Marketing agencies exist to be on the cutting edge, looking into the future and presenting ideas that provide value to our clients. We can often get caught up in tactics (paid search, email, social, etc.). Our true value shouldn’t be just running campaigns and executing tactics, but ideating and innovating on behalf of the brands we represent to drive more value for their businesses and their customers.
At Swarm, we love to be challenged, pushed to the limit and valued by our clients. Below are questions we ask of ourselves and hope our clients are asking of us and their other agencies:
- What value is your agency providing our brand/company that we couldn’t provide ourselves?
Understanding “why” your agency is there and what value they bring to the table is crucial to your decision making. How can I best use this agency?
- How do you continuously innovate and improve value?
We agencies exist to continually bring new ideas to the table. Let us understand your business goals and objectives then challenge us to innovate on your behalf.
- What should we be doing as a brand that we aren’t already doing?
The world and our lives are moving fast. It’s easy to get caught in the trap of continually running the same plays over and over because they have worked in the past. While this may work for a while, eventually someone in the market is going to come up with new ideas to reach your consumers more effectively unless we are constantly looking at “what’s next” for your brand.
- How can we test new tactics or improve on ones we are already employing?
Testing and learning is the essence of innovation. While you want a majority of your budget to be going towards what is currently working and driving business results, we should always allocate a portion of our resources to testing new ideas, learning from those ideas, then cycling the good ideas into your mainstream campaigns.
- What are we as a brand doing that you disagree with?
Agencies should not be comprised of “yes” people and order takers. We exist to challenge you as a brand. Once trust is established between your brand and your agency, your agency should be constantly asking “why are we doing this?”
In a world where most brands are working with multiple specialty agencies, the answers to these questions will allow you as a marketer to figure out how best to tap the true value of each of your agencies and continuously improve your marketing strategy.
