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Having a marketing agency on your side can help you achieve your business goals. But it’s not always easy. There are a lot of moving parts and lots of collaboration involved in getting the job done, which means there’s plenty of room for mistakes. In order to get the most value out of your marketing agency, you’ll need to understand what they do and how they work—and that means communicating effectively with them throughout the process. In this post, we’ll show you how!

Choose the right partner.

Choosing the right partner is critical to your success. A good agency will understand your business, goals, and culture. They should be willing to listen to you, collaborate with your team, and be honest about their capabilities.

Set expectations.

When working with an agency, it’s important to understand what you want from your marketing partner. What are your goals for the relationship? What are the expectations of your agency? How will you measure success?

It’s also important to set expectations with the people at your organization who will work most closely with the agency (e.g., marketing leads or even non-marketing employees). This can be done formally in a meeting, but it may be just as effective when left up to informal conversations throughout a project.

Make transparency a priority.

Transparency is a mainstay of the marketing industry, but it’s not always easy to achieve. When you work with an agency, there are often questions about what they’re doing and why—and sometimes these questions can feel like an intrusion into the creative process. As a client, you need to know that your marketing agency cares about your goals and wants to help you achieve them in the most effective way possible.

That’s where transparency comes in handy: it lets both parties know what information is being shared so everyone can stay on track with their goals and responsibilities.

Transparency also helps make sure everyone stays on the same page throughout the project; if something goes wrong or doesn’t go as planned, there will be no surprises because both parties have been kept informed at all times.

Communicate effectively.

Communicating effectively with your team is crucial to running successful campaigns. To ensure you’re communicating efficiently, try the following:

• Set up regular meetings: Meetings are a great way to get everyone on the same page and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal. They also allow for quick and efficient real-time answers to questions or concerns.
• Use a project management tool: This will help keep everyone organized and accountable. You can assign tasks, track progress, review deliverables, and communicate directly through messages within the system. If you don’t have time for this kind of thing in your busy schedule, find an agency that does!
• Using chat tools such as Slack or HipChat: Chatting is an easy way to stay connected with people who work remotely—or even those who sit right next door! You can chat about work anytime day or night without interrupting anyone else’s workflow (you know how important productivity is).

Listen to expert recommendations.

If you’re working with an agency that’s providing quality, consultative services and has earned your trust over time, then you should be open to listening to their expert recommendations. However, it’s also important to ask questions and make sure that the recommendations align with what you want for your business.

If they’ve done their homework, they’ll be able to explain why they recommend a specific approach—and how it will help achieve your goals—both in terms of short-term benefits (e.g., increased sales) and long-term ones (e.g., building brand awareness).

Find out more about your marketing agency’s team and skills.

• What are you looking for in a marketing agency?
• What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• What are their capabilities and capacity?
• What is their experience in your industry?
• What is their experience with your target audience?
• What is their experience with your competitors?

Understand your organization’s gaps (and how your agency can help).

By identifying your company’s most pressing needs (and how an agency can fill those gaps), you’ll be able to work with them more effectively. What are the pain points that need addressing?

Learn what your business wants to accomplish. Once you understand your organization’s gaps, it’s time to set some goals. These are typically quantifiable, measurable objectives that will help determine the success or failure of a campaign/project/etc. Examples include: “increase sales by 15% over last year” or “improve customer retention by 5%.”

Know what you want your agency to do next (and ask for it). It’s important that both parties have clear expectations about what should happen next in order for collaboration and communication between agencies and clients to be successful—so make sure everyone knows exactly what they’re supposed to do next!

Embrace flexibility with your marketing agency.

Flexibility is key to a successful business relationship. A marketing agency that can adapt and change on the fly will help you get more done in less time—and that’s what every business wants.

To find a marketing agency that’s flexible, start with your search engine of choice. If you’re looking for an agency in New York City, use keywords like “NYC digital marketing agency” or “NYC digital marketing firms.” Then filter down by price range and other factors (like the number of years they’ve been in business). When you find one that looks promising, read reviews from clients so you know what kind of experience they had working with them.

The right type of flexibility depends on what kind of project you’re working on: if it’s a long-term campaign or something short-term like an infomercial video shoot, having a team that understands how to respond quickly will be important. In addition, make sure any potential candidate has experience working in similar industries as yours; otherwise, they may not understand what it takes to meet client needs effectively!

Focus on the outcome, not the output.

It’s easy to get caught up in the details of what a marketing agency is doing and forget about the outcome. The best way to make sure you’re on the same page as your agency is by focusing on the outcomes, not their output.

