Achieving Success with Your Marketing Agency: A Collaborative Journey - Part Three

You’ve identified what your business needs and learned how to find the ideal marketing partner. Now let’s talk about what to expect after you get started.

Working with a good marketing team should be an exciting, challenging process in which you think deeply about your goals and priorities—and then translate them into action. Ultimately, you should expect solid execution and measurable results, leading to deeper trust and richer collaboration.

All right, you’ve identified the marketing resources that need improvement, and chosen a team to help you elevate your game.

We know what you’re probably thinking.

Now what?

How do you work with a marketing agency?

What should you expect?

How do you get the most out of your marketing partnership?

What are the hallmarks of a successful collaboration?

Every situation will be unique, but there are some signs of healthy collaboration that should be the same no matter the variables. Let’s jump in.

Part 3: Collaboration

1. Honesty

From beginning to end, you need to be completely honest with your marketing team. This includes:

• Your goals and priorities
• The weaknesses and gaps you’ve identified in your marketing
• Your understanding (or ignorance) of marketing technology
• Factors affecting your marketing strategy that they won’t know unless you tell them

That last one may or may not apply—but if it does, it’s important. Hopefully, you’ve partnered with someone you trust enough to be vulnerable with (if you’re not sure, go back and read Part 2, How to Find the Right Marketing Agency for Your Business).

Honesty is about communication, and communication needs to remain free and open for best results. For example, you should be able to ask questions about marketing assets you don’t quite understand. Your team should feel confident approaching you about something they consider a bad idea or false step.

This doesn’t mean your marketing partner has access to privileged information or that you’re obligated to answer every question. It just means that, as far as the marketing process is concerned, you will achieve the best results by dealing honestly and transparently with your team.

Honesty is a two-way street, and your partner should be upfront with you, as well. Be prepared to consider their professional opinions, and to hear one or two things you might prefer not to hear. Keep your eye on the prize. You’re working toward the same goal.

2. Imagination

Depending on your needs, you will be working creatively to some extent with your marketing partner. There is creativity even in the copy that goes into a good social media post. It’s unavoidable. But what if you are not the creative type?

Not to worry. Odds are you are working with some highly creative people—and that they are skilled at applying their creativity to the prosaic world of business. That’s what marketing is!

So expect to stretch your imagination as you work with designers, writers, and other creatives during the process. Hopefully, you’ll even have a little fun.

By the way, when we say “imagination,” we also mean to include a natural openness to possibilities you hadn’t considered. If you are working with a talented marketing team, they will bring ideas to the table that may or may not work for you—but you would be short-circuiting the process not to entertain ideas from the people you’ve hired to help you grow and improve.

3. Attention to Detail

Not everyone has the same ability to sniff out typos in a draft of web copy—but we have all seen typos on websites! And boy, are they embarrassing!

As a business owner or team leader, attention to detail is not anything you need us to explain; it comes naturally when you are examining a patient. Well, it is also important when you are handling a marketing project that will represent your business to your community.

Go ahead, and send the logo back for one last revision. Ask for a fourth draft of your home page copy. Suggest a slightly brighter accent color. This is your project. We want you to be thorough—and we really want you to own the final result wholeheartedly.

But also be prepared to stay engaged in the process when your marketing team comes back with that final revision. Especially at the end of a big project, everyone needs to have the stamina to take one more close look.

4. Flexibility

Marketing is a dynamic and frequently difficult field, requiring a lot of planning, coordination, and creativity. It’s rare that a complex project goes off without at least some unforeseen challenges.

So it’s critical that both the client and the marketing team stay flexible throughout the process.

You can give your team some breathing room by adding a little time to your deadlines up front—and by understanding the nature of the process, which is both an art and a science. It’s also important to make yourself available to provide input when and if an obstacle arises—and to keep the faith.

At the same time, your team should stay flexible and adaptable to any changes that occur to you midstream. It’s not easy to change course in the middle of a creative project, but they should be willing to adjust.

Keep in mind that mid-process changes always require additional time and usually incur unplanned costs. But any good marketing partner will remain open to changes and—going back to our first point—will give you an honest estimate of the extra time and cost.

5. Defining Your Ideal Case

At Artisan Workshop, we are laser-focused on helping your business not only grow, but grow in the best way—increasing your share of work which most closely matches your skills and preferences as a business owner.

So we’ll ask you now: Who is your ideal client?

You probably know the answer without having to think about it, but even if you need to do some hard analysis, it’s worth reaching clarity about what kind of clients you like serving the most.

So go ahead, tell your marketing team about your “wish list.” There’s nothing better for us than to have a precise and measurable target to aim at. We’re listening.

Conclusion

If you’ve made it all the way to the end, congratulations, you are on your way to a successful marketing partnership.

You have evaluated your existing resources and learned how to choose the right marketing team—and now you have some idea of what to expect while working with them.

The only question left to answer is, what can Artisan Workshop do for you?

Contact us today with your other questions, or to get started on a marketing strategy to take your business to the next level.

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