Feeling ripped off by your digital agency?

When it comes to digital support, agencies often promise a utopia of expertise, but this can come at a price and results can often take a lot longer to materialise than expected. A few months into the project, nothing has really changed except for the plummeting rate of your bank balance. The concern is often exacerbated by high initial set up costs that make the whole prospect of hiring an agency again a complete turn off.

Despite these negative sentiments, there really is a time and place to use an agency to quickly test a new activity and to leverage the multiple specialist skill sets they are able to offer. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes the fault in performance actually lies with the one who hired them.

Far too often we see businesses fail because they failed to plan. It might all seem a bit obvious, but have you covered these basic points before reaching for the phone?

#1 Brief in hand?

Have you pulled together a detailed brief so you know exactly what you are looking to achieve?

Be clear with what your goals are.  It’s not good enough to simply say, “We want to see growth, please”.  Are you looking for reach or conversion for example? There is a difference.

It is also your responsibility to determine the overall long term strategy, not the agency’s. No one external can truly understand your business the way you do. The point of outsourcing elements is to simplify things, to take on the necessary expertise that free you up to focus on other work.

Always choose carefully which elements to outsource and which ones to keep in house. Items such as ownership of contractual relationships with suppliers, data ownership, setting and monitoring budgets, overall strategic direction and policing your branding are normally better controlled in house.

Agencies, however, will typically have the upper hand when it comes to helping with the choice of tech platforms to use, automation of complex time consuming tasks, implementing best practices to follow, auditing your data and providing useful insights and benchmarking the results of a given campaign.

There will be some elements which require you and the agency to agree and determine together such as attribution models, audiences, platforms, the creative content production, any flex in the budget to avoid down time if a campaign is performing well. Some of the decisions will be down to the expertise of your agency and the abilities of your own team, but don’t be afraid to test different ideas and challenge the agency. Before opening the door to a full blown agency, you could perhaps consider outsourcing to an experienced freelancer first with a specific expertise and see how that works.

In either case, do set aside good time to support your agency with all their requests to help them fully understand your business and thereby deliver you the best results. Ensuring that meeting action points are followed up promptly can keep the momentum to stay on track and reach goals faster. Simply hiring an agency and letting them ‘get on with it’ is unfair and rarely workable for both parties.

#2 Budget and KPIs in place?

Be honest with what your true budget is, set realistic KPIs with your agency and review frequently as the landscape can change rapidly. For example, new retailers and competitors could start muscling in on valuable search engine real estate pushing your search ads below the fold and increasing ad costs.

Always understand what you are measuring and why. Be careful not to set so many KPIs you cannot see the woods from the trees and that restrict your agency unecessarily from the overall objective.

Allow a good amount of time for results. This is not a market stall where you hand over a £1 and receive a bag of apples instantly so manage your expectations. Changing agencies too fast and frequently can result in a lot of downtime while a new agency learns and you teach them about your business so think carefully beforehand.

#3 Know who to talk to?

Be sure to shop around and do your research on who are the right players to approach for the task. Make sure you are their “big fish in a small pond” rather than the “small fish in a big pond”. Talking to the right type of agency for you and also the right person within the agency from the outset is critical to receiving the best rates and agreeing the optimal contract terms. Be wary of flashy offices and layers of account management (because you will paying for them!) and make sure you see some references and review the notice period before you sign on the dotted line.