Solid Digital’s CEO and founder Jesse McCabe recently sat down to record an episode of An Agency Story where he discussed his own path, Solid Digital’s transformation to its current state as a brand-focused digital marketing agency and where we’re headed. Below are a few highlights and a link to the full podcast.
How Valuable is a New Website?
The value of a new website is difficult to gauge. Is it worth the price you paid an agency to develop and create it? Is its value based on the ROI it creates or new online sales it brings in? Can you amortize it over time?
Russell Dubree, host of An Agency Story, compared a newly launched website to the day his landscaper finished work on his yard. He looked out at it and thought, this is the best it’s ever going to look, which he called “a sinking feeling”.
Likewise, during the early days at Solid Digital, Jesse began to feel that too. Even after months of collaboration, dev work, design revisions and the celebration of launching a new website, there was more to be done in order to maintain what was built rather than just handing it over and sending clients’ on their way.
This led to Solid Digital’s primary offerings today which revolve around programs built for after a web design project – Digital Growth Marketing and Digital Growth Web. Both have been built and iterated on as we continue to learn from our clients how to best help and have an impact on their metrics and outcomes. These programs help keep our clients’ websites performing smoothly, optimized and targeted. In this way, we have created a metric to measure Digital Value and ongoing strategy and actions that keep websites up-to-date post-launch. It’s like weeding, mowing and planting consistently once the landscaper finishes that big project in order to keep your yard healthy and blooming.
"Our evolution is, at one point we were doing a lot of websites and would just redesign a website and move to the next project. I just felt how valuable are these sites to the organizations we’re building them for? Can we even put a dollar amount or some kind of value to it? Also why do brands redesign their website every three to four years? Why can’t we just evolve with the brand and keep it valuable? That’s our intention."
Customer Service Comes First
It would seem that being a computer science major in college led Jesse to working in web development and onto opening a digital agency. However, that’s only part of the story. While his passion revolved around computers, he found more value in business communications classes. Indeed, communication is key between our agency and our clients. It’s what feeds into two of our top values – honest guidance and thoughtful collaboration. As a team, we pride ourselves on our relationships with our clients – it all goes back to not only creating the best-looking and best performing websites, but the desire to entrench ourselves with our clients and their brands.
As Jesse explained, “I’m still a guide. I’m still the solution seller, but in the past where I could sell technological solutions, I can now sell more impactful solutions. I can guide our process and our client experience, which is a real benefit to our customers. Clients are on a journey and we consider ourselves part of it and we want to make it as fun as impactful as possible. Celebrate wins together and keep going with those relationships.”
Hear it for Yourself
No founder represents an entire brand once an organization grows, shifts and evolves over time. All of us here at Solid Digital though share the same values and have a culture where dependable service and creative craftsmanship intersect. For us, we can’t perform the best work if we aren’t listening to our clients, their pain points and their objectives. Yes, we do know website design, development and digital marketing, but without also understanding your brand, we’d be just another digital agency putting websites into the ether rather than helping our clients succeed.
Finally, to really understand what’s behind our brand, you may need to know what haunted houses, craft beer and the first Jimmy John’s sandwich shop have to do with digital marketing. For that, you’ll need to get your ear buds out and listen to An Agency Story, Build-Solid Digital yourself.
