A few days ago I wrote what I thought you should expect from a digital agency and to be fair I may have been rash and a bit too critical. Unfortunately I find myself being too critical at times, but thats another point entirely. It got me thinking though about what you should be learning from your digital agency, because as someone pointed out to me during the week a digital agency cannot repeat its offering to you again and again. Let me explain in simple terms. If your digital agency offers say a pay-per-click strategy for 12 months it seems obvious to me that when you work with the digital agency you will soon learn and realize that what they are offering as a PPC strategy can be accomplished by an internal resource dedicated to the task. Pay per click is a skill that can be learned quite easily, either by reading up on it or by following key people doing it. Point is though if a digital agency only offers to do a simple pay per click campaign, and not much else, they are just acting as a middle man between you and Google.

There is still nothing better in any marketing environment than being organised, simply put. If your digital agency is not organised in the way it approaches your marketing campaigns, its not really worth it. Some may say but you have to react to the way the market is playing at certain times, bullshit, you can still have a 6 month or even 3 month calendar planned for your marketing events. A digital agency that fails to plan with you on your marketing strategy and who does hit and miss strategies is bound to fail.

And by digital agency I refer to organisations that provide services ranging from SEO, mobile marketing and email marketing. Yes I mean those. Do you look for the shiny and fresh website with the never-ending list of clients, or the barrage of comments on the “what customers say” page? Do you look at their value proposition and ask yourself, “is that in line with what my organisation wants”? Is it all just a matter of shopping and finding the one that looks and sounds the best?

Personally none of these things matter, because if a digital agency does not have the time or resources to spend on you, yet they accept you as a customer (read take your money) then you should be worried.  If a digital agency has 30 clients and three of those clients, for arguments sake, contributed to 50% of their income it surely implies that they will offer more (and better) service to those that contribute the biggest portion of their income. It only makes sense for the digital agency to protect their income, but where does that leave the other clients who do not get the same amount of service? It leaves you in a very dark and unforgiving place, where you are left with a situation of paying a monthly retainer for which you do not necessarily get your pound of butter, for sake of a better phrase.

If you choose a digital agency do you ever ask them for a list of their clients, and a list of their top clients, and a list of their current projects? I guess not because you are too eager to get yourself on the digital road-map, and you were really impressed with the presentation given to you, and the shiny website. If the digital agency has a long client list then the next question you should be asking them is how many staff members they have, and if the proportion between staff members and client list and active project list is not balanced then you should seriously reconsider. Logic tells you that if a digital agency has a limited number of staff members and a lot of project work, which means your project will take priority somewhere between a desert and an ocean. Sounds odd, but thats the way I see it. As a developer I know that I can only write so much code in a single day, even though I would want to write more, its just not feasible to try and write for 24 hours a day.  The same applies to digital agencies, who can only do so much in a single day. Meaning that if a customer, who pays a digital agency 3x as much as another, asks them to jump they will surely jump, leaving the other customers a little less satisfied.

Things to notice when a digital agency is not giving you as much as you deserve, or are paying for, are simple things like grammar in promotional write ups. If the responsibility of checking the quality of the written content comes back to you, as the client, then the digital agency are not doing their job. Its their job to create content that is reputable. Another item that can be of concern is when they send out social media communication and they do not notify you, and you end up picking up errors in the communication. Basic skills are not negotiable for a digital agency, whether they be written or communication skills. Ask a digital agency for a copy of their last campaign(s) and read the content to establish the quality of what they are capable of delivering.

In hindsight its always easy to list what went wrong and in this instance its no different. Picking a digital agency to provide services should not be just about a perceived image or a seemingly good organisational fit bit also about the detail. Ask some of the following questions before you pick a digital agency:

1. Who are their biggest clients?
2. What are their biggest current and active projects?
3. How many staff members do they assign to each project?
4. What is some of their most recent campaign work?

