Collaborate with a digital marketing agency

What needs does your marketing agency have to cover?

The classic Marketing department is changing. In recent years, the volume of marketing channels and contacts has exploded. Websites, online stores, Google ads, offline marketing, newsletters, customer events, search engine optimization, market places, language versions, marketing automation, publications on social networks, social ads, personal data law, internationalization... The list is very long.

Each of these areas requires strategic priorities, specialized skills and long-term efforts. All equipment also requires continuous updates.

Even in the marketing teams of large companies, the marketing director often he has only one graphic designer and one person for content on his team. However, they are required specialized skills to generate results on digital channels and platforms.

Therefore, more and more companies are outsourcing to external agencies. Or on the contrary, where really big players invest heavily is in creating their own internal “agencies”.

This means that the marketing director is now assuming a buyer role and must choose between acquiring competencies from one or more agencies. Should I choose one? Large digital agency with a wide range of competencies or should attend a series of small specialized agencies?

Las specialized agencies may have the advantage of having specific competencies well covered. But at the same time, you can spend a lot of time managing and prioritizing services, pricing, interaction and performance of different agencies with varying participation in your business. A management task in which many needs, competencies and resources must create value as a total solution.

That's why we ask ourselves:

- How to choose the right agency?

- How to manage internal team resources?

- How to ensure that the agency always prioritizes the tasks that give the most value to your business?

Steps for a successful collaboration with your marketing agency

We have divided the challenge into 4 steps, for guide you in collaborating with your agencies of digital marketing.

1. Set clear business goals

It's very valuable for a vendor collaboration to have some clear business goals to stick to. This means that you too have to fulfill the general purpose of the collaboration and be able to see a clear value to solve the problem.

The agency must then be able to provide solutions to challenge the problem, and provide a plan of how to solve that challenge. In other words, you know your own business best, but the agency must know the business well and present the trends, methods and technologies that you can use to solve your challenges.

2. The agency must be compatible with the company's values

Some believe that the main factor in choosing the best agency is to find the one that offers the best price. But it's about much more than that. Collaboration must complement business values, your company's core competencies and culture of collaboration so that you can make a significant contribution to solving the challenges you face.

Use your orCollaboration objectives to prioritize the wide range of advertising, media, web and digital agencies that exist. Are you lacking strategic resources, campaign execution resources, data analysts, software developers, or resources for developing internal competencies?

You can get all the skills to achieve your goals. But you can quickly lose your bearings and focus if you don't have daily contact with your outside resources. Therefore, you need choose agencies you trust and that they provide you with a report that fits your business objectives.

3. It includes an internal team with a clear objective

It's essential that you have a goal to make decisions for yourself. Or that you have the budgetary support of other managers in the initial negotiations, so that the agreement can be negotiated without having to return too much to sales or IT for approval.

The same applies to the project management. Take care of managing the project itself, or show confidence to colleagues who are going to promote cooperation. If you deliver larger projects to your employees, you can join a steering committee yourself to keep up to date and participate in discussions more based on principles that should be raised at the management level between partner companies.

4. Focus on good communication, transparency and integrity

Be clear in the Start of collaboration with your agency about your goals, your priorities and how to measure and evaluate cooperation. Share your plans to launch new products and services, new brands, scheduled campaigns, vacation plans, and contact information for your colleagues when needed.

Good and effective cooperation is created through transparency and mutual association.

Surely there will be mistakes on both sides. That's why it's important that they agree on who should comply. And how and when, so that the project does not move forward because the delivery is pending.

It is important to agree Periodic reports with the agency to find out - in due time - if projects are progressing efficiently, or if something needs to be resolved in advance before it becomes a real and potentially costly problem.

Remember that effective partnerships are optimization exercises that are carried out over time. This makes the agreement a solid and reliable partnership. And above all, integrating business development and product innovation as a plus for marketing and sales.

There is no single path to follow. First of all, you should choose partners that you like to cooperate with and trust. And then, of course, that they help you achieve your goals.

How can we help you?

If you need more information, do not hesitate to contact us.