Finding the right strategic marketing partnership
If you’ve ever gone through the process of finding the right strategic marketing partners, you know how difficult it is.
You know that even after all the vetting you do, sometimes you just need to work with partners to see who’s good and who isn’t. If you knew someone who interviewed hundreds of agencies and partners, would you be interested in learning how they do it?
If so, let me share my process when I select new marketing partners.
Step 1: Meet with agency owners and team members
This step is extremely important because I get to understand the personality of an agency. Businesses and agencies have personalities and if the two don’t match, then the relationship won’t work out. Part of being a marketing broker is matching not only skill sets but making sure the relationship fits for both parties.
A key part of this step is also seeing which agencies are customer focused versus purely profit driven. I choose only to work with the first kind. At the end of the day, my customers need to be taken care of because if your business doesn’t grow, the agency’s business shouldn’t either.
Step 2: Sign an NDA if needed, and go over their work to understand their strengths and weaknesses
One of the key steps I take with agencies is seeing their work live. Not just the marketing material they show me based on a proposal, but I go into the back end of the data and see what they have accomplished. From this, I get insight into how an agency explains complex topics to customers and how deeply they understand the data.
Step 3: Review past work and current customers
Reviewing past work isn’t just about seeing what an agency has done well. It is about knowing where an agency didn’t meet customer expectations either. Most agencies are strong in 2-3 skills and everything else is typically average work. The job of a marketing broker is to manage expectations and match the project with the right agencies.
Step 4: If authenticated, they become a partner
Simple enough, contracts get signed and we begin working with the partner and clients.
Step 5: Monitor service and remove any partners that don't perform at the highest level.
Every month, I work as a quality checker in the background, getting reports and making sure things are done well. A few months in, I will reach out to my customers to make sure they are happy with the services. If there are situations where customers are not happy, I will communicate with the agency to see if any issues can be resolved. If an agency isn’t performing, I remove them from the partnership network.
As you can see, most people can only do steps 1-4, but since I work with these agencies continuously, I can actually see how well they do their jobs. So when you work with me, you are getting proven partners who have performed for my other customers.
If you are looking to start your next marketing campaign or project, feel free to reach out and see what my partners can do for you.
