How to get the most from your marketing agencies?
I’ve worked in marketing and communications agencies for a little while now and I have represented clients large and small. Some with millions of dollars of marketing budget and others with pennies, or in some cases nothing at all. If you want to get the most from your agency, whether professional marketer or small business owner, there are a few factors you really should think about.
I am constantly surprised by how few marketers know how to effectively brief and manage an agency. As such, here are a few thoughts from someone who has sat on both sides of the client agency divide:
1. Start with a strong brief
All too often agencies are given a brief that is either too broad for there to be a clear definition of success, or is too defined so as to restrict creativity and allow little room for creativity and strategic consulting. There is no standard agency briefing template, but you should consider the following:
- Background to your business / industry
- Short analysis of trading conditions, including the market, key competitors
- Your companies strengths and weaknesses
- Budget and any preferences you have for its expenditure
- Target audiences – who is the decision maker you want to reach
- Broad objective – create Awareness, Interest, Desire or Action – in most cases for a small business you want to create action as there is little point in engaging in a brand building exercise.
- Timescales – when do you need to have the work completed?
Overall, what are your specific measures of success? For example do you need to see a 15% increase in sales, or 100 new leads for your sales managers to follow-up on.
The key with the brief is to be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound – to use the old SMART acronym.
2. Build a strong relationship
All agencies will want to build a relationship with you and your first port of call will often be an account handler. My best advice to you is to build a strong relationship with this person, ensure they understand what you need and when, ask them to report on progress regularly and importantly reward them for good work. The account handler will be responsible for ensuring all other elements of the agency team pull together to service your account effectively.
I have two examples of recent best and worst practice in this regard.
- The best practice client develop a partnership approach, involving the account handler in decision making, asking and taking advice, setting clear goals and ensuring the agency was well represented within the client company. Once the programme had achieved its objectives, the client properly rewarded the entire agency team with lunch and a mention to the agency bosses how well they had performed
- The worst practice saw the client take on an authoritative approach, overruling every recommendation made, treating agency staff poorly and generally being quite arrogant – the client is always right approach. As you might imagine, the project did not run so smoothly and ultimately the objectives were not met.
One client would dearly benefit from some lessons from the other.
3. Agree suitable budgets
All agencies will take a slightly different approach to fees depending on the client and your objectives. You may find you are quoted based on time, or a set fee for a project, or a monthly retainer for ongoing services. Your particular objectives will be more suited to one than the other and the agency will identify the best fit.
Ideally, and particularly if the economy becomes more challenging, you may want to set some performance based payments, e.g. you will pay 100% of the fees if the agency reaches the agreed targets of PR coverage, or uplift in sales enquiries. An example might be:
Target: 10 pieces of coverage in national newspapers
Fee: £10,000
Scale: £1,000 per piece of coverage achieved, with a minimum fee of £8,000.
This provides you with a little protection against under performance and the agency will have the incentive to perform.
If you consider this route, add a little carrot along with the stick. In other words reward your agency for over performance to the same scale as if they under perform. Not forgetting of course to set this as a line item in your marketing budget.
4. Communicate regularly
No matter what field of marketing or communications your agency specialises in, they will need to talk with you frequently. A successful campaign is rarely run by an agency in isolation.
For example, they will often need speedy approvals of copy or images, or a quick turnaround when a journalist requests more information or a quote, or they may need sign-off on a particular choice of advertising vehicle.
In addition, for ongoing campaigns, they may advise you on how to react to news or crises, or provide input for where they believe strategy could benefit from tweaking. Listen to their advice, particularly in the case of specialised agencies, and agree on next steps together.
The key is to make yourself available to the agency and to listen. After all, you are paying them for their expertise.
5. Evaluate and feedback continually
Along with ongoing communication with regards to the tactical implementation of any campaign, don’t forget too to feedback at a higher level. Agencies, like employees, need the opportunity to react to negative feedback, as well as positive of course.
A quarterly feedback meeting may be appropriate but each campaign will operate on different timescales. The importance is to keep up the two way evaluation, feedback and communication.
6. Pay a visit to their offices
Agency teams are often extremely busy. Of course you are too and, as the client, you should expect a certain level of service. However, consider how often you ask them to travel to your offices and think whether it may be practical to pay them a visit instead.
This small courtesy will provide you with an insight into their agency style, level of creativity and environment. In addition it will give you the opportunity to meet with the broader account team and possibly more senior agency management. All of these factors may benefit both your campaign effectiveness but also your ongoing relationship with the agency.
Agency client relationships are vital to the success of any campaign. Whether it is advertising, PR, web design, DM or other, it is very easy to get this wrong. The emphasis to my mind should always lie in a strong relationship built on clear performance objectives.
Whilst it may be difficult for a small business owner or someone new to the game, there is certainly no excuse for a professional marketer to manage his / her agencies poorly.
If you want some advice about how to choose the right agency, there is a decent enough article on Business Link, or you could do worse than looking up the PRCA (Public Relations Consultants Association) or the CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing).
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I am a fan of the last tip, to visit the marketing agency. Makes a lot of sense, and those people do work hard. Sounds like a reasonable gesture to me . . .
That’s some good advice. I think a lot of people assume that the agency knows best so often won’t worry about providing them with background to the industry, company strengths etc but as you say this is one of the most essential parts.
