How Advertising Agencies Become Essential Partners to In-House Marketing Teams

The Value of an Advertising agency goes beyond mere execution of campaigns. In fact, it has been seen that a successful agency can function and contribute as a catalyst for its clients. These types of agencies perfectly align with their client’s internal teams in order to smash goals and execute their campaigns quickly and without error. 

This means for agencies, it’s not just a question of winning a retainer with the client; However, it’s about building a partnership that’s founded on a few core principles, including: building trust, working in a collaborative and efficient manner, and understanding the ever-changing needs of each client. On the part of the client, it’s about encouraging communication, leveraging the strength of both the in-house team and agency, and delivering promotions in a swifter, smarter, and more effective manner. 

The goal becomes for the Agency to take the initial transactional-based partnership and turn it into a real strategic partnership that combines goals, speed, and expertise to build brand recognition and improve awareness, engagement, and conversions for each client. 

The Role of the Agency

To successfully integrate and accelerate clients’ marketing activities, agencies need to focus on a few key areas: 

1. Understanding goals: 
It’s highly important as an agency to understand the goals each client has, from YOY business goals, monthly marketing performance goals, all the way down to specific goals of each campaign. Without this understanding, you and your client can find yourself not aligned, which can cause campaign execution setbacks, wasted budget spends, and loss of trust. 
2. Process Integrations: 
Having the ability to adapt to your clients’ processes or integrate your client into your processes is critical for success. For example, using collaborative software for approvals. In my day-to-day experience, I use Basecamp to quickly send proofs to clients for approval. This allows for an easy approval process and helps keep everyone on the same page in a fast-paced environment. Figuring out what works for both your agency and your client can not only save you time, but it allows everyone to communicate effectively to drive successful campaigns. 
3. Reporting & Data Transparency: 
Although the in-house team and the agency work in different buildings, or even different time zones, it is important to be as transparent as possible to drive success and build trust. It is the agency’s task to make sure the in-house team has direct access to analytics, dashboards, and monthly reports. This not only helps the client understand what the agency is doing for them, but it also allows for strategic discussions to see what is working and what should be changed.

3 Ways Agencies Drive Rapid Results and Collaboration

1. Prioritize Context Over Assumptions: 
The biggest hurdle I face when working with a new client is a lack of internal knowledge. For example, understanding who has the authority to approve proofs, specific creatives needed for branding purposes, and which internal systems we need access to. Understanding these things allows for less revisions, quicker deployments, and eliminates branding errors from the start.
2. Ongoing Knowledge Transfer and Capacity Building: 
An agency doesn’t just execute campaigns; it also works to make the client team stronger. This creates long-lasting value instead of temporary wins. This can include training the client on specific tools, or keeping the client updated on the latest marketing trends, software, or strategies. This allows for better time management and can lead to freeing up the agency to focus on higher-level strategic challenges and innovations such as testing new market segments, learning new tools, and implementing new tactics to increase the brand’s awareness and market share. 
3. Innovation & Market Leadership: 
Agencies are often the first ones to see new technologies or platform changes, and are usually the first to be offered beta testing for new and improved tools. Making them the client’s essential link to future growth. This results in a competitive edge over the competition by having an agency learn, test, and implement new technologies earlier than others. It also allows the agency to educate the client on different industry shifts. This could be algorithm changes, outdated tactics, and even privacy regulation changes. The agency can explain with actionable insights how to adapt quickly and prepare for any changes needed to be made. 

The Agency Partnership Advantage

Agencies that excel at working together and communicating openly become more than just a service provider; they become a valuable partner. By focusing on context, simplifying shared workflows, and empowering the client’s team, agencies not only achieve great results but also make sure campaigns and promotions are launched quickly and accurately in today’s digital world. 

This mutual respect, clearly outlined roles, and shared responsibility create the key formula for lasting success in today’s modern digital marketing world.