When It Comes To Brand Presence, Take Your Own Advice

As marketers, we know the importance of having a strong brand presence-to stand out from the competition, get recognized by customers and reinforce your mission. It’s something that we tell our clients on a daily basis. But as agencies try to sell robust brand and content strategies to their clients, when’s the last time they seriously looked into their own? Sometimes, the best advice is your own-especially when it comes to building your agency brand presence.

Prospects Are Finding You Online

While there is still value in great pitches and cold calls, we all know the real research happens behind the scenes. Prospects are combing through your online presence well before they reach out to you, so having strong content is a major factor in how successful your agency is at connecting the dots between prospective interest and closed clients.

If you aren’t taking the time to create collateral that prospects can use in their own research, they will likely move on to an agency that can answer their questions and provide detailed, in-depth content that supports the value they’re looking for. Even the most promising of introductions can be sunk by online content that contradicts your pitch.

They’re Judging Your Work, Not Your Words

Think about it: You wouldn’t hire a wedding photographer who had poorly focused images on their personal Instagram, or a landscaping company with dead grass in the front of their building. If you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk with a web presence that complements the services you’re offering. The same exercises you’re putting your clients through should be pressure tested on your own website and content strategy-design, messaging, and proof that your pitch isn’t just empty words.

Find A Strategy That Works For You

As an agency, client work understandably takes up a majority of your bandwidth. But it’s important to use those extra pockets of time to keep your brand fresh. Here are some tips you can use to strengthen and optimize your strategy:

Keep Your Website Current

We live in an agile world where things are constantly changing, including your business. The messaging and services you provided when your site first launched have likely evolved over time. Unfortunately, most companies get their website live and never look at it again-even if it no longer reflects the company’s purpose.

It’s helpful to get in the habit of checking on your website frequently and making changes as your agency develops and grows. Try creating a regular audit schedule to apply changes when they happen so it doesn’t build into an insurmountable pile of updates.

Leverage Landing Pages

Sometimes a website refresh doesn’t reflect the nuance of the content you’re trying to highlight. If you aren’t ready to change the bones of your website, you can do smaller fixes like adding landing pages-ensuring they’re discoverable or tied to some sort of marketing effort. You can use those landing pages to pilot new offerings, expand into niche content, or update your approach without making major changes to the rest of your website.

Make Some Noise on Social

Social media is a great tool for expanding your brand presence and reinforcing your messaging. However, you don’t have to do it all. Not every platform is the best fit for your agency, and spending time on unsuccessful platforms can take you away from more concerted efforts on mediums that directly impact your business.

For example, Instagram and LinkedIn are very different platforms, and you might not need both to accomplish your social goals. Lean into what works, and schedule posts in advance to save time.

Get Into the Blog Game

Blogging not only helps increase your content production and improve SEO, but it also allows you to build trust with your audience. Your agency has an entire team of experts that have specific knowledge in their respective fields. You can tap into that expertise by asking your team to pick a topic they are passionate about, then have them jot down a draft. Your content team can then turn that into a new blog for your website, or you could outsource that outline to a third party to save even more time.

Make Sure It All Works Together

A brand strategy works best when it works together. Your different marketing channels should work in harmony to create a cohesive, collected approach to branding. If you are scheduling posts for LinkedIn, add that social link to your email marketing. If you are publishing a new blog post, share it on your social channels. Making a new landing page? Make it discoverable on your site. Bringing it all together allows prospective clients to discover more content, build more affinity, and ask for more work in the future.

Stories Need To Be Told

Once you decide the most efficient and impactful strategy, you can generate a pulse for your brand that continues to amplify your story. Every component of your strategy-social, email marketing, websites and otherwise-becomes a chapter that pushes their positive perception further. That way, when prospects are researching your company, they’ll be digesting a cohesive story that sticks in their mind.

Final Thoughts

Make Time For Yourself

Look, I get it! We are all busy, and agencies in particular have the difficult task of managing client workloads and internal marketing initiatives at the same time. That’s why being proactive about your time and making room for a brand strategy will help keep your larger business goals in sight. So the next time a prospective client is checking out your website, you’ll be confident it’s working just as hard as you.

This MODintelechy authored editorial originally appeared in Forbes Agency Council.