Before you can select an agency, you need to know and acknowledge a few key things about yourself. Not just about the capabilities you want, although that’s important. But it’s also about the way you work and how your brand operates and what is really critical to your business.
Transcript:
Oh, Hey, Hey, you’re probably thinking I need to hire a design firm or an ad agency. And you wanna start looking at firms. Right. But before you do that, Maybe you should take a look at something else.
Yourself. Welcome to clienting. Well, Hey there everybody. It’s your old P Grant Sanders. And today we are talking about the things you need to know about yourself before you start to think about hiring an ad agency or a design firm or a freelancer or any kind of creative service firm, because there are certain things that will make sure that the.
Is the right fit. And if you don’t consider those things, you might end up in a situation that is just going to be painful, and we don’t want that. Right. We want the situation to be fruitful. So let’s talk a little bit about that, you know the first thing that you need to understand about yourself before you go hiring an ad agency or design firm or any kind of.
Is your size. How big are you? Are you a giant firm with hundreds and hundreds of employees or are you a startup with three employees or, or fewer, you know? And the reason this matters, , I mean, it’s separate from budget. You may, you may be a startup of five people and have. $10 million to spend, which, , the way investment happens these days is not out of the question.
You might have a cool startup idea and you might be in, , series Q funding and, and maybe you have a lot of cash to spend. But the truth is your size matters to the agency as well. If you are a small company, don’t hire a large ad agency. Why, even though they do good work, even though they do work in, in a In a industry that, that you are in, , they’ve got category experience, even though they are smart.
And , everybody thinks great things of them. The reason size matters is because of economics. If you have 10 employees and they have 300 employees, a dollar is going to look very different to you than it does to. Their travel budget is bigger than your yearly payroll. Okay. Their — just, they’re not going to look at you as a client.
They’re going to look at you as., maybe you have an interesting creative problem to solve and, and, and that’s it, but they’re not going to think of you as a viable way to keep their business moving. Because frankly at that scale, they’re going to need 200 clients like you. In order to keep their giant machine moving forward.
So, , I think a good rule of thumb is never hire an ad agency that has more employees than you do. You know, the obvious the obvious exception to this rule is if you plan to have more employees — if you were, if your business. Means that you’re a startup with a dozen people, but you will need to have — you’re going to need to hire 150 engineers in the next 18 months then yes, go ahead and get a big firm.
But generally speaking, you want the economics on both sides of the equation to be similar. You know, you want a dollar to look the same to you as it does to them, because then when they give you a price for a project, it’s going to be something that makes sense to you. You don’t want to have that hanging over the relationship.
So similarly, another question that you need to ask yourself is how big is your budget, right? How much money have you allocated for marketing, for advertising, for design, for digital, for all of the bits and pieces of the marketing mix that you have to touch? And the reason this makes good sense to consider is because if you have a certain level of budget, you may not be able to afford a firm that’s in a major metropolitan area.
There are really great agencies in Des Moines, Iowa, and there are really great agencies in New York. But for the most part office space in New York City is going to be far more expensive than office space in Des Moines. Right. The economics are different. So how much money do you have to spend really does help you decide what kind of agency that you want to talk to?
Right. Here’s another good question to ask yourself. Okay. There’s, there’s a really solid chance that you are in an industry that is considered a vertical market. Okay. Let’s say you make flooring, right? Maybe you make flooring for airports. That’s a pretty vertical market. And maybe you need an, a design firm or an ad agency or at least a team of freelancers that has some experience in construction products. Okay. But you have to ask yourself how important is that vertical focus to you? Because you will pay a little bit more for a creative firm that is vertically aligned. And that’s because frankly speaking, their expertise is more valuable to you.
And so you’re going to pay more for it. Their expertise is not easily interchangeable with the expertise of other firms. If they have a really clear vertical focus in your, in. So — let’s just say, say that you’re in the plastic packaging business and you happen to find an agency that has a plastic packaging focus.
