{"id":1315,"date":"2021-04-02T19:36:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T19:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/learn\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2023-03-01T19:56:41","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T19:56:41","slug":"how-to-manage-a-digital-marketing-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/ppc\/how-to-manage-a-digital-marketing-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Manage a Digital Marketing Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whether you\u2019re looking to hire an advertising agency or you\u2019re having trouble managing your existing one, you don\u2019t want to be stuck in a scenario where you\u2019ve got two \u201csides\u201d finger-pointing as the ship burns. Sadly, this occurrence happens far too often in the marketing world because of how difficult it can be to match various personalities together. That\u2019s why I\u2019m so unbelievably proud that we retain our clients an average of 3.5 years. <strong><em>That\u2019s freaking hard.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But wait, why listen to a digital marketing agency about how you should manage us better? We\u2019re probably so biased!<\/p>\n<p>Previously to creating a marketing agency, I worked in-house at a company managing another agency. It was that terrible experience that drove me to create Digital Position. Since then, I\u2019ve managed and overseen hundreds of client relationships. I understand why they succeed, why they fail, and what both the client and the agency can do better.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s right, it\u2019s not just \u201cthe client\u2019s fault\u201d. <strong>It\u2019s all about fit before the engagement even starts.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>What Type of Manager Are You?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The first question to ask yourself is \u201cwhat is my management style\u201d? Think about how you manage your employees and be completely honest with yourself. I\u2019ve said many times that ego is the #1 killer of most businesses, but don\u2019t worry I\u2019m not judging you. This is an open, safe place \ud83d\ude09.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s ask yourself some questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do you want to be completely hands off?<\/li>\n<li>Do you want to avoid any other costs at all that might come up?<\/li>\n<li>Are you fearful of wasting money on the agency and getting nothing in return?<\/li>\n<li>Are you fearful that the agency might not care about your results like you would?<\/li>\n<li>Do you think you can do what the agency does \/ that it\u2019s not that hard?<\/li>\n<li>Are you expecting constant communication?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019m a firm believer that proper management is balanced management, but that doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t be successful with other styles of management \u2013 you just need the right fit.<\/p>\n<p>Take this little image I like to call the \u201cmanagement spectrum\u201d:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1316 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Management-Spectrum.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"581\" height=\"67\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Management-Spectrum.png 581w, https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Management-Spectrum-300x35.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 581px) 100vw, 581px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The \u201cends\u201d of the spectrum are the danger zone and are colored red on purpose. Think of this spectrum as an \u201codds of success\u201d meter for your digital marketing relationship. You can absolutely be successful in the \u201cdanger zone\u201d, but your odds of success go down significantly.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>Agency Relationship with a Hands-off Manager<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1329 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Neil-deGrasse-Tyson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"><\/p>\n<p>Hands-off managers can be fantastic for success IF they are responsive and support the agency with what they need to be successful. In fact, if you\u2019ve got an amazing agency who is proactively pushing growth (that\u2019s a BIG IF) and a growth relationship where the agency grows with you, these can be the absolute ideal situation for both parties.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it from an employee &gt; manager perspective internally. You come up with a process to improve something in your business, use it all for yourself, don\u2019t take the time to train your staff, then blame them if results are bad or they aren\u2019t providing value. <strong><em>How terrible is that?<\/em><\/strong> Management can be light touch, but you can\u2019t just abandon your team and then blame them if the results aren\u2019t great, right?<\/p>\n<p>If you find yourself in the \u201ctell me what to do\u201d mode and you want to be hands-off, that\u2019s perfectly okay though! Maybe you have business challenges outside of marketing you need to focus on or other great reasons why this is the case. If so, make sure you read the \u201ctips\u201d section here.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>PROS:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The agency can be the expert you\u2019re paying them to be and drive the strategy.