“Finding the sticky” is a phrase I have heard a few times recently and it has been mulling in my head. It refers to a brand’s ability to find a foothold in a specified target audience. Think of a lollipop that you unwrap and lick and how sticky it is then, and if you stick it to a wool jersey or to material how it sticks. A brand can be seen this way, and thought of in this way. Your brand must “stick” with those that get into contact with it. Finding the key to making it stick is a journey in itself because in today’s modern world of mass communication we are constantly bombarded with information, at an unprecedented rate, which makes it tough if you are a company or organisation seeking to create brand awareness with a specific target audience. I’m not sure if brand uniqueness alone will suffice, because novelty is something that dies off quickly. Yes, its important to create a fresh and appealing look, but beyond that you must be more.

Sometimes I get the feeling that using and developing a content management system is and can be very subjective, depending on the situation. I have found that dealing with the Marketing agencies that specialise in SEO and e-Marketing services in South Africa, was almost like trying to buy a meal at Spur without the onion rings, you can do it if you want to but it kinda is part of the meal. What I mean by that is that the majority of marketing companies in South Africa will try and push their development teams as part of their offering, which makes sense, but I know of at least one instance where a development company withheld source code, and then expected further development costs for any iteration to the website. To me thats kind of louzy, in fact its a downright rip off. Why would a development agency want to retain the source code of a paying client, the operative word being paying? I also find that some of these development companies tend to have a hashed-together content management system, a system consisting of regularly-used scripts, and a system that is sometimes not very flexible. Which brings me to the title of my post, is content management a subjective thing? Yes it is, because no two organizations have the same need, and I feel that most development companies try to offer you some flavour of content management, and although they profess to have your requirements close to the heart, they often persist with said content management system.

After I wrote yesterday’s post I sent I communicated with Rob Stokes via Twitter and I got an immediate response, first from him and then his colleagues. They promptly responded and I am much happier for it! Thanks Rob and thanks to Quirk. Hope I didnt cause too much damage to you in terms of ORM.

Here is why I want to work with Quirk:

• I like their newsletter. I have been subscribing to it for a while now, 2+ years maybe, and I love the approach and the feel of the newsletter. Its informative, and they have a few quirky ways of saying things.
• I loved the emarketing seminar I attended.
• They are a progressive and innovative company, SearchStatus and BrandsEye come to mind.
• They give away a free ebook!

I attended an e-marketing seminar hosted by Quirk, and presented by Rob Stokes (CEO of Quirk), in 2008. Before that I approached Quirk to give my site an audit, and sadly nothing came from it, and the feeling I got at that time was that they were too busy. In this week I sent an email to them from their website and also had a colleague of mine phone them, and again unfortunately they did not respond. I’m not sure what the reason for this unresponsiveness is but my initial impression of them was that they are a progressive and forward-thinking e-marketing and SEO company. I follow Rafiq on Twitter, and Rob Stokes, and I can remember Rafiq appearing on Carte Blanche a while ago, and if memory serves me correct he works/worked for Quirk. I can also remember someone from Quirk approaching me after I wrote an article on the need for content management, so it kinda baffles me why they are so sluggish in responding. I rated them highly, in the same category as Purple Cow, maybe better. And I mention Purple Cow because they have responded. I mean how come do Quirk appear on the top of the organic search for “e-marketing services south africa”. Strange. I mean my opinion of Quirk is becoming more and more tainted and disjointed. Are they a snobbish company only seeking to help those whom they think are good enough? I’m not sure.

So with this in mind I am trying to gauge the local South African market, in terms of who provides what services, and how good they are. I follow quite a few on Twitter so maybe a good place to start is by creating a list on Twitter. At the moment there are about 11 people on that list.

Just to give some background as to what my current needs are. I am involved with a B2C startup that aims to provide e-learning with the use of content from key strategic content partners. The content partners are World Class and have been around for a long time and their content has proven very successful. Our current need is to work closely with someone who can provide SEO and eMarketing services. We are developing our web-presence from scratch, and the idea was to incorporate key emarketing and seo objectives from the get-go. They key deliverable is to achieve first page SERP, since we believe our ROI will be closely linked with where we appear in search engine result pages. I have already contacted two companies from the Twitter listing, so we will see how it goes. I would have loved to get more than just the input of one company.