The Best Agency Relationships Don’t Feel Like Agency Relationships
For growing businesses, there is often a gap between using an external agency and building a complete marketing department in-house. We believe the strongest partnerships are starting to exist somewhere in between.
There’s a gap in the traditional agency model
Traditional agency relationships are usually built around deliverables. A certain number of posts, campaigns, videos or design hours are agreed each month, the work is produced, approved and delivered. There is nothing inherently wrong with that model. For plenty of businesses, it works. But as a company grows, it can start to create a gap. The agency understands the brief, but not always everything happening around it. The internal team understands the business, but may not have the time, specialist skills or resources to execute every part of the marketing function properly.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the traditional agency model. For plenty of businesses, it works. But as a company grows, it can start to create a gap. The agency understands the brief, but not always everything happening around it. The internal team understands the business, but may not have the time, specialist skills or resources to execute every part of the marketing function properly.
Building everything in-house isn’t always the answer
At the other end of the scale is the internal marketing department. Done properly, that can mean strategy, creative direction, content production, design, social media, digital, web, reporting and campaign management all sitting within the business. It is powerful, but it also requires significant investment, multiple hires and a considerable amount of management. For many ambitious businesses, particularly those in a growth phase, neither extreme feels quite right.
The opportunity sits somewhere in between
We think there is another model. The strongest client relationships are the ones where the agency becomes increasingly integrated into how the business operates. That means understanding what is launching next month, which projects matter commercially, what the sales team is trying to achieve, where the brand is heading and what is changing internally. Instead of waiting for a brief, the agency has enough context to help shape what the brief should be. That changes the relationship completely.
For us, that is increasingly what a modern agency relationship should look like. Not an outsourced content factory. Not a collection of disconnected services. And not necessarily a replacement for an internal marketing team. Something in between: a specialist team with the capability of an agency, but the context, consistency and involvement you would expect from people sitting inside the business. Because the closer your marketing team is to the business, the better the work tends to become.