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),…
A big part of running a successful agency is well-managed finances. Getting your agency budgeting right can make all the difference
Running an agency is no easy task.
You have to go on a tiring process to acquire the right type of clients that want the solution you offer.
At the same time, you have to hire employees to build the best team to render your services. On top of that, you have to put a system in place to ensure seamless collaboration between your team members for maximum productivity.
Of course: there’s also managing your agency's finances.
How do you budget your agency resources to maximize profits?
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1. Settle on a costing model
To budget your resources properly, you have to find the best costing model suitable for your agency. Using the wrong costing model for your clients could lead to losses.
Here are common costing models available to marketing agencies:
Fixed fee:…
Avoid these 10 mistakes when developing digital services for your marketing agency
If you're running a marketing agency, you probably know a thing or two about offering marketing services to your clients. But with the pace of digital transformation and new trends emerging all the time, 'to err is human', you may make some strategic and tactical errors when selecting the best mix of your digital marketing services.
If you are considering offering new digital services like Design and build for websites and mobile or PPC, Search, Social or other Paid, Owned or Earned media, you'll want to check this quick checklist to avoid the mistakes agencies often make when getting into new digital services.
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A good brief helps to ensure that the finished project is what you envisioned, meaning it is more likely to be an effective part of your marketing campaign
"Great projects start with a great brief. This isn’t one."
"Garbage in, garbage out."
Those are phrases I have heard a lot over the years. Often (whisper it) from the agency team, berating a client contact amongst themselves.
But agencies have a big part to play in the quality of briefing. People in glass houses and all that. Over the last few years, I have seen some great briefs from clients that really helped an agency hit the mark. And I have seen some excellent briefs written (for themselves) by agencies, where the client couldn't articulate what they really wanted. But in amongst that have been some very lame briefs, on both sides, so I wanted to tackle that lack of consistency in the latest …