The outcomes should be specific, measurable, realistic, and timely (SMART). For example:

• Create an SEO strategy for our website that will increase monthly organic traffic by 10% within 3 months.
• Improve our conversion rate from 5% to 8% within 6 months by redesigning our checkout process and creating more compelling ad copy.

Understand key performance indicators (KPIs) and return on investment (ROI) for marketing activities.

Understanding the KPIs and ROI for your marketing activities is very important.

• KPIs are metrics that show how well a business is doing, such as revenue growth and customer retention.
• ROI measures the return on an investment, such as a marketing campaign or advertising budget.

As you work with agencies and consultants, they need to know what your key performance indicators are so they can help you achieve them through their services. This allows agency teams to work with clients more effectively by focusing on areas where the most value can be added, rather than guessing at what those might be based solely on their own experience in similar situations.

Ask about capabilities and capacity early in the relationship.

Ask about their capabilities, not just their skills. Does the agency have access to a team of people who can tackle different parts of the project? Is their team able to manage your project from start to finish or are you expected to be involved in its development?

It’s also worth asking if they have worked with similar companies or projects before; this can give you an idea of what they bring to the table—or whether they’re going into uncharted territory with little experience behind them.

Work within timelines and deadlines (but keep it flexible).

Timelines and deadlines are a critical part of any marketing project. The client will want to know when they can expect the campaign to be completed, and the agency needs to keep its project managers on track.

Timelines should be flexible, but not too flexible; they should allow room for unexpected delays like travel or illness without being too lax about it. Deadlines should be realistic and achievable by all parties involved in the relationship: you, your agency, your team at work, and even external collaborators such as photographers or graphic designers who may need time to prepare their own materials for use in your campaign (a photo shoot isn’t just done on camera—there’s editing and selection!). Finally, both timelines and deadlines need to be shared among everyone involved: that means both clients and agencies alike!

Provide feedback often to your marketing agency.

Providing regular feedback to your marketing agency is a key part of working with them more effectively. It can help you maintain transparency and prove that you understand the value they provide, which can ultimately lead to more engagement with their services.

• Provide feedback often – Ideally, you should be giving your marketing agency feedback on a monthly basis at minimum. The frequency will depend on how often they update or deliver new content for you across social media channels, email campaigns, etc., but it’s important that this does not become an afterthought.
• Give feedback in a timely manner – If there is something wrong with one of their pieces of content (e.g., lots of typos), let them know as soon as possible so that they have time to remedy it before distributing it further. If there are grammatical errors somewhere on your website or blog posts, let them know about those immediately so that these mistakes aren’t perpetuated beyond what’s necessary for making corrections.
• Give feedback on the right things – Make sure that any comments made by either party are constructive rather than destructive—this way both parties can learn from the experience instead of feeling down about something negative occurring between them.
• Be positive! – Remember: Your relationship with your marketing firm should be constructive and positive!

Set a fair budget for your marketing initiatives.

A budget is a key factor in the success of your marketing initiatives, but you also want to make sure that it’s affordable. In order for your marketing agency to deliver on its promises and meet your business objectives, they need to have enough funding so that it can hire the right team members (and pay them well), invest in tools and resources, and deliver on time.

At the same time, you need to be able to afford this expense while also measuring ROI (return on investment). If it seems like too much money at first glance, try breaking down costs by project instead of lumping them all together into one big number—that way if things go wrong along the way, there won’t be a huge loss of funds at once!

It’s not always easy working with a marketing agency, but these tips will make it easier.

Working with a marketing agency is not always easy. There are many things that can go wrong and it’s important to know what the most common pitfalls are so you can avoid them.

To help you get the most out of your relationship with a marketing agency, we’ve summed up the list of tips for how to work more effectively together:

• Choose the right partner in advance—You should choose your partner carefully, especially if it’s someone who will be managing your project and asking for money upfront. Make sure they have good references, are transparent about their pricing model (especially if they’re charging hourly or on a retainer), provide samples of previous work they’ve done for clients like yours, and demonstrate their expertise in everything from social media strategy to SEO best practices, set clear expectations upfront on timelines and deliverables.

Conclusion

To sum up, there are many things to think about when working with a marketing agency, but the key is to keep in mind that your relationship should be long-term. Your organization deserves the best possible marketing strategy and execution of that strategy, and your agency partner should be able to help you achieve it. The tips above will give you a great start on working with an agency effectively.

If your business is looking for a great marketing agency, feel free to contact us to set up a consultation at Reversed Out Creative.

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