10 Things Your Agency Missed That Continue to Hurt Your Business
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of doing a workshop with the regional National Speakers Association, led by Karl Ahlrichs. For public speakers, it’s critical to have an excellent web presence, and most attendees were surprised to find huge gaps in their strategy.
Most of this is because the industry has changed considerably… and most agencies haven’t kept up. If you put up a website, it’s like opening a store in the middle of nowhere. It may be beautiful, but it won’t get you any customers. Here are 10 features your agency must include when developing your site:
- Email Address: The first impression when you hand someone your business card is to see your email address. Don’t embarrass yourself with a gmail address, spring for a Google Workspace account and add a professionally branded email domain that matches your website.
- Content Management System (CMS): It’s ridiculous for agencies to hold their clients hostage anymore for updates and edits when so many fantastic content management systems are around. Content management systems allow you to add to and edit your site as you wish when you wish. Your agency should be able to apply your design around virtually any robust content management systems’ theming engine.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): if your agency doesn’t understand the basics of search engine optimization, you must find a new agency. It’s like building a site with no foundation. Search engines are the new phone book… if you’re not in it, don’t expect anyone to find you. I’d push that they should even be able to help you identify some targeted keywords.
- Analytics: You should have a basic understanding of analytics and know how to see what pages and content your visitors are concentrating on so you can improve your site over time. A plus is if your agency programs your events and key events in GA4.
- Content and Video: Content will provide your company with a means of communicating news, answering frequently asked questions (FAQs), and sharing successes with your prospects and clients, as well as providing them with a means of following via subscriptions and communicating in return. Your feed should be publicized on every page. Video will add a ton to your site – it makes explanations of difficult concepts much easier and provides a great introduction to the people behind your company.
- Contact Form: Not everyone will want to pick up and call you, but they will often write you through your contact form. It’s safe, and it’s simple. They don’t need to program it… they can integrate a form builder like Formidable, and you’ll be up and running!
- Mobile Optimization: Your site should operate fast and look great on a mobile device. It’s simple to develop a responsive theme that enables mobile visitors to browse your site, find your location, or click a link to make a phone call.
- Social Branding: Your agency should build a compelling background, logos, and destination URLs for each social profile, including X, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
- Landing Pages: Well-designed Calls-To-Action (CTA) throughout your site will provide a path to engagement for your visitors and a landing page will convert them into customers. Your agency should discuss options with you to drive leads through every website page – through demos, whitepapers, more information forms, ebooks, downloads, trials, etc. that collect contact information in return.
- Email Marketing: Visitors to your website are not always ready to buy… some of them may want to stick around for a while before they decide to purchase. A weekly or monthly newsletter that discusses relevant and timely information can be just the trick. Your agency should have you running with a branded email and a solid email platform. Your blog content can even drive automated daily emails through their system so you don’t even have to login!
Some agencies may push back on doing all this work both on and off-site… I don’t care. It’s about time they stepped up with their clients and understood that simply pushing a pretty website is not enough. Nowadays, your strategy needs to beyond your site and include social media, search engine optimization, and inbound marketing strategies.
Attention agencies: If you’re not preparing your clients to leverage the web fully, you’re just taking money for a half-ass job. Your clients rely on you to build a web presence and strategy to get them business.
Related Martech Zone Content
