STANDSTILL agencies are browsed.
STANDOUT agencies are sold.
I was speaking to an agency owner yesterday who told me about a situation he found himself in with a prospective client. After a brief conversation, the client told him she didn’t want to talk further yet as she was “just shopping around at the moment”.
Yes that’s right, he was a shocked as you are. Agencies have become commodities that people browse. This is not the fault of clients of course, the agency sector has fuelled this.
STANDSTILL agencies package themselves based on what service the provide. They tell people they build websites, SEO or paid ads and place themselves in the shop window (or the web as we call it these days) and wait for clients to come along and buy.
STANDOUT agencies aren’t commodity providers waiting to be chosen, they know they must sell themselves.
Even the best professional services need to be sold. As agencies, we operate in the knowledge economy. No matter how good we are, we must still first convince people to trust us. We need to sell the benefits of our work (particularly as much of it remains invisible or a mystery to some of our clients). To do this we need to sell the benefits of what we do (not what we actually do).
This starts with having a good offer. If you’re offer is “We do digital marketing”, you are competing for those unsophisticated, price focused, buyers who enjoy shopping around.
#StandoutOrDie #StandoutSecrets