Would You Trust a Marketing Agency Without a Website?

We’ve all heard the adage before, “the cobbler’s children are the only ones without shoes.” In essence, a professional is so focused on their clients that they neglect to leverage their professional expertise for their own benefit (or in this case, their family). Admittedly I’ve never known the child of a cobbler, but I’ve seen significant evidence of this phenomenon since I started working with digital marketing agencies.

In an industry where there are never enough hours in the day, it isn’t the least bit surprising that this trap has befallen marketers more often than most professions.

What are the risks of not marketing your own agency?

Let’s say you’re looking for help with your taxes and you stop into a local accountant’s office. If you see a notice from the IRS that their business was going to be shut down, would you still take their advice?

What if you walked into an interior decorator’s office and were horrified to discover white walls, a popcorn ceiling and mismatched furniture?

Better yet (and I see it quite often), a marketing agency that doesn’t have a website!

When your prospects consider you to manage their digital marketing, more often than not they will check out your website to see how it looks. Sure, they probably look to see what work you’ve done with other clients, but they need to navigate through your site to get there.

This is of course assuming you have a new business prospect, which you may not if you completely neglect your own lead generation. Perhaps the biggest danger of not marketing your own agency is not being found by your ideal prospects when they’re looking for help with their digital marketing.

Here are three easy steps to avoid these pitfalls:

1. Know your baseline metrics

Every agency’s least favorite part of the month is reporting. But there’s a reason why you deliver reports to every client, every month – it helps you and the client analyze what’s working and what isn’t. Be sure that you do baseline reporting for your own site, know which campaigns are working, what is driving leads, and keep historical numbers.

2. Practice what you preach

This is the essence of what this blog post is about. Spend at least two hours a week on campaigns for your own agency, I recommend blocking off time on your calendar. Are you an SEO company? Be sure you have clean, well-optimized pages. Do you offer email marketing? Be sure you send targeted emails to your prospects so they know what they can expect. If you offer web development, make sure your site is optimized for conversions and looks good. More prospects will find your agency online, and they’ll be more likely to sign when they do.

3. Be your own best case study

This is a combination of 1 and 2. If you keep baseline metrics and spend a minimal amount of time marketing your own business, you’ll be able to create several case studies based on the different services you offer.

Our digital marketing agency partners always put their own site in Optify for several of these reasons, but showing a demo of the software you use is always more effective when the numbers are real and show the results that you’re promising the client.