How to choose the right marketing agency for your business

Before I started KDV, I worked as marketing director for successful e-commerce brands for many years. I was often involved at the early stages of the businesses, where resources were limited and every penny was looked at twice before it was spent. Throughout these years I worked with many marketing agencies and saw varied results.?

I’ve been very lucky to have worked with many fantastic partners that were a great match for the brands I was growing, and also with some that were a bad fit. I learnt? that if there was a good match between my brand and the agency, my team and I often felt we were getting great value for our budget. If that fit wasn’t there, however, we often felt like we were mis-sold to, over promised on results and overcharged. I realised that the results that the agency produced for me, often matched the feelings we as a team had about the relationship with them as a partner.?

I understood how important it is to find the right agency partner for the brand’s marketing needs, and how much the commercial results rely on the relationship with them. Over time, I developed a list of 5 key considerations that helped me choose agencies that were a good match for the brands I worked for and that helped me and my team achieve consistently good results. Here is my list of considerations :

1. Size
2. Process
3. Deliverables
4. Case studies
5. The ‘want’ factor

Before I get started, it’s worth mentioning that asking your trusted network for recommendations of agency partners is always a good idea. If someone you know and trust had a good experience with an agency, there’s a good chance that they’ll do a good job for your business too. Regardless of whether the potential agency partner is found via recommendations, google search or a timely cold outreach, it’s always a good idea to compare them against a few others just to know you’re making the right choice. The following considerations will help you compare your options in a meaningful way and make your decision based on data and facts.

SIZE

Skipping all the clichés about whether size really matters or not, I can speak from experience, that when it comes to choosing an agency partner for your business, it does matter. Broadly speaking, if you’re a small business, you're likely to work much better with a smaller agency. Small agency team doesn’t always mean they would be cheaper, but what it does mean is that there will be less bureaucracy and process that comes naturally with larger organisations and that you’ll inevitably end up having to co-sponsor.?

For smaller businesses and startups, the doing is often much more valuable than the strategising. A smaller agency is more likely to offer you more of the doing, will be much more agile and willing to change tactics in line with your ever changing needs. When marketing agencies are concerned, the best possible scenario is when a start-up finds a small and ambitious agency to work with and both partners grow and learn at a similar pace and stay working together for long years to come. This happens relatively rarely though, and reviewing the relationship with an agency on a regular basis is very important for the alignment between the partners to continue. It’s often that either the brand or the agency grows much faster than the other partner and the organizational changes within the faster growing business mean the synergy is no longer there. And that’s a sign to start looking for another partnership.

PROCESS

Regardless of the size of the agency you’re considering working with, it’s worth investigating their internal process. Hiring an agency means hiring people, and each of them will have a slightly different way of doing things. That’s OK as long as they all follow the same process to ensure consistent standards of delivery. This way, even if an agency team member working on your account leaves, you can be sure that whoever replaces them will provide consistent service without you having to onboard them to your brand again.?

Usually, all agencies say they have a process. It often has a fancy name, is illustrated using some cool icons and animated graphs, and consists of very mysterious terms and abbreviations. That’s great; what you need to do is check if that process is actually being used internally. Asking a lot of questions about what their daily work rhythm looks like, how they manage working on many brands at the same time and what their team’s core experience is can give you a glimpse into what role the said process plays there. Another good tip is to inquire what milestones and output you should be expecting in month one, two and so on and see how what you hear aligns with the fancy process they talk about. Hearing the answers to these questions will give you a good idea about whether the process is a real deal or just a sales tool.

DELIVERABLES

One of the most important things to understand when considering hiring an agency is what they would be actually doing for your money. In the sales pitches, they talk about increasing your sales, boosting your profits and acquiring tons of new customers. What they often don’t get very clear on, is what it is that they will be doing for you to achieve this. Are they talking about giving recommendations? This would mean that you’ll end up having to do the work yourself. Are they disclosing how much time they will be spending on your account? How many leads will they reach out to on your behalf in a given time period? These are the real deliverables you can hold them accountable for, so it’s worth getting clarity on that as soon as possible. This way also you can compare the potential partners to each other in a more meaningful way.

CASE STUDIES

Every agency has success stories and case studies on their website. They show impressive percentage increases in sales, profits and customer growth on colourful, hockey stick shaped graphs. While it all can (and should!) be true, what really matters is what role the agency played in achieving these results . All marketing channels work together, and no one of them can neither be solely responsible for the success or failure of a campaign. While it’s great to show off successes and celebrate them, as they say - success always has many fathers! Trying to understand the role the agency played in the business and the actual scope of the work - what they did and how long for - will give you an indication of what it might be like to work with them, and if what they offer is really what your business needs at this stage.

THE 'WANT' FACTOR

When agencies are pitching for your business, they obviously are after more clients and they want your business. But do you know how much they actually want your business in particular? It’s worth asking them this direct question and evaluating their motivation to understand how important you are going to be for them when they start working with you. You don’t necessarily want to be the biggest client, but you want to know your business is important for them as a team, not only from the financial side. You want to feel that they care about creating success for you and that it is an important part of them realising their goals as a company.

Throughout my career I found that vetting my marketing agency partners according to the above list helped me make better choices and avoid costly mistakes. A good fit made working with the partner more intuitive, required fewer formal documents and boring meetings. It also made working together much more fun. The right size, process and ways of working in an agency help you as a leader use them well to achieve your goals while not focusing on managing the relationship itself.?

I hope you found it useful, and if you did I’d love it if you shared it with someone who might benefit from reading this as well. If you have any questions about choosing the right agency for your ecommerce business, DM me and I’ll be happy to help.