Want to Start Working With An Agency?
Working with an agency can be daunting, and deciding on which one can be difficult. The good news is, we’re here to help! We know working with an agency is a great idea (obviously), as they are full of experts ready to use their specialised and up-to-date skills to solve your marketing problems. To help you get started, we’ve compiled some tips on how to best work with advertising agencies, and what to expect when you get started.
In a rush? Skip ahead!
How to work with your advertising agency
Understand Your Problem
Know Your Goals
Keep Them In The Loop
The Agency Process
Workshopping
The Work
Approval and Go Live!
How To Work With Advertising Agencies:
Many businesses associate working with an agency with a loss of control. Sure, there are a few horror stories out there of businesses experiencing this problem. But believe it or not, these issues are easily avoided. To form an effective and lasting relationship with your agency, keep the following tips in mind:
Understand Your Problem:
Most businesses choose to work with an agency for a reason. Whether you’re looking to develop an app to streamline your processes, begin an advertising campaign to generate leads, or redesign your website to improve the user experience and increase conversions, you are seeking a solution to a business problem. One of the core benefits of an agency is the ability to create up-to-date solutions to unique problems. An agency can only create solutions when they know the problem.
Know Your Goals
It’s important to have a clear direction when you’re working with an agency. Your goals will determine the execution of your campaign or project. They are also vital to managing expectations from both sides of the agency-business relationship, so be sure to communicate exactly what you’re trying to achieve. If you need help defining your goals, take a look at our SMART Goals Template.
Keep Them In The Loop
Communication is key! The business-agency relationship does not start and end with the brief. Try to keep your agency in the loop and up to date with your new ideas, campaign progress and results you might notice along the way. If you’re both on the same page, the process will be much smoother.
The Agency Process:
If you’re on the lookout for a great digital agency, there are a few things you should keep an eye out for. Here is the process your agency should be following:
Workshopping
Working with an agency provides a unique opportunity to workshop problems, and to have a fresh pair (or a fresh few pairs) of eyes look over strategies, ideas and plans.
Workshopping is one of the most important processes in working with an agency. One of the biggest benefits of a workshop is the chance to talk problems, ideas and get everyone excited about the possibilities. It's a chance for you to decide how you’d like to move forward and how it will add to your brand, service and customer experience. The workshop process is a chance to lay everything on the table with your digital agency and begin the process of working together to find the best solution for your company, combining your industry and internal knowledge with your agency’s digital expertise.
The awesome thing about bringing in a digitalagency and beginning a discussion as a newly formed team is that they have a completely different perspective. Best of all, they thrive on new & fresh problems or solutions - that’s why they’re in digital, it’s a rush. They will push you and suggest things that have never been done in your industry before. It's part of their job to help you push the boundaries to stand out in your industry - a workshop is the perfect forum for floating radical, blue sky ideas and figuring out if they’re viable.
At Klyp we hold a half or full day workshop with your sidekicks, your account manager, designer for humans and marketing guru to discuss your needs and flesh things out at a high level, before diving in deeper with the detail. We start off talking about the overall goals and objectives of the company and discuss various ways a digital platform can help you reach those goals.
The Workshop Process:
Your Needs - All of them
What do you need? What do your colleagues need? We also gauge what your expectations are and what you consider success factors for effectively completing the project. We get to know your organisation, your needs, target markets and product or service - the more we know about you the better we will be at delivering exactly what you need.
You have the opportunity here to discuss the possibility of integrating other existing systems into your website, streamlining processes for better insight into sales and customers behaviour, or even addressing internal efficiencies by integrating platforms.
2. Upper-Level Involvement
The workshop process gives all decision-makers a chance to get to know the digital agency and have their say on how things should look from their perspective. It will also give them a deeper insight into the process and how the project will progress if they are not directly involved in the digital asset being discussed. They also have the opportunity at this point to assess possibilities of integration of systems.
3. Your Customer Journey
Mapping out the customer journey and discussing how clients would come to find you online, referral, paid placement or just a Google Search? What do they go to your website for? Why would they visit your website? An agency will then be able to match these answers to the goals of the organisation and ensure that the UX/UI design caters to the needs and wants of your client as well as those of your company ensuring a successful product.
4. The Work
Once the ideation and workshop process is completed, your agency can get to work! Depending on the scope of the project or campaign, this process can vary in duration. This is when agency specialists can implement their knowledge and create something for your business. Please be patient and remember to keep in touch throughout this process!
5.0 Approval and Go Live!
The final stage of the initial agency process is to approve the work completed. This may be an advertising campaign, a new brand or transformed website. Take your time, and give all the feedback you can. This will be passed back to the team of specialists for changes to be implemented before a project or campaign is set live.
If you'd like to find out more about Klyp and our collaborative workshop process, flick an email through to engage@klyp.co!
