Kansas City Area Advertising
I’ve been an interested observer of the Kansas City advertising industry for 15 years, both while working in it, and merely an observer of it. I’ve come up with four hard and fast truths about the Kansas City web design industry since getting back into the business recently.
New agencies have to sell their services.
Agencies have to be good at self-promotion. It is imperative that they have staff available to go in front of business owners and sell their services.
People in the Midwest are do-it-yourself creatures. They don’t like to spend a lot of money on something that they’re not sure will show return on investment. They’re perfectly OK with having their nephew throw up a site to promote their company.
The problem is that they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand how search engines work. They don’t do analytics. They don’t know what we know about keywords. They sure don’t understand how to build a site from scratch and how much more effective and flexible it is than throwing up a Word Press site.
The face of the company has to be available to talk up the service. Business owners can’t be expected to just open a phone book or do a Google search, and then sign a contract. Marketing the business itself is vital to the creation a client list.
Most small design companies know what they’re doing.
There are exceptions, of course, but the area seems to be a breeding ground for solid work in advertising. For one thing, two of the best journalism schools in the country are within a quick road trip distance from the city; the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas. There are also fine design programs at schools nearby – Johnson County Community College, UMKC and of course, The Art Institute – come to mind. This makes the area fertile ground for new talent.
There is enough business to go around.
Unlike surrounding midsize cities, Kansas City’s job market is not primarily dependent upon one particular industry, compared to Omaha, Wichita, St. Louis, etc. Small business is a commodity in the metropolis, giving a lot of business to go after.
That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t a lot of corporate entities in Kansas City. Sprint, H & R Block, and Hallmark, just to name a few, all call Kansas City home.
The number of bigger agencies helps to grow the industry.
This directly affects the big number of Kansas City web design professionals. As with any big business, there is burnout. As a designer succumbs to the pressure of working on big accounts, they are very likely to separate themselves from the big agency and hang out a shingle. And they start to build their own list of clients. Every big agency starts with one or two people who want to do business their way. They can even get really big, if done the right way.
Although some of the bigger ad agencies in the Midwest may not be the agency of record for McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Southwest, they do work in specific areas for those companies. This type of work, the talent pool and the business environment make it a great place for artists and developers to work.
From very small companies to very large, there are any number of places for young designers to earn their chops, for experienced designers to advance and for the more entrepreneurial of them to strike out on their own and build a new mega agency.
