Choose your next marketing agency which lasts long
Inclusive approach using objective criteria & compatibility factors
Both the enterprises and SMBs outsource some part of marketing operations to digital / marketing agencies. As per statistics brands usually churn their agencies every 2–4 year. Be it change in marketing leadership, agency’s poor performance or paradigm shift in business strategy this is a process mostly all brands go through inevitably.
So it is no surprise this will be cyclical and a heavy lifting exercise — The way you construct objective criteria, decides how far you will go with your agency partner without next churn. Most brands decide their partner around two main drivers — Cost and prior Relationship and that is where the pitfall is. This generally leads the engagement starting on unknown expectations / promises, where generally brands push power by elevating the requirements every now & then; on the contrary agencies keep pulling back and ask for higher billing and commitment. This is equally applicable for big banner global agencies or round the corner freelance shop.
To choose your next agency right you have to avoid any biases and go beyond usual method of selection. Let’s call it “core proposition” but every agency starts as a main proponent to deliver few things well. Be it their pedigree, leadership’s background or agency’s original vision, they started and mostly still be power house of one or two of below:
- Branding solutions and communication strategy
- Creative & design centered shop
- Performance / Direct marketing led
- PR / partnerships / Content centered
- Technology & process oriented
Now there is a catch — you will come across
- Full service agency — grown by acquiring mini companies from above
- Full service agency — organically built over time
We have to look past their impressive story and smart ass pitch to find the real deal. Evaluation list needs to have objective criteria which will take your relationship a long way:
1. Vertical specialization: This alone can make or break your marketing investment, there is difference between a full service agency to show few industry case references and single industry focused agency. Look internally to see if your industry is complex / highly competitive and needing to go after a small market e.g. Student loan refinance, electric hybrid vehicles, home cleaning robots, online learning programs etc. So do you want to learn this space with someone who will be doing it first time with you or with someone who knows the tricks of trade?
2. Technology investments & partnerships: Many agencies invest in their own / partner platforms in three areas — Execution, Intelligence and Audience. Each of them brings some value based on applicability to your scope. This needs to be vetted to see what data they ingest, but having ad copy algorithm or audience saturation framework can outrun manually driven processes both in time to market and cost of execution in medium term.
3. Agency fee structure: You may have to ask dozens of questions to get this right, but as said devil is in the detail. Based on your engagement many of following will apply i.e. trafficking fee, ad tech platform fee, creative assets cost, campaign management fee, people cost, audit fee, ad serving, audience segments cost, implementation fee, additional package for web page, tagging, creative development; additional change request for out of scope work, strategy revisit and travel cost. So agencies may put some of this as part of percentage of media, a retainer, and technology fee. But it’s for you to spot where they are not transparent and need to tighten your contract to avoid churn just because of loose terms and conditions.
4. Operating model: When your campaign flights dates are next week, you need all hands on deck to rally around and deliver. This goes back to how you want to set up your strategy, planning and execution teams to hand shake considering their operating locations. You may be pitched with hub and spoke model; or global low cost media centers. Be wise in taking high rush holiday season, cycles of new offers and events in calendar year and operating turnaround time to go live into consideration to choose an agency which is either heavily local (step in to your office any work day) or sitting in another city with different time zone & support structure.
5. International partnerships: Your next agency will go all nine yards to prove their worth, showcase their gold partnership and premium status. That’s not it, what you need is your agency partner to have connects with bigwigs for trouble shooting support, TG specific partnerships for insights and audience segments, industry first beta tests, exclusive seat for media buying, certification programs and participation in relevant events so to bring your brand right opportunities to expand and experiment.
6. Data strategy: World is going through big change be it data privacy policy amends, 3rd party cookie being demised or data processing & selling restrictions. Your 1st party audience and campaign performance data is a gold mine. Your agency being first custodian, how they learn from past trends, apply algorithms and models, extend this data to your in-house analytics teams or even aggregate your data to have industry outlook. Having a clear data strategy may prove to be a competitive advantage you can reap anytime.
The above list makes sure you shortlist the ones who have their house in order, but finalizing between last two is trickiest bet you determine via compatibility factors:
7. Same size and pace: You being an aspiring popular local brand and signed a global agency thinking this will give you extra edge? May be, but sizes of two firms bring far more synergies than hiring a big agency name for a news splash. Your firm may want to grow at 30% QoQ which requires extra commitment from team only if your agency hungry enough. This is usually evident when your brand gets a B team instead of A team, minimal support by agency’s leadership committee, low or zero strategic talent of agency part of your brand’s team. So evaluating the profile of the actual team will push agency to be transparent.
8. Cost optimization roadmap: Your cost of acquiring customers and delivering ROMI does go up YoY. Agency which acknowledges this and has a plan to work towards should be given preference. Agencies can employ gamut of tactics like optimize strategic resource, pass on media fee benefits, automate operational tasks and onboard technology which requires lesser manpower. It is about your survival not theirs and it is worth working out this roadmap so to be aware what areas you can cut investments post first year of heavy capital infusion.
9. Openness to co-create & partner: None of the innovations are ever done alone, be it you building a differentiation using data or domination on market & audience combination. All this will need your company to step outside you core business and build something of greater value. Tons of agencies have capacity to do this but only few have the vision to do it with one client. This is not simple but it doesn’t mean this should be left to future statement “when we reach there we will cross the bridge” instead “let’s partner with one who shares our vision”. Co-creation also leads the relationship to start on an equal ground and open the possibilities for agencies to invest together to build IPs scale-able to industry.
