The Perfect Marriage: Digital Agency & CMS

Technology platforms are double edge swords for digital agencies.

Digital agencies are the creative force behind many well-known brands and websites and are critical components for their clients’ marketing strategy. This relationship between digital agencies and their clients, however, is increasingly challenged by the poor economic outcome for digital agencies. In other words, what the digital agencies offer as one of their main selling feature, technological development capabilities, is wiping out their profit margins. The current profit margins for digital agencies averages to less than 3%; this is not a comfortable or enticing margin for any agency, be it digital or traditional.

Thus, the digital agencies are stuck in a loop where their most prized offerings to their clients which in the words of Chris O’Hara “being on the cutting edge of media and technology, being in the “social media conversation,” helping clients understand and deploy groundbreaking new technologies” is causing the slow ‘death’ of digital agencies.

CMS to the Rescue

The good news is that both traditional and digital agencies recognize this fact and want to shift towards an integrated agency that meets the full spectrum demands of their clients. While implementing this spectrum of activities will require multiple software and technical capabilities; CMS would play a major role in facilitating this process. Rather than following the old school cycle of build/tear/build, forward thinking digital agencies recognize that they need a content management software (CMS) platform to enable them to focus on what they do best; produce creative design, content and marketing while in the process restore their profit margins to healthy and sustainable levels.

So what are the present options for digital agencies?

Develop their in-house CMS?  Build a tech department to service their clients’ CMS system? Partner with a CMS provider?

The first two options are easily discarded because building an in-house CMS has proven to be a costly mistake for many enterprises and digital agencies and does not make much economic sense. Building technology departments is a major culprit responsible for the low profit margins experienced by digital agencies and does not represent a viable option. Furthermore, digital agencies have difficult time in retaining talented product developers mainly because they don’t offer the right environment for them to thrive and grow. Thus, these two options offer at best a short-term solution and in the worst case scenario can lead to further erosion of an already slim profit margin.

Should we mention that CMS’s have continued to evolve over a period of time and made custom CMS development an obsolete idea?

The third option of partnering with a CMS provider offers a cost-effective, direct and long-term solution for digital agencies to integrate with a technology platform. The one caveat being that the CMS interface should be user friendly or in other words allows the creative individuals at digital agencies to focus on content and design and let the CMS take care of the implementation.
CMS can flip the equation for digital agencies

Rather than the digital agency professional trying to fit their content and design into an existing platform – the CMS would instead adapt to accommodate whatever content and design is developed by the digital agency professionals. This represents a reversal of the existing equation and will allow the creative professionals to work freely with the front end of the software to create their vision. This is the perfect scenario where each party is doing what it knows best. The digital agency professionals are the creative force and the CMS is the technology implementation tool that broadcasts this creativity to the outside world. This is an important step for digital agencies along the road to convert to integrated agencies.

Readyportal as a partner for digital agencies

This is exactly the type of partnerships that Readyportal is currently building. Our software has been developed with digital agencies in mind. We created the interface and made it simple, feature-rich and open to any design formats. Our SaaS-based model allows Readyportal to offer the CMS at affordable prices to organizations of all sizes with no operational and maintenance worries. This provides digital agencies with a powerful platform that can handle all their clients, big or small while concentrating on creating cutting edge design.

Links

• For great statistics on digital agencies – check Society of Digital Agencies 2011 digital marketing outlook report
• For great blog on digital agencies – check Chris O’Hara’s blog