<\/li>\n<li>The agency has more time to spend in the account and isn\u2019t dragged down by constant communication.<\/li>\n<li>You\u2019re starting a healthy relationship built on your trust in the agency.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>CONS:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bad agencies can abuse this and put little effort into your campaigns. (I should probably say \u201cwill\u201d. ~75% of the accounts we audit for new business are horrible).<\/li>\n<li>You have a lot of value to add that you might not realize. You should know your business better than anyone, so if you\u2019re too \u201chands-off\u201d the agency might not realize that value and leverage it in their efforts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>TIPS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If the agency needs something from you, don\u2019t \u201cghost\u201d them. It\u2019s okay to be \u201chands-off\u201d, but not completely unresponsive. If you\u2019re doing this to your agency, you\u2019re setting them up for failure.<\/li>\n<li>Be willing to invest more if you don\u2019t have the bandwidth to provide support. For example, if we have a client that\u2019s hands-off and we need them to make a change on their website \u2013 it\u2019s perfectly fine if they say \u201cno\u201d, but only IF they\u2019re willing to let us bring in agency partners or additional resources to get that problem fixed.\n<ul>\n<li>If you don\u2019t have the time, be willing to pay your agency to fix problems that are beyond their contract with you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Agency Relationship with a Balanced Manager<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1332\" src=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/jared-rice-NTyBbu66_SI-unsplash2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/jared-rice-NTyBbu66_SI-unsplash2.jpg 400w, https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/jared-rice-NTyBbu66_SI-unsplash2-258x300.jpg 258w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Balanced management typically follows a process. A weekly or monthly call, a weekly or monthly report, and then primarily hands-off beyond that. You just want what\u2019s best for the business; identify you have value to bring to the relationship, but also identify that you\u2019re paying experts to pull the digital marketing levers and trust them to do a great job.<\/p>\n<p>This is typically the ideal relationship so long as both sides are in alignment on the strategy. The cadence of meetings allows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the agency to plan their schedule &amp; bandwidth<\/li>\n<li>the teams to iron out any kinks that come up before they become huge problems<\/li>\n<li>a place to debate ideas<\/li>\n<li>gives some room for them to breathe and execute the strategy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you think you\u2019re a balanced manager, check out the pros\/cons\/tips below:<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">PROS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The agency gets valuable business knowledge from you<\/li>\n<li>You\u2019re informed of the strategy and can provide insight if needed<\/li>\n<li>The agency can typically get responses and assistance from you if needed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">CONS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Multiple chefs in the kitchen can become a problem, although MUCH lower risk than micromanagement<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes people are \u201cmicromanagers in disguise\u201d in this bucket, they are fine with a weekly\/monthly cadence but they require a 1,000 word novel from the agency every week explaining every detail.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">TIPS<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Focus your feedback and insights on what you can do to help the agency succeed, not nitpicking the account(s)<\/li>\n<li>If meetings result in the agency asking for help, be willing to provide it quickly<\/li>\n<li>Keep your eyes focused on the forest, not the weeds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><strong>Agency Relationship with a Micromanager<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1331 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/MicromanagerMeme1-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/MicromanagerMeme1-1.jpg 480w, https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/MicromanagerMeme1-1-300x269.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be completely honest, micromanagers are some of the most toxic professional workers I\u2019ve come across. The only way I\u2019ve ever seen micromanagement be successful for anyone is if you find yourself a bunch of \u201cyes people\u201d as an agency. The kicker is, those people are typically very bad at digital marketing, and thus, you\u2019ll be frustrated anyway.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re being honest with yourself, and you\u2019re in this bucket, typically the root issues are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ego \u2013 you think you know more than the people you\u2019re managing<\/li>\n<li>Mistrust \u2013 you don\u2019t trust the people you\u2019re managing<\/li>\n<li>Fear \u2013 you\u2019re so fearful of failure that you want your hand in every aspect<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If any of these buckets define you, I would strongly consider you to think differently. <strong>That is, unless the marketing agency has proven to neglect you or provide terrible results despite your best support &#8211; then fire them.