– Red flags when working with marketing agencies include defensiveness about performance, pointing fingers at other parts of the journey, and providing criticism without solutions.
– Other red flags include not using versioning to test, not conducting research or limited research, and ignoring existing data.
– Lack of organization, poor communication, and failure to ask important questions are also warning signs when working with marketing agencies.Ensure that the marketing agency you work with is organized, communicates effectively, conducts thorough research, utilizes data-driven decision making, and keeps a log of their work.Red flags from working with marketing agencies over the years:
1. They get defensive about performance.
2. They point fingers at other parts of the journey.
3. They provide criticism without offering a solution.
4. They claim that something normally expected wasn’t in the SOW.
5. They use phrases like “industry standard.”
6. They have constant requests without goals or reasoning attached.
7. They don’t have a testing sheet.
8. They don’t use versioning to test.
9. They don’t do research or have limited research.
10. They ignore existing data.
11. They don’t ask for the unit economics of the products.
12. They rely too much on incomplete data.
13. They fail to ask why something might be happening.
14. They aren’t organized, and communication is lacking.
15. They don’t have organized UTMs.
16. They don’t answer customer questions through communication.
17. They don’t ask how their work fits into the larger journey.
18. They aren’t discussing changes in the industry.
19. They parrot what everyone else is saying.
20. They don’t keep a log of the work they are doing.
Why is this my list?
I’ve hired and fired a lot of agencies over the years, some quicker than others. I’ve also worked with and helped many agencies organizationally over the years to improve their organization. I spend a lot of time working with brands to help them better understand gaps in their marketing strategy. One of the hardest things to do is to hire an agency and align expectations. Arguably, my frustration with agencies billing for creating personas on whiteboards with limited research and templating work a month in advance in less than a day, and billing thousands of dollars without the ability to defend the work produced, has left me fairly bitter more than a few times. It’s one of the reasons we built Formtoro – to keep marketing teams honest, reduce guesswork, and provide them with the data needed to make data-driven decisions. Our software allows us to collect and understand data in ways that build blueprints for how to acquire and market to customers. We work with agencies to ensure they do all of the above to keep things tight and help them succeed. If you’re an agency looking to reduce your workload and provide value from every visitor that subscribes to your clients’ websites, you should get in touch. We offer white-label services. If you’re a brand and any of that list resonates, get in touch, we can collect data and work towards providing you the real reasons things aren’t working. We’ll even work with your agencies and explain it to them.#marketing #data #ecommercehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jivanco