5 tips for crafting the ideal agency website and social presence

As a new crop of agencies pop up and others invest more in their branding, it’s more important than ever for agencies to have a clear identity. But agency websites and social accounts, often the first introductions to a potential client or new employee, aren’t always up to the task. Too many agency websites feel clunky, outdated or incomplete, and many agencies don’t have a clear social media plan. Ad Age interviewed several experts to break down some of the ways agencies can make their websites and social media accounts more effective. Include the right information Agencies spend so much time trying to promote their clients that they sometimes neglect their own marketing, which begins with an informative website. “Clients really don’t pay attention to agencies until they have to. Unaided awareness of agency names is extraordinarily low,” said Steve Boehler, founding partner of consultancy Mercer Island Group. There are basics that every site should have, according to experts: a clear positioning; functionality, which means a clear way to navigate the site; and useful content, such as information about clients, thought leadership, executive biographies, team size, office locations and a clearly marked contact page. Agencies struggle most with positioning, Boehler said. “You need to stand out in a way that really matters to the prospect, but you also have to have a clear frame of reference,” he said. “It has to be clear what kind of agency you are when the prospect gets to your site and they’re considering hiring,” Boehler added. “They probably have a list of agencies they’re looking at, and they’re not going to spend a lot of time. So if you make it hard to figure out if you are you a media agency, a PR agency or a creative agency, they’re going to move down the list.” Be specific Rachel Segall, co-founder of consultancy NBZ, said agencies make the mistake of being too vague about their capabilities and other aspects of their business. The vagueness often comes from a “lack of confidence” in an agency’s capabilities or size, she said. When it comes to client lists, Boehler said more agencies should also include past client work in addition to what’s on their current roster. “Very few have their past clients listed, and that’s really important because a lot of clients are looking for somebody that has really specific experience [that could be] related to their category,” said Boehler. He cited the following agencies as examples of agencies that are clear, navigable and engaging: agriculture creative agency Think Shift, creative agency Brownstein Group and Red Thread PR, along with small media agency Marketing Doctor. Besides Brownstein, Mercer Island Group has worked with the previous agencies listed either on positioning or in a pitch process. NBZ cited Highdive as having a strong website, which touts its mission to create the “healthiest client + agency relationships in the world.” That, according to NBZ, makes it stand out, since this bold claim is not your typical starting point for a creative agency. Highdive highlights its “fearless creativity,” with examples of client work that illustrate its point of view. “The site is simple, easy to navigate, and leaves no doubt about who they are,” Simone Oppenheimer Mandel, a co-founder of NBZ, said. NBZ hasn't worked with Highdive on positioning work. It’s also important not to overthink your site. “[Agency] websites are just too complicated,” said Lindsey Slaby, founder of Sunday Dinner. “It takes forever to load because you try to create this really immersive experience. You’re not showing a lot of work that I can flip through and learn about quickly.” “It’s a lot for me to watch a whole video about a case study,” she added. “A really great case study presentation is a collection of screenshots, GIFs, moving images and storytelling. It’s not me sitting down and watching a 10-minute video, because I doubt that happens.” Be visually appealing From a design perspective, there are a few key elements that matter and ultimately vary depending on the agency. Rich Tu, an executive creative director and partner at creative studio Sunday Afternoon, said its important for agency websites to have an attention-grabbing visual at first glance. Sunday Afternoon has helped create brand identities for agencies such as Fig, Joan and Liquid Arcade in the past as well as several holding company agencies. The agency also recently redid its own website. Overall the fewer clicks it takes to navigate a site the better, according to Tu. However, he clarified that it also depends on the agency. Tu called out Pentagram for its site and the use of thumbnails for projects broken down by different categories and industries as an example. “Pentagram can support that approach, but another design agency with way less bonafides can’t,” Tu said. “If you don’t have the projects, then don’t do something that’s meant to be a dense thumbnail thing,” he advised. “If you have too many projects, but also want to do something beautiful, then you have to have a totally different approach.” One of those approaches comes from Austin, Texas-based agency Bakery, which revamped its site earlier this year. The new website is meant to showcase the agency’s personality, culture and capabilities. The site features analog-inspired designs such as a flip phone with a game of “Snake” on it, and an old-school computer. The website’s typing was inspired by editorial magazine layouts, according to Kaleb Sindac, Bakery’s design director who helped lead the project. Upon opening the site, visitors see a succinct statement about the agency’s mission: “Bakery is the creative and culture agency designed to ignite brand obsession.” “Our approach was very playful, loud, and unapologetic, but to balance that through design we were inspired by a lot of editorial layouts and editorial type fonts and because it really helps balance out the fact that we’re an agency that’s playful, that has a lot of personality, but structurally we know how to present our work in a very serious way,” Sindac said. The site also features a music playlist that employees update every month and pictures of the agency’s employees pretending to work at a bakery, including executives and junior employees. “You don’t see a lot of agency websites that have very detailed and ornate photo shoots that include their juniors,” Sindac said. “It’s just a really fun way to show