Working with a marketing agency is an interesting experience, especially if it’s new to you. Even if you are used to working with agencies, no two are the same. So, understanding the responsibilities of your chosen agency, and those they expect of your organisation is key.

Our team is committed to providing you with the perfect blend of highly strategic and creative marketing, reliable guidance you can trust, and an attentive service tailored to your schedule and preferred means and frequency of communication. Our approach is 100% client-centred.

However, beyond the responsibility your agency has to your organisation, there are a number of responsibilities you have as a client to help your agency produce the finest work, and deliver the best results.

Client Responsibilities

1. Provide a point of contact.

We work with CEO’s/MD’s, business/operations professionals, and in-house marketers. Sometimes all 3.

Businesses working with a marketing agency must provide the agency with a point of contact that possesses not only industry and operational knowledge, but the authority to follow through on ideas, to create the connected multidisciplinary team required.

Our communication with clients, and streamlined working processes dedicated to navigating bottlenecks, help to manage the many moving parts at play when putting strategies and campaigns together. Selecting the right agency, with the right processes, and the right point(s) of contact to work with your agency is key.

2. Reliably read and respond to emails requesting your knowledge.

Our marketing specialists are adept researchers, but there is no substitute for boots-on-the-ground industry and operational experience.

Whatever your preferred method of communication, we regularly contact our clients with discovery documents to respond to, or quicker, more straightforward requests for industry or operational information to help create truly targeted, conversion-generating content and campaigns.

We don’t expect our clients to create or write the content, but like all agencies, we need guidance and inside knowledge to ensure we are hitting all the right points in our marketing strategies.

3. Digest, respond to, and provide clearance for content plans, drafts, and technical documents.

90% of the work we do at The Marketing Optimist, across each marketing discipline, can be done without the involvement of your team. Or, if you would prefer to, you can play a more active role in providing input and generating ideas.

However, when working with a marketing agency, whether they’re supporting you with social media, SEO, content creation or beyond, there will usually be a part of the process, between creation and publishing, where clearance is sought from your organisation.

Neglecting to respond to these emails, or failing to respond in a timely manner, can result in wasting the efforts of your marketing agency and having their excellent work go unpublished, missing opportunities to respond or react to time sensitive topics, and slowing momentum down to the detriment of your marketing and the results it yields. In short, it’s also a sure fire way to waste your investment.

This is why we always establish your preferred means and frequency of communications at the very start of our relationship, to ensure our point of contact at your organisation understands these expectations.

On the rare occasion when clients go MIA for long periods of time, depending on the marketing specialism, entire campaigns can grind to a halt, making bringing them back from the brink a near impossibility. So, be communicative!

4. Give time for regular progress meetings over zoom.

When working with a marketing agency, it’s important to have regular meetings to gauge progress, hold each other to account and more.

At The Marketing Optimist, the frequency and length of these meetings is dictated by you, the client, but we feel regular Zoom meetings are essential to maintain connectivity between your team and ours, to keep progress moving, and to help generate ideas and identify opportunities that would otherwise be left untapped without regular conversations.

Without these meetings, missed emails containing content for clearance or requests for specialist knowledge can go unanswered and individuals not held to account, processes that may need refining can go untweaked, and both campaign progress and the development of your marketing can dramatically slow down.

5. Be open and honest about what you want to achieve.

During the earliest briefing sessions, we ask our clients what they want to achieve.

Businesses working with a marketing agency should be open and honest when setting expectations and realistic goals together in the early stages, as failing to do so can lead to misunderstandings and frustration about expected results and targets.

Setting honest expectations that all parties are happy with helps your agency marketers to target their efforts to more effectively meet or surpass expectations, and fosters transparency between agency and client. Who wants to dread reporting day? Nobody!

We believe it’s the role of your agency to help you set your goals, expectations, and to help you understand the variables at play which may impact results. Be sure to have thorough conversations about both your targets and the variables that may hinder your ability to achieve them.

6. Trust in processes and guidance.

Like any marketing agency worth their salt, we’ve spent years carefully developing our processes, and we’re always refining them further to offer our clients the finest service and generate the best results.

From the processes we use when deploying our services, to our discovery processes that fuel our work, they’re tried, tested, and effective in guiding the projects to a successful outcome.

When working with a marketing agency it’s important to trust in your chosen agency’s processes, and the guidance they offer in terms of best practice.

At The Marketing Optimist, we’re always open to refining our processes to best serve your organisation, and we enjoy working closely with our clients to seek their input. However, we believe it’s important that clients trust the experience and judgement of their agency in order to experience the best results.

7. Be open to feedback and new ideas.

Very occasionally, resistance to your agency’s ideas can occur if somebody within your organisation feels ownership over creative ideas.

A huge benefit of working with a marketing agency is the access to creative professionals.

It’s important that your staff working with the agency and those involved in the clearance process, are open to new creative ideas, and feedback on ideas generated by your organisation, to truly benefit from the experience of your specialists and to keep momentum moving.

At The Marketing Optimist, Nobody has a monopoly on ideas, if somebody in your organisation has an excellent idea, we’ll help you sharpen it and execute it with precision. This approach helps us to navigate the risk of creating campaigns made with too much input-for-the-sake-of-input, which are usually destined to flop.

We work closely with in-house marketers (who understandably could feel more protective over the creative process and the marketing output generally), and build relationships of trust where both parties can give and receive feedback. These vital communications enable us to move forward together more effectively.

When working with a marketing agency, collaborating on ideas or feedback should be done constructively, with tact, openness and a commitment to a joint goal.

Not Yet Working With a Marketing Agency?

At The Marketing Optimist, whether you’re looking for some top-level marketing strategy or consultative support, or help with Social Media Strategy, content and platform management, SEO, Copywriting, Website design and development, Ads, Digital PR and beyond, we have the specialists to help transform your marketing.

Get in touch with us today and set up a call with our Founder and MD, Richard Michie, to discuss your requirements.