In other agencies (not Disquiet Dog where we don’t talk about you behind your back) there is the concept of the ‘bad client’.
This is the client who doesn’t know what they want but will know it when they see it. The ones where the CEO hires an agency but doesn’t seem to have told the head of marketing. The ones who ask for strategy but never get round to implementation. The ones who have well-indulged habits of scope-creep.
Not to say that any of these crimes are especially terrible - there may be good reasons for all, but the best way to get the maximum for your spend with a marketing agency is to be a ‘good client’.
That’s not to imply some sort of supine approach or an awe-struck approach that ‘these guys really know what they are doing and we should just obey’.
A good client/agency relationship is full of challenges and honest conversations, an open approach to all the work, and the ability to understand that everyone can claim ownership of success (so long as they have the same attitude to setbacks).
So, while there is no checklist that will guarantee success, here’s some things to bear in mind when you work with your whizzy digital marketing agency. Which might, let’s face it, be us.
- Build skills, not dependency This is as salesy as it gets - but we’re passionate at Disquiet Dog that our role is not to build a range of dependent clients who need us and pay us each month in perpetuity. There’s many agencies who work like that, but that brings boring work, a decline in creative ideas and general disillusionment. Not always, but often enough to be a real risk.
The Disquiet approach is to help you create a strategy, help you understand what’s driving it and how to implement it. In other words, we help you learn from the process (not that we have omnipotent knowledge) and understand how to take it over when we leave. Which we shall. With a tear in our eye. But we shall leave you.
Remember who owns it
And that links to the next key point - you own everything. An agency steps in and plays with your toys and tells you how to play with your own toys. But they must give them back. It’s your data, your strategy, your channels and your content. No matter how much the agency is driving you, they are your responsibility so the final sign-off is done by you. But more importantly, when the agency steps aside, you need to be able to pick it up seamlessly - to keep on the same strategic path (assuming its working) and to know what the data is telling you and where the next round of content is coming from. Get involved and stay involved.
Be prepared
To be this mythical good client, you need to know what you want. That, for one thing, helps you choose the kind of agency you need. Sometimes that may not even be us.
But whichever agency it is, good analysis of what you’re trying to solve really helps in the diagnostic phase, though we do that investigative work too and may even come up with different answers to you. But defining, and agreeing the purpose, is key. It might be that you want brand profile, or thought leadership, or greater numbers in your CRM sales funnel. Knowing the question helps define the answer. And make the work much stronger.
Be ready for something new
The point of an agency is to help you do something new. So embrace the new and go happily into a new world of experimentation. This may be about new technology, or platforms that are unfamiliar, or it may be new content streams or formats.
Don’t get on your hind legs about work which drives you to areas in which you’ve never worked before. The point is not to keep you in your comfort zone, but to mine where your customers are - and the outcome should be that you learn, and learn a lot, from the process.
The data is an ally, not a weapon
The thing with digital is that you can track everything. You know when people land on your site, what pages they read, for how long, what platform sent them there, and you can read what they say about you on social media. Use it - find out what works and keep doing it. Find out what isn’t working, and do it better. And if it still doesn’t work, stop doing it.
All this is just common sense, but it requires honesty and transparency with your agency. If you own the strategy, you also own its consequences. Work the data like a dog but do so collaboratively. It’s a way for you all to get better, not a stick to beat the agency with.
Expect your agency to work with your other agencies
You might have an agency to do your digital advertising, but reckon they aren’t all that great at search engine optimisation, or content design, or building your website. But what you don't want is your advertising to say one thing, while your content says another. Again, you own the strategy so make sure that, if you have more than one agency working with you, they talk to each other as well as to you. So that the content creator is using the same keywords as your SEO people, that your social media ads carry the same intent as your organic social media. Either that or you are paying agencies to compete with each other, which isn’t great….
So when you pick an agency, make sure you know what you want from them and spend the time thinking about building a relationship towards that. And then give us a call.