All right. That’s going to be — be critical to your success. If you can find an agency like that. If, if vertical focus is not nearly as important to. Keep in mind that even though you’ll pay less for a general agency with no vertical focus, you may end up paying more to get them up to speed. Is there, there are trade-offs every step of the way, but if vertical focus is, is critically important to your success, then your choices are going to be fewer, but they, for the most part, are going to be better.
And that’s something to understand about yourself. The next question is kind of a tricky one. You have to ask yourself, how much will you really depend upon this firm you plan to hire? How critically important is that relationship to you? I, , where does the, where does the Jews come from, , in that relationship, does it come from you or does it come from them?
And , if you are really relying. Upon them to, if you are really relying upon them. Make your business run to make your business make headway. Then that’s a different relationship than if you just need a firm to, , design a brochure. , if you really rely on them for strategy and for research and to be a business partner, that’s one thing.
If you just want someone to execute some cool creative stuff, that’s another how much are you going to rely on? The most important question that this brings up is, okay, are we, are we going to create a, a relationship that is some kind of retainer-based relationship? Or are we just going to do some projects?
And — there’s, there’s a correlation between long-standing agency relationships and those that are just project-based and the correlation is with the length at which. The people at the top of the marketing organization on the client. The length at which they stay at their job. The average CMO moves to a new job every 18 months, pretty much.
And they often take their ad agency with them, their design agency with them — their — this is their, some of their secret sauce. Their relationships really are portable, you know? And if someone is going to be in the job for five-plus years, six-plus years, then they really do. Need a more — they don’t necessarily need a project-based relationship.
What they need is somebody that’s going to be there for the long haul. So, , think about that. Think about how permanent your, your relationship needs to. How much will you depend on them? Are they going to be critical to your business or are they just going to do some projects? Okay. Let’s talk about the different levels of relationships that you will have with your creative service firm. Okay. At the first level, you’re, you’re really just looking for somebody to do some maintenance work, right. They’re going to execute one or two key tactics. They are — they might give you a new website and then go away.
They might give you an ad campaign or an, or a single ad and then go away. Th that’s, this is a very low level of dependence, , you don’t really rely on them for all of their, all of their, their capabilities. You just need them for one or two things, right. It’s kind of like hiring a handyman, you know, I, I have a fence that needs fixing and once that fence is fixed , I don’t need you to redo my heating and cooling just fix the fence and I’ll pay you.
And we’re going to shake hands and that’s it. So, I mean, that’s, that’s level one relationship level two is, is, , more like a contractor where there’s a larger job to do right. And you have a, a sort of a beast that needs to get fed by this, by this organization. Maybe you need to talk to them weekly.
Maybe you need to sign a contract for at least a year that’s that’s level two. These are people that do all kinds of things. They tend to, they tend to be able to do design. They tend to be able to do marketing and. Digital and websites and social media. And , that’s, that’s a pretty good relationship, , not a super long term contract, but it’s an important relationship level.
Two level three is more like strategy comes into play in level three. Right? You’ve got this, you’ve got the designer. Of the stuff, but you’ve also got the strategic people working behind the scenes to look at your research, to come up with insights, to help you develop your messaging. It’s sort of a, an architect slash builder kind of model, right?
It’s, it’s strategic thinking and it’s execution. In some cases you may just hire a firm like this for their strategic thinking and then bring all the execution in house and use them as, as a consultant going forward. But in a lot of cases, this level three engagement is really just sort of a, a really super, super important.
Relationship, , where they help you develop the secret sauce. And then they put together the, the tactics that, that will get that secret sauce out into the marketplace. Okay. And then level four is sort of like it’s, it’s so much more involved. Okay. It’s, it’s somebody that is not just involved in the strategic part of your business, but they’re involved in your business, , and the giant firms that come to mind in this scenario are the, the big consulting firms that don’t just do creative, but they also do business strategy.
So , this is like, This is like a, a giant real estate developer coming in and helping you build out your entire franchise system. And there are agencies like this massive, massive holding companies with lots and lots of divisions that can, can really help you do the things you need to do.
