Focusing on success
As agency professionals, we're always focused on A) saying all the exciting, persuasive things we can about the thing we're promoting, and B) designing the piece — whether it's a website or email or banner ad, etc — to be beautiful. But are we focused on making it successful? It sounds obvious, right? It should be! Of course we are! But what I find all the time is that we often forget to think about this last part. We accidentally think that saying persuasive things and designing something that looks great means success will just happen naturally. In many cases, this is simply not true.
Following digital best practices is a huge factor in making our work successful. When we adhere to digital best practices, we focus on how users search for content, what they look for, how they engage with content, and all the other elements that make our work successful. This should always be our starting place. Not just great art and copy.
Of course our clients evaluate all of the work we produce — and this is how they evaluate us. They way they do this is by measuring engagement. Of course they want a digital promotional piece to say all the exciting things they can, and they want it to be beautiful, but above all, what they really want is success.
Joking not joking here, imagine asking your client, if they had to choose, would they rather have a piece that's stunningly beautiful and award-winning, or one that gets great engagement/conversions/etc? Remember, one of those two options means better success for them.
Of course we need to strive for both beautiful and successful. That's our job. It's do-able!
But what does focusing on success mean, besides writing persuasive copy and creating beautiful art? It means adhering to the philosophies of designing mobile first, always following accessibility guidelines, making sure our content is easily searchable, and more. See my engagement cheat sheet for more info.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying: our consultation on digital best practices should come from seeing the patterns of what works and what doesn't work. We need to adere to best practices to produce the best results for our clients. And in many cases, this means explaing to our clients why certain things will perform better for them than others. We're the experts! Let's guide them! They'll be grateful for it.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.