Firstly, let me me preface this piece with the fact that I truly believe that there are a lot of great agencies that are talented at what they do, they have very specific skills and can execute some projects very well technically.
Additionally there has been a surge in new agencies (small and medium sized) on the market and with this comes a huge variation in quality.
Many agencies are quick to profess that they are SEO specialists, social media experts, lead generating content aficionado's, creative geniuses or brand connoisseurs...but are they and do they hit the mark?
To find the right marketing agency for your organisation, the agency should essentially do the following for your business:
Hit the mark by understanding your objectives and fulfilling the right needs of your business at this point in time.
Understand how to manage the right mix of marketing strategy versus implementing your marketing communications.
Be students of marketing in the broadest sense, even if they offer a specialist niche in marketing, they should understand the context of your marketing problem.
Be an extraordinary specialist or be able to provide a full service agency offering.
Value you as a client and provide the right value to your business, no matter how big or small the agency is.
Be a multi-industry agency can find a creative strategic solution to your marketing problem.
Think global, act local.
Be able to push your budget as hard as possible for the best possible outcomes.
What is "hitting the mark" and how do you define it...is it fulfilling a need?
As an owner of a small business (and an agency) I always look for high quality and smart with any supplier that we engage with.
For example, we pay our accountant a premium, however, we receive excellent advice regarding how to best structure our business for taxation purposes and maximise our returns.
Marketing is no different and having a good quality marketing agency knowing what to focus on can help your business grow in a sustainable way
I feel as though every agency should do their best to understand their clients:
Organisational needs
Sales and marketing needs
Their internal department KPI's and structure
How the proposed marketing activity and strategy impacts on their bottom line, this can include an uplift in sales (and retention) as well or cost savings through efficiencies (or both).
and a whole lot more...
From my extensive experience on the client side, I would say that not many agencies have the knowledge in-house, financial incentive or possibly the opportunity (due to structural issues) to understand the above points with their clients and this is where the cracks in the relationship exist and agencies will often try and mould their clients around their specialisation versus what the client actually needs.
The right amount of strategy and implementation with a touch of value
Very high quality output is very important, however, as the saying goes perfection is the enemy of progress. With that in mind every agency should communicate to their client when they believe that the quality is commercially ready and push to the next stage of implementation.
Clients can often get hung up on creative or copy. In this day and age, the best way to find out how something is working is to simply put it out in the marketplace, see how it is received and then then adjust accordingly. With digital marketing you can be particularly flexible as it is not static (whereas print is static until your next print run).
Agencies should understand the fundamentals of marketing to know how their solution best fits in the context of the broader marketing strategy
So what does this exactly mean and what does it look like when an agency understands the fundamentals of marketing?
Needs, wants and demand
Target markets, positioning and segmentation
Offerings and brands
Value and satisfaction
Marketing channels
Supply chain
Competition
Marketing environment
Marketing planning
The following PDF 'Marketing - The Fundamentals' is a good introduction into the fundamentals of marketing management.
It would be unfair to state that there are no agencies that understand fundamental marketing management, however, there has been a disconnect for many years.
Just like the phenomena of the 'professional politician' has lead to the disconnect with the community, the marketing agency with a high proportion of staff that have never worked on the client side (and vice-versa) has lead to the demise of what is essentially two sides of the same coin from practising and pushing fundamental marketing management.
Full service marketing agency or an extraordinary specialist agency?
To be honest there is merit for both. However, there are only a handful of agencies that very extraordinary specialists and they are usually in very high demand.
We recommend finding an agency that does a few areas really well and can touch on all areas of marketing if need be. A good agency will have potential resources or extraordinary specialists within their network and can often accomodate your needs by calling on their network.
Having a multi-disciplined agency on board can often provide your organisation with efficiency and greater value.
Big agency versus small?
The reality is that even the biggest global agencies outsource to smaller agencies with non disclosure white label agreements. Big agencies often rely on big contracts and you often see them open, close or merge offices and brands with competitors dependent on how many large contracts they have.
The fact is that Australia is quite a small market with a majority of organisations (including multinationals) requiring a small to medium sized agency as their budgets simply cannot justify working with a large agency to get the required ROI. A smaller agency is generally hungrier for the work and provide better personalised value.
Industry specialist versus multi-industry agency
An industry specialist is great as they can often speak your language straight from the get go and this can often be an advantage when initially engaging with them, however, they can also be held back by the industry and the fact is that many great ideas can be found in the way that other industries operate.
For example, some people would argue that FMCG marketing is at the pinnacle of brand development. After being in the FMCG industry, I would most likely agree with them.
However, marketing in the technology space has come a long way and has been very progressive with the advent of SaaS based products. Some would argue that paying attention to this space today is very relevant.
If you can find an agency that has a mix of experience within your industry combined with other industry experience you may find a sweet spot with an agency that can find creative solutions to your marketing problems.
Think global, act local
Global branding and product roll-out with no real local considerations also has a lot to answer for with the complacency of brand and product marketers (but that's another rant for another time).
Essentially your agency should understand the local market quite well and if required understand how to work with you to implement your marketing nationally, regionally and globally (even if that means partnering with other agencies overseas).
Understand the value of brand development
Clients often want everything related to marketing to be measured in terms of leads that were generated. However, organisations also have to understand that they are at differing levels of marketing sophistication.
If your organisation does not have a website or has a very old website, then a marketing win is simply updating the website. This may not generate leads immediately, but doe play a role in helping to facilitate a sale.
If your organisation has zero brand presence, then trust for your brand needs to be established in the marketplace. Depending on the product or service, you may need to invest first in simply getting your brand out in the marketplace and to establish yourself as a player versus your competitors.
If you have no marketing structure in place and have not done structured marketing communications. Then simply setting up that structure is a win.
If you have never completed a formalised marketing, brand or campaign plan, then developing these items to create your strategy is a win for marketing.
Agencies cannot come in with a silver bullet and generate huge amounts of qualified leads or sales and those that do profess to be able to do that are most likely telling porky pies.
Conclusion
As a Sydney based marketing agency, we at Mind Methods understand the value of correctly developing your marketing structure and establishing and building your brand amongst your various target markets.
Marketing is a process and to do it properly you simply cannot take shortcuts. Whether you take a condensed version of the process or detailed version of the process will determine whether you spend more time and budget in the short term or at a later date.
For example you may get a simple website up on Squarespace to have an improved online presence, but know that in 18-24 months time you will need to do this project again in a more detailed fashion on Wordpress.
You can be strategic about your shortcuts, but ultimately you will have to address where you have taken a shortcut in the future. A good agency can provide you with the pros and cons of taking certain shortcuts now versus later and should help you push your budget as hard as possible!