If you are a business owner and have recently boarded a professional marketing agency, it’s time you take serious lessons on how to manage your relationship with a marketing agency. Brad Sugars, Founder of ActionCoach rightly exclaimed that “Business is all about relationships. How well you build them determines how well they build your business!” , and we go a step further and tell you that the relationship between marketing agencies and businesses is no different.
But, Why is it Important to Build a Relationship With a Marketing Agency?
The professional marketing agency you have hired to take care of your business’s marketing would be designing your campaigns, marketing activities, and so forth. This would also decide your business presence, reputation, and customer-business interaction. Not only this, but this would also affect how well your business will be anticipated by your customers.
Further, as marketing is directly related to ROI, revenues, and goal achieving for business, it is paramount you make sure you are in a fruitful and healthy relationship with your agency!
So, how can you maintain a healthy relationship with your agency? well there are ways to improve agency relationships, and we’ll guide you through them one by one.
Maintaining a relationship with your marketing agency can be daunting, and cumbersome. As both parties have to look at a lot of business processes, meetings, and team events, it becomes a challenge to remove time for interactions at regular intervals!
But, by following a few simple strategies, (don’t miss the bonus strategy at the end!) you can ensure that you establish a progressing and cordial relationship with your marketing agency.
Here are the Strategies (and, a Bonus Strategy)
Pause! Pause! Would you like to take a recap? reconsider a simple step, and let your brand win in the argument between hiring a digital marketing agency vs building an in-house team
1. Establish Regular Effective Communication
Effective Communication has the power to unleash challenges, bottlenecks, strengths, and so forth. It can assist in detailed S.W.O.T analysis for a business. Therefore, it is important you communicate well with your marketing agency!
But, it doesn’t mean you reach them thrice a day or request reports four times a week. This would kill the flexibility, and room of freedom to execute planning and strategies. Establishing efficient communication means informing, and updating them at regular intervals.
If you change your product, services, or business’s approach, update them on time so that they can reflect that on the marketing strategy for your business. Further, also communicate about what you are expecting, and looking forward to. This would drive transparency and help you manage your relationship with a marketing agency.
2. Be Clear about your Goals, and your Expectations
Establishing a clear communication is being just half way there, you ought to run the trail of your end goals with your marketing agency and align your marketing strategies accordingly.
When your business goals are in place and all your other actions are streamlined according to those, then your outcomes from digital marketing will also be satisfactory as you had already performed the requisite for your business.
Also, aligning your business goals and your digital marketing, lets your agency take a preview of your past online marketing, that drives a compatible marketing strategy. This is necessary to connect your online ads with the brand’s tone, that in turn increases the recall value of your brand.
3. Control Your “Interference”!
Some businesses have the nature to regularly interfere or suggest strategies, planning, and successive moves to their marketing agency. This can kill your marketing agency’s creative side, and make them followers of your vision.
Whereas, not followers, only partners can take your business a step forward!
Therefore, believe in your agency’s idea, and process. Have faith in the steps taken by your agency to fuel your business growth and vision. If needed, do share your suggestions but give them complete onus and freedom to design, plan, and execute marketing strategy for your business. And you just enjoy the results!
4. Cut The Crap, and Be Transparent!
Think of a situation when your marketing agency’s idea and execution didn’t match your expectations or didn’t deliver the results you were anticipating. Well, this is not scarce and it often happens with businesses; even with the ones succeeding in the real market!
But, the important thing is, What would you do? Will you communicate this to your agency? Or, would you wait for another month to get your desired results? If the answer to this is the former, you are on the right track already!
Whenever you feel the professional marketing agency you hired is not providing you desired results, share your feedback immediately. Don’t linger on your disappointment, and make a mountain out of a molehill! Inform, and share your feedback and concern straight away. This would help your agency in mapping its style of work with your expectations, and is the right way to manage your relationship with a marketing agency from the very beginning.
5. Ride With Your Agency!
When two parties are in a result-driven relationship, it is paramount that both parties believe in each other. And, same goes while trying to manage your relationship with a marketing agency!
To ensure you get the most out of this relationship, be less of a critic, and start believing! Believe in your agency’s team and execution. contemplate the thought that they know better than you when it comes to marketing, and would therefore provide the best for your business.
But, this nowhere means you become lenient in tracking your marketing growth. As most agencies would provide CRM to access your marketing growth and progress, belief in numbers. Comprehend what numbers say but also ride along with your agency, and reckon that results can take time. Don’t expect skyrocketed growth every day.
These were some of the ways of maintaining a relationship with your professional marketing agency. But, wait, are you still unsure about hiring a digital marketing agency? Read about these 7 signs that say that you need to hire a marketing agency.
6. A Great Client is a Flexible Leader
As important as you would think a marketing agency’s role for your brand’s success is. Even more important is the way you sail with the agency.
If you look at it this way, you represent your company, not to the public at this moment, but a vendor who has the right resources and tools to shape your brand’s image online. Thinking likewise, it gets important for you as a representative of your brand to provide an appropriate download of the knowledge that this particular marketing requires, and to act like a leader who is here to drive productivity.
You have to step into the shoes of a flexible leader, being available to review each creative, adding on to existing strategies, listening to your marketing agency’s time tested advice, and bringing more liberal thoughts on the table to push your marketing online in a seamless manner.
But, Where’s My Bonus Strategy?
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered, and we remember our promise. Here is your bonus strategy-
7. Automate Approvals!
Believe it or not, this correctly fits the criteria of a bonus strategy! If you’ll ask your agency about what is the hardest challenge for them to crack, the majority of agencies will say “Getting Approvals on time!” and this is indeed the most maddening challenge for businesses as well.
Automating this can change the shape of your marketing execution plan. To begin with, decide with your agency on CRM or a common platform where they can share content, and creatives they need approval for, and you or your team can share your feedback across. Along with this, decide a day, and time. Let’s say Friday; at 3 PM!
By the scheduled time, your agency can drop in things, or assets they need approvals for, and you can share your feedback on the same. This would mitigate steps for a to and fro communication, and can help gain a proper flow of work for both parties, hence making you easily manage your relationship with a marketing agency.
So, Are you Ready to Establish a Relationship That Drives Profits?
Marketing is one of those business operations that can directly affect your profits and revenues. So, why don’t you get it done right, and effectively? And, an effective business relationship is the right way to achieve it.
Start today with the above-mentioned strategies, and experience marketing growth by strengthening a relationship with your professional marketing agency!
Just started with a newly hired marketing agency? Know these 5 must do things in the first 30 days with your marketing agency.