How to Build a Collaborative Relationship with Your Digital Marketing Agency

If your company chooses to partner with an external digital marketing agency, it’s important that you establish a transparent and collaborative foundation. Good collaboration is about more than status reporting - you have to speak the same language and both sides must be equally dependent on each other and equally involved in the project. We’ve outlined a few ways in which you and your marketing agency can work together more effectively - based on our best practices here at SilverDisc.

The onboarding process

The onboarding process is the most important first step in building the relationship. A marketing agency will use an introduction meeting to establish roles and responsibilities, communication expectations, timelines for review, and action items. Further meetings can be arranged to discuss the project and answer any questions.

Be clear on objectives

All effective marketing starts with a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Identify what success looks like for you - whether you want to reach more people, improve your brand reputation, or reward your current customers in some way. If you’re not sure of your objectives, this is something you can talk about with your internal and external marketing teams in more detail to decide on goals, conversions and calls to action.

Establishing communication

It’s a good idea to set up a recurring monthly meeting to stay in contact, discuss strategy, and review the past month - this is standard practice at SilverDisc and communication is an essential part of working on a successful marketing project. If you are working on a particularly big campaign, you may want to increase your number of meetings to plan and follow up on activities. In addition to regular meetings, you should also establish a plan for communicating whenever something urgent comes up. Make sure you know who your contacts are so that you always have a clear channel of communication.

Monthly reporting

Your digital marketing agency should keep you informed with monthly progress reports, which may include the following, depending on what channels and platforms you are using:

• Outlining your goals and objectives
• Recapping the work completed during the month
• Data analysis
  • PPC conversions and costs
  • Website traffic
  • Month-on-month performance
  • Clicks, impressions, users and sessions
  • Social media engagement
  • Email campaign performance
• Planning activity for the following month

Quarterly business reviews

The purpose of the quarterly business review is to have a strategic conversation and review the high-level performance to understand what’s working and what needs to be improved. This is an opportunity to discuss how the relationship can develop, and set goals for the future quarter.

Collaborative tools

Collaboration tools make it easy for your company and your marketing agency to share documents. Most marketing agencies will already have a tool in place that they use and can recommend, but it’s important to use something that works well for both parties.

When it comes to file sharing, there are several free options available. Google Drive provides a simple and free way for agencies and in-house departments to share text documents, graphics, spreadsheets, videos, and presentations, while Microsoft offers a similar setup for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on.

Share knowledge and resources

Sharing knowledge is one of the main benefits of teaming up. An agency may have access to helpful software while also offering advice for you to make better-informed marketing decisions. Your agency team members will also bring advanced knowledge of Google Analytics and other tools and can advise your company on how to use those tools more effectively. Meanwhile, your internal team brings a deeper understanding of your company, your competitors, your target audience, and your industry.

Other collateral your team may need to share with your marketing agency includes:

• Existing content style guides
• Your marketing initiatives calendar
• Media files including photos, videos, slideshow, or webinars
• Updates on your product launches and other company news
• Sales and lead data

Finally, you should trust that your agency has your best interest in mind. Essentially, your success is also their success and both parties are working together to reach one common goal.

At SilverDisc, we have the expertise and tools to provide true collaboration. We work with our clients to customise our service to suit your specific needs and help you meet your business goals. Contact our expert team today - use the contact form or call us directly on 01536 316100.