How to Make Your Marketing Money Count: Part 1 – When to Fire Your Marketing Agency?

Any financial commitment for a young business comes at a high opportunity cost. Was printing those new brochures the reason that you couldn’t afford extra office fittings?

Could the money used to buy extra chairs have been used to upgrade office technology instead? It is dilemmas like these that small business owners face daily. When the budget is tight, it is often the marketing budget that gets cut as it often seems to provide limited value. Could this perception of marketing come from marketing agencies that are talking the talk but not walking the walk?

What Should a Marketing Agency do for You?

Most businesses know where they stand and where they want to go. Marketing agencies are employed to develop and execute ideas in order to realise the business’ goals. All too often marketing agencies make grand promises of all the things they will achieve for your company, only to return with your original brainstorming ideas impressively reworded. However your investment in marketing should result in ‘doing’ rather than ‘saying.’

So what are the warning signs you aren’t getting value from your marketing agency?

• Large marketing documents are sitting on your desk gathering dust
• Impressive presentations from your marketing agency leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling, but also leave you confused about what will actually be taking place and the return you can expect

What should you be looking for from your marketing agency?

• Advice on how to best sell to your target market through scripts and relationship building advice
• Brochures, letters and other promotional material that assist your sales team
• Detailed, clear campaign plans that can be referred to for generating leads
• Assistance in execution of the campaign plan

If there is no tangible return for the money being spent on marketing, it may be time to look elsewhere to find a marketing agency that can actually deliver value. However, to get value from your marketing agency, it is important to know what you need and want. And that’s what we’ll look at in Part 2: How to get value from your marketing agency.