Having a good relationship with your agency is essential to drive success. The prospect of onboarding or switching agencies can be daunting for many; however, equipping your team with a few key steps and the necessary understanding of the process can make it a lot easier while allowing you to get the results you need to start the year more robust than ever.
Working with an agency should be a two-way street, and your team needs to understand what to expect of them within the relationship. Building a strong rapport with your agency is hugely important and will ensure that trust is built and maintained.
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Strategy and Tactics
Every agency handover is different, therefore, you will experience various scenarios. However, all professional agencies should have a procedure to ensure a smooth handover and mitigate any potential risks.
Having a comprehensive view of your marketing is crucial, and therefore, your new agency also needs this perspective. Knowledge mustn’t be lost in the transition between two agencies. However, it is also essential that this doesn’t hold you back from working with a partner that might be a better fit for your organization and your key objectives.
Setting strategic objectives should be one of the first steps you take; outlining targets that will enable you to measure results, whilst giving your new agency a clear idea of what success looks like – creating SMART objectives is an excellent way to do this.
Services and Access
To deliver a successful digital marketing mix, relationships, services and access to critical tools or platforms need handing over. Although there may be some issues and challenges along the way, you can take some steps to smooth the process to have a positive experience that will benefit your business.
Confirming which services your new agency will be handling is vital. It is essential to have a strategy in place for each of the services you want to focus on and know exactly how you will meet your objectives. One of these services might include SEO. Changing up your SEO approach could significantly affect your business, with organic traffic increasing and your audience base widening.
Although it should be reasonably simple to hand this over to your new agency, you should always consider providing the answers to questions such as, ‘what CMS are you running?’ or ‘what is being tracked in your analytics?’. Another service you might consider handing over is email marketing. Email marketing allows you to be creative and implement personalization to improve customer experience.
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Your new agency will need to know what email service provider your business uses, what the sending domain is, and be clear on the billing process. It is crucial to communicate your business guidelines in this PPC handover process. Additional services you might contemplate handing over are social media, website design, and maintenance. In particular, social media can take up much time, with drafting, publishing, and engaging with your followers a pivotal tactic to build trust and a strong rapport. Therefore, this is an excellent service to hand over to your agency.
Ensuring your new agency can access the required tools and logins for the various services is vital. This can include databases, Google Ad words, web analytics and affiliate accounts.
When it comes to data, your new agency will want to know as much as possible about any previous information or insights gathered. For your new agency to continue the momentum previously gathered, it is important to share any data you have in analytics accounts and any deliverables given to you by your previous agency.
Ultimately equipping your team with the knowledge for a seamless agency handover will help support your digital objectives and therefore your overall business goals. Prioritising the relationships, access and services in conjunction with each other can help deliver a flawless marketing mix that will meet these objectives. Simply none of these can operate in isolation. By taking into account these practical steps and choosing the right agency, you can be well on your way to boosting results.
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