When we started the NP Group in 2001, the industry was small and still emerging as a force. Since then, the internet has grown to power every aspect of our lives. In any given day, we use the internet not just to power the flow of information but also to control our homes, make the majority of our monetary transactions, manage our businesses, control our finances and even update our cars! It’s truly amazing what has happened over the past 18 years.
Just to think: When we began the NP Group, there was no iPhone. There was no Uber. There wasn’t even the concept of the API! In fact, dare we say it, but even WordPress wasn't a thing yet. Ah, the good ole' days...
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?
This is the biggest challenge in hiring an agency. Problematic in one way, because customers don't know what they don't know. This means there needs to be a high level of trust between client and agency. There has to be a culture of learning and knowledge transfer. Sadly, many agencies are simply sending out many proposals to keep their doors open, but not spending the time to learn about client problems and craft custom solutions.
In fact, the thing that makes us angrier than anything else is the prevalence of "agencies" who are simply downloading web designs off-the-shelf, installing to a website management system, and calling it a custom design. As we said, it's the wild west out there, and the victims are always the clients.
Well, simply put, it’s because we don’t have material costs. Material costs make it easy for you to compare vendors in almost any other medium in which you are comparison shopping. When you get a new roof, you can invite a few different contractors. One will charge you X, another Y. The delta between pricing will be small – typically less than 20%.
In the digital world, pricing divergence is literally insane. How can one company charge $25,000 for a project when another can charge $250,000? How can one company have an hourly rate of $100, and another base their pricing on absolutely nothing at all? In a world of clarity for consumers, digital agency services are about as transparent as a brick wall.
And on top of all of that, even after procuring an agency, the failure rate is astounding. We don’t even want to provide you with the statistics for how many digital projects fail. (View the CHAOS report if you want to know!)
Well, we could go and tell you about our values and show you a photo of an office with bright furniture, ping-pong tables, and exposed brick... We can show you company excursions or photos of our dogs... Or, we can just tell you what our core value is: minimizing your risk in hiring a digital agency, and being human about it!
It's just that simple! Over the years, the thing that has bothered us the most as we grew our agency was the number of new customers that came our way after bad experiences elsewhere. This led us to focus our efforts on how we could minimize the risk of customers, provide expertise-based value, and realize well-defined goals and objectives. All while being human beings that relate, educate, and sadly in some cases even console.
You may be wondering why we speak so much about risk. That's because we believe that the best way to ensure client success is to mitigate your risk, starting from day one. As such, we have a process dedicated to lowering your risk of wasting time and budget.
First, our sales process isn't sales. It's a series of consultative discussions. We have no salespeople - agency principals focus on all new engagements. We focus heavily on education. In fact, WE GIVE AWAY ALL OUR SECRETS. Just view a webinar, download an e-book, or read our blog.
We focus heavily on pre-engagement discovery. By doing so, we know how to architect your project, and can propose fixed costs. And, by the way, we pre-publish general budget ranges so you know where our prices fall.
We propose multiple options to our customers that empower them to make the decisions based on their budget, timeframe and overall goals. There are ALWAYS multiple ways we can make a vision into reality.
We plan for grey areas that inevitably can happen to any project - it's built into every project plan, just in case.
We plan for long-term relationships and not one-off projects. Many agencies have no long-term strategy for handling client maintenance and continuous improvement. We built our business around this model.
Our unique (and some may say blunt) approach enables us to maintain honest, long-term relationships with our clients and ensure the success of your project.
In an industry of confusion, lack of transparency and a high failure rate, we are here to serve not only as the team that can get things done, but as your long term partner.
We're happy to help!