If you’re thinking about retaining a full-service marketing agency, are already working with one, or are considering doing so in the future, understanding how to get the most out of your marketing agency can make a significant difference to the results you achieve.
A successful agency partnership is built on collaboration, clear communication and shared objectives. By investing time in the relationship from the outset, you’ll help your agency develop more effective strategies, deliver stronger campaigns and create better long-term outcomes for your organisation.
We’ve put together a few practical tips to help you get the very best from your marketing agency partnership.
1. Be as clear as you can about what you need
If you don’t know what you intend to achieve from your marketing activity, it is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, for your agency to fulfil those objectives.
Be clear on what you want and need – or let them know you’ll need help designing objectives. Start within your organisation and plan out what you want to achieve, who you want to target – the more information you can provide an agency with, the quicker and cheaper it will be for them to devise a marketing strategy and campaigns to meet your needs.
2. Know your audience
In 2021, customers expect personalised experiences, therefore segmenting your target audience is vital to create marketing campaigns that best focus on and engage with each group. Companies such as Netflix and Spotify do an excellent job of knowing their audience allowing them to create a personal experience for each user.
If you’re not sure where to start with segmenting your target audiences, Mackman offers marketing persona workshops where our experts work with your team to identify your different target groups and their behavioural traits.
3. Establish clear goals
Make sure between yourself and the agency you set clear and SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely) objectives for your marketing campaigns. This helps when it comes to measuring the success of your marketing efforts over time. It allows both parties to be clear on what has worked and what needs more focus throughout the campaign, without any subjective influences.
4. Invest in the relationship
By appointing a marketing agency you are no doubt trying to take the pressure off your internal employees by handing over projects. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to invest in that agency/client relationship. The agency is only as good as the relationship with a client. Therefore, make sure you have the resources in house to deal with questions, information requests or approval from your agency.
5. Be honest and open
This is a relationship based on mutual respect and trust. Agencies can easily meet smart objectives but only as long as they’ve based their solutions on accurate information, so be honest, let us know what you’re really trying to achieve, and how we can meet your needs further.
7. Be open minded
It can be really hard to accept information or recommendations that go against your initial thoughts. However, a good agency will base all suggestions and concepts on robust and thorough research and knowledge, not just on a whim.
Remember, you’ve employed this agency to come up with an innovative solution so don’t constrain this process and you might be surprised with the results. However, if you really don’t agree, this is a collaborative relationship, challenge the results and see what happens.
Lastly…
Most importantly enjoy the process. Working with an agency should be fun. If you don’t enjoy seeing these ideas come to life and most importantly having a positive impact on your business, you’re not doing it right.