<\/strong>&nbsp;Let me tell you a quick story.<\/p>\n<p>Once, we had a client who brought in a new marketing manager. The new marketing manager was arguably the worst micromanager I\u2019ve personally come across. He wanted to message us constantly, if we didn\u2019t respond within 1 hour (no lie) complaints would come flowing in, he made egotistical statements about his past experience constantly, he bragged about how important he should be because of how much they were paying us \u2013 and so much more. At one point we even logged our average response time of 23 minutes (which is insane even for an in-house employee!) just to see if we were in the wrong.<\/p>\n<p>We were using a Target CPA bidding strategy and this person thought manual CPC would be better. We explained why that wasn\u2019t the case for them, backed everything up through irrefutable data, but were forced to execute the strategy this person wanted anyway.<\/p>\n<p>It completely bombed the account. Then the marketing manager continued to push for it!<\/p>\n<p>Throughout this time, we gave this marketing manager \u201c5 things\u201d we needed from them to crush their growth goals. This included some changes to the landing pages, some access to reliable back-end data, etc. \u2013 nothing outside the realm of possibility.<\/p>\n<p>The marketing manager instead insisted on their own ideal account management changes, <strong>ignored our requests<\/strong>, routinely jumped in the account to make changes, any pushback we had was ignored, gave us completely irresponsible deadlines (\u201cI need you to make the following changes, all by EOD\u201d \u2013 and would message us at 1PM).<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll say it again \u2013 ego is the #1 killer of businesses. Would you want to work with this person?<\/p>\n<p>It all goes without saying, but leadership was frustrated and this marketing manager blamed us (we tried 5 different account leads!). In 8 years, there have only been 2 relationships we\u2019ve walked away from and this was one of them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Almost no micromanager thinks they\u2019re a micromanager<\/strong>. That\u2019s what makes this problem so difficult. If you think you might fall into this bucket, there\u2019s no \u201cpros\/cons\u201d list here \u2013 they\u2019re all cons. Very few great employees will want to work for you, agency or in-house. Results will be bad. All I can do here is make my best plea to avoid this at all costs.<\/p>\n<p>I like to tell prospective employees that \u201cI hire adults\u201d. Adults don\u2019t need to be hand-held; you open the door and provide the necessary training and they\u2019ll walk through it. That doesn\u2019t mean they won\u2019t trip from time to time, but this is crucial for their growth and your success!<\/p>\n<p>#rantover<\/p>\n<div class=\"blog-proposal-middle\">\n<div class=\"blog-middle-line\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<p>Now that you know what kind of manager you are (or want to be), why don&#8217;t you take a moment to get in touch! There&#8217;s no smarter move than getting professionals involved!<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"dp-button-slim dp-button-green-on-white getProposalButton\">Get your custom proposal<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"blog-middle-line\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2><strong>Agency Management Checklist<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Now that we\u2019ve got the personality part out of the way because it\u2019s the most important, let\u2019s take a look at my top 5 tips to manage your digital marketing agency and skyrocket your odds of success!<\/p>\n<h5><strong>1.) Set Clear, Reasonable Goals<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Goals are super important and are typically unique for each company so coming up with goals together with your agency is key. The agency might have some really good perspective here!<\/p>\n<p>Once, we had a client who was struggling with growth. They were selling tile, which has a very long time to purchase (often 90+ days). We were managing to the Google Ads ROAS, but it was missing so much attribution for our efforts. I jumped on a 30 minute phone call, asked for us to manage to the overall Shopify ROAS, and then months later they were driving 3x the revenue and couldn\u2019t believe the profit they were driving. One little conversation, a little flexibility, and boom.<\/p>\n<p>Another client we worked on goals together in year 1, we set goals at 60% growth. We delivered over 100% growth. Then in year 2, because of the success of year 1, they arbitrarily handed us goals at 200% growth. We delivered another triple-digit year of 120% growth, and leadership was upset that we weren\u2019t hitting our goals. Don\u2019t be this client, that\u2019s crazy!<\/p>\n<p>Get your agency (us) involved. We\u2019ll provide open, honest feedback and help you set aggressive goals for your business. Our portfolio overall grew 178% in PPC revenue and 105% in SEO revenue YoY in the last 12 months, that doesn\u2019t happen because we\u2019re sitting on our hands!<\/p>\n<h5><strong>2.) Get Proper Tracking in Place<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>You can\u2019t improve what you don\u2019t measure. If your tracking is messed up, attribution is still on last click, or the agency has a tough time tracking results \u2060\u2013 let\u2019s get this fixed. Let the agency bring in a partner or hire an analytics agency that can get this cleaned up. It\u2019s often one of the most undervalued aspects of digital marketing.