Recently I concluded a data science workshop with a digital marketing agency in SE Asia and perhaps had an experience of seeing the inside working of an agency for the first time. While I have immensely inspired from the leadership for how quickly they have developed a leading agency brand; I left with an impression that most of the agencies have no niche USP to offer other than filing the man power void for their clients that are needed to connect the ‘need to reach to digital consumers’ with the digital marketing powerhouses. (Google, Facebook etc.). I mean I totally failed to understand what will stop the Google’s and Facebook’s of the world to offer their platform directly without much need of agencies in near future. (with developing AI capabilities, the evolution of human like robots might be still far fetched dream; but AI driven keyword optimization, AI driven SEO and SEM are about to become mainstream offering in months if not days). There is absolutely no entry barrier for anyone to start a digital agency business and join the ‘manpower supplier’ business model but I think it will abruptly cease pretty much soon in the current form.
In my view the real USP of digital marketing businesses lies with the companies who see their proprietary data as a strategic asset (that’s what have made likes of Google the unbeatable marketing machines) and continue building / enriching these invaluable resources. That’s something that neither competition can catch-up nor Google’s of the world can replicate. It’s going to be inevitable for survival and real winners will be the ones who jump start their data strategy before its too late !
It’s about time that many companies (specially marketing agencies) who play the role of data brokers (fetching leads data through search engines / social media) start creating their proprietary database to have their niche in otherwise ‘no barrier’ agency business.