From experience communicating regularly is essential - if an agency thinks that you’re not too interested in what they’re doing then they won’t put a strong emphasis on working on your company.
Thanks for the great advice! I really like your steps especially the last one. Like Jasper Lesen said, it sounds like a reasonable gesture.
Well, I am not a fan of marketing agencies to say the least. Marketing agencies are worth the money, and they are great for huge or local businesses such as a PR firm or law firm, but even now traditional marketing methods are starting to die out. But this was a good post.
Nice tips indeed. Marketing agencies are a must these days, and these tips could be really essentials for making a deal with them. I would put visiting the agency on the top of the list, because as marketing agency will be introduced with your business, you will also want to see their system also, and to evaluate it is it professional or not.
Thanks for the tip!
Good points to consider in the marketing world.
This is an interesting post. Thanks a lot for the pointers. Hope to see your new posts.
You have a great point with the visit the office statement. So many marketing agencies are now one or two man shows operating out of their homes and many times there are hard working people, but I do not want to trust my company to them.
Great stuff here. Number 3 really stood out to me, as far as having some performance-based metrics established ahead of time, so that nobody can try to over-value their work, or accuse you of under-valuing it. Spelling it out like this is a great way to avoid a potential “butting of heads”, because both parties know what to expect. Thanks for sharing.
Nice tips, really. Marketing agencies are a must these days, and these tips could be really essentials for making a deal with them. I would put visiting the agency on the top of the list, because as marketing agency will be introduced with your business, you will also want to see their system also, and to evaluate it is it professional or not.
First of all is thanks for sharing those pointers to us, listed above is some of the good pointers that should be implemented in marketing online. My mind was focus in this two: Start with a strong brief and Build a strong relationship with the customers, having a focus and willed mind will help you to reach your goal and having a professional bond with your customer is a good sign for the better business transaction in the future.
That’s some good advice. You have a great point with the visit the office statement. I think a lot of people assume that the agency knows best. Good points to consider in the marketing world. Thanks for sharing this in your post with us.
Good article and nice tips. I think it worths for $1K.
http://seonseo.blogspot.com
A lot of companies, especially big ones tend to dominate every aspect of a campaign, even the creative side. An advertising and marketing firm thrives on it’s ability to come with new ideas and propositions, so tying their hands in those terms could lead to not-so-great relationship.
I am not a fan of marketing agencies to say the least. Marketing agencies are worth the money, and they are great for huge or local businesses such as a PR firm or law firm. I think a lot of people assume that the agency knows best. Good points to consider in the marketing world.
This is a GREAT list, it should be required reading for companies who aren’t sure what they want from an agency. I wish clients understood these concepts before coming to me, my life would be so much easier.
Nice advice. It happen often that there are companies that offers services, takes money but customer somehow doesn’t get what he’d paid for.
This should be “a must read” for some SEO “expert” that does very bad job - almost no effect and are just taking advantage on people, that are not webmasters but want customers from their webs.
Great advice. At the end of the day, it all boils down to communication. You also have to start a project with a strong idea of what you want done, and the expected results. that said, be open to change if they have a better idea than you. After all, they do it for a living, but it is your money.
i think #4 is the most crucial. so many things go awry when there is a lack of communication. money is wasted, time slips away, the direction is altered… just not a pretty picture :/
-jack
Nice tips indeed. Marketing agencies are a must these days, and these tips could be really essentials for making a deal with them. I would put visiting the agency on the top of the list, because as marketing agency will be introduced with your business, you will also want to see their system also, and to evaluate it is it professional or not.
Marketing agencies are a must these days, and these tips could be really essentials for making a deal with them. I would put visiting the agency on the top of the list, because as marketing agency will be introduced with your business, you will also want to see their system also, and to evaluate it is it professional or not.
Great article, very nice tips, I am definitely taking down some notes on this one.
I used to work at a SEM agency and experienced both sides of the spectrum here. Some clients were very cooperative and eager to learn, and some were downright rude. However, I felt bad for most of our clients because we charged way too much and they weren’t getting any value out of our services.
I own my own small business and your article was very informative. I own a commercial truck dealership and my marketing campaigns and agencies have always been sub par. I live and work outside a major city and I feel that the agencies in my area might just be of poor quality. Should I be able to find a great agency in a more rural setting that is willing to work on lower budget campaigns? Thanks for your help.
Hi Isuzu Commercial Truck. You should definitely be able to find good small town agencies and yes they should operate on smaller budgets than big city firms. It will often be the case that smaller agencies will actually be owned or managed by people who have learned their trade at a bigger agency. If you are worried about getting a good service agree on some performance based payment scales.
Seems a lot of you agree on the importance of good communications. This was proven once again to me yesterday when we invited a client into our agency and had a fantastic meeting. Agreed on some clear action points ad build a better working relationship. Great clients.
Shuwix and others having problems with SEO agents. Agree clear objectives, define what success looks like and relate fees to performance. Simple as that, if the SEO expert is confident they can deliver a good product, this shouldn’t be a problem.
A good internet marketing agency can do all of this for us .Advertising agencies are mostly doing up by shifting the base from traditional marketing to cater to increasing demands in online advertising.
The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses.Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets.
Thanks for the nice review on marketing…I may be need your services at some point in the future.
That’s some good advice. You have a great point with the visit the office statement. I think a lot of people assume that the agency knows best. Good points to consider in the marketing world. Thanks for sharing this in your post with us.