As a marketing agency, we recognize the importance of building and nurturing strong partnerships with our clients, industry peers and even our own team members. And while different partnerships may have different needs or processes, we’ve found that all successful partnerships are rooted in the same principles. So today, we’d like to share our best practices for fostering agency partnerships that deliver serious results—and satisfaction.
Complement one another
There is a reason for every partnership. In fact, working with someone who has a different skill set than your own is one of the biggest benefits of working together. This is because you’re able to gain access to outside knowledge, capabilities, resources and beyond that can complement your own team’s expertise and abilities.
Recognizing how your skill set varies from your partner’s is essential to realizing how you can help bolster one another’s ideas, thinking, and processes. While we may wish we could launch a new product or re-brand our global company with internal resources, the truth is that partnerships make us—and our solutions—stronger.
Align on objectives
In order to achieve a happy partnership that leads to profitable results, both sides need to agree on where they’re headed and what they’re to achieve. If you don’t align on marketing or program objectives upfront, it could lead to confusion and frustrations down the road—and no one wants that!
The great thing is, aligning on objectives is as simple as communicating them and having a conversation about what you are trying to accomplish with your agency partner or internal team. Sometimes this can be in the form of a briefing or kickoff meeting, and other times it could be as quick as a phone call. The main thing is just ensuring everyone involved is on the same page and in lockstep throughout the partnership. At the end of the day, this will positively impact timelines, budgets and, most importantly, results.
Set clear expectations
What do you need from your partner? What does your partner need from you? What could you both improve or elaborate on? Answering these questions at the start of your partnership and throughout it can help agencies, clients or colleagues understand their role and responsibilities within the relationship.
Part of setting those expectations is defining the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be used to measure and track the success of a project and the partnership as a whole. Just like why aligning on objectives is so important, setting KPIs can help prevent either side from feeling like their needs are being ignored, talents undervalued or results falling flat. All things no partner would want!
A few example KPIs that LoSasso measures throughout a partnership and/or campaign include:
- Qualified high-value leads
- Digital ad engagement and conversion metrics
- Website health
- Content SEO standings
- Email marketing metrics
Communicate openly and effectively
Partnerships, like any successful relationship, rely on open and frequent communication. From setting expectations and aligning on those marketing objectives to providing feedback or resolving issues, communication is key to ensuring the best possible partnership, especially between agencies and clients.
If you don’t work near an agency, marketing partner or even teammate, then an open line of communication is all the more essential. Thankfully, there are tons of different tools and resources to make communicating with people, near and far, beyond easy. You can email, text, call, video chat, message, use an app or project management software—find what works best for you and your process!
Trust your partners
Trust is the glue that holds a partnership together. And building trust begins with honesty, respect, and full transparency. Everything we’ve discussed so far goes into building that trust and setting one another up for success. If you feel like trust isn’t there or is lacking, talk to the agency lead or your daily contact to figure out what’s missing or what needs to change. If they aren’t working with you though, that may be a tell-tale sign that the partnership isn’t right.
The best thing you can do is trust yourself and find an agency partner or teammate that does too. Because when you empower and support one another then it shows—in the solutions, in the results, and in the wins.
