A marketing agency is a specialized team that offers marketing services to businesses and clients. Companies engage marketing agencies because of their experience and expertise in the market, and their capability to synthesize marketing strategies that are tailored to each client’s business, helping the client to achieve their marketing objectives at the end of the engagement.
Marketing agencies often act as the external marketing department of the companies that hire them, taking on the business’ marketing challenges and offering creative solutions and elaborate strategies. Marketing agencies are generally not a one-size-fits-all entity. Some agencies are more suited to the needs of certain industries, based on the agency’s experience and area of expertise.
As a client, there are a few questions to ask when hiring a marketing agency to help with your operations. These questions will help you pick the right agency whose expertise aligns with your business goals, giving you the best chance of success.
During meetings with prospective agencies for your business, it is important to see the work they have done for previous clients as this gives you an insight into how the agency interprets business needs and how they go about meeting those needs. If they have worked with other brands in your industry, you can also assess how well they know the industry and how much impact those specific campaigns have had on the target.
Asking questions about any specialized capabilities the marketing agency may have will show you if they are specifically equipped to solve the marketing problems that you have. This works better when you are clear on what you’re looking for when shopping for an agency.
Having gone through some of the agency’s work and determined that their expertise is suited to your needs, it is now time to clarify what kind of engagement you will have and what kind of working communication to expect between you and the contact person at the agency. You can specify how you would like to be carried along in the process or express what works for your company. This is usually a simple conversation and if there are differences in the communication and engagement expectations, a simple compromise can be reached.
The most important part of your engagement with a marketing agency is what the key performance indicators will be. The client and the agency have to agree clearly on how the agency’s performance will be measured, and what specific objectives can be expected to be met at agreed times throughout the engagement. This is to be documented in detail to avoid any ambiguity over what is expected from each party.
Marketing is critical to the growth of a business. If you find that your business is coming up short in this aspect, consider hiring an experienced marketing agency. Pulse provides digital marketing, video production and brand and web development services to large brands as well as smaller businesses across Africa, leading innovation through expert teams in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Senegal. If you would like to contact Pulse about a marketing engagement, please click here.
If you would like our team to help you with your marketing, send us an email here.
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