How to ensure your advertising, digital & marketing agencies perform and meet your KPIs.
To get the best return on investment (ROI) on your advertising and marketing dollars, the ball’s in your court as the business or brand representative. You can appoint the best agency who has all the credentials for delivering strong results and performance for their clients but ultimately the onus is on you, the client, to foster a strong performance culture and partnership with their agency from the outset.
Here are some tips and tricks on how to make sure your advertising, creative and digital agencies meet the KPIs and deliver strong results for your brand.
Communicate your expectations up front
Regardless of whether you’ve appointed your agency or inherited from them when you joined an organisation, it really helps if you let them know what you expect right from the outset of your relationship. This can be on many fronts. It can be what your expect in terms of results, meeting deadlines, responsiveness, providing estimates, professionalism, etc. Share with them what makes you tick, how you work best with your agencies, suppliers and partners and that way there are no surprises when you hit a bump in the road. And there will be some because humans are involved! When expectations are communicated and shared early, you get off to a flying start.
Be clear on your business and marketing KPIs
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when working in partnership with your agencies is not being clear on what KPIs you need to achieve to be successful and what key deliverables they need to meet to be long term partners. If you communicate what your KPIs and objectives are from the outset, there is no time lost in getting the most effective creative, media and digital solutions created and underway. As it is important to communicate KPIs up front, it is also important to loop back and review the results at the end of the campaign or project to see if they were met.
Agree reporting structure and metrics from the start
Reporting is really important especially when it comes to paid advertising, whether your business is using traditional media channels, such as TV, radio or outdoor, or paid search and social channels. Digital channels are much easier to measure thanks to google analytics and the ad manager tools in Facebook. That said, some agencies are more proficient at providing insightful and meaningful reports than others. And if you’re using traditional media channels to advertise in you can still measure success, it can just be a bit more time consuming and requires looking at different data and reports, but don’t let that frighten you off. Measuring the impact of your advertising dollars is one of the most important things you can do to ensure you maximise your return on investment.
Meet regularly to review results and optimise performance
Depending on the type of agency you have appointed and the amount of investment you’ve made into a specific channel (i.e. google search or social media), will impact how detailed and often you receive reports from your agency. In general, for paid search and social media advertising activity, your agency should be providing monthly reports. And that’s not just a bunch of data - that’s insightful reports that summarise the data and findings and provide trends over time so you can see ongoing performance, not just a point in time. If you are not getting reports, you need to have a word to your agency!
Share the wins and success
When you have wins that your agency have helped you achieve, share the excitement! Agency account managers are often run off their feet and often kept out of the loop when the client enjoys great success. Don’t be shy - let them know. Even go for a cheeky drink to celebrate.