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>3.) Be Flexible<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>Our motto is \u201cfail fast &amp; cheap\u201d. Digital Position, for how exciting our results are compared to our competitors, doesn\u2019t succeed 100% of the time. Most of the time we need to continuously test and some of those tests fail. But with every test we learn, and with every test your account improves. Once we\u2019ve \u201ccracked the nut\u201d for you, the sky is the limit. Here\u2019s an example of client who was growing slowly for 4-5 months, and then BOOM:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1317\" src=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/resources\/learn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/revenue-growth.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"627\" height=\"537\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/revenue-growth.png 627w, https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/revenue-growth-300x257.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 627px) 100vw, 627px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>See that big spike in August 2020? This was when we found the \u201cstrategy that worked\u201d and the business took off.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>4.) Be There For Your Agency<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>If you\u2019ve hired experts who live and breathe digital marketing every day, to do your digital marketing, and they\u2019re saying \u201cwe need XYZ from you\u201d, your ears should perk up. Every good partnership starts with a foundation of trust, any thing we ask of our clients is because we need it to drive the best results. It might be tweaks to your landing pages, it might be asking for better tracking, it might be to fix bad reviews and improve customer service \u2060\u2013 it could be anything.<\/p>\n<p>Take this feedback as a sign that your agency is going above and beyond to leave no stone unturned to grow your business, NOT as an attack against you or your business.<\/p>\n<h5><strong>5.) Consistent Communication Expectations<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p>I highly encourage clients to set up a regular cadence for meetings. Monthly typically works best for Digital Position, but weekly works too. Use this as a medium to get your feedback out, provide value to the agency, and feel comfortable with the strategy the agency is utilizing. No question is off limits, on a regular basis there should be fully transparent phone calls.<\/p>\n<p>Have the agency provide an agenda. This ensures the agency is always thinking about ideas and proactively coming up with things to discuss to move your business forward!<\/p>\n<p>We also provide on the first business day of the month a report with 3 sections \u2013 the metrics (our interpretation), projects completed last month, and upcoming projects. We\u2019ve found this to be amazing! Clients have full faith in what we\u2019re doing behind the scenes.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>TL:DR<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Figure out what type of personality you are, match yourself up with a good fit\n<ul>\n<li>Hands-off &gt; Super proactive agency (like us \ud83d\ude09)<\/li>\n<li>Balanced &gt; Balanced agency (also us)<\/li>\n<li>Micromanager &gt; \u201cYes sir\/ma\u2019am\u201d agency (or change your behavior)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Set clear, reasonable goals<\/li>\n<li>Get proper tracking in place<\/li>\n<li>Be flexible<\/li>\n<li>Be there for your agency<\/li>\n<li>Establish consistent communication expectations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The hardest part about working with an agency is finding one that fits with what you\u2019re trying to achieve. If you\u2019re looking for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/services\/ppc\/\">PPC agency<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalposition.com\/services\/seo\/\">SEO agency<\/a> that pushes for aggressive growth, shoot us a proposal and we\u2019ll scale your business together!<\/p>\n<div class=\"blog-proposal-end\"><span>Need help with your own marketing campaigns? Get us involved!<\/span>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"dp-button-slim dp-button-on-green getProposalButton\">Get your custom proposal<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whether you\u2019re looking to hire an advertising agency or you\u2019re having trouble managing your existing one, you don\u2019t want to be stuck in a scenario where you\u2019ve got two \u201csides\u201d finger-pointing as the ship burns. Sadly, this occurrence happens far too often in the marketing world because of how difficult it can be to match&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,2,3],"tags":[],"thumbnail_src":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ManageaDigitalMarketingAgency1-1-300x168.jpg","thumbnail_medium_src":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ManageaDigitalMarketingAgency1-1-768x430.jpg","featured_image_src":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/ManageaDigitalMarketingAgency1-1.jpg","author_avatar_src":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/roger2.jpg","author_name":"Roger Parent","category_labels":["CMO","PPC","SEO"],"tag_labels":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.digitalposition.com\/resources\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}