How to have a better relationship with your marketing agency

As a business owner or leader, it is likely you will not have all the resources available to execute all of your own marketing tasks from scratch. Whether that is graphic design work, advertising, website development, photography, social media etc., there will have been a point in your journey when an agency, freelancer, or consultant was engaged.

If you are relying on a marketing expert now to implement your marketing activities for you, chances are that relationship could be better. And it needs to be if you are going to get the most out of their professional experience. I can relay hundreds of conversations I have had about unhealthy relationships between agencies and business owners. So many stories of misunderstood briefs or financial abuse —I Even witnessed one instance where an SME owner had to conduct their own investigation to discover that the forwarding number for their Google Ads account was incorrect.

These issues come up time and time again (heck, I was even victim to a bit of agency misalignment), so it is important to understand why it keeps happening and how you can make the most of your marketing-expert- to- business relationship. Importantly, not all marketing-expert- to- business relationships are poor. The best ones are built on mutual understanding of the business strengths, realistic outcomes and communication —for both parties.

We used to work with a client whose view of her business strengths, desired outcomes and  communication expectations differed vastly from ours. Where most clients would fit into a once-or twice-monthly communication rhythm, this client would call me every week —multiple times. Text, WhatsApp, everything. The communication expectation was not clear, and it did not lead to the best outcome for either of us. To make matters worse, every call she made to us used up her marketing budget as our team would be clocking time to her business. This left very little time for actual ‘marketing work’, which didn’t produce the outcomes she wanted and made the relationship very tense.

As she was the owner of a beauty salon, the way I contextualised it for her was to compare the behaviour to me coming into her salon sporadically over a couple of weeks to have a few eyebrow hairs plucked and then expecting to pay the same appointment fee when I arrive for my full shaping appointment. Whilst not all marketing agencies have rules around communication (and not all salons have rules about sporadic eyebrow-hair popins), it was essential that we got on the same page about things like communication to get the best results.

COMMUNICATION

So start by locking in how often you going to communicate. Who will you be communicating with? What is your expectation for communication and what is theirs? Getting on top of these things is important for success. Remember that communication takes time, and when it comes to a service like marketing, time is the commodity. So, the more time you spend communicating, the more this is going to cost your business. Ensure you are on the same page with your marketing company about how much this time costs, what is included and how much you receive in your quote. Similar to how you communicate is the language you are communicating with.

Marketing lingo (which can manifest in abbreviations, technical terms and insider phrases) can often leave business owners feeling a little lost. Follow up on lingo you don’t understand so that you increase your knowledge and can have better conversations about strategy, rather than feeling overwhelmed. This is essential to combining their skills with your intimate understanding of your business for the best outcome.

BUSINESS STRENGTHS

Ensure you have ample time together to communicate your business strengths to each other. They need to understand yours, but also take the time to understand theirs, so you feel comfortable with their marketing strategy. Sometimes working with a marketing company is a bit like a gossip chain where the message you relay to one person has to trickle down and down until the creative that assembles it only has a loose understanding of what your business does and what you are looking to achieve. How can you rectify this? Can it be relayed in a document, video or notes so the whole team is across it?

REALISTIC OUTCOMES

Goal setting every year, or every quarter, is absolutely essential to ensure you and your marketing  provider are both on the same trajectory. They will be able to give you realistic feedback on what is possible for your budget/business/resources, and you can hold them accountable to those results.

This process is essential not just for improving your agency-business relationship, but as an integral part of shaping your entire marketing strategy. It is important to quantify your goals and your budget and resources so you can bridge that gap between your present state and your future goals effectively.

The above is an exclusive extract from The Very Good Marketing Guide (Wiley $29.95) by Amy Miocevich explains how to get the most out of your marketing expert.

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