Disclaimer: No, we are not cheap, and neither are you.

How many emails or calls do you usually get when someone is selling a digital consulting service and the main USP is that it is cheap, or cheaper than what you are currently using? Unfortunately, most of us are short sighted and look at short-term gains rather than long-term gains. In this article, we give you a questionnaire to send to a digital agency to understand how and why they are so cheap. But before that, we would like to go through certain reasons why some digital agencies are so called “cheap”.

Lack of Understanding of the Market and Business

With digital consulting, a low hanging fruit, every second person proclaims that he/she is a digital consultant. The problem is that when you treat this as a business, you need to look at the economics. With the space being highly competitive, a lot of these services are sold below their face value and more often than not the person selling this service is not even aware of this. Just for the sake of getting the business, the pricing is brought down drastically. This might be good for closing a deal but imagine what it does to the motivation of putting in the hard work when one knows that they are not getting compensated well for the job at hand.

Good Resources Cost More Money

A huge difference between a company figuring things out and a company that kind-of knows its forte is that there will be more generalists in the former and specialists in the latter. Also, specialists cost more money than generalists. The turnaround time and the quality of work of a specialist will most definitely be better than a generalist. Also, if their resources are not full-time, it will reflect poorly on the service you receive. Most freelancers come and go. Dedicated resources are better than freelancers.

Also Read: How to Decide Your Digital Marketing Budget, According to Experts

Companies are Processes and People

Right from your first touch point with the company to your last (if you decide to discontinue working with a company), there will be a process for everything. Yes, you might be a disruptor yourself, but if the company you are hiring does not have well-defined processes, then you might get stuck and not make much progress when things shake up a bit. Processes can include, how code is stored, when backups are maintained, digital asset management, contracts, service level agreements, proper accounting and invoicing, disaster recovery, alternate resources, etc.. How would you feel once the machine died and so did your website? How would you feel about working without a contract or not getting an invoice at the end of the month?

Software is Expensive

There is software to create amazing graphics and to write enterprise-level applications. These amazing kinds of software come with a price tag and/or licensing fee. If they are not licensed, you are at risk and so is your brand. You need to have this as a part of your contract to ensure that you are protecting yourself from any potential legal issues in the future. Secondly, using such software illegally tells a lot about the professional ethics of the company. Are you willing to compromise your ethics for the sake of saving a few dollars?

Who wants what?

You need sales and the consultant wants your money. This can work for a short duration, but over the long-term you need to understand money is not the only motivator. Hence, a deeper alignment is needed. What is the vision and mission of the digital consulting company and does it align with yours? If there is not a vision or mission, then clearly the company will not last long since it does not know why it is working.

You are not mediocre.

Mediocre work is cheap! Are you or your brand cheap? There is a difference between being frugal and being cheap. Great businesses are built on frugal business models, not being cheap. Do not be penny-wise and dollar-foolish.

We have built our digital consulting company on processes and ethics. Our employees are our biggest asset and each of them has been carefully vetted and continuously improved over time. If you would like Dignitas Digital in Philadelphia to conduct a digital audit of your company, feel free to get in touch with us at hello@dignitas.digital.