Ever visited a marketing agency website and wondered what the heck the agency actually did?

Or have you ever visited a marketing agency website to look for work relevant to your category and found it harder than heck to locate?

Ever visit a marketing agency website to see just how different that agency was from other agencies and left feeling like it looked like all the rest.

Here’s a really good one…

Have you ever visit a marketing agency website after being sold on the importance of developing content to find the agency hasn’t updated its news or its blog for 6 months to a year?

I could go on and on with this “ever visited?”…

It just amazes me at times how shortsighted agencies can be when they neglect their own front face of their agency.

We have represented enough marketing agencies on the agency new business side of our business to know that when an agency’s site is bad, you lose marketing prospects.

Marketers go to agency sites to learn about the agency, see their work, validate their related experience, and get a flavor for the personality of the firm.

What they don’t want to do is run into crappy navigation, get lost is a lot of blabber about philosophy, and need to pull out the specs to see tiny images of work.

So if you hit a marketing agency’s site and one or more of the things above confront you, what do you do?

Overlook it and think…”hey, these guys are busy with their clients, so I’ll give them a pass.”

Or do you ask yourself “what the heck…if they think what they’re telling me is important, but they don’t do it for themselves, what’s up with that?”

I know what I’d do…I’d ask myself “what the heck”.

Agency websites tell you a lot about the agency.

Not suggesting there aren’t great agencies out there with less than perfect sites.

But I believe that the site, the proposal response, the pitch presentation, the RFI submission are all a reflection of what you get when you buy.

If they can’t take the time to speak to you when you visit them or when you read something they put in front of you, then what happens when you bring them on board.

There are plenty of great agencies out there that take the time to do it all right.  It’s those agencies we like and it’s those agencies that we put in front of our clients when we run a search.

So next time you visit a marketing agency’s site, ask yourself, “Is this agency a reflection of me and my brand?”

Or is it a hot mess that simply is not consistent with how I would want to look and feel?