4 Tough Questions to Ask a Marketing Agency before Hiring Them

Whether you are large enterprise or a small business, you sometimes question your marketing decisions. Regardless of the number of agencies I have worked with or the campaigns I have run, I question myself right up until the first few leads come in, or articles get written or the first time I have to present the success or failure of a campaign. In the end, I rely greatly on my team and my partner agencies to help assure I have effectively spent my budget and am getting the most from it. That’s why it is important to make sure you do have the right team working with you.

So, what I thought would be helpful is to share some of my learning’s related to choosing the right partner marketing agency to help you through those times when you have questions or need to outsource your entire project to an agency.

Tough Question #1: Who will really be working on my account and will I have direct access to all assigned agency staff?

Well, that depends. Some agencies have a hierarchical process structure that requires a single point of contact between the client and the agency itself. It makes life easier on the agency’s end. From the client perspective, you would ideally have direct access (phone, email etc.) to all individuals working on your account. This includes everybody from the Production Artist up to the person ultimately responsible for your business (usually an Account Executive or agency principal). Ultimately though, that overhead can cost you time and money, which can make smaller projects more costly.

My personal preference is to work with agencies that have a more senior person connected to my account. One that knows the ins and outs of getting things done or is even doing the project themselves. It’s kind of like when I go to a restaurant and order my food. I want a waitress that will listen, identify costs for ala cart items that may or may not be needed, and know that special orders take longer or will cost more. The same works for an agency. What has generally worked for me is to either work with a smaller agency where you get access to more senior staff, or make sure you have an experienced account executive that understands your processes, your business, and their own firm’s cost structure (no ala cart, surprise invoices).

Tough question #2: How will the agency measure marketing success?

That’s an easy question to answer, but only if you ask it. There are many ways to track results via software and systems…quality of campaign responses, number of new customers, media coverage, internet conversions, web traffic, email clicks, etc. But, the first question you need to ask is, what is most important to me as the client, and is that what is important to my “boss”?

Before moving forward on a project, ask yourself, what is most important to measure, and then what results would be adequate to justify the time and cost involved. Be realistic though, and look to your marketing agency to be a partner, not a vendor. For example, you may have the goal of generating 100 qualified opportunities, but have only a limited budget, a small market, or don’t have the sales resources to follow up on leads generated. This is also why an experienced Account Executive and marketing team is essential. They help you set your goals so that you can meet them as a team. Once you have set your goals and objectives, you can then build a plan to address the cause and-effect relationship between your marketing program and your results. Lastly, I cannot stress enough that you communicate them often to your sales team, executives, and marketing partners as each will play a role in their success.

Tough Question #3: Should I market to sell or educate?

Let me answer this question with a question. Do you like sales pressure? I don’t. If you are looking to build a long term relationship with a customer, then without question, the better method to use is Education-Based Marketing. People are tired of selling and sales pressure. Trust needs to be built. You do this through demonstrating that you are a leader in your field and have solved the problem for others who are similar to themselves. Prospective customers want information and advice, which is the foundation of Education-Based Marketing. And until business owners realize what customers want — and give it to them — many companies will continue to get a poor response to their marketing.

Look to multiple techniques to get your message across. Training videos on YouTube may work for some clients, where white papers on the same topic, delivered via email may work better for others. Today, common educational techniques include blogs, white papers, case studies, articles and videos…and most can be produced at a fairly low cost. Just make sure you are giving people what they want in the medium they want it in.

In looking for marketing support, look for people who specialize in education as well as selling. It will help your reputation, your relationship and your SEO results.

Tough Question #4: Is it better to work with a marketing person/team on an hourly rate, project rate or retainer?

A project may take 10 minutes or 10 weeks. That being the case, if I were to charge clients by the hour, I’d have to know exactly how long the project will take and that there would be no surprises. An hourly rate means you will be billed exactly on the time it takes me to do the job.

In the end, some agencies have to charge for additional time, so must recoup it in other areas. I am not as big a proponent of an hourly quote because

#1, different skill sets have different rates (ie a Production Artist will not be billed at the same rate as the Creative Director), #2, I have to track hours tied to specific projects. An administrative hassle.

Now of course, for larger agencies, clients may have an advantage in that clients can selectively bypass the higher-tiered employees for ones with a lower billing rate but you don’t want to ask a Production Artist about overall marketing strategy.

For small projects, ask to be billed in increments that are smaller than 1 hour. For larger projects, many smaller customers like to be quoted on a project basis. Together we develop the plan, I provide a quote, and the project is then completed and paid in stages. It is a good balance when you want to test an agency for performance and build a longer term working relationship between client and agency. It does, however, mean the agency is less likely to negotiate terms of an agreement since the long term relationship may be uncertain.

