In digital marketing itself, because of its own necessity in business, businesses often try to use digital marketing service firms.

naturally, there are debates on in-house versus agency, and at times, a company might want to have a full-time agency onsite. And given the higher cost of an agency, a company needs to get as much as it can from the agency.

To ensure great outcomes for your clients, make sure you remember these four things.

1. Set clear expectations and communicate when things change

Without proper customer expectations, some agencies would rather move on to their next sale. So make sure to know what success actually looks like for you. At the same time, define clear success benchmarks on how you can expect your business to do during that quarter, the next 6 months and finally at the end of the year.

For example, what is the preliminary measure for success you would like to establish? It can be a Key Performance Indicator that relates to sales or leads. It could be a certain amount of website traffic or engagement. It’s also possible your marketing campaign is about empowerment and supporting your team members with creative assets or expertise resources as needed. If you haven’t had a discussion with your agency about expectations, there is a good chance they are thinking about success differently or you and them have different timelines.

Of course you also need to be prepared to see volatile marketing metrics and, month after month and year after year, understand and be prepared to see both absolute and relative growth numbers. If varying and not clearly predicted expectations aren’t mentioned, please allow for some disappointment and unhappiness down the line.

2. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle

If you are too close to the problem, then it’s difficult to find a practical solution for it. But if you’re an in-house marketer, this problem becomes more magnified due to the fact that you know what, or are at least aware of, actual sales or revenue outcomes of your business.

Clients and agencies can gain insight and a new perspective through their clients and clients’ champions. However, to get the best outcome, both parties must maintain free-flowing communication and trust one another. Both parties should have access to real-time data and feedback on the impact of their campaigns on business revenue.

Having information about your company’s market requirements and challenges, recruiting new clients and plans will make sure that the plans for collaboration and communication with them do not compete with current reports and customer acquisition reports.

3. You and your digital agency are on the same team with the same goals

A client-agency relationship is based on mutual respect among equals who trust the other’s knowledge and judgement. Furthermore, the opposite of this is the case of an agency managing a client via fear or in a reactive manner). During conflict, it’s best to address this matter head-on in order to find the best solution.

When you hire an agency with the expectation that you dictate exactly what they will do, how they solve problems, then actions only actions, you will probably never see their best work. This kind of work is best left for an execution agency rather than a strategic marketing partner, like ADMA. Likewise, if your agency believes they have all the answers and do not take the time to discuss strategies and make sure you are aligned with their approach, then you should be concerned about the effectiveness of their work.

4. Feedback is a two-way street

Hiring an agency is all about setting expectations correctly. Communication is so important, so having open conversations about mutual respect is critical. But arguing back-and-forth about your ideas at the same time is not helpful.

You’ve known it as the dirty uncle of customer reviews – that simply is not nice. It can also break relationships, as well as lead to an unhappy client and eventually poor return business too.

An agency should always be appointed to deliver an outcome, and clients should always give clear feedback on how things are going from their perspective. Just as strongly, an agency needs to let clients know when they believe the clients are working against the goals of the campaign.
Sometimes a planner is making suggestions that attendees don’t want to directly contradict and sometime a conference call might be discussing the wrong topics just because we’re no better than we already are. Also, there might be times when a client needs to know that their website and messaging just isn’t up to scratch and this marketing advisor will help them with links and ways to improve this.

Sometimes these conversations may seem like torture. But they are very rarely as tough as you expect them to be. Often people go through these conversations greatly simplified and fulfilling their dire consequences; other times people can face even worse consequences by making little changes.

In summary

When you’re already going with an agency, it is worth reviewing your relationship with them. You need to ask if expectations of campaign results have been clearly set, what kind of feedback and escalation process they have in place, how often Digital Marketing Agency will get in touch with you and finally, what kinds of questions have been asked about your business.

With this agency, all our clients here at ‘ ADMA ‘ not only benefit from our providers, but also from their relationship with the company. This is one of the best ways for agencies to build trust with their clients and other brands that they work with. So, if you’d like to take the plunge into agency firm, get in touch!