Review where your marketing agency is at and the next steps you should take with our new tool
A question I have been asked when I work with agencies to grow their digital marketing services is ‘how can we benchmark our approach to growing our digital services?’ It all comes down to your marketing agency capabilities, and how you manage digital transformation in your business.
To answer that I have used the excellent benchmark framework that Smart Insights has used for other areas.
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These one-page templates let you quickly review where you are on a five-point scale (from laggard to market-leading). You can spot gaps in your approach to transformation and your…
5 Options for charging fees and paying for agency resource
There are a wide range of marketing agency costing and budgeting options for marketers to consider when outsourcing their marketing activities. The fees model used will vary by both type of agency and client engagement as you seek to agree what is a practical, mutually beneficial remuneration mix. Whichever model(s) you use, an agency or consultancy should ensure that all elements of activity are captured and you minimise working ‘for free’ e.g ‘giving away thinking’ in order to secure production work. I say costing model(s) since it’s common practice for an agency to have a preferred approach, but to vary it on a case-by-case basis depending on clients requirements and expectations.
How much you should charge clients for specific elements of work that you undertake will be based on a range of factors e.g. your fixed overheads (office rent, management salaries etc),…
Cost-plus (times based) or value discussion: which one works better for your agency?
When I was putting together the new agency guide to pricing digital marketing, I made a conscious effort to call it exactly that - a pricing not a costing guide.
I grew up in agencies that talked about ‘cost proposals’, ‘costing projects’, ‘cost to client’ and spreadsheets that had cost against each deliverable rather than ‘price’. In putting the new guide together, I referred back to two existing project budget workbooks that are on Smart Insights. But I refreshed them and renamed the line items from cost to price. Why am I reinforcing point this so much?
Because if you start with the idea of ‘Price’ and not ‘Cost’ (Time + Materials + a markup) you are on the way to actively thinking about how your agency makes money – by providing value to clients (and therefore earning a value-based…
Google highlights competition over digital ad monopoly claims, YouTube removes paid ad views from Music Chart counts, Client-side marketing and media professionals have declining trust in agencies, Facebook launching oversite board, Instagram cosmetic surgery post restrictions
Google has sought to fight off claims that it is dominating the digital advertising industry by pointing to other companies in a bid to prove competition, but is this entirely accurate?
YouTube is removing paid ad views from Music Chart videos to focus on organic views only and provide a more honest reflection of artists' popularity.
New research has found that trust in agencies is declining among client-side media and marketing professionals with the increasingly complex media landscape likely being a contributing factor.
Facebook is set to launch an oversight board in 2020, which will review and potentially overrule the platform's decisions on content.
Finally, Instagram is continuing its work toward reducing the negative impacts that social media can…
If you're trying to market an agency, these 7 resources and our 'Marketing your Agency' guide will help you
Where do you turn to, to check your Agency’s new business framework is as comprehensive and potentially as effective as it could be? Well if you're reading this, then Smart Insights is one of those places. But there are other ‘new biz’ coach or consultancy voices out there with lots of experience to share. So I thought it would be useful in this post - that accompanies our recent guide about marketing your agency - to share a few of those with you.
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Marketing an agency
As part of my work with agency clients, I talk about taking a structured approach to raising their profile,…
How to select the very best agency for your business.
So you want to hire a marketing agency. But how do you find the one that will deliver what it promises? What are the things you should ask and, most importantly, what are the answers you want to hear?
Here are some of the answers to these questions and insider tips on hiring agencies (and not regretting it afterward) from the perspective of a marketer.
Before You Begin
First things first. Before you start asking questions, answer a few yourself. You need to be able to get at least a general idea on the budget and your marketing goals.
What do you expect to achieve? How much are you willing to pay for…
6 tips for a successful agency partnership
Over the last 7 years, I've had experience of working with various different traditional and digital marketing agencies. Whilst one agency’s skill set may differ from another, what I have found to be consistent is the way in which many agencies operate and how clients can get the best from a working relationship with them.
Working with a marketing agency should be a collaborative relationship. With digital marketing moving at such a frightening pace, it’s important to work closely with an agency and allow them to provide strategic insight and know-how whilst acting as an extension of the client’s in-house team.
In this post I’d like to share a few thoughts on how you, as a client, can establish a productive working relationship with your digital marketing agency so you can...
1. Set out your goals and…