As an agency owner, I personally prefer a retainer. Why? Because it allows me to allocate costs and hours appropriately. And for the client, he/she can count on me for X number of hours allocated to them. This allows for some negotiating room with both parties. For example, when using a retainer, my discussion with the client would be that I would usually charge X for this amount of work but in the interest of developing a long-term relationship, I’ll charge X minus Y%. Furthermore, in the spirit of fairness, I wouldn’t quibble if the amount of work in a given month went a little over (and I wouldn’t expect that the client would complain if a month was a little light. In the end, it works out even.

One alternative in how I offer projects versus other agencies, is that I bundle my services into larger projects with a set price structure. This allows the client to get the advantage of a retainer model (a cost reduced set of integrated deliverables) with a set quote for completion of the project.

The Tough Conclusion

I know this is article may be a bit controversial for some of my agency friends. Some may not agree with me at all. Regardless, I want to hear from you. Are these the tough questions you would ask? Send me more.

What’s So Special About Social Media?

There was a time when traditional marketing strategies like print media, direct mail, TV, radio and brochures were the only lead management tools available. However, these outdated strategies no longer apply to today’s tech-savvy and always-connected consumers, ones who rely upon social media in order to become real-time, proactive participants in defining a brand’s relevance.

Success with social media isn’t merely a case of being present. It’s not just about being available and accessible. Instead, it’s about leveraging social media and relying upon it as a renewable source of low-cost leads. For consumer markets, this ultimately means having a presence on well-known and well-established social websites like Facebook. However, for business markets, LinkedIn is best solution available as there is no other online social platform that gathers so many high-level decision makers, engineers, designers and C-level contacts the way LinkedIn does.

Social media is unlike any other marketing media in existence. Companies rely upon it to increase their marketing return on investment (ROI) by identifying and leveraging brand champions, reducing their costs of leads, and most importantly, reducing their costs of retaining customers. So, how can social media accomplish all these things and why should you rely upon it as a means of building long-term customer relationships?

1) Real-Time Platform

Today’s consumer is constantly on the go and always updating their social media status. Their favorite brands are apps on their smartphones. They use social media to advise friends, acquaintances, and coworkers of where they are, where they’re going and how they’ll get there.

Over 50% of people in the United States have at least one social media account and 93% of Americans think companies should have a social media presence. It’s a platform today’s customers rely upon and it’s the surest way to interact with your market.

2) The Ideal Lead Generation Strategy

Think about how costly those aforementioned outbound marketing strategies were. Companies were never 100% sure where leads came from. They could never accurately define their costs of leads. It was a numbers game and an expensive one at that. Companies relied upon a high volume of expensive strategies in the hopes that combining these haphazard approaches would eventually produce results.

Social media is a more exacting and scientific way of generating leads. You’ll know exactly where leads come from, what motivated them to act and what platform works best. Better yet, you’ll be easily-accessible and constantly available to a customer base looking for solutions.

3) Less-Intrusive Sales Strategy

Cold calling has and will always be intrusive. It’s a cumbersome strategy where salespeople call companies they don’t know and have no history with. The job is made even more difficult when they offer a solution the customer sees as too good to be true.

Social media removes this irritation entirely. The best companies provide free downloads, discounts and rebates as a means of securing customer contact details. Referrals are much easier to secure and customers aren’t put on the defensive when they get that initial call. In fact, they expect to hear from you because they’re pre-qualified themselves. LinkedIn is excellent at generating high-quality business leads as the platform allows you to create a customized company page complete with your banner and three separate sections defining your history, products and services and contact details.

4) A Stronger Value Proposition

Companies fail with their value proposition when they assume what that value is and how they’re perceived in their market. However, social media is the ultimate voice of customer (VOC) data tool. It provides you with time-critical feedback and invaluable insight into how your customers see your company and its value. Customers want to provide feedback and they expect feedback. Social media is their platform of choice and the surest way for you to connect to your target audience.

5) Stronger Customer Engagement

Simply put, an engaged customer is a great customer. Social media allows you to directly engage your customers. There are no gatekeepers, no channels to navigate and no middleman to work around. You’re can access your marketplace and incentivize your customers to act in a way no medium can match.

With social media, you build a following and then use your customer’s feedback and input to upgrade your product and services and improve your brand. This is what it means when companies talk about taking their customer relationships to the next level.

Your focus moving forward must be to define what social media website your customers prefer and how to go about reaching them through that platform. However, don’t limit yourself to the most obvious social media websites. In fact, social media can include online magazines, professional forums, blogs, video websites, RSS feeds, and professional social websites like our aforementioned LinkedIn example. Start by identifying your target audience and the rest should follow.

This is the first of a series of articles focused on social media optimization and how companies need to leverage the platform to reach today’s customers.

For more information on social media management or if you are looking for someone to handle your social media strategy for you, please contact us today.