&US Agency

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder and CEO of a platform marketplace that focuses on specialty food items.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire &US Agency, and what were your goals?

Our goal with our agency search was simple: we need a 'tune up' of our basic digital presence. My co-founder and I needed to focus on building our business, so we wanted to hire a team to simply clean us up on the basics! 

We hired &US Agency to improve our fundamentals like site speed, basic on-page SEO items like a sitemap and 404 errors, basic off-page SEO items like blog posts and backlinks. 

We also hired &US Agency to manage our social media and google adwords accounts. Again fundamentals - produce content, plan campaigns, and monitor performance.

The goal was that at the end of the 1st month, all of these fundamentals would be tuned-up and the following 2 months would all be recurring work to really amplify the foundation that was built.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We used a startup + digital marketing agency matchmaking service. Basically an agency for agencies. We were recommended to &US by this matchmaker because our needs/goals were so basic and standard that we we did not need to opt for a 'high tier' agency in order to accomplish them. &US Agency was less expensive and they confidently explained that they could accomplish our simple needs, so we believed them.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

This is the scope of work:

Week 1 Tasks: SEO

● Initial Review & Analysis

• In-Depth Site Analysis
• Keyword Analysis ○ SEO Site Audit
• Backlink Audit

Weeks 2 & 3 Tasks:

Development issue fixes & On-Page SEO optimization

● On-Page

• URL Structure - Check all web page URLs and make sure they’re SEO friendly & contain keywords relevant to the page's topic
• URL Canonicalization - It's a process of refining the web URLs
• Image Alt Tags - Adding relevant names/titles to all web images
• Website Crawl ability - To encourage the search engines to access and crawl content on a page
• Sitemap - A XML file to provide all web data & URLs for google to crawl it
• Website Page Speed - Developer will fix the website speeding issues & browser compatibility
• Webpage Cache - Will add the necessary plugin(s) to enable the web browser cache
• Media Query Responsive - Testing the website on all mobile devices (smartphones, tablets,
• desktop computers) & provide and required fixes
• Google Business Page
• Keyword Density Optimization - A number of times a target keyword appears within the total
• number of words on a page
• Content optimization - To improve your web visibility on search engines which drives traffic to
• your website and encourages people to purchase your products/services

Weeks 3 & 4 Tasks:

● Off-Page

• Bookmarking’s - To increase the domain authority & traffic, building quality backlinks.
• Web 2.0 - To use Web 2.0 is to make us utilize its link advantages
• Blog Posts - To generate organic traffic for your website
• Blog Comments - To increase your credibility, helps with social media & campaigns
• Forum Postings - To increase website traffic & introduce your web to new customers
• Business Listings - To make it simple for local customers to find your business online
• Directory Submissions - Submit your website URL to various web directories.
• Infographics Submission - A graphic visual representation of web data & products.
• Guest Posting - Posting on another person's blog as a guest to get quality backlinks
• High-quality landing pages - A page on your site that is designed to convert visitors into leads
• High-quality Backlinks - Get another website's traffic to your own website to increase the web
• traffic & sales
• Press Release Writing - Create more info about websites & products cited in news and media
• publications for visibility

● Conversion Rate Optimization

• Hot-jar Implementation
• Call To Action
• Exit Pop-ups

● SMM

• Create promotional banners/creatives
• Keywords analysis & research
• Install FB Pixel
• Create compelling offers (if this is desired)
• Campaign planning & setup
• Social Media Marketing
• Video campaign (if Foraged has video content available)
• Setup conversion tracking

● Google Adwords

• Create promotional banners/creatives
• Keywords analysis & research
• Create compelling offers (if this is desired)
• Campaign planning & setup
• Creating high-quality landing pages
• Setup conversion tracking
• Continue to optimize your campaigns

Recurring Tasks for Weeks 4+

From the 4th week onwards, we will carry out the following task on a monthly basis:

● Off-Page

• Bookmarking’s
• Web 2.0
• Blog Posts
• Blog Comments
• Forum Postings
• Business Listings
• Directory Submissions
• Infographics Submission
• Guest Posting
• High-quality landing pages
• High-quality Backlinks
• Press Release Writing

● SMM

• Campaign management
• Website Traffic creation
• Creating posts
• Lead generations

● Google Adwords

• Campaign management
• Website Traffic creation

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

It wasn't clear how many resources from their team worked with us. 

Our originally stated project manager was replaced the day before the engagement started, then the next PM replaced shortly thereafter, followed by two more PMs ultimately rotating in or out. 

So what was supposed to be our primary point of contact was actually a continuously revolving door.

In addition to the many PMs, there were 3-4 others involved in various degrees. The vendor's resources were rarely all present together - we would meet one individual and then never hear from them again (read: no status updates or visibility into what work was in motion/accomplished). 

The positions varied. Some individuals focused on marketing generally it seemed.. but not clear who actually owned what, or who was an expert. They had a designated SEO individual and design individual, but again their contributions were sporadic and unreliable.  

&US Agency outsources all of their work to freelancers in developing countries. None of the vendor's team was in the United States, and only one spoke native english (nothing wrong with speaking english as a second language... it did however make communication difficult, and the quality of the content they delivered to us severely suffered. For example, &US Agency asked me to approve instagram content for Christmas that repeatedly stated the line "Marry Christmas".. trivial yes, but consistent with overall quality). 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

1. &US failed to deliver the scope of work which resulted in an early termination of the engagement due to their breach of contract.
2. &US failed to specify any measurable goals at the outset of the engagement, so there was no way to specifically measure their performance. 
3. If performance is measured by simply completing items from the scope of work, then the only measurable outcome of the project was abject failure. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

To understand how poorly &US Agency manages workflow, consider this: their CEO did not even join the Slack channel until the engagement was already in dire condition -- two months after the project started. Their COO attended 2 weekly standups throughout the full project. &US Agency CEO never attended a meeting after the kick off... despite him knowing his client's dissatisfaction. 

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What I found most impressive was how vehemently the &US Agency CEO refused to recognize the degree with which his team failed to deliver on the scope of work. Even in the face of legal action upon their breach of contract, &US Agency remained obstinate. 

Even after I shared screenshots from their public internal project Slack channel -- which documented flagrant incidences including the &US Agency CEO ordering his team to 'stop all production on the account" while in the middle of a pre-paid, good-standing billing month -- &US Agency wholly denied and ignored their own actions. (shortly thereafter the internal project channel was made private.)

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They could have delivered the items in the scope of work. That would have been an improvement.

Even better, they could have operated with an ounce of quality and professionalism. The most frustrating part of my experience was that not only did &US Agency not deliver on the scope of work, they stubbornly insisted that they were performing above and beyond expectations. &US Agency executive leadership ignored our concerns and offered absolutely no reconciliation. 

It was the worst agency experience I've ever had the displeasure of engaging with.