s in another space now. No regrets. Frankly, I feel like it’s a natural evolution. I mean, if you look at every stressful event in your life, whether it’s moving to another country, right, new career, after the hardships and the difficulties have went by, when you look back at it, it’s always a positive experience, because you’ve always learned something, or overcame something.

So, I treat this the same. I treat this the same. There’s nothing more regrets. There’s nothing that as you said, I wish I would have known it is what it is like. I was able to take all my clients, still, a lot of the members of my team, and we kind of parted ways the way we did, branded themselves. And I mean, timing wasn’t the best, because a year after that COVID, sorry, months after that, COVID started, you know what I mean? So it was a really stressful period, but no regrets whatsoever.

Jeremy Weisz 9:27 

So what were you thinking at the time you’re out, you’re reinventing yourself, and then COVID hits, right? So how did you manage through that period? I mean, it’s rocky for everyone, especially if you’re okay. I’m getting this started up again.

Shamil Shamilov 9:46 

So we had ongoing clients that I was able to retain. They kind of left with me if I may, but even they paused for the first three to four months, then, March, April, May, right? So extra pressure not to mess up. And I really felt responsible for the people, because there were a couple of key employees that I hired, and they chose to kind of leave with me. And I feel that I couldn’t want that, I didn’t want to let them know, because what happened is all around me, a lot of even our clients, you would hear people were like, laying off people, right? Because, like, literally, the world stopped for three or four months, and I felt like I couldn’t do that to them. I mean, so, it was tough, but we survived. My father said to me once that you always in your wallets, when your back is to the wall, you kind of overcome and you grow the most, right? And I feel like that was, that time still, it’s a new venture, plus COVID. And you really have to pay attention and be vigilant.

Jeremy Weisz 11:09 

What niches at that time were you in? I’m curious, going forward, did you decide to focus or more, go broad at the time we’re talking COVID. What niches were you serving at the time? Talk about the evolution of the niches at that point.

Shamil Shamilov 11:27 

So we were a general agency, and he had a lot of plastic surgeon clients. I worked on those campaigns, but they were his accounts, so to speak. We had a number of dentists, Home Improvement, and I had a bunch of legal clients as well. So initially my thought process was, and you’re talking about selling in acquisitions, and I was thinking that we have to specialize on something. And legal was kind of the pivoting point right at the time, 40% of our business was legal. Having said that, because I’ve been doing that at the time for whatever, seven years, we kind of got referrals from other niches. So we kept the medical space, and we kept the home improvement space.

And at one point or the other, we invested more in legal clients, having said that, I feel that, personally, it’s more interesting to run campaigns and do business development in more than one. It keeps your mind working and keeps your mind fresh. The good things that work for lawyers, they don’t necessarily work for home improvement industry.

Jeremy Weisz 12:42 

So at that point, you’re like, we have great clients in legal, we may focus on there, but we’re not going to turn people away from other niches. And you kept that open

Shamil Shamilov 12:55 

Exactly, exactly, exactly. And some of those relationships were very fruitful in terms of, for clients, or, like, successful campaigns with lots of referrals, right? And let me tell you, this way, for a year or two, we market it only towards legal. So the website, like we worked with everybody, but we exerted effort to niche ourselves as legal marketers. But then we kind of said, let’s just officially declare that we work with others as well. We still market to everybody, right? We attend a lot more events that are legal in space and in the legal space, but we still work with a lot of home improvement, and that’s probably 40, 50% of the business now.

Jeremy Weisz 13:45 

Yeah, it’s interesting when you talk about it, because I’ve seen a lot of agency owners struggle with this, right? They’re like, okay, I have a majority of this segment, but I don’t want to turn off these other segments. And it’s interesting how you’ve navigated that on the website we’re looking at. So you could see, we generate leads for and it kind of scrolls through law firms, then it scrolls to medical professionals, and it scrolls through, and then you can see, kind of the industries, so you’ve navigated in a really interesting way, is like you have these, at least showing that you have these specializations, but not focusing on as one niche. Is that accurate?

Shamil Shamilov 14:29 

Yeah, yeah. And look there, there are a ton of agencies that do, like, just literally, there’s a, there’s a company that does literally pavers and asphalt, right then they niche themselves as that at the time, like, if I was starting from scratch, we perhaps would follow a similar path. But we were already doing decent numbers when dNOVO was born, and it’s just like turning down this right? And there was some concern about people thinking, oh, he’s not serious in this, or he’s not serious at that. But you know, when they speak to us and we consult, I feel like we have enough knowledge and experience to and we have enough successful case studies to make it grow.

Like, definitely a concern, especially you and I were talking about that the marketing world has changed. In the beginning, it was like people were looking for a company that could do your Facebook and do your organic and web design. Or now that’s no longer the case. I feel like people specialize and do one thing better than the others. So it was a tough decision, but we kind of try to go in those three directions.

Jeremy Weisz 15:34 

So you chose to niche. I mean, you have specific industries that you serve, but really chose to niche in a specific service. Talk about the evolution of the services. You said, like, way back when we did a little bit of everything. Talk about how that evolved.

Shamil Shamilov 15:58 

I feel like people were looking, 10, 15 years ago, people looking for a company that could do your website, do your set up your social media and like Facebook, 10 years ago versus Facebook, five years ago versus Facebook, or Meta now — different beasts, right? I remember the time when you couldn’t get leads that were tangible from the particular social media platform, and now you can, right, and then there are other platforms coming out. So I feel like people were looking at one-stop-shop before, where now digital marketing is at a stage where you realize people can be good at everything, and they’re looking for companies that kind of niche out.

We have partners that we work with that, for example, do paid search management or large home improvement businesses in the US, and they’re very, very successful, but that’s their business model. That’s all they do, right? Like so and relatively new agency, they’ve chosen that way. I have other people that do content and only content, right? It’s almost like, you know, we’ve evolved, and we turn down a lot of niches. And with time, we work with less and less of others, but for the whole improvement, medical, legal, we have high case studies and kind of have enough experience where we could hold out good.

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