What's important for a buyer looking to acquire a marketing agency?

There are a few factors a potential buyer will take into account when looking to acquire a marketing agency. The number of paying clients is certainly one of them. You can either show contracts with clients or, if you don't have contrast but have clients that pay you a recurring fee, you can simply show that. It's basically the same thing. In most cases of acquiring businesses, the founders play a very significant role in operating the business - Managing the day-to-day, driving sales, production, customer success, etc. So, another very important issue for the buyer is to figure out how valuable the founding/leadership team is, and whether they should stay on post-purchase. Also, you can't sell a business if all the knowledge isn't documented. Even before selling, having proper documentation and processes in place allows you to train your team members and delegate responsibilities. Finally, the larger the agency is, or better said, the larger your revenues and margins are, the more potential buyers there are. Serious investors would probably look at agencies that are at the $10M mark and above. And as far as valuations go, EBITDA matters more than revenues. Keeping all other factors aside, your company is worth about a 4x multiple on EBITDA, but that's always up for negotiation of course.