The agency-client relationship can be difficult to establish and grow. These are the things I've learned over the years as both a consultant as well as operations leader, hiring consultants and agencies.

1. Agency and Client
Relationships
Todd Barrs
Principal, Pier3.co
SearchCon 2018 (Breckenridge, CO)
Lessons from both sides of the aisle

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3. “Dedicate 10% of your budget to
tools and 90% to people.”
- Avinash Kaushik, Kaushik.net
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4. Client-Side Perspective
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5. Are you ready to hire an agency?
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6. Agencies can’t fix business, product nor
team problems with good digital marketing.
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7. Why Hire an Agency?
 Expertise and focus to stay up to date with rapid changes
 Often less expensive vs. building a team in-house
 Leverage insights from multiple clients
 Bring outside viewpoints (“see the forest through the trees”)
 Avoid internal barriers and politics
 Results focused and performance-driven
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8. Agency Considerations
 What do you want to achieve? – Be specific
 What skills do you have in-house? / What skills are you missing?
 Resources and budget considerations
 Agency fees
 Ad spend
 Technical implementation costs
 Specialized vs. multi-service agencies
 Time: Who will manage the relationship? Are they prepared?
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9. Agency Checklist
 Are they current with latest trends?
 Do they display thought leadership?
 Have experience in your niche or vertical (Ecommerce vs. lead generation)?
 Who will manage AND work on your account day-to-day?
 Get sample reports and case studies (beware of large KPI increases)
 Request multiple client references
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10. The Best Agencies…
 Spend time up-front analyzing your business
 Ask in-depth questions and are naturally curious about your business
 Offer services based around classic marketing techniques
 Educate clients as part of their process
 Are confident, but humble: Show a willingness to continue learning
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11. Agency-Side Perspective
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12. Get to the break-even point
as fast as possible.
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13. Break-Even Point
Source: The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins
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14. Know the Business Situation
Start-up
Turnaround
Accelerated Growth
Realignment
Sustaining Success
Source: The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins
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15. Match Strategy to the Business Situation
 What is the business situation? (likely a combination)
 What kind of change is needed in the business?
 Which type of efforts will likely create the most valuable change?
 Which parts of the contract & scope fit with each business situation?
 Aim to get early wins (Under promise and over deliver)
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16. Focus on ROI
 Agree on metrics and data sources
 Set up attribution models
 Calculate and benchmark customer LTV (multiple time periods)
 Build models to view LTV with attribution
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17. ROI Example (SEM)
ROAS in your web analytics
platform will be even higher
Actual ROI
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18. Build the partnership through
communication and trust
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19. This is a Partnership
 Check everyone’s ego at the door
 Create plans and efforts that will truly change/grow the business
 Leverage each other to help validate what needs to be done
 Put in structure, process and systems to rapidly scale ROI
Agency
Negotiate time lines for diagnosis
and action planning
(build into service offering)
Clients
Be open about your business
(learn to build trust)
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20. Tips for Communication
 Take ownership for making the relationship work
 Clarify expectations early and often
 Regular check-ins (both verbal and non-verbal), at least once per week
 Identify the untouchables and address surprises quickly
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21. Create an Agile Mindset
 Agile methods offer the most flexibility and greatest chance for success
 Marketing is an “educated” guessing game (We don’t know what we don’t know)
 At the beginning, guesses will suck
 Every campaign/effort provides more data and feedback to improve
 Use feedback loops: Continuously talk to customers and stakeholders to find out what’s
important to them
 Size of effort and ROI are not necessarily correlated
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22. Source: https://www.initio.eu/blog/2018/1/18/the-agile-invasion
Campaign 1
Agile Concepts
Campaign 2 Campaign 3
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23. Agile (continuous) Improvement
23Time
Value

24. Agile (continuous) Improvement - Reality
24Time
Value

25. Summary
 Client
 Know your goals beforehand
 Remember that agencies can’t solve business problems
 Focus on ROI, not cost
 Agency
 Know the business situation
 Get to the break-even point as soon as possible
 Focus on the bottom line ROI (vs. secondary KPIs)
 Build a partnership through open communication
 Use an agile methods to build the relationship (continuous improvement)
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26. Todd Barrs
Principal
Linkedin.com/in/ToddBarrs
Pier3.co
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