Today, everything is totally different.
Our industry has grown from a small group of agency professionals around the country to at last count over 15,000 companies that provide digital services, or otherwise identify themselves as an "agency".
However, the industry is still the wild west. Isn’t it crazy that you have to get licensed to cut someone’s hair, but anyone with a computer can call themselves an “agency” and charge customers tens of thousands of dollars? And, on top of that, provide services that expose them to sensitive user data?
Truth be told, the best thing about the internet is how it can make a small business compete with global, multinational corporations. But, in the agency world, it also means a guy who works out of Starbucks is selling his services as being on parity with established agencies. We all know that just isn't the case.
There are two basic problems in procuring digital agencies:
1) How does one determine the quality of the agency - what do they know, what results have they shown, and what is it like to work with them?
2) What will they cost, and how do they arrive at pricing?