Four Signs Your Digital Agency is Only Taking Orders

RDA prides themselves on being a digital agency that strives to make your organization better. Whether that’s through our GEO offerings, our Vision to Victory strategy enablement, or our AI and technology practices, RDA challenges stakeholders and businesses to help drive them forward.

Many of the clients we’ve worked with have come from other digital agencies that are simply pushing “business as usual”. The agency delivers work, deadlines are met, and nobody is necessarily unhappy, but there’s a real cost in terms of propelling the business forward. Maybe it’s an opportunity unseized, an integration that goes unbuilt, or a pain point the agency never cares to dive into too deeply, and goes on lingering for years.

We’d like to think we’re a digital agency that tries to push your organization to be the best version of itself. Here’s a few signs that your digital agency is just taking orders:

They build exactly what you ask, and not what you may need

We’ve seen the aftermath of many complex projects that go straight from kickoff to requirements, without the crucial first steps of understanding the “why” behind it. What are the drivers for the project? What are the goals? What pain points should it solve? Understanding these from the outset are crucial to ensure everything inbetween kickoff and project completion ultimately aligns with the organization and stakeholder’s north stars.

If your digital agency isn’t asking these questions, they may be missing key elements of the project. They may also miss the larger overall alternatives. Maybe there’s an integration or platform that already solves the challenges a project may be trying to overcome in a fashion that’s less complex, less risky, or less expensive. A good digital agency will help provide this alternative point of view by simply questioning the goals of that project and making sure they build what you need, not just what you want.

They never bring the agenda

If your digital agency isn’t bringing the agenda to your meetings, you may be missing a crucial voice in how you can push your organization further. Without that alternative point of view on other current projects in flight, pushback on priorities, or brainstorming/ideation, you’re missing a great opportunity to hear from a team with a huge array of experience. Continued agreement that always falls in line with your thoughts may be a warning sign that they are just acting as “yes-men”. At RDA, we’d argue that a partner that always acts in the best interests of the future of your organization may sometimes disagree with your priorities or your ideas, and that alternative point of view can lead to new opportunities.

Their recommendations always align with their partnerships

This may seem obvious, but if your digital agency only ever recommends platforms or integrations that are the partnerships they promote on their website, they may not be delivering the right solution to your organization.

At RDA, we pride ourselves on providing platform-agnostic platform evaluations and recommendations. While we take great pride in the many partnerships we have, we will never recommend a platform simply because we partner with them. We will always go out of our way to recommend platforms and integrations that line up best with your requirements, your budget, and your organization overall. We’ve performed these evaluations and recommendations across a variety of content management systems, customer data platforms, search platforms, and personalization engines, and these evaluations and recommendations always differ from one another based on the client’s needs.

They only work on a small slice of your organization

We are a diverse team of strategy and technology specialists. Not all digital agencies work that same way. Some agencies specialize in one or the other, and never are able to have the holistic view of your needs across marketing, content, and technology. If all they ever deliver is a piece of your system, they’ll never be able to make recommendations that align with everything else that makes your organization unique.

We love getting in the weeds on all aspects of your organization: what makes you unique, your marketing and product or content challenges, and how technology helps bring your team’s content to market faster. This 30,000 foot view helps us deliver projects that keep your organization’s needs front and center, and help us align around a north star that keeps us focused.

If you’ve recognized two or more of the above scenarios, the fix isn’t just a blind switch to another digital agency, but a switch to different type of relationship with a digital agency. RDA’s strategy-first approach to all projects gives us a unique perspective, where all of our projects have scalable discovery before any project, where you’ll receive options for an engagement that makes the most sense for your team, and where we sit alongside your team to understand the full scope of any project in the greater context of your organization.

Interested in partnering with a digital agency that doesn’t just take orders and helps push your team forward with a Vision to Victory framework and deep technical acumen? Let’s chat more about how RDA can help you out.