As a service to our clients and partners, Steel summarizes topics in the marketing and advertising industry each month. Please reach out to Kirsten Cutshall for more discussion on this month’s checklist or anything that is on your mind. We would love to hear from you!
Video Transcript
I am Kirsten Cutshall with Steel Advertising. It is December 19th, and this is my gift to you – a year end client/agency review in under 5 minutes. It is no secret that stronger partnerships lead to stronger results. As one year ends and a new begins, here is a 9-point checklist to improve your client-agency relationship so you can unlock greater collaboration, creativity, and success in the year ahead.
1. SOW Alignment: Have you recently reviewed the scope of work together and discussed any areas where you feel unaligned? Feelings of underdelivery on the client side or scope creep on the agency side can lead to major tensions between the executional team.
2. Updated Marketing Calendar & Schedules: Do you have an updated annual calendar that is readily available to you and all key stakeholders? For each project, do you have a core team schedule in place that is kept current and available?
3. Collaborative Briefs: Whether creative, PR, web or media, the brief is one of the most important documents for ensuring projects meet mutually agreed upon strategies and goals. Are you getting briefs for all projects, and are they presented and improved in joint client-agency work sessions?
4. Forward-looking Status: Does your core client/agency team meet regularly over the status of all current work, with a view towards what is coming next? Is a status document updated on a regular basis and is it clear what is needed from you?
5. Joint Planning for Team Training: Do you and your agency discuss training together annually to ensure new skills are brought to the overall team? Whether you divide and conquer or attend conferences or webinars together, planning training together makes sure the team is evolving in sync.
6. Compelling Creative Strategy: Marketers should expect their agency to deliver a well-researched creative rationale presented and discussed in a way that invites revisions and collaboration.
7. Optimization of Ad Spend and Budget: Your media should meet or exceed industry benchmarks for key performance indicators. Additionally, when working in a full service agency relationship, the agency should not only be garnering paid media bonus, but also building earned opportunities as well and integrating these into the funnel as well.
8. Feedback: Does your team have an established routine for delivering feedback on the agency’s level of service outside of status meetings? Do you make time for proactive review of performance between the client/agency team? Do you have a regular cadence for Top-to-Top calls? Are both sides of the relationship giving and accepting feedback well?
9. Stakeholder Communications: Do you and your agency prepare regular updates for executives and stakeholders? In addition to times when you need buy-in on new campaign ideas and significant investment decisions, are you updating stakeholders and executives regularly to build trust for when you need major decisions.
That is it for this year. Thanks for listening. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk. And don’t settle for average this year—aim for an A-grade partnership that truly represents your brand’s potential. Merry Christmas!
By: Emily Heller
