For many decades businesses of all sizes have been replacing their in-house marketing teams with digital marketing agencies, and for good reason! As agencies can deliver more diverse opportunities and innovative collaborations, which a company’s in-house team could never access.
Although many businesses are hesitant to dabble in a digital agency relationship because there are many grey areas and unfamiliar territories to navigate. While new client-agency relationships are exhilarating for both parties, many find establishing trust, loyalty, and good teamwork from the outset challenging.
Every digital agency wants a successful, long-term connection with its client. And every client desires a strong agency partnership. So, how can businesses ensure they are entrusting the best digital marketing agency for their brand?
At RGC Digital Marketing, we have built hundreds of strong client-agency relationships with businesses of all sizes across the globe since establishing our brand in 1998. Along the way, we have learnt just as much from our clients as they have from us.
As a result, in our opinion, here are the six essential components of a good client-agency relationship. If your digital agency Sydney delivers all the following elements, you can rest assured knowing your company is in good hands.
Deliver Tailored Solutions by Developing a Mutual Understanding Of Each Other’s Businesses
Both the client and the digital agency must be familiar with each other’s industry and business ethos. Understanding how each other does business will impact the result and satisfaction of marketing projects.
Before entering a client-agency relationship, both parties should first research how their industry and business ethos operates in today’s market. The more each party understands about each other, the better issues can be resolved, marketing initiatives can be completed with greater gratification, and the prospects of building a long-term client-agency relationship are higher.
While any digital agency in Sydney may have excellent marketing gurus, at the end of the day, the client knows their brand and consumers better than anyone.
Accordingly, trustful digital agencies will acknowledge that each client and their business is unique. As a result, they will suggest bespoke strategies and readily explain why these avenues best suit a particular client.
If your digital marketing agency is unable to do so, perhaps they are offering you cookie-cutter approaches or one-size-fits-all strategies; in this case, you should seek digital marketing services elsewhere.
After all, no ONE marketing channel is the be-all and end-all. Your digital agency should encourage you to utilise as many different marketing channels as possible (if your marketing budget allows for it). This way, your campaign can achieve maximised results and give your business the best chances to achieve marketing objectives.
Foster Realistic Expectations
Expectations on both sides are critical for defining goals, benchmarks and assessing progress. Digital marketing agencies must be careful not to overestimate their capabilities, especially when it comes to matters outside their purview. Clients must also hold their agencies accountable for delivering timely and complete information that allows them to operate successfully on their behalf.
Mapping out a campaign’s process with objectives and deliverables, as well as allocating responsibilities of the agency and client, makes it easier to define and manage expectations. This also identifies bottlenecks and possibly problematic regions rapidly.
A client-agency partnership is bound to collapse if a client has unreasonable expectations or if an agency fails to set realistic expectations. At the same time, both parties should always look for ways to improve.
When starting a new client-agency relationship, reputable agencies will tell you the type and amount of communication you can expect from the digital marketing agency in Sydney to operate efficiently. This might involve organising frequent review meetings, making fortnightly phone calls to discuss tasks, responding to emails within a specific time frame, or sending monthly campaign reports.
Establishing this foundation initially is crucial, as, after all, digital marketing agencies cannot be kept distracted with non-urgent emails or unproductive daily meetings.
Offer Transparency and Authenticity
For a successful client-agency partnership, it’s important to remember that the total openness of both parties determines the best relationships. For example, a digital marketing agency should be upfront about its strategy and payment structure. Meanwhile, clients should be open about their goals and finances.
While agencies may have proprietary procedures, a high level of transparency is essential to aid in the establishment of trust and reasonable expectations. While some clients may not care about micro-level information, a reputable digital marketing agency will foster this dialogue by delivering clients periodic overviews.
Setting up checkpoints along the relationship promotes trust on both sides and increases the likelihood of succeeding and exceeding marketing goals. So, the client can comprehend the digital agency’s actions and what goals they are accomplishing.
However, transparency in a client-agency relationship means nothing without honesty! Digital marketing agencies should inform clients when a campaign or strategy does not match the client’s overall vision or is challenging to implement. On the other hand, clients should feel free to voice their dissatisfaction or joy with the outcomes of a project.
Set Specific Objectives and Track the Success of Each Campaign
The most prevalent circumstance the client-agency relationship will utilise transparency is through understanding marketing campaign outcomes.
As clients, you do not have to set quantifiable goals for each project, but the digital agency should. All good digital marketing agencies will set defined success targets, tracking methods and quantitatively showcase campaign outcomes. Such intentions prove that your digital agency is providing tangible value to your business.
Even if you don’t understand the numbers, an excellent digital marketing agency will explain campaign outcomes in simple to understand manners for you. As a result, both parties can understand what works and what doesn’t, which helps optimise marketing activities and establish benchmarks for future campaigns.
Regular Communication is a Two-Way Street
Communication is an essential component of the client-agency interaction. Nothing makes clients feel more anxious than not hearing from their agency and vice-versa. Therefore, both the digital marketing agency in Sydney and the client should be in contact with each other on a frequent basis.
Good digital marketing agencies make their clients feel like they are an extension of their own company, rather than just another service supplier. (RGC’s established clients already know how much Richard, our CEO, loves a phone call!)
The secret to excellent client-agency communication is to collaborate as partners, reaching common objectives and outstanding achievements. Both parties should take the time to listen to one another and offer what they require, rather than telling what they need.
Keeping clients up to date on the status of their projects or campaigns is critical to establish trust. Clients should be kept regularly informed and active in an agency’s procedure to better grasp how the various teams of a digital agency may collaborate.
Involving clients in the marketing processes early ensures they are happy with campaign results. This way, they can raise questions and make adjustments before launch rather than after, when most of the job is finished.
Without criticism, neither side has the opportunity to learn and develop. To avoid this, both parties should commit to continuous innovation through regular brainstorming sessions and information exchange. This is especially important for longstanding client-agency relationships, as it’s easy to grow comfortable and allow growth to stall, just like in any other relationship.
Demonstrate Appreciation
Even though both clients and agencies focus all their attention and resources on business, it’s important to remind your partner of how valuable they are. Both parties deserve to work with the best people. Make each other feel like VIPs by remaining in touch frequently (don’t wait for them to contact you) or send them a handwritten thank you card or a modest gift to make them feel cherished.
Build a Long-Lasting Client-Agency Relationship with RGC Digital Marketing!
Building a new partnership is a fantastic journey. However, it’s advisable to take the time to focus on the critical components mentioned in this article to enhance the likelihood of a successful client-agency relationship.
In addition, as currently the business climate is so heavily influenced by the pandemic and can rapidly have detrimental effects on business operations, the necessity of good client-agency partnerships has never been so necessary.
Significant changes in consumer behaviour and covid restrictions have necessitated more agile ways of working and modifications on both sides of the client-agency relationship to provide relevant and timely messages.
Ready to work with a Digital Marketing Agency Sydney? To learn more about the Digital Marketing Services we provide, please call our expert team on 1300 770 985 today and get ranking! RGC Digital Marketing is a Digital Marketing Agency in Sydney that offers creative services, web design services, SEO services, digital marketing services, programmatic advertising, and many more services to improve our clients’ digital presence online.
Author: Ashley Regan-Scherf
