Getting the best out of client and agency relationships.

Cargo; We pride ourselves on delivery.

I was asked the question last week how we solve our clients’ challenges or problems.

We offer a range of services that do this, but the ’solving problems’ element of this is very much taking responsibility away from a client and onto ourselves.

We aren’t a ‘salesy’ agency. So I’m not going to sit here and spout the ‘Top 5 Problems we solve for our clients’.

However, if you delve a little deeper into this, the flexibility of the way we work with many of our clients is invaluable to answering a client brief, or solving a problem.?

We have always said that there is nobody that knows their business better than the people in business. Which is great, they have the knowledge in their product or sector and we are specialists in ours. The beauty of working in our industry is that we get an insight into a wide range of business types. It is up to us to do everything we can to understand that business and its audience, immersing ourselves in it to help us deliver the best possible outcome.

In-house teams are often stretched. At this moment in time we are working with several clients that have 1 - 3 people in their marketing team. It is impossible for them to do all of the work needed to successfully deliver for their clients. We also work with smaller companies that do not have an in house marketing team, but due to size their requirements scan be very different.

Building client relationships isn’t just about getting to know your product or service. It’s also about getting to know you as humans. Building close working relationships is essential.

Our most successful work is understandably with those clients that we have worked with for a long time. It’s only natural as you get to understand how a client thinks, you can draw on previous discussions and reference points in order to execute work more efficiently. The one day ‘deep dive’, or ‘immersion sessions’ are great, but I’m talking more here about years of delivery.

So, what does this look like and how does it function?

We have never worked to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Yes, there are tasks, functions and processes that we follow, ‘branding concepts’ for example, or a ‘website technical audit’ maybe the top level description, but under this is the individual activity for each and every client - the unique ideas and approaches that works for them and speaks to their audience to therefore sell their product or service.

Further to this, we are flexible and with clients in a way that works for them. Some may be ‘retained’, some may work project to project or job to job. The detail and benefits of each of these approaches can be discussed in another post, but the most important thing for us is that our clients are comfortable at the start of the relationship, and if/when we see an opportunity to change up or introduce new ways of managing work we can do this further down the line. Not every one of our clients use online tools such as Basecamp - for some it simply isn’t on their radar, but for others we have brought them over and transformed the way we manage tasks and projects.

The journey of working with a client or on a project - no matter what the size - all have a backbone - an ideal route - but let’s be honest, when have they ever ran perfectly along this one road? Being flexible to accommodate the bump in the road - or ideally anticipate it so you can avoid it is key. As an agency it is our job to do this for our clients. Constant discussion, open lines of communication and a reference to the original aim and objective enables us to do this.

Select the right partner

When selecting an agency to work with, make sure you explore how the relationship will work and try to meet with as many of the team you will be working with as possible. This is very different to asking how the work or project will be managed, which is a more transactional function!

This also works the other way round from agency side when selecting clients. Is the fit right?

Clients and agencies always have a choice. As a client you can choose the agency to work with, and as an agency you don’t have to take on work - if the relationship is not going to be an equal one that benefits both parties - and is not enjoyable - then the question stands: is it the right relationship to be entering into?