Agency Vista’s Year in Review: Every Cool Feature We Launched in 2021

Marketing your agency was redefined in the age of Covid-19. This year and beyond, marketers thought about building relationships in new and strategic ways. While you have been hard at work, Agency Vista’s team has discovered key solutions to help marketing agencies grow faster in this new era!

While it’s been a challenging year, online credibility and third-party validation have played an essential role in assisting businesses to make connections, build online communities, reach new customers, and drive sales.

As you begin planning your marketing agency’s growth strategy for 2022, we’re highlighting every cool new Agency Vista feature we released in 2021. From premium lists to our recommended agency feature, our tools will help you get ready for 2022 and beyond. Grab a coffee and dive in — it’s a BIG one!

New Agency Vista Features in 2021

1. Agency Vista’s Most-Loved Releases of 2021
2. New Features for Automating Your Agency’s Marketing
3. More Ways to Build Credibility and Social Proof
4. How We Are Levelling Out The Playing Field

Agency Vista’s Most-Loved Releases of 2021

Let’s kick things off with the headliners! We released 3 huge new features in 2021 designed to help marketing agencies increase their brand awareness, elevate their online reviews, and connect with qualified businesses. 

#1: Partnership Badge and Certification Verification 

If you’re a digital marketing agency, you most likely have heard of the benefits of being a marketing partner, such as a Facebook Marketing Partner or Sendible Agency Partner. Maybe your agency even is one! A vast number of agency partner programs are available that allow agencies to seal their credibility with a stamp of approval from top platforms and earn the well-respected badge.

But, some businesses will add these badges to their website even if they haven’t been awarded them to deceive website visitors. Credible marketing agencies need to verify these partnership badges and awards through a third-party source businesses can trust. 

With Agency Vista, you can verify your partnership badge and certifications directly on your profile and in front of businesses actively looking to hire. Additionally, the search can be filtered by these badges for businesses to discover their perfect marketing agency easily. And the best part? It’s available on all paid plans!

When you connect and verify your partnership badges, you also can be added to dedicated lists as one of the top agencies for those specific tools and partner programs. This will allow your agency to rank for keywords on and off Agency Vista’s network providing tremendous SEO benefits while fostering credibility. 

TIP: Connect all of your partnership badges and certifications to be included on more lists and placements throughout Agency Vista. This will help ensure maximum engagement and exposure of your profile to your ideal clients. 

#2: Premium Lists

Let’s all agree that B2B directories and search engine giants are biased to the businesses with the biggest budgets. It can be incredibly difficult for small to medium-sized agencies to rank on the first page of these lists for relevant keywords. 

This can also result in agencies competing against others that may not be the top candidate for that service but somehow wind up at the top of the list.

And that’s exactly why we launched Premium Lists this year. 

Available on our Agency Vista Premium and Viral plans, Premium Lists helps you level out the playing field by taking data-driven information from your profile to rank and recommend your agency on premium list placements. 

You’ll not only rank on Agency Vista for these keywords but on search results as well. 75% of people don’t scroll past the first page on a Google search, which is why your agency needs to rank on page 1 of Google. 

This also is proved to be more credible as it isn’t company-generated communication. When a credible third-party source provides information to a business, it is viewed as more trustworthy due to the vetting process and ranking standards of the publishing entity. 

And Premium Lists are frequently distributed through press release organizations such as PR Newswire. 

#3: Automatic Lead Generation

Finding top-quality leads for your agency got a whole lot easier this year with Agency Vista’s Automatic Lead Generation solution. 

Businesses can now review, compare, save, and contact an agency in a matter of minutes. 

Agency Vista’s main goal is to connect marketing agencies with the most eligible leads – a new age of marketing calls for new pre-qualified vetting. 

Our assisted-agency matching questionnaire eliminates wasting time on warming up poor quality leads. This unparalleled feature minimizes time spent through the buyer’s journey while providing you with the most qualified leads.

The best part? A matched agency will automatically be saved to the businesses profile for future reference and contacted to get things started. Say goodbye to time spent filtering through businesses and say hello to focusing on what matters: fuelling growth for your agency.

And did we mention that it’s available on Essential, Premium, and Viral plans? Yup, Automatic Lead Generation is available to all agencies with an upgraded plan on Agency Vista. 

Not only is this a huge time saver, but it’s also a perfect solution for every budget size. 

