Most experienced, in-house marketers will have used agencies at some point in their
careers. When handled in the right way, this relationship can be both creatively and financially rewarding for everyone involved.
Creating the perfect working relationship can be tricky, but here are a few things to think about in order to get the best out of yours.
Choose carefully
The principles are the same no matter what type of agency you’re thinking of hiring. Hiring a digital marketing agency, or a public relations company is often started by asking a few companies to pitch for your work. The size of your company and your budget will impact on how you go out and find agencies.
Do your research, both online and by asking friends, colleagues and peers. You’re looking companies who have experience in your sector and have a proven track record of success.
Beyond the portfolio and stack of awards, try and get to grips with the culture and ethos of your prospective agency partners. If their way of doing business or attitude is incompatible with your own, you will find it difficult to work with them on a long term basis. Chances are, they will feel the same about you.
Don’t bring any baggage into the relationship
Some marketers will have had a bad experience with an agency in the past. This could have been for a number of reasons. Perhaps the agency wasn’t performing or the relationship broke down gradually over time.
After an experience like this, it is difficult not to project your negative emotions onto a new agency. Learn from any mistakes you may have made in your previous agency dealings and go into your new relationship with a clean slate.
This isn’t only true for negative experiences. Some people are lucky enough to have worked with a company who are almost mind readers, they work away, with very little direction, handling every issue and achieving every goal with very little management required. Assuming that your new partners are immediately going to start making your marketing dreams come true with very little help from you is unfair to them.
Be clear about your objectives
Issues between agencies and their clients tend to crop up due to misaligned expectations. Try not to leave too much room for interpretation. At the start of your contract, sit down and work out a list of objectives, milestones and deliverables.
By having this roadmap in place, you both know where you stand and can see immediately if any performance issues are starting to occur. From an agency’s perspective, having this in place gives them confidence in dealing with clients and setting their expectations around their level of service.
When setting goals, be specific. Wanting to improve your website traffic is not detailed enough, and you and your digital agency may both hold different opinions on what that means.
Instead, something along the lines of ‘increase organic traffic by 30 per cent with a resulting increase of website conversions by 12 per cent’.
Hold your agency (and yourself) accountable
Once you have set your objectives, ensure that you are receiving detailed activity reports on a regular basis. Of course, you don’t want all of your precious retainer hours to disappear on reporting, but it is vital that you hold your agency accountable.
Regular reports not only detail that your agency is doing what they said they would but give you an indicator of where you need to tweak your approach or campaigns.
If an agency is reluctant to produce these reports for you, this should be a red flag.
All good working relationships are based on two-way communication. It’s very easy to list your expectations and objectives you expect your agency to reach, but you need to accept the role that you play in this. For instance, know what you want from your email marketing agency, is it just newsletter baking, support with some tips, – or do they need to actively push for better results? Clear expectations, providing the agency with the time and information they need to do their job properly. If you are becoming a bottleneck, then even the most talented digital marketers in the world will not be able to meet your expectations. Even though you are paying them, it ultimately comes down to teamwork.
Create a single point of contact
It’s great when your company embraces your marketing efforts and the marketing agency you have chosen to work with. While this enthusiasm is great, it can sometimes lead to non-marketing areas of the business getting involved and knocking your well-planned activities off the track. You want to try and encourage this enthusiasm because all marketers know how difficult it is to do your job without it.
To try and prevent a marketing frenzy which results in your agency struggling to deal with the multiple projects and stakeholders.
Be clear upfront with how communication will work between you. Ideally, there should only be a single point of contact for each of you. However, in a busy organisation, it may not be possible for only one person to deal with everything. In this case, as long as the marketing team are all following the same marketing plans and objectives, then your agency should only be accepting tasks from them.
It is up to you to put the systems in place internally to focus the flow of projects from your company.
Raise performance issues early
If you’re starting to have concerns about the performance of your agency, then you need to flag these early before mistrust and resentment kick in and the relationship begins to break down.
Any good agency will want you to voice your concerns as soon as you have them. It gives you both the opportunity to discover if your concerns are well-founded, or there has been a misunderstanding or other issue.
If it’s something that can be fixed relatively easily, then great. If not, then don’t be afraid to lay our your expectations for their behaviour and performance, and the consequences if they fail.
Final thoughts
A great relationship with your marketing agency can transform your working life. By being clear about your goals, streamlining your communications and receiving regular activity reports, you can create a relationship that thrives for many years.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash