The typical interactive agency story

Every day we come to work roll up our sleeves and get to work on client projects. Immersed in our work, we diligently employ our skill sets to create mind bending user experiences that satisfy client goals. As days bleed into nights and nights into weekends, the work goes on as passion fans the flames of our never dying commitment to output the best quality work possible.  And output high caliber work we do.

Yet when we take inventory of the work we’ve done for our own agency, the score card barely reflects a passing grade.  Is the news section of our site up to date?  Do we have active job postings for positions that were filled months ago?  Do we have personnel listed on our site that no longer work here? Are our marketing materials up date?  Do we employ the same marketing tactics that we recommend and implement for our clients?

All too often agencies let themselves go by the way side, making client work their only priority. It’s the same old song and dance of: “we are too busy working on client projects.”  While certainly not a negative to have a full workload, not spending time minding your own business can limit your growth and your output.

I know this first had as six years ago we were too busy to build our own website.  Instead we had one page posted with links to projects that we had completed.  The irony of it, was that we couldn’t keep even one web page current.  Over time, some of the links became broken as client site URL’s had changed.

When a client reported this to us, we were embarrassed, and we got mad.  Mad at ourselves for being so caught up in the day-to-day work load that we were potentially losing business because of it.  After all, who wants to hire a interactive agency with a one page website with broken links?  It was a really bad first impression, but not an accurate one.  Behind the curtain we were an agency doing cutting edge client work that clients were reaping numerous benefits from.

At this point we realized our own success was becoming our failure.  Immediately we mobilized.  We made a decision to make ourselves a client and considered our project work equal in priority to other client project work.  The results were phenomenal.  Within a short period of time we developed a new website that truly reflected our brand and accurately communicated the services that we provided. We began to employ the tactics that we put to work for clients.  This included viral campaigns, a monthly newsletter, site conversion tools and client surveys.

The end effect was that our business doubled in less than two years.  We were shocked.  We realized that by minding our own business, a certain magnetism or law of attraction was enacted.  Both outwardly and inwardly our company was perceived differently.  As a result we grew, we changed and we reached another level.  We were able to hire more people with high level skill sets.  We attracted a different caliber of clients, and we improved our technology offerings.  The outcome was awesome and to watch the fruits of our self-focused labor grow and ripen was deeply rewarding.

To this day we are still our best client. We work hard for ourselves, so we can work hard for our clients.  The two go hand in hand. We get it and we won’t lose it. In fact this is my first blog post on our new website. I thought the subject matter was fitting and hope that all businesses realize the importance of minding your own business.