Hey everyone, I run a web design agency, and I wanted to ask how other handle situations where they don’t offer digital marketing services.
When we work with small to medium-sized businesses and build their websites, we don’t offer any digital marketing services or have partners to refer them to. As a result, clients often struggle with driving traffic to their new site. Once the website is live, they realize they aren’t getting any sales or leads, and from their perspective, it seems like the website ‘doesn’t work’—when in reality, it’s because they haven’t implemented any marketing strategies to drive traffic.
Without a clear way to help them address this, they often abandon their websites and go back to selling on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, where they get quicker results with less effort. This leads to us losing clients and missing out on opportunities to renew services or generate additional revenue.
I’ve considered potential solutions, like offering clients a digital marketing guide —perhaps one of those pre-made ones that are sold online— but I’m not sure if that would help either. Most business owners aren’t likely to sit down and read a 20-page PDF or learn how to run Google Ads and manage all the marketing themselves.
So, my question is: for those of you who only offer web design services, how do you handle this situation? How do you help clients understand that their website needs marketing to succeed, and what do you do to support them without offering full marketing services?