How Have Client-Agency Relationships Evolved?
The Changing Agency Model Landscape
2013 has seen a number of significant shifts to the client-agency relationship, leaving many agencies having to re-visit their models to cater to the evolving needs of brands.
What does the perfect digital strategy look like?
I always find it easier to flip what an agency should look like, by asking what it is that brands are doing and what they need.
Presumably this is likely to include the integration of owned, earned and paid media:
From here you can then drill-down on setting your goals and KPIs to ultimate create a strategy where you can take a budget and spend it where it works best, with short, medium and long-term goals in mind.
Once you’ve figured this out, you can then define everything else afterwards. It’s important to know the budget you have to work with early on, so that you can set targets and control realistic expectations from the outset.
Integrated or specialist agency?
To succeed in 2013, brands really need a multichannel approach. This means they have two choices:
- Work with an integrated team (either in-house or externally – usually a mixture of both) who can bring everything together under one roof.
- Work with a number of specialists in each area.
There’s no right or wrong answer, but it’s important that you maximise the synergies between channels such as SEO, PPC and social media:
Surround yourself with talent
Marketing has become so integrated that clients will often need a digital partner to support and challenge their internal team and goals.
Scaling with quality is always the biggest agency challenge, and as always, everything is about people – so good recruitment and team building is vital.
Breaking down the silos
It’s clear to see that there are obvious efficiencies in combining maketing channel into a single team and strategy.
Sometimes, it’s as simple as getting them to sit next to each other - other times you need to bring them into internal/client meetings, brainstorming and projects.
Having that single and clear strategy, operating across multiple channels using different tactics, means you’re less likely to hit bottlenecks further down the line - because you’re all on the same team and working together.
Make Content Central to Your Brand
In 2013, there’s no longer an argument on if content is important, everyone can now see the market growth is clearly there, although surprisingly that wasn’t always the case, even 12 months ago.
As a result of this growth, the job roles that agencies are now hiring are much more content-based. This means writers/bloggers/authors, social influencers, graphic designers, videographers and creative PRs are becoming highly sought-after.
In order to succeed, brands like Netflix, Red Bull and Virgin Mobile are seriously are investing in content to integrate with all of their marketing channels - this a much longer-term vision to grow their audience and sustainably increase market share.
No one understands your brand better than you
The first signs of digital integration were when social media started to go back in-house. Brands figured out that as much as they need a social strategy, it’s their brands story that they need to tell. And no-one knows that better than themselves.
Often the agency task is now to support in-house teams, planning and executing a strategy together to combine the skills and resources of both in order to hit achieve the clients goals.
Brands have huge power in data, knowledge & relationships
Data shouldn’t be under-estimated in the future of marketing - and while brands may often be slow to move, once they do, you’ll find they have a huge advantage in the data, knowledge and relationships they hold.
The time to be innovative & forward thinking is now
Sometimes you need to take that leap of faith on something that you believe is going to become increasing important. Of course, if you are being innovative, it does involve an element of risk and you need to have a healthy balance between investing in the future and focusing on right now.
But often the opportunitiy-cost of inaction and not getting a head start means that when that time comes that something is going to become influential, you may have missed your chance to capitalise because you didn’t take that bet and get involved early on.
Being agile and quick is vital
It’s important to have a consistent model, so balance is key. Allow yourself enough time to be agile, but have that clear plan and strategy that it can work alongside a planned digital roadmap to get the best results.
End of Day Rates?
Pricing models in digital are hard to get right, it’s all about providing value at a fair market rate.
In every situation, you have to make it win-win. If the client doesn’t get results they’re not going to be happy, and if the agency doesn’t make a profit, equally that’s unlikely to be a good relationship long-term.
I would expect this is a common trend as more productised and performance-based agreements are much clearer to set expectations and charge clients/reward agencies much more fairly.
Summary
In a lot of ways the agency task hasn’t changed at all, it’s about supporting clients goals in the best way possible to achieve results. What has changed, is the fact that the lines are becoming so blurred between marketing channels, which means operating in silos is no longer effective.
I believe the way to go is almost to do both - build an integrated team of specialist skills in each key area, then you can bring them in and out as you see fit to support the growing needs of clients across multi-channels.
It’s simply the process of supporting them in that task and taking a marketing budget and spending it where it works best!
Please note: the full version of this post was originally published on Econsultancy
About The Author
Kevin Gibbons is CEO of Re:signal. You can connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
