While some marketing agencies are superheroes, most are made up of mild-mannered creative types who are really trying to help you succeed. As such, we are not mind readers. The biggest values we bring to the table are our experiences with other clients in similar situations, a certain creative flair, and the ability to offer an objective viewpoint from above the forest.

To make a client and marketing agency relationship work takes communications. Even when you think something should be clear and obvious, it may not be seen or heard that way on the other end of the table.

So, here are the top 6 things you want your marketing agency to know about your business in order to be successful. 

1. Let Us Know Your Real Goals

Just saying, "we want more customers, we want more growth, and we need awesome marketing for it." might cut it for a vague headline in a magazine, but for your digital marketing team this information is too superficial to use.

We need business data to base our social media, SEO, email, and inbound marketing strategies on. Tell us about the exact expectations you have. Is it traffic increase? Is it lead generation? Is it conversion optimization? Are you struggling to sell a specific service? All of those solutions can bring you customers, but they all belong to different problems. As a business owner or a marketing director, you need to shed light on the marketing challenges your business is facing, so that our marketing agency can give you the right diagnosis and start implementing a unique and targeted strategy. 

By the time you're discussing the partnership details with an agency you plan to work with, you need to be able to articulate the exact problems you have, or at least have an idea about what it can be due to initial consultations with your team. 

2. Tell Us About Your Brand

No one knows your brand better than you do. And we want to hear all of that! Brand personality is a very subtle direction of marketing, which requires clear and precise communication. How can you describe your brand? You don't need to use marketing-specific terms, but you need to communicate what your brand stands for.

If your marketing agency is not asking questions about your brand, they are most probably implementing a standard strategy that will fail to stress your unique selling points. Are you a driveway paving company based in Florida that boasts exceptional customer service and very friendly staff? Or, maybe you are a tech company with a unique training strategy that helps clients get up-to-speed faster? These are the kind of details we need to know. 

3. Who Are Your Customers?

Don't think we're crazy if we ask you to describe the person that is most likely to enter your store or give you call. This is part of the persona process. Be specific about who your ideal customer is. We will want to know what their preferences are concerning your services, what their online activity hours are, their challenges, expectations and how can your company service them. 

Never exaggerate, thinking that your digital marketing agency might catch big fish if they don’t know it’s way above your capabilities. Sure, businesses grow and you might be able to level up your profits, but a step-by-step campaign will get you further than an inaccurate buyer persona profile.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customer. They are also objectively selected and researched. This is why we are so confident in our marketing activities, because we know exactly who is on the other side of the communication line. 

Collect some data to present to your marketing team, including basic demographics data, common biography details, common challenges, lifestyles and personalities. 

4. How Would You Like to Be Communicated to?

If you’re the primary contact to your marketing team and you’re going on a month long trek in Alaska, a secondary contact should be provided to your team. If you need to approve a press release, your marketing can’t send it out.

Absence of communication will make the job of your marketing team more difficult and the campaign less effective. So be clear about your communication habits and days you will be unavailable before you start a campaign. Most importantly, inform your business colleagues about the needs of your marketing agency. Make sure your marketing has access to your sales team, and vice versa. Turn this partnership into a team working together and campaigns will run much smoother. 

5. Tell Us about Your Marketing History

There is a kind of background check in the world of marketing too, although it’s called simply research. Your team may research your brand’s activities online for days, come across problems and tasks that have already been done, or you can provide them with the marketing history from the beginning. 

Sometimes, methods that you have used in the past can cause issues in the future. For instance, if your website content is not unique, it will draw your marketing team back, no matter what kind of impossible fights they win for your company. Past penalties, black hat SEO, buying followers on social media will definitely ruin your online reputation in the long run. The only solution is being honest with your marketing agency and sharing that information. If your team is confident about handling it, then they will make informed choices, if they are not, you might be paying for a service that won't help you grow anyway.

6. Your ROI And Monthly Sales Estimates

We know it might be difficult at first, and you might feel like you're sharing confidential business information, but you're not, really. 

Be transparent with your marketing agency and share your sales data, customer information, frequently asked questions, and so on. When your team is working on a campaign for weeks, they must be able to assess the results in terms of sales and ROI. 

Knowing the days and months that were extremely productive for you will help them come up to conclusions that your business will benefit from, so don't hold back. 

We Care … Really

Finally, remember that a company that asks questions cares about you as a client. Your marketing agency is a part of your team, make sure it's clear. The agency that goes silent after leaving you an invoice, won’t be in there for the long haul – and certainly doesn’t help the rest of us who want you to trust your marketing agency relationship.

And now, if you want to know if we are a match, contact us for your free inbound marketing assessment. We love asking questions!