First, I just want to say that building anything and getting paying customers is never easy so it's impressive to see what these guys have done.
While there is definitely a large market of agencies suffering from this problem, I don't think this is the "true" solution.
Clients hire an agency because they just want to pay somebody to build them a website (or whatever it actually is). When approaching this, they are almost definitely not thinking at all about having to do anything other than tell the agency what they want.
This is the client having unrealistic expectations, but they aren't supposed to be the experts, so it should be on the agency to be clear about those expectations. Even if you think you're clear about the about of work required of them, most client will drag their feet to no end on delivering the content. This is because they have 1,000 other things to do, don't really know where to even begin, and are getting frustrated because the reason they went to an agency was because they didn't have the time to deal with this.
Looking at setting up endless reminders as a solution misses the reason they came to you and loses out on a ton of value. Clients don't want to do this. Find a way so that they don't have to and then charge for that. If a client doesn't want to pay to have you do it at the start, give them a deadline for the content, if they don't get it to you by then, they can either get the site as-is or pay to have you do it for them.
What content do you need from the client? Figure out what questions you have to ask them to create that content, schedule a call, then ask them those questions, get a transcript, and give it to a copywriter. Then give the result to the client along with a timeline of "if this isn't approved or edited by X, then it is going live as-is."
I get where Content Snare is coming from, but I think it misses a much bigger underlying point of why this is such a problem.
There's more to Content Snare than just blasting your clients with reminders. One of the most important parts is making it easy for clients to provide content. You can do that by providing structure and visual references.
That way it's easier for them to understand what they need to provide.
When they understand what needs to be done, it often gets done.
We've found that's the big difference between the people Content Snare works for and ones it doesn't. The ones that take the time to lay it out properly and provide instructions get content faster. The ones that sign up, put in a couple of pages and let it blast their clients never get anywhere.
This is why I'm in the process of creating a bunch of templates that lay out copywriting instructions and wireframes... to get people started down the right path faster
(sorry if this is hard to read. I'm on my phone and half was done with speech to text)
This was the value I perceived mostly as well. I likely wouldn't use reminders at all. In my experience, if a client isn't on the ball and can't remember or be bothered to send content, I probably don't want to work with them.
Making it easy to send the content though, that's great. Keeping it all in one place is even better.
This would be great if you could host it at your own domain (or can you already?) so clients just go to your website to do it rather than a totally different service. Just drop a widget into your own web page or something, tell clients to go to yoursite.com/content/clientName where they log in and start viewing. I suppose that would complicate things in other ways, but it would be nice in general to not make a user remember yet another service and url that's totally disparate from your own company.
I think it really needs the space of a full browser window to get the full experience, especially if there are screenshots/wireframes in the layout.
If this was squashed down into a typical column on the website, it could get a little crowded and hard to follow but I definitely see your point on this.
The best we have right now is the ability to share a request with a link - no login required. So you could have a button in your client portal or a client-specific page to open their request
It's definitely not a universal scenario that the agency can produce 100% of the content for the client. Sure the content should be part of the planning and budgeting up front, and the agency should do as much of it as they can. But a common example of where you may need content from the client is a hotel that wants to do a new photoshoot for their new website. They know that photos are incredibly important to their marketing, they often have a preferred photographer they want to work with directly, even if you're local and offer to conduct the photoshoot for them, they can probably do a better job producing those assets than you can because they know their property inside and out.
That's a classic case where you have to depend on the client for content and a tool like Content Snare might be useful.
This is hitting it on the head. A lot of clients don't want to provide their own content and spend time filling out headings and searching for images, sure some do but mostly they are focusing on their business and while yes they are the ones closest to the metal, actually doing the work, they aren't and likely shouldn't be doing the copywriting. Speak with them, figure out as much as you can about them, take notes, and get a copywriter like you said.
More often this goes pretty smoothly and they'll review the website quickly and will send corrections like "Oh, you should add this sentence." or "Don't say that, remove it." I usually do a few pieces and make sure the tone is on point and then take that new information to flesh out the rest of the site.
It's a lot easier for them to edit a "complete" product than to see a blank canvas and have to figure out what goes where.
Yeah, it's a bit like the client asking you to collect and present information, then passing the question back to the client using a slick interface :)
I dont think OP is suggesting buying their oil to somehow impact the price, and is instead saying that the cost US oil companies are paying to extract oil themselves is more than it would cost them to just buy it from Saudi companies
Would your earnings teaching English in Japan cover living expenses and debt? If it would, the go for it. If it wouldn't, figure something else out.
