Brian Murphy of Linkage Philippines on Building a Digital Agency in the Present Times

After almost seven years in the business, Patrick and Brian Murphy have led Linkage Philippines to become a successful, leading web development and marketing company in the Philippines. In his talk “Building a Digital Agency in 2020” at Calle Uno on July 23, Brian shared some pointers to aspiring digital agency owners on how to reach this kind of success. According to him, there are three things that separate freelancing as an individual from doing business as an agency – vision, mentality, and legal infrastructure. It’s from these things that the rest of the business follows. 

Key Points From Experience

One of Brian’s points is creating a targeted message which he follows later on with niche selection. He advised business owners to know their customers, their products, and themselves to help them know how to gain authority and to determine what value they can offer. 

Brian then laid out a simple process of making sales. It starts from a consistent lead generation system to recurring revenue and then to finding leverage. He also reminded business owners that the key to getting these sales is to appeal to how their customers would feel. As he put simply, frame the offer in a logical sense but appeal to the problem they want to solve and let them close the deal themselves. 

Lastly, he emphasized on having an “If it is to be, it’s up to me” attitude. He encouraged aspiring digital agency owners to set ambitious goals. He advised them to recognize the patterns and build systems around them. And he also highlighted the importance of taking care of their teams. As Brian said, “Anybody can do it; as long as you have the right vision, the right mentality, and you’re willing to set up the right business infrastructure, you can do it too.” 

The Murphy brothers officially started Linkage back in 2012. But before that, the brothers worked on their own laptops from home with only a small team to accompany them. From there, the company started to grow. Linkage now has around 50 employees divided between two branches: Baguio and Angeles. And from a couple of clients, the company now caters to numerous clients in a month. In the midst of all that, the Murphy brothers have also established brands like Linkage Web, Custom A Design, My Cloud Spot, and Murphy Consulting among others. 

More recently, the Murphy brothers have partnered with Gian Santillan to launch the DASHSMS App. This app is specifically geared towards eCommerce marketers with the goal of reducing cart abandonment rates. Aside from that, the Murphy brothers are also working on another app called AuthentiCart with eComm entrepreneur Mel Macasil. No release date has been announced as of now.