And that relationship is multi-year really CR , major service agreements are get signed over this kind of stuff. And you’ve got to make sure that the relationship is good because without that relationship — you’re really relying heavily on your creative partner in that situation.
Okay. Another question that you need to ask of yourself before you engage a creative service firm is what’s my main message. And I’ve got this handy flow chart to help you figure out what your main message is. I’m, I’m fine with, with sending it to you. If you just zap me an email, love to send you a PDF of it.
But basically, this is kind of a complex question to ask yourself, what, what message do we need to get out in the marketplace about our product or service? Okay. And there are lots of ways to go about it. You may have a really unique product and therefore your message is, , we have this unique product, if it’s a product that people want and it solves a problem that people have, maybe that’s your message that it’s, it’s your unique product, but , you also might have a product that is very similar or exactly the same as.
Products in the category, perfumes come to mind or or alcoholic beverages come to mind, every single vodka out there is essentially chemically the same. And it’s just the marketing that changes. What’s your message there. Well, , your message may be. Built around an insight that you have about your target audience.
And this is some heavy duty homework that you need to do. You can also do it with an agency partner or with a strategy partner, but before you hire a firm to execute all these tactics, you really do need to answer this question airplane. There are a bunch of ways to formulate your main message and there are a number of ways to, to figure.
Figure it out. But the best way is to do a ton of research and, and come up with some ideas based on what you learned from talking to your target audience. And if you haven’t, many of you have done that work already. But if you haven’t. It’s , before you hire an ad agency you’re going to save yourself a boatload of money if you have your main message nailed down.
All right. So the last question that you need to ask yourself before you hire an agency or a design firm or anyone that does creative work is what kind of marketer are you? Okay. And, and, , Seth go in his book, this is marketing talks about the two different kinds of marketers. Right. And it’s basically the direct marketer versus the brand marketer.
Okay. And, there’s another way of looking at this. These, these are people that are either transactionally based or they are image-based. Okay. If you’re a direct marketer, a transactionally based marketer, then you need someone. To generate work that gets people, drives people to your website or to retail to buy your product.
Okay. It’s all about metrics. It’s all about transactions. And if you know this about yourself, then you’re going to save yourself a lot of headaches and it going forward. Right. If you are more of a brand marketer, then it’s about building an image and creating a persona and finding an. Within your market or your audience or your brand that is unique and different.
And , the — this is a, is a much longer proposition. It’s about building a brand. It’s about creating an image. And frankly, it’s more expensive. It, it takes a lot more time. The transactional marketer, the direct marketer, you can, you can always tell them On the internet when you go to their website, because they have a little tab at the top that says “pricing” because they want you to buy their product right then and there.
And their marketing firm’s job is to drive people to their website so that people will buy their product. The marketing organization’s job for a brand client is to. Create a campaign of ideas and work that builds the brand over time. It’s not transactional. It’s about your audience, owning your brand, taking ownership of your ideas, your thoughts, your product, your brand, your existence, your theme, your, your image.
And those are the kinds of clients that tend to be, , tend to have high. You think about, , everybody uses apple as an example, but apple is the ultimate example of a brand client, right? I mean, they sell stuff and they want, they want you to go to their website and buy things. But apple has spent millions and billions of dollars building their brand, helping the.
The marketplace understand that their products are so much more well designed than anything else out there. That there’s a, that there’s a cache that goes with apple branded products, ? And I’m not saying one is right or wrong. I’m saying that it helps you to understand which direction you’re going in, because if you hire.
A design firm. That’s good at building a brand and you really just want to drive people to click on your website. You’re not going to have a good relationship. And so understanding that in the first place is, is key to hiring an agency in the first place, a design firm knowing.
Knowing about yourself, know IEL client know thy self it’s it’s super important. Anyway, those are the questions you need to ask about yourself before you hire an ad agency. And then, , at a later date, we’ll talk about the ways, the questions that you can ask an ad agency when you are in the process of hiring them, that’ll be even more fun because some of those questions are unexpected.
Anyway, until next time, this is your friend, Grant Sanders, saying “be well.”