Robert Craven, the widely-respected Bath-based author of business bestseller Kick-Start Your Business, is helping digital agencies to expand with his new book Grow Your Digital Agency.
Robert, pictured, has been helping marketing and digital agencies to grow since the original internet bubble and is currently working with Google, where he is running a coaching program for high-growth marketing agencies that focus on the digital side of their business. 
He is author of several business books for service firms and agencies and has worked extensively with West of England businesses, including a number of Bath digital agencies. The FT described him as “the entrepreneurship guru”.
With the incredible growth in demand for all things digital, there has been an explosion in the sheer number of agencies selling all things digital.
Robert said: “The trouble is that most agency directors are great at the digital piece, they are technically excellent at working in their business. What they are not so hot at is all the other stuff, the working on the business. For instance, the marketing, pricing, selling, recruiting, and creating a strategy for the business.”
Despite the market growing quickly, Robert realised that there a problem for many agencies.
“In a growing marketplace you can fool yourself that all is good,” he said. “However, the industry has a growing reputation for under-delivering especially in terms of customer relations and delivering to time and to spec. Agencies are going bust with bad debts despite being good at the day job. In what is becoming a real dog-eat-dog scenario, the winners are the agencies that are significantly better at all aspects of growing a business, not just being good at the technical stuff.”
It was suggested that Robert write the book after a trip to Dublin where he was working with 25 coaches all focusing on helping agencies to grow. He said: “What we were doing was helping agencies with everything but the technical stuff. Being technically excellent is not enough to guarantee survival; you also need to be able to run every aspect of a business.”
The book, with a Foreword by Raja Saggi from Google UK, is now available.
For more information go to www.robert-craven.com/grow-your-digital-agency
