Blink and you’ll miss it
A nice little exercise came from a recent session for the Agency Growth School that I wanted to share. I asked a client an (admittedly blunt) question - What are you, and why should anyone care?
I know. Mean aren’t I. You can see why my kids spend so much time crying.
Anyway, the point of the question is to test how strong (and, importantly, how apparent) an agency’s position is.
Like a tree falling in a wood making no noise unless there’s someone there to hear it, believe that position isn’t what you think it is until you find out what someone else thinks it is (I’ll just give you a moment to go back and read that last sentence again).
The test of this is to get someone unfamiliar with your agency to visit your site in a ‘realistic way’ - and by that I mean someone who’ll skim across your site rather than read each paragraph as if their life depended on it.
What was their impression of your agency? What did they take away as being your core strengths and areas of expertise? Did they get any vibe at all from their experience, or was there SO much matter to absorb that they actually left none the wiser than when they arrived?
Remember: your clients will view your site with a vested interest, your competitors are just looking for a smart phrase or two to steal, and your prospects… well, your prospects are arguably the only ones that matter anyway. Like Whitney Houston, I believe the children are our future. And by ‘children’ I mean prospects.
Try it now. Only allow yourself eight seconds on a page, bounce around a bit, and then try to be really honest with yourself when you think about what you’re seen.
Perhaps you can get some chums to play this game for you, and make it clear that it doesn’t help you at all if they’re kind. Get them to be strict and be honest.
You might also want to do this on competitors’ sites - if only to get your own back and make yourself feel better.
(Oh, and if you want any other similar pearls of wisdom, please take a look at the Agency Growth School. Thanks).