How Hands-on Should You Be With Your Marketing Agency?

Companies of all sizes struggle to figure out how involved they should be with their marketing agency. Nobody wants to be an armchair quarterback, but on the other hand, it isn’t prudent to be entirely hands-off and not make the agency accountable. Here are things we believe are important in a productive and positive client-agency relationship.

  • We believe the best client is an educated client. If you want to know all the gory details about the technical side of SEO, we’re happy to tell you and walk you through how we execute based on those details. On the other hand, if you prefer an executive summary, that’s fine, too.

  • Campaigns run most efficiently when day-to-day activities are as streamlined as possible. The best times to be hands-on are during campaign performance reviews. When clients insist on multiple approvals and sign-offs for routine activities, timelines get extended, confusion and errors are more likely, and results suffer.

  • Clients are more comfortable with being hands-off on day-to-day campaign activities when the agency operates transparently. This is a major reason why we launched a unique online reporting platform that enables our clients to see what’s going on with their campaigns in near real time.

  • Clients should never be completely hands-off with certain things. In particular, clients should always be the driving force in defining campaign objectives. It’s up to the client and the agency to collaborate on establishing campaign KPIs, but the objectives themselves must be client-driven — and the more clearly defined, the better. (Agency input on objectives is quite helpful, however, as the agency can provide a broader perspective.)

  • In addition to setting objectives, clients should review results and campaign strategy at least quarterly. Agencies need to inform clients about successes and failures, as well as changes in marketing technologies and best practices. Equally important, clients need to inform agencies of changes in their business model, competition, customer preferences and any other variables that affect campaign execution.

If you’d like to discuss your online marketing objectives and develop fresh ideas for a campaign, please contact us now.

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