An Ad Agency Veteran’s “Inside Baseball” Views on Agency Fees

by Marcelo Salup

.

 

And there will be some big advantages for agencies along the way:

  1. Research cross-pollination: if you control all the factors and your single P&L sees all the influences, your research can cover all of them and hopefully, you, as a company, will understand your product much better.
  2. Better employee base. I began on the creative side, won 2 Addy’s, moved to media. That can only happen in an integrated agency. From everything I’ve read about millennials, having more growth paths instead of less would make advertising more attractive to them and agencies would recruit better talent.

So, three easy steps:

  1. Behave like a real company
  2. Prove that your work works
  3. Re-bundle up

If you run a small or medium sized business, what do you do to ensure quality?

1. Begin at the end: Can you define what your advertising should do? If not… you are the one in serious trouble, not your agency. Write down the three key things that move your business. Is it referrals? Word of mouth? Calls? People visiting your store? People buying online from your site?

2. Assign adequate resources to your task. A good rule of the thumb is that advertising should be around 10% to 20% of your sales. In less-competitive markets, perhaps you can squeeze by with 10%, in some others, perhaps you’ll need the 20%. But, however you slice it –in time or in cash—you need resources to achieve results. They are not going to happen by themselves.

3. Seek professional help and be part of the process. Go through the discipline of writing a brief outlining your objectives with your advertising, the timing, what makes your business work, the resources you are assigning and determining a series of goals.

Whether you hire an agency, a consultant or freelancers make sure you sit down to be a positive part of the process. Listen carefully, but make sure that your agency, consultant or freelancer explains what he/she intends to do, why that is a solid course of action, what data does he/she have that proves it and what are the expectations.

Make sure all your marketing allies talk to each other so you don’t have a creative guy thinking “print” and a media guy thinking “mobile”.

4. Track results on a timely basis. Come on, your business is your life and certainly a huge part of your income. The least you can do is dedicate a couple of hours a week and a long meeting per month to make sure your objectives are being met.

5. Pay well. A few extra thousand in salaries or fees should be but a tiny percentage of the return on sales.

Related articles:

Taking Your Business To the Next Level?

Choosing the Right Ad Agency 

Hiring An Ad Agency- the Next Steps to Narrow the List

How to Select An Advertising Agency from an Ad Agency Insider