New Features for Automating Your Agency’s Marketing

Managing your client’s marketing can take up a significant amount of your time. Every agency employee has received the “one more thing” email at least a hundred times. You’re inevitably going to have clients request a last-minute copy or design change, which can take up hours out of your day. 

That’s why we built four new tools to make it easier to increase your brand awareness and drive lead generation for your agency without taking time away from your clients. 

#4: Recommended Agency 

Automatically appear under similar agency profiles to generate more qualified leads with our Recommended Agency feature. 

Available on our Premium and Viral plans, agencies can acquire prospects right from their competitor! Additionally, agencies on the premium or viral plan will have this feature disabled from their profile to eliminate driving leads to their competitors.

The funnel approach, which is a traditional method of lead generation, has many factors that can prevent a marketing agency from gaining the best quality of leads. This is mainly because this technique focuses on attracting a broad audience through gated content or contact forms on websites followed by a lengthy nurture sequence. 

The biggest problem with this approach is that it is incredibly time-consuming and is not highly targeted, which typically results in a significant number of unqualified leads with zero chances of converting. It’s like casting a wide net and hoping a high-quality lead slips in. Having a thousand leads does not automatically translate to new business opportunities. Waste of Time, energy, and resources is also a side-effect.

Appearing as a recommended agency establishes credibility for your agency to a defined audience searching for similar services to your offerings. 

And good news — this feature gets automatically applied to your profile when you upgrade your plan to premium or viral!

#5: Reviews as a Service (RaaS)

A powerful and handy update: you can now tap into our complimentary Reviews as a Service (RaaS) program when you become a verified agency. 

Put your review engine on autopilot by leveraging our team to collect reviews from previous and current customers for you. 

There are thousands of marketing agencies available, and that number is only rising. It’s crucial to harness the power of online client reviews for a stronger online presence built on credibility. 

Online reviews play a crucial role in improving your agency’s current client trust and confidence. It is a particularly important strategy for marketing agencies as it can provide an edge over competitors who do not use or have any client reviews. 

Save time by letting Agency Vista collect your client reviews when you become a verified agency!

#6: Inclusion in Marketing Material

Have your agency featured in more, higher quality content that will increase your agency’s expertise, authority, relevance, and trust by being included in our marketing material. 

According to coSchedule, it takes most marketers between one to six hours to create a piece of content. 

If your agency spends that time crafting content, it can be incredibly frustrating when it doesn’t get any engagement. The reality is the people you are trying to reach are bombarded with immense quantities of marketing material, most of which they tune out and little to which they actually trust. 

Agencies need to be included in content to foster a better reputation and increase the loyalty of their current client base while building new relationships.

Inclusion in our marketing material is available to agencies on Premium and Viral plans. 

#7: White Label Customer Intake Questionnaire

Easily integrate Agency Vista’s white-labeled customer intake questionnaire in a matter of clicks. 

A strategic way to start the buyers journey is through a detailed client intake questionnaire. This provides agencies with the information they need to quickly provide smart solutions to prospects and lay the foundation for a successful business relationship. Intake questionnaires also give off the impression to prospects that your agency is experienced, professional, and equiped to solve their client’s problems. 

This feature can be used for prospecting and onboarding new clients. The idea is straightforward – instead of spending time building out an intake questionnaire or having numerous discovery calls, an agency can simply put an already built and customizable questionnaire that is available as part of all agency profiles. The questionnaire can be fully customized to fit your branding. Specifically, you can:

• Choose a domain that hosts your questionnaire (this requires you to create a CNAME record pointing to agencyvista.com)
• Agent picture (this will be the picture of the person that is shown to the user)
• Return URL (this will redirect the user once the form is completed)
• Primary color (set the primary color to match your brand colors)

This feature is already integrated into every agency’s profile and can be easily installed on an agency’s website. And did we mention that it’s free? Yup, the customer intake questionnaire is available on all Agency Vista plans, including our free plan.

More Ways to Build Credibility and Social Proof

Social proof and credibility are key for marketing agencies to convey authority and build new business relationships. In 2021, we added new feautres to help you establish even more credibility and social proof for your agency. 

Lower the barrier for prospects to choose your agency — with strategic solutions available within Agency Vista. 

#8: Client Verification

Whether you’re looking to acquire new clients or establish more authority for your agency, client verification is a stellar tool for increasing credibility and conversions.

