Why should you include your digital advertising agency in your marketing planning and budgeting process?
When a digital advertising agency is brought in to manage paid campaigns, they become an extension of the digital marketing team. For the agency, understanding the intricacies of a business and goals become extremely important in becoming a true partner with an ability to execute successful campaigns. There are monthly calls, reporting, and strategy sessions all in an effort to improve key performance indicators. It’s imperative to keep everyone on the same page to make sure advertising budgets are allocated on the most effective channels, brand messaging is consistent, and each campaign’s success is attributed correctly.
When communication lines between the brand and agency are fragmented, the brand typically suffers. There are several reasons why it’s vital to keep your agency in the loop with internal conversations revolving around planning and budgeting for advertising initiatives. Here are some of the most important ones:
Align Team Efforts Towards The Same Goals
When there is consistency in a brand’s message across multiple channels, there is a greater impact on the target audience. In the same way, when marketing efforts are consistently chasing a singular goal the overall strategy is accomplished.
It is not uncommon to see brand managers keeping their marketing agency in the dark about internal plans of new launches or efforts on print, TV, or radio that may not involve a direct contribution from the digital agency. However, each outward facing component of a brand has the ability to complement each other, which can be leveraged to pursue the same goals.
Getting the most out of your budget
Marketing coordinators or brand managers may take prior agency recommendations into account, but might not always know if there are more opportunities on new advertising channels and mediums. There are new channels, publishing websites, and media formats that are launching on a daily basis. It is not fair to expect an internal marketing resource to know the ever changing landscape of digital media. However, advertising agencies are part of that ecosystem and are certainly knowledgeable about where target audiences for a specific brand live online. Potentially, reallocating resources within the existing marketing mix may also be an option if major budget changes occur. Getting a second opinion can help minimize risk and maximize expected return for a brand. This can lead to higher efficiency with ad dollar savings.
Be more informed and prepared internally
Internal employees that are responsible for interacting with marketing agencies need to ensure that they are fully aware of what their brand should be doing on digital. Having this knowledge helps establish themselves as authorities on the subject around leadership.
Brands typically plan their marketing strategy a year out in advance. To propose a strategy that is effective and innovative at the same time is key to being successful within the industry. The advertising agency on record can support filling in any strategic or technical gaps to that strategy. By doing so, the agency would naturally be in the loop on what’s to come and it’s also a win for the internal marketing team.
Agency preparedness for new initiatives
Managing agency bandwidth is never a client responsibility. However, in a true client agency partnership, bandwidth considerations are important to keeping the quality of work consistent.
If an agency is blindsided by a large project with a tough deadline, it is safe to say there will be some unexpected growing pains internally. A client might not care about how the agency delivers but when the quality of work is at risk, it becomes something they should care about.
Keeping your digital ad agency in the loop on future projects alleviates the risk of having mediocre work done on a project. When agencies are part of the planning process, they have a heightened sense of what is coming through the pipeline and can make internal adjustments accordingly. This practice can not only help with keeping quality consistent, but it can also improve expected outcomes as more time goes into preparation.
