About 9 months ago, I decided to take my small agency down the dark unknown digital road. At around the same time, quite by accident, I hired someone who had studied web design and communications. Aisha had been hired predominantly for her old media, graphic design skills. Her arrival meant that for the first time we had someone who could not only build a website but also answer our silly web questions. If she did not know the answer, she didn’t give us bs. She researched it and came back with an answer.
She has been aided and abetted by another Pepper staffer, let’s call her Q (because that’s her name), who blogged in a previous life. For a small agency with limited resources this was a bold move. 2/13’s of our agency manpower spending most of their time on a market that does not yet exist.
Consider the context of how bold it was:
- Traditional Media is 99.9% of our revenue
- Most clients treat a website as a billboard/call card at best
- We have not really figured out how to charge for digital works/conversely clients are not comfortable about what they are willing to pay
- While you can measure ROI on digital, getting people to the web takes time to drive them to your site or Facebook fan page. There’s no light switch here.
- The Digital Space needs a dedicated nanny on the client side (so more head count or re-training)
- And the ever popular resistance to change (internally and on the client side)
So why am I so convinced that we’re on the right track?
- Because I have always known that you have to go where your customers go.
- Because a good website is no longer optional
- Because traditional media is so diluted that it’s losing its efficacy
- Because people are living on the net and on their mobile phone (and I’m not just talking about 15 years olds here)
What do we have to show for our investment in digital?
- One major client is now re-launching their website. Most importantly, it has cemented our relationship with them because we are servicing their traditional and new media needs (so client comfort has increased)
- Another major client is now calling us for urgent web based action after nine months of us telling them they needed to jump on board yesterday
- We’re working on or completed 5 website projects; including our own Pepper Website makeover
- We have 4 more website proposals pending a decision
- And our biggie: We have started blogging, recently celebrating our 100th blog post. Now when we talk to clients about blogging we talk with some experience under our belt
- E-mail signatures are a regular feature in Pepper’s communications and that of our clients
- We’ve started to use mobile marketing and mass e-mailing for clients with a database
So we believe we’re on the right track. There is ample research (not done in Trinidad admittedly) that proves the power of word of mouth. The web is word of mouth on steroids. Tiger would not have been in the trouble he’s in if he was the Tiger of the 60’s. The web is instant and its reach is limitless and its incremental cost is not even one golf ball. Big agencies will buy a digital agency and buy the knowledge. We’re learning the slow painful way.