that we really care about the people that we work with.” The site has led to two new business wins and is often brought up by potential employees during the hiring process, making it a key recruiting tool, Sindac added. Be creative, but not too clever Agencies naturally want to showcase their creativity on their sites, but they can sometimes go overboard. The consensus among experts interviewed by Ad Age is that creativity is a good thing on an agency website as long as it doesn’t obscure the information on the site. However, that doesn’t mean a website’s creativity can’t pay off. Lusion, a U.K. digital experience agency, launched a new website last year that ended up winning Silver and Bronze Cannes Lions awards this summer. The agency’s site is an outlier. The shop started reworking its site as a side project after some client projects got canceled last minute, which led to some free time for its employees. The new site is a unique sensory experience that feels like maneuvering around a video game home screen. It incorporates subtle features such as music changes for different screens, and a camera-like zoom-in visual effect and sound when visitors hover over a case study panel. The site also incorporates 3D visuals such as an astronaut going through a dark hole or portal and breaking through a TV at the end of it. Edan Kwan, co-founder and creative director at Lusion, said the goal was to have the website act as a case study for what clients can expect from the agency while maintaining useful information needed for a website, which clearly states its purpose: “We help brands create digital experiences that connect with their audience.” A clearly marked “Let’s talk” button makes it easy to contact the agency. Since its launch, the agency has won several awards and has increased its new business pipeline. Lusion’s former website averaged 7,400 active users and 29,000 page visits per month; the new site averages 34,000 active users and 190,000 page visits per month, the agency said. Creative strategy agency Gus’ homepage shows a wall made of green blocks. When the user interacts with the site, the blocks reveal memes and photos and break down and reassemble in different ways—including into a playable pong game. The goal was to create something memorable that subverts expectations, said Gus Co-Founder Spencer Lavallee. It was created with the help of Australian design studio Ed. The site itself has acted as an unofficial chemistry barometer for the agency when getting queries from potential clients. “It’s self-selecting in a way,” said Graham Douglas, another co-founder. “We get one of two kinds of outreach from people who [either] love the website and the work on it, Or ‘I heard you guys are really good, I like the work but your website’s pretty crazy, man.’ And we kind of already know from the very first conversation … what this client is looking for.” Creativity doesn’t have to be strictly related to a unique visual. For example, Mischief’s home page transforms a period placed after the word Mischief into a wormhole that spews out copy touting all of the agency’s accolades. However, probably one of the most interesting aspects of the site is the agency’s manifesto, which explains the story of the song “Hound Dog” and how that manifested into the agency’s unofficial mascot, which is a cat. The agency also added funny FAQs that answer some questions about the agency, but also answer questions such as “What’s the most popular baby name?” and "What is the oldest thing in the known or observable universe?” Oppenheimer Mandel applauds Opinionated’s “House Specials” menu, which creatively writes different scenarios in which the shop is able to help chief marketing officers. “This is how they get specific with who they’re for, the business problems they solve, the situations they like to be in and with, and they so elegantly are able to communicate this with their own personality and tone,” she said. Don’t neglect social Slaby said she almost never visits agency websites and instead pays more attention to their social media accounts. She often looks for recent posts, visuals, work and employee culture. “It feels more active,” Slaby said. “You see more of the people and what they’re doing, and you see a better vibe of the work.” Slaby credits agencies such as Object & Animal for how they display their work on Instagram and calls out other agencies such as Hugo & Marie and Chandelier Creative for showing off their aesthetic well. She also credited OK Cool for posting about more than just their work. View this profile on Instagram Object & Animal (@objectandanimal) • Instagram photos and videos LinkedIn has also become crucial for agencies and agency leaders to navigate. While a vast majority of Mischief’s traffic comes from organic search, according to Oliver McAteer, Mischief’s head of development, LinkedIn is the largest driver of engagement from a social media perspective. McAteer leads the agency’s social accounts and has gotten millions of views on TikTok videos just by talking about the agency’s work. “They’ve almost made Mischief a consumer-facing brand,” NBZ’s Segall said. “It’s a pretty cool strategy to get a lot of people engaged,” she said. “Even if you’re not going to buy advertising from them, you still have this brand recognition.” The agency also makes it a point to update its work on its site quickly, because it often sees a spike in website visitors the day a new campaign is launched, McAteer said. Boehler credits Gale’s VP of communications, Lindsay Bennett, for creating smart slideshow content on Linkedin. Whether posting to their own websites or on social, the most important thing for an agency is to be consistent in look and tone. Oppenheimer Mandel cited Mojo Supermarket, Curiosity and Mischief as agencies that have clear visual identities and tones across all their platforms that make them recognizable. She also credited Gut for having its employees consistently post across platforms even if they share the same asset. “The individuals post it like 1,000 times and it’s the same visual asset,” Oppenheimer Mandel said. “You just see it reposted. Whether you’re reposting in Buenos Aires or you’re reposting in Canada, we see this kind [of] visual repetitiveness that happens across platforms that does create a swirl, and that consistency is super important.”

5 tips for crafting the ideal agency website and social presence

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