Rise of the Digital Partner Agency
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The days of coding up websites armed only with some popular development tools were good ole days. Looking back, we as developers needed only to know how to code well to ensure all went well. We spent days and nights (mostly nights) hacking away, using software tools that most times required a bit of magic to work and then we sat back and gloated at our clients’ impressed faces. They were the days of showcasing our technical expertise when we launched projects ensuring that ours had that much more sparkle than the other guys. They were good days, simple days, straightforward. Then something happened, and by something we mean several things happened. The speed at which our development tools were both released and adopted lowered the entry bar for developing quality projects which inevitably created an exponential growth in online assets in a relatively short period of time. The smart mobile era kicked off and brought websites into the palms of everyone’s hands, allowing businesses to reach an enormous untapped market in what seems like an overnight transition. We initially thought the glory days were behind but that was child’s play to what lay ahead.
The Complexity
The complexity was creeping in for us as developers, we had to learn faster, consume new knowledge, internalize it and implement quickly to keep presenting our clients with cutting edge solutions. The growth of the audiences now using websites on all different types of devices also meant we had a ridiculous number of devices to test across before we launched a project. The real challenge however, was even more complicated than that; issues were emerging with the web that we built just years earlier. The tools that once made life easy were slowly starting to make life challenging. Our favorites were being deprecated for tools that sometimes even went against what had been best practices for development for years. The web was evolving and so were our clients with it.
Marketing, which had always been at the heart of consumer messaging stepped to the fore with a new face, digital assets. We reinvented the AIDA model for the online world and our friends at Google and Facebook paved the way for an era of Digital Marketing that was unparalleled to any era of marketing that went before. It was, in a way, beautiful. The ability to be present and have consumer touchpoints that reached the intended audience at any time during the day, created a connected world that from that point on would never be the same again.
We adapted, we did it quickly and then we adapted some more. Our clients now had the opportunity to see through their audiences eyes with hard data. Personas, which had been the backbone of marketing campaigns, could now be validated with strategic online campaigns launched in tandem with offline marketing campaigns. Big data soared into frame and tools to assist in the analysis of all this data emerged to put tremendous power in the hands of businesses. We witnessed small businesses grow into medium sized businesses and large businesses became behemoths. The vision for globalization was realized as everything that could have been done offline, could now be done online, even more efficiently and more excitingly, without geographic borders.
Our challenges in the development world had to be ironed out in order to better serve the new breed of clients. New development processes were created just to ensure we could deliver software in a more reliable way and on the heels of Agile development practices proliferating through our industry the birth of DevOps allowed us to perform highly technical tasks that were previously the domain of software architects and server admins. We were able to manage increasingly complex software projects with less human resources, in an even more efficient manner. We were miles away from where we started but we had a bird’s eye view of every piece of the puzzle and it would only get better from here.
Been through all of it…
Over the years we saw how digital moved from being an add on to being the glue that connected all pieces of businesses. Data not only drove innovation in marketing but legacy systems were connected to newer systems to streamline internal operations, which inevitably streamlined marketing initiatives. We learned that businesses no longer needed us just for our technical expertise when software came up in the conversation but they needed partners who understood the terrain. Who understood why the path we were standing on was paved in the first place and what those things said about where they should be headed.
Helping you traverse
We pack a heavy punch with our team, we collaborate with the best of the best and our years of expertise all sum up to an awareness in the industry that sets us apart. We love a high level view of things as much as any C-Suite exec but we keep our hands on the keypads always ensuring that we have an idea of where the industry is moving to next and building for sustainability, scalability and return on investment.
Building the right projects for businesses means understanding where the business is in relation to the current and forever changing digital landscape and where the visionaries that lead them are trying to go.
Understanding where a business is at is one thing but the strategy portfolio must include a balance of long term and short term objectives to see real return on investment. We’re immersive and we love long term relationships. We do what we love so you can do what you love, better. We don’t build websites, we build strategies. We grow with you. All great things take time and we lay out the roadmap to get you to wherever your vision calls. We’re your Digital Partner and we code success stories.
The 404 A-Team
Klove & Sitch Agency
