How brands interact with their agencies can significantly impact the outcome of their marketing efforts. Our friends at QRY shared ten strategies that the best brands use to ensure their agency relationships flourish. If you want to unlock the full potential of your agency relationship and drive more impactful results, this article is a must-read.
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Agency Management Mastery: 10 Strategies from the Best Brands
Just as a strong relationship between a brand and its customers is crucial for success, so is a productive and trusting relationship between a brand and its agency.
We've compiled a list of ten strategies that successful brands use to manage their marketing agencies effectively. Each of these strategies is a response to common pain points, distilled from our years of experience working with many ecommerce brands.
We implement these strategies at QRY to help ecommerce brands like yours maximize the value of your agency relationship, leading to better collaboration, increased productivity, and more impactful results.
1. Establish Clear Communication Channels
Communication is the cornerstone of a successful client-agency relationship; the more seamless the communication, the more productive the relationship.
Establishing an effective and reliable communication channel at the onset of the relationship is vital. We recommend regular status meetings and streamlined emails. Some teams integrate project management platforms or use a dedicated Slack channel.
Clear communication helps keep everyone aligned on tasks and timelines and ensures that everyone can quickly resolve any issues.
Also, a consistent communication channel fosters transparency and trust, enabling the agency to understand the client's vision and goals.
2. Set Realistic Expectations
Setting goals and expectations is integral to any marketing campaign. However, it's paramount that these are realistic and within the realms of possibility. Exceptional results require time, resources, and the right market conditions.
Unrealistic expectations can cause stress, miscommunication, and dissatisfaction with the project's outcome.
Instead, collaborate with your agency to set achievable yet ambitious goals, factoring in your budget, timeline, market competition, and other key variables.
3. Trust Your Agency's Expertise
Hopefully, you hired your agency because you found them to be a team of experienced subject matter experts with a time-tested process.
When you engage an agency, you want to leverage their expertise and experience. Therefore, it's essential to trust their judgment and give them the freedom to do what they do best.
Consistently second-guessing their decisions or micromanaging the work can hinder and dilute the agency's potential to deliver outstanding results.
4. Provide a Detailed Onboarding
A detailed and thorough onboarding is the foundation of a successful long-term relationship. This onboarding should encapsulate your business objectives, target audience, brand guidelines, key performance indicators, and overall expectations.
The more comprehensive your onboarding, the more effectively the agency can fulfill your needs and understand your expectations.
5. Share Feedback Constructively
Constructive feedback is a vital component in the iterative process of a client-agency relationship. Delivering feedback in a specific, objective, and solution-oriented manner is crucial.
Instead of saying, "I don't like this," explain why a specific aspect doesn't work for you and how you envision it being improved. This feedback gives the agency a clear direction for revisions and helps them better understand your preferences and expectations.
6. Have a Single Point of Contact
To prevent potential confusion and miscommunication, having a single point of contact within your organization who interfaces with the agency is advantageous. This person should gather and synthesize feedback from all relevant internal stakeholders before communicating it to the agency.
Having a single point of contact ensures that the agency receives unambiguous, consistent instructions and feedback, reducing the likelihood of miscommunication and saving valuable time.
7. Understand that Good Work Takes Time
Creating high-quality, strategic, and impactful campaigns is an intricate process requiring research, development, testing, and refinement. While wanting quick results is natural, pressing an agency to rush projects can lead to subpar work and compromised results.
By giving your agency ample time to put their best efforts into the work, you're setting the stage for high-quality outputs that genuinely resonate with your audience and meet your objectives.
8. Be Open to New Ideas
Agencies stay abreast of the latest industry trends and have experience across clients and markets. Their expertise makes them uniquely positioned to offer innovative, out-of-the-box ideas you might have yet to consider.
Embracing these new ideas can lead to distinctive, impactful campaigns that elevate your brand and set you apart from the competition.
If your agency is not regularly being strategic and bringing you new ideas, you should strongly encourage them to do so.
9. Maintain Transparency
Transparency is a crucial ingredient for a successful and harmonious partnership. Be open about your expectations, concerns, budget, and any potential challenges that you foresee.
The more information the agency has about your business, market, competitors, and industry trends, the better equipped they are to strategize effectively and anticipate potential obstacles.
10. Value the Relationship
The client-agency relationship should be viewed as a long-term partnership with a shared vision and goals. Treating the relationship as a strategic partnership leads to a more collaborative and productive working relationship.
The best relationships include regular check-ins, constructive feedback sessions, and appreciation for successful outcomes. Nurturing this relationship can lead to better understanding, improved collaboration, and more successful campaigns.
What's Next?
Effective agency management requires clear communication, realistic goal-setting, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to achieving the best outcomes. By following these principles, clients can ensure a more productive and rewarding relationship with their agency, ultimately leading to more successful outcomes.
Visit https://www.weareqry.com/workshop to learn more about QRY strategy workshops or email them at consultation@weareqry.com to talk to one of their paid media strategists.