There’s this concept out there called “a market for lemons.” Originally penned by George Akerlof, the core of the concept is this:
“if a buyer can’t distinguish between good and bad, everything gets priced somewhere in the middle. If you’re selling junk, this is fantastic news — you’ll probably get paid more than your lemon is worth. If you’re selling a quality used car, this price is insultingly low. As a result, people with good cars leave the market to sell their stuff elsewhere, which pushes the overall quality and price down even further, until eventually all that’s left on the market are lemons.”
(thanks to Frank Chimero for that quick explanation)
The world of “building websites” is absolutely this phenomenon. For a small business, what is the difference between a freelancer building you a site for $5K and someone like me building it for $15-20K? It’s hard to tell the difference!
All the websites of these agencies look and feel basically the same. They have the same process. The same words. The same “treat you like family” promises. And… everyone has a horror story about website work. Whether their domain got taken by a ruthless company, they got locked out of their own website, or it was the “project that never ended.”
With the ease of pushing out simple, low-quality work, it’s going to drive the market towards the middle (aka. “a market for lemons”) — the folks that sell the high-quality work are going to have to drive down their prices in order to compete with the newly-formed masses who are running a business off of a “hope and a prayer.”
I think we are going to be leaning SO much more on our tribes of people than we ever have been in the coming years (so yes, this is true for the gamut of marketing agencies as a whole as well, not just companies building websites). Referrals are always the best sales opportunities because they come from an existing, warm relationship. I think that’s going to be compounded immensely over the next few years when it becomes harder and harder to tell the quality of work from simply looking at a company’s website and the content they are putting on display for everyone to consume.
It’s easy to out-market a “lemon market”: be yourself, show it off to your tribe.