What do clients value most from their agencies?

Used to be a pretty straight forward one this

Clients ‘make stuff’ and agencies ‘make ads to sell clients stuff’.

And then we all started talking at once.

Procurement said you can only make this much margin

But agencies said but we’re specialists and that costs

Then agencies said meet our network, buy it all from us and get some discount

However clients said meeting our in-house team

And then he said this

And then they said that

My dad said ‘it’s just ads isn’t’

I, being clever explained ‘funnels, omni-channel, programmatic, content…’

My dad went to cut the lawn.

How to stand out?

To launch an agency, you only need three folks (suit, creative, planner) and a spare bedroom.

Do you know how many agencies there are in just the UK? Google told me about 25,000, anyway a lot. How do you stand out from 25,000 mouthy types all claiming to be best? How does a client choose?

So I asked them. Our clients, what did they rate most from us?

Here’s what came back (see the word cloud).

So that’s encouraging. It’s down to the people. We all know this, but good to hear it once again.

But let’s dig deeper – what does these people need to deliver?

Again, I asked our clients, who said the holy trinity:

Communication + creativity + execution.

One by one.

Communication – the art of good listening, of hearing the unspoken, of keeping all informed, of finishing each other’s sentences when you really are an extension to the marketing team.

Creativity – effective stuff, remember the bit about selling their stuff. Don’t do it for the gongs, do it for the Sales teams, they need leads, they get their bonus. You make Marketing the heroe. Now is the time ask for introductions to your client’s colleagues and deepen your engagement.

Execution – make it easy and efficient to go from scamp to live. Don’t forget, brownie points can be won for effective navigation on behalf of your client between their Product Marketing, Brand Team, Content team and Sales. It’s not just what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

And lastly be the glue. 

Clients can be siloed for many reasons – regions they cover, customer segment or vertical they own, prospecting for new business or organic upselling. 

Here’s where a good agency does well. Get amongst your clients, tell one department what the others are up, spot opportunities to joint it altogether for them and make it bigger and better. The Execs will love you.

Now go build that team that your client wants

Do that colour personality team test – for both your people and your clients, to match them effectively. Blues (let’s do it right’), go well with Yellows (Let’s do it together’), while Reds (Let’s do it now), are best balanced out with Greens (Let’s do it in a caring way).

And keep asking if you’re doing it right, push for reviews, push for scores. You’ll learn a load, we did.