Effective Internet Use Eludes Many
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the services I offer my clients. See I come from an internet marketing background and in general I’ve found a few things to be prevalent among most firms:
- An over-emphasis on design.
- Few performance based incentives.
- No focus on client education.
The Over-Emphasis on Design
Most marketing companies are so firmly rooted in design it’s absolutely ridiculous to me. I understand where it comes from, design is far easier to manage than SEO campaigns or traffic generation and sales. I also know that it’s generally easier for clients because they can see results quicker this way and derive more instant value from it. However, I think that most small business overpay immensely for design. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a great design as much as the next person but the sheer amount of a client’s budget that often goes into design is absurdly disproportionate. This isn’t the client’s fault alone, in many cases they really don’t know any better, blame also lies with many agencies out there that simply design pretty sites and move on to the next customer.
It’s terrible to see this happen because even great designs look old in 2 or 3 years. We simply tire of looking at the same thing over an over again. I’ve always believed that design should be simple, clean and switched up every other year. No one can afford this if they’re paying over $10,000 for redesigns. I’m strictly talking small businesses here, I’m well aware that there are many companies out there more than willing to shell out 10x that amount for redesigns every year.
When give design too much attention, far more important things end up as afterthoughts. Things like content creation, or link building efforts. When I hear a client is spending $15,000 on a new website and the content is being re-used from their 5 year old site. I can’t help but shake my head. Google doesn’t give a shit about your design as long as it’s usable and guess what, neither will users. Great content will get you customers, lots of links will get you high in search results, a great design won’t get you anywhere without either of these.
The Lack of Performance Based Incentives
Here’s an issues that’s slowly getting more and more attention, thanks in part to the rise of affiliate marketing. However most agencies still haven’t adopted this form of payment. This is in part because of two factors; people at the top not understanding the value/function of affiliate marketing, and not believing in your ability to perform. If you stumble upon an agency that doesn’t offer any form of performance incentives, I’d really recommend looking around for one that does.
I currently offer only SEO related performance incentives. I do this because I know that nearly all of my clients don’t understand SEO or how it works. I can’t expect them to pay me X amount on faith alone, and you’ll find many marketing agencies out there that expect you to. Clients usually choose a keyphrase they’d like to rank for and after performing a bit of research we agree on terms. Clients love it because they get to pay a slightly discounted hourly rate up front while work is being done and once they see results, like hitting first page for their keyphrase, then they pay.
I see myself potentially adding link building or traffic to this model and also straight sales in an affiliate type set up. Affiliate marketing is fast becoming an area that I am very interested in. Every company out there that sells a product should have an affiliate program set up. If you don’t know much about it I strongly recommend reading up on it, I think it gets a bad name because there are a lot of spammers out there with get rich quick schemes at the expense of customers but once you’ve seen it used properly with good morals and honesty, it really does make sense.
No Client Education
This is my biggest pet peeve. As a result the entire ethos of my services revolve around one philosophy. A client has to be willing to learn how to effectively use the internet. It’s no secret that many agencies can’t stand most of their clients. That’s the reason why sites like Clients from Hell exist. It’s totally understandable, most clients have no idea what they’re talking about but still insist on forcing their ideas and opinions on their designers/marketers. It typically makes the process of building your site longer, more expensive and in some way worse.
What I don’t understand is why the best way to resolve this, is nearly never taken. Clients and customers need to be educated on a lot of basic ideas. How the internet works, why it works this way, how to leverage content, how to talk to people, how to spread ideas…the list goes on and on. Someday I believe that at least 60% of my services are going to come in the format of consultation. I don’t want to give people pretty sites, I want to teach them how to be great internet users. I want them to understand why their sites are built a certain way and why content needs to always be growing and changing. I want them to be able to do this themselves, effectively. A lot of marketing companies are stuck in a rut because they’re unwilling to evolve and adapt. The internet is getting more and more user friendly and it’s all about giving freedom to users so they can effectively communicate with their audiences on their own.
It seems that no one is willing to take on the task of getting people up to speed, personally I think that teaching a client as much as I can about internet use is the most valuable thing I can offer them, so that’s why I do what I do.
There’s no point in giving someone a bike if they can’t ride it.
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