Consejos para mejorar tu relación con tu agencia - Blu at Marketing Fest.
“Why doesn’t your relationship with your agency work?”
This was the question that Diego Villarreal, Blu’s Managing Partner, asked the audience of The Marketing Fest last October, where Blu had the badass experience of collabing with MKT Fest for the first time, giving us the opportunity to talk about the industry, its challenges, and some tips intended to help brands, agencies, and newcomers in general.
Here are some of the best tips that Blu’s Head Manager gave at MKT Fest that will help you understand the keys to what makes the relationship between a brand and an agency work:
- More than a means to an end
First, you need to understand that an agency isn’t just a tool to get you where you want to be in terms of branding, social media relevance, PR, and more.
Your agency is responsible for transmitting and presenting your brand to the market, as well as building the bridge that will lead an audience, old and new, to you. Your agency defines the way your brand is perceived and will work for the sole purpose of accomplishing your goals.
So, when dealing with your agency, it’s important to never forget: Your agency is your partner.
- Beware the smooth talkers
Knowing how to choose an agency is half the work. For this reason, it’s important to make sure that the agency you are considering working with is up-front about its strategies.
A big red flag when talking to an agency is when they present themselves as too good to be true. What does this mean? That you need to make sure that what your agency is pitching to deliver is reachable and realistic.
If an agency is promising you something that sounds hard to accomplish, stop right there and make sure to ask them to prove that what they’re proposing is sustained on strategy and hard data. This will avoid a relationship that ends up being disingenuous or doesn’t live up to expectations.
- Budget, budget, budget!
When talking about budgets, it’s vital to know not only how to manage them, but also how to invest them so that your agency gets all they need to give you what you want. You can’t expect your agency to give you their 100% if you can’t even bother to properly invest in the project you’re expecting them to deliver to you.
A business proposal requires effort and a rigid structure that will work for you and your agency. If you are not able to offer resources, propose reasonable deadlines, and be receptive to your agency’s needs, your relationship is doomed from the start.
- All play and no work makes you a bad partner
Finally, more than anything, it’s important to remember that hard work is what makes things work. You can’t expect to simply tell your agency what you want from them and bail. Being receptive, constructive, and clear at the moment of communicating with your agency is the stepping stone necessary for accomplishing your goals.
Not only that, but the same goes both ways. An agency manager should be someone who is thoroughly involved in every aspect of the project they are running and makes sure that what is being worked on and delivered is consistent with the vision of the brand.
A good collaboration is born when both sides, brand and agency, are pulling their weight to offer each other the best they can.