Agencies

It’s also a powerful agency value-add

Content marketing is expensive. If you’re an agency providing content marketing services, you probably invoice a fairly hefty dollar amount each month – or if you are the company, you’re investing significant budget. Why? Because great content is very, very labor-intensive.

Not paying (or invoicing) much? Might wanna compare deliverables with brands that are rockin’ it. You definitely get what you pay for when it comes to writing and placement.

It’s also becoming more and more competitive. As more agencies realize the importance of content creation to their clients and their own success AND, as more freelancers enter the fray, competition is becoming a serious issue.

Standing out with fabulous service makes a huge difference.

So how can agencies take their deliverables from expected to fabulous?

Consistently give them a PRE-SIZED SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGE they can post and link to the content! Something to promote it that can easily be retweeted or shared by their audience, and that adds visual interest to grab attention. Using a quote wraps in their expertise in a nice little visual “sound bite.”

This is a simple, low-cost value-add for agencies to give their clients every time they deliver a new piece of content – especially if you have a graphic designer on staff.

If you are doing your own content development, you’ll explode your reach and awareness efforts for your content IN MINUTES. Free tools are readily available, including a few of my own personal favorites: Canva and PicMonkey.

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(Read part one here.)

Earlier this month, I introduced four truisms that many digital agencies aren’t telling their clients and prospects.

1. While they want to be a full service digital agency, they tend to excel at one thing, not everything.

2. Some are repackaging services under new labels and jargon, but what they deliver hasn’t changed.

3. They are frantically trying to hire, but can’t find the right combination of skills.

4. Knowing this, most still aren’t training the talent they already have in-house.

Why did I bring these out in the light? Because it’s time to do something different. It’s time to be more nimble as agencies and talk about our  gaps so we can more easily FIX them. If we can’t find the right skills, frankly, it’s time to aggressively begin training the talent we DO have.

And if we are selling services we can’t execute with expertise, we should either stop selling it and become more specialized where we can perform with confidence, or wait until we have the right staff and/or training in place.

To do anything less feels like an abuse of the trust clients place in us as experts.

We are here to guide them through the minefield into success with company growth and visibility, not pretend to pull warm, fuzzy bunnies out of magical hats.

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The more I work with digital agencies, the more I’m noticing a few trends in common across all of them.

1. While they want to be a full service digital agency, they tend to excel at one thing, not everything.

2. Some are repackaging services under new labels and jargon, but what they deliver hasn’t changed.

3. They are frantically trying to hire, but can’t find the right combination of skills.

4. Knowing this, most still aren’t training the talent they already have in-house.

I have a few ideas on why these things are true, and how you can benefit as a PR pro. Because this topic is rather lengthy to discuss and I’d like to elaborate on each one of the above points, I’m splitting it into four posts.

This is the first.  

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