Choosing an advertising contractor and briefing him correctly is a whole art. How to find a reliable partner, avoid common mistakes and make advertising campaigns (ACs) as effective as possible?
Die or develop
“Agencies are dying” – such conversations have been going on for ten years. Subjectively, it seems so. Small teams leave the market, especially if their work was based on a stack of tools from large foreign companies that have left. Market pressure is also increasing – working conditions with sites are tightening, margins are falling. The most intelligent, most highly organized and professional agencies remain – camels that can run the entire digital desert on one barb and find an oasis of leads.
At the same time, the number of requests for brand promotion to agencies is not decreasing. Yes, in-house teams are much stronger than ten or even five years ago. But the market is highly competitive everywhere, and they solve other problems, continuing to look for a “good digital contractor”. Moreover, the consumer “grazes in the oases of marketplaces”, where the toolkit is so complex that, according to research, only 1% of specialists know how to customize promotion there. Another 3% do it “more or less”. Such data was given by WB.
Error costing million
With increasingly complex CJM, changing formats and ways to optimize at sites, increasing automation helps but does not save. And here it is easier to contact those who are already immersed in these changes and difficulties. The team on the side of the advertiser simply often cannot afford to invest the required amount of resources in training and mastering the tools, in the search for personnel while lead is needed today. In addition to using up-to-date inventory, including the same neuron networks, risks can be shifted to the agency: selection of a high-quality strategy and efficiency of the AC, timely mastering of budgets, communication with the site and labeling of advertising.
There are two main risks if a company makes the “wrong choice” of an agency. The first, of course, is a waste of budget. But for brands, not only this is critical, but also the lack of budget mastering. It may be due to poor organization of processes, where the consequence will be untimely starts of the ACs, or with incorrectly configured ACs. And this is not savings, but business drawdown due to lack of traffic.
Other fears of companies, for example, blocking accounts or banning advertising offices, are not a thing of the past: on the current sites, the rules are softer than those of the departed social networks, but there is still danger. Fines for lack of labeling in most cases in contracts are prescribed for the agency. There are also cases of delays in the moderation of advertisements by sites because the agency did not take into account certain details of the advertising law.
Of course, any agency mistake can be expensive. But for the company it is worth talking, rather, not about the choice between “bad guys” and “handsome” ones (today outright unprofessionalism will not survive in the competitive digital market), but about the choice of “the most effective in a particular area”.
How to choose a digital agency
Almost everyone owns the tools, someone is slightly better in certain categories. It is this small difference that can be critical and important for business. And you also need to be prepared for the fact that the desired “good” agencies that can cover the needs of the business also choose a brand with which they will work: they are looking for such tender conditions (terms, budgets, goals of the AC, depth of interaction with the client) where they can maximize their potential.
What are the key basic criteria for choosing a company and how to prepare for work in order to build cooperation with the agency as productively as possible?
Goals and expectations. Define clearly what exactly you want to achieve. These should be not only general goals, such as improving SEO, increasing traffic to the site, increasing the quality of interaction with the consumer in social networks, promotion on marketplaces, but quite specific tasks in a calculated format indicating budget opportunities. This will make it easier to not only choose an agency specializing in the right areas, but immediately calculate the reality of claims and a possible stack of tools to achieve.
Experience and competence. It is important that the contractor understands the specifics of the business, but do not focus on agencies of “native industry” only. Expand your search to agencies that have a successful track record with companies of similar scale. Often non-standard strategies for your business work better. It is important that an individual solution is offered that is adapted to your needs. To search for information about the work of the agency, you can request the “name of the agency cases”, this will lead to results in company blogs or specialized publications. You can search for competitive cases to find out who they are working with and what tools and current metrics are used in your industry.
Reputation and feedback. Ratings on independent platforms can give an idea of the format and overall quality of services. The digital industry as a whole is trying to give as much information as possible about itself, so industry ratings like Adindex, Sostav, Ruward will help to navigate. The methodology of each is described, as a rule, it takes into account customer feedback on the results of work.
Approach to communication. Ensure that the agency offers a clear feedback mechanism, regular reports on the work performed and the possibility of operational interaction with in-house marketers. Whether the agency gives access to the task tracker is one of the best tools for monitoring the effectiveness of processes, which allows you to see all stages of processes. Another indicative process is onboarding, the transfer of cases, because the clarity and systematization of information about previous campaigns and their results makes it easier for all participants.
Flexibility and adaptability. Digital is constantly changing, and it is important that the agency is aware of new trends and technologies. How often does the agency train its employees, is there an up-to-date certification on sites, for example, on the marketplace (it appeared quite recently).
You can ask at the start a question about how and with what equipment they work: are neural networks used? The answer “yes” is the chance of additional efficiency that everyone is looking for. Their use should theoretically reduce the cost of the product. But at this stage, the neural network does not do the entire work, it perfectly solves micro tasks, such as drawing an element of an advertising banner. And we are talking about freeing, rather, the specialist’s time from the routine, which can be spent on finding new individual solutions, testing new combinations of digital tools, etc.
How else to test flexibility and adaptability? Look into the rating of domestic software. Does the agency use solutions from there as well as its own developments? The analytical base on foreign inventory is a risk to business with a possible closure of access, so it should be avoided. And the desire to deploy analytics on the company’s servers, in its own IT perimeter, is quite normal. This is an additional control point so that the software belongs to the company and it is possible to work with the obtained raw data on its own. A strong player (agency) will always agree and stay close if product support is required.
How companies prepare for quality cooperation
Companies need a clear understanding of what budget they are ready to allocate. And what they want to get for him, based on their unit economy. These are the key issues of a successful start of work with the agency. If the task is set incorrectly, for example, the AC is calculated for 10 million with a certain result, and after a successful defense, the agency is requested to launch an AC for one million, it means that the previous work was done in vain. We need a new strategy.
Another important point is the transfer of current affairs and information on the past AC. How much is the lead cost now, how the company obtains it, what KPIs it set itself earlier, what creatives and UTPs worked well with what set of sites for placement, and what was ineffective. In fact, it is necessary to share a promotion story that will be useful for testing new hypotheses by the agency.
Agency selection checklist
- Before starting the search, define clearly the goals of future ACs and the resources that you can use. Focus on your unit economy, calculations of abstract media plans are a waste of time.
- Study ratings and cases. Don’t limit your choice to just your industry, compare results on investments of the same scale.
- The relevance of certification is important – advertising offices of sites are complex. It is important that the contractor should know about the innovations before anyone else. Moreover, certified agencies have access to beta versions of new promotion formats.
- You can try to start cooperation with an audit of your existing promotion by a potential contractor. So you can evaluate the comfort and effectiveness of communications with a new close partner.
- Prefer those who are ready to provide access to all processes through a task tracker, show results online, are ready to implement end-to-end analytics and deploy software on your servers. Transparency and flexibility in most cases is an indicator of a strong team.
- Choose flexible and adaptive partners.
- Not ready made or custom analytics are needed, but the ones that are right for your business.
- For efficiency, be prepared to transfer “historical data” and possibly even access to the CRM system to the agency. The deeper the contractor is immersed in the business, the more opportunities to find the most effective solutions.
By Evgenia Grunis, CEO of Adventum Agency