This updated process will help give prospects a truly holistic view of the agency they’re evaluating. The new client verification process requires validation of that relationship to receive a verified agency badge.

Fake online reviews are becoming a bigger problem than buying likes on Instagram. Buying online reviews damages the credibility of the business. It signals to the audience that the business not willing to put in the work to build an actual relationship. 

Although Google says that it has strict policies against fake online reviews, from the looks of it, it needs to update its game because such fraudulent activities are happening on its platform, which can be financially harmful to the buyers.

We can all agree that the marketing agency landscape is a very saturated market right now – with everyone claiming they are an expert. With client verification, we ensure all agencies’ experience and success are stamped with a seal of trust and confirmation.

#9: Social Media Integration

Agency Vista profiles allow social media integration to empower the business and help the agency connect with its ideal target audience directly. 

There’s no denying it — being active and consistent on social media as a marketing agency is vital if you want a business to trust you with their digital marketing. 

The power of social media is such that it can make or break any business. According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 Report, how people discover new brands and decide what to buy is evolving, with 7 in 10 internet users saying that they now go beyond search engines when examing information about products and services to buy.

Agencies that integrate their social media profiles to Agency Vista can assist prospects in the decision-making process and build a trusting relationship from the start. 

#10: Agency Vista’s Verified Badge

The Agency Vista verified badge is awarded to agencies that meet the highest standards of our vetting process. If an agency’s got a badge, it tells prospects that they’re a credible business that is among the best at what they do. 

Agency Vista’s data-driven marketing agency ecosystem utilizes key details in an agency’s profile to unite forward-focused professionals across the globe. Our verification process requests agencies to provide detailed information on their business to help us rank and recommend the top agencies – providing brands with a trusted resource when selecting a marketing agency. 

Agency Vista verified badges are not for sale and can only be awarded to agencies based on their quality of service and recommendability.

According to a study by Reboot Online, “linking out to authoritative sites appropriately and in the correct context may help rank your blog or website higher in Google search results.” Verified agencies can harness this power of influence by installing the badge on their website or in their email signature. This allows prospects and clients to better understand the verified badge’s significance. 

Leveling Out The Agency Playing Field 

Last but not least, we made a few extra changes here and there to make Agency Vista even better this year. 

#11: Bringing Justice to Marketing Agencies

It’s certainly not a good thing for smaller agencies with great services, great content, and great value propositions to be sidelined because they don’t have the budget to compete. 

For many B2B directories and search results, this is the case. And for small to mid-sized agencies, improving SEO, brand awareness, and lead generation is a bigger challenge. 

Agency Vista’s platform utilizes data-driven information to rank and recommend providers — the system can’t be cheated, and it can’t be bought. 

We strive to put the most notable and verified marketing agencies in front of businesses. There are dedicated lists and content pieces to provide support for certain communities that have struggled to gain recognition and make new connections. 

The focus here is on providing a safe and credible space for the expression of individual and/or collective talents. In clearer terms, Agency Vista empowers all-sized marketing agencies to reach new customers and drive strategic relationships. 

#12: Budget-Friendly Solutions

Small to mid-sized agencies often have a tight marketing budget to work with, making promoting their agency a challenge. The current solutions? Online advertising (the average CPA on Facebook is $18.68) or hiring an in-house marketer, which can be costly. According to Payscale, the average salary for a marketing agency employee is $59,000/year (or $4,916.66/Mo) . 

Say you decide to run a Facebook link clicks campaign for the daily minimum budget of $5/day. This would require a minimum monthly budget of $150. Agency Vista upgraded plans start at $74/month on annual memberships. That’s a savings of 50% and you’re getting so much more for your money!

Agency Vista plans focus on solving the common pain points to marketing agencies and provide cost-effective solutions for all. There are tons of upgraded features to streamline your marketing without taking time away from your clients. 

With Agency Vista upgraded plans, you can increase your brand awareness to a defined audience of businesses looking to hire and be recognized as a thought leader for your unique offering. Have tailored content about your agency shared across multiple channels, gain powerful insights, and seamlessly collaborate with prospective clients through your profile. 

And that’s a wrap!

Thanks for doing 2021 with us. It hasn’t been easy, but we’re so grateful you joined us for the ride.

We can’t wait to bring you new Agency Vista features in 2022 and continue helping you market and scale your agency. Cheers to the new year!