How to Drive New Innovations at Your Digital Agency

The recipe for running a Service Agency generally goes something like this: take 2 parts quality work. Add 1 part customer service. Add 1 part good salesmanship. Do that and you’ve got a successful business. But why should it be this way? Why not mix things up — add some Sriracha, or some fish sauce? Bake things instead of frying? Mix in ingredients from a totally different industry? In fact, if asked why we provide Services the way we do, the answer is likely “because that’s just how it’s done.” (We just try to do it better.) Rarely do we ask if it’s the best way, or even if there’s different — even crazily different — way to do things, one that might change everything in our field. You know who does ask those questions? R&D people. (That’s “Research and Design.”) Their job is to ask “why,” then to use the answer to come up with new ideas. Those ideas then become new, groundbreaking products. While R&D is generally imagined to be a part of product development, there is no reason why you can’t adopt some R&D-style thinking, and use it to set your business apart. Here are some strategies for helping you stay innovative, R&D-style.

1. Create an In-House Innovation Group

Here’s one way to do R&D for a digital agency: create an in-house group dedicated to innovation. Pull people from different areas of your company, and have them meet once every two weeks or so. Make everybody come in with two new ideas! You can go big — what would change everything about what we do? — or stay focused on particular problems your business faces. You can also rotate members to keep things fresh. Either way, this should be part of your employees’ job descriptions, not just something extra they’re supposed to lump on top of everything else they already do. The larger goal is to foster a company-wide culture of innovation.

2. Solicit Feedback From Customers

Often it takes stepping outside of our own head to realize where the problems are. Luckily, you’ve got a wealth of people who are already there. So don’t be afraid to use them! There are lots of ways to go about soliciting feedback. You can send out occasional surveys. You can have frank conversations. You can also incentivize them: give a discount to any customer who gives you an idea that saves you time or money! Put their ideas to the test using resource planning to predict project profitability. Again, the point is to let customers know that you prioritize innovation, and that you love it when they contribute.

3. Imagine Automation

Yes, yes, technology changes everything. Well … except for when it doesn’t. As a service agency, lots of our work depends on human-to-human interaction. But maybe there are ways you can incorporate technology more creatively. Create fun videos to answer some common questions? Create an online portal that lets customers easily accomplish those tasks that are necessary, but boring? Automate paperwork? Use AI to figure out what your customers need? Given today’s technology, the sky’s the limit. (Well, maybe price is the limit. But you can always dream.) But the more you let yourself imagine, the more creative you’ll get.

4. Experiment

Traditionally, R&D people create a prototype, then spend extensive time testing that prototype out before unleashing it into the public realm. You can do the same thing! How about you tell one customer that you’d like to try something new. You’ll give it six months, and if it doesn’t work, you’ll go back to what you were doing before. Plus, you’ll give them a slightly lower rate for the duration of the experiment. Do this three or four times, and your digital agency will be innovating all over the place.

5. Have Upper-Management Do Lower-Level Jobs

This one’s and oldie-but-goodie (and also inspired that glorious show “Undercover Boss”). Once a quarter, why not have some upper-level executives do the jobs they’ve been hiring other people for? Put them on the sales floor! Have them code for a while! Let them run HR! The point isn’t just to “put them in touch with their employees.” It’s to put them in a position to think more creatively about how these various jobs are done. Which, since they’re executives, they have the power to change.

6. Think Design

Sometimes the best way for a digital agency to innovate is to bring in a perspective from a different field. Design — which thinks about the ways products or systems interact with users — seems perfect. You may have UX designers working on your website, but why not bring in other kinds of designers to help with the service and selling side of things? Instructional designers can help with customer interaction; systems designers can help with internal processes; product designers can think about the ways your customers experience your company. If anything, try out different types of software to help you optimize your most valuable pages — like your homepage introduction. Try one out and see what they say! One way to ensure an appealing visual aesthetic is to utilize high-quality graphics and visuals. To support this, websites such as Wepik offer a wide variety of royalty-free graphics, photos, videos and more, allowing developers to create stunning visuals for their UI/UX designs.

7. Use Big Data

Big Data’s certainly a major trend in R&D, and it’s not going away. Luckily, Big Data insights are available to you, too. Anything you can monitor or measure, you can analyze. The trick is to figure out what you can measure and how you can measure it. And then, once you’ve measured it, to figure out what those measurements can tell you. This may be a job you can do in-house; it may be something you can hire outside people to do. Either way, Big Data can give you information about your company that isn’t available elsewhere, and that can help you imagine new ways of doing things.