If you do go for it, and don't want to make this a permanent change, make sure to stay current with technology. Build a public portfolio showing that even though you aren't working in tech, you are still working with it.
Another option would be to slowly transition away from teaching English to becoming a freelancer so that you could travel while still earning mid-high pay.
yes, they almost certainly would cover living expenses and debt, and id probably be able to save on top of that. I've already done some number crunching along those lines.
Yeah, honestly I was already thinking about teaching english as a means of full-time pay, and then doing ML freelance work to build my skills and portfolio
Without touching on the other examples, insisting that you stay for a full day isn't unreasonable, let alone abusive. While it would have been nice for him to be a bit more empathetic to your situation, it isn't his fault you didn't plan better.
They guy sounds fairly insensitive which sucks to deal with, but be careful not to twist everything he does just to fit that narrative.
If that 1 out of 50 was picked by random, then that might be correct, but the article makes it seem as though that isn't the case.
Since most of these autopsies are conducted when foul play is suspected or when the cause of death is unknown, that doesn't help doctors improve in the cases where they thought they knew the cause of death but were wrong.
I don't think its fair to say FB ads dont work as well when your audience is not ready to buy. If you try to run an Adwords style campaign on FB, then you are right, that isn't very likely to work but that isnt because of FB.
The problem is the ads don't match where the prospects are in the buying cycle. Where FB excels is driving leads into a nurturing campaign that gets them ready for the sale down the line. These campaigns work wonderfully across a wide variety of industries.
If you want to get a better view of this and have Google Analytics conversion tracking setup, you can look at the Attribution reports and Path reports to understand where/how FB and social in general contributes to your conversions.
Google has a decent overview of the high-level topic [1] with a tool to see the change across various verticals/categories, but you can actually calculate a similar chart for your own business quite easily by doing the math on assisted conversions/last click conversions. The higher the number, the more that channel plays a role towards the beginning of the "intent funnel" (defined as awareness >> consideration >> purchase).
Obviously that doesn't mean that channel ALWAYS plays that role (as can be seen in the path reports in GA) but generally speaking, it is not uncommon for display and social to be very high on the assist side of things, and channels like direct, email, paid search, etc. to be stronger on the last touch side. If you discount the value of an early touch channel, you might find that the demand it generates drops off resulting in a loss of volume and/or efficiency for later touch channels.
There are some scenarios where FB and social can drive strong last click performance, but more often it is an assist channel. Being able to measure and manage it as such can easily mean the difference between perceptions of "yes this was a smart investment" vs. "what a waste of cash, FB sucks."
From the outside, it seems likely that you have the common developer mentality of "If I build it, the customers will come."
If a business does not have a reliable, repeatable way to acquire customers profitably then any success they may have is based on luck. It is much easier to just try to code that problem away, but likely you need to step away from the code and start talking to customers so you can find out what they really care about and where you can find more people like them.
Why the hate for consultants who write books? If they dont provide value in the material then sure, that sucks, but if it is worthwhile information why should I care if they use it to help get consulting clients? Shouldnt I be happy that consulting allows people with valuable things to say to publish it for a price I can afford?
While there is definitely a large market of agencies suffering from this problem, I don't think this is the "true" solution.
Clients hire an agency because they just want to pay somebody to build them a website (or whatever it actually is). When approaching this, they are almost definitely not thinking at all about having to do anything other than tell the agency what they want.
This is the client having unrealistic expectations, but they aren't supposed to be the experts, so it should be on the agency to be clear about those expectations. Even if you think you're clear about the about of work required of them, most client will drag their feet to no end on delivering the content. This is because they have 1,000 other things to do, don't really know where to even begin, and are getting frustrated because the reason they went to an agency was because they didn't have the time to deal with this.
Looking at setting up endless reminders as a solution misses the reason they came to you and loses out on a ton of value. Clients don't want to do this. Find a way so that they don't have to and then charge for that. If a client doesn't want to pay to have you do it at the start, give them a deadline for the content, if they don't get it to you by then, they can either get the site as-is or pay to have you do it for them.
What content do you need from the client? Figure out what questions you have to ask them to create that content, schedule a call, then ask them those questions, get a transcript, and give it to a copywriter. Then give the result to the client along with a timeline of "if this isn't approved or edited by X, then it is going live as-is."
I get where Content Snare is coming from, but I think it misses a much bigger underlying point of why this is such a problem.