Imagine the excitement (and slight fear) that comes with hiring a new marketing agency for your business. Something was said or done to make you feel like this particular agency was the right fit for your brand. It’s a risk but it’s one every business owner is willing to take. After all, marketing drives sales and sales increase the bottom line.
Let’s flash forward one year. Your company has been introduced and handed off to five different Project Managers, a brand new Creative Director, and a few other new faces who you’re unsure of their role within your specific marketing project. By now, you are starting to lose hope. How many more times will you have to tell your story to a new Project Manager? How many times will your project be placed into the hands of a new team, watering down the goal of the project with each handoff?
The uncertainty is painful and sadly, this type of behavior has become the norm for the marketing industry. I can say that in my professional experience, this phenomenon boils down to one thing and one thing only - the significance of your employees.
When someone is significant to you, you care for them, take into consideration their needs and wants, and you show them compassion. On the other hand, when someone is not significant to you, you may feel less emotional attachment or grief should that person ever part from you.
When shopping a new agency to work with, how the agency treats their employees and what their turnover rate is usually don’t make it to the list of “things to consider.”
Having your marketing strategy and ongoing projects lose significance due to the inconsistency of team-members working on your company’s marketing can and will affect your bottom line. Here are some things you can do to avoid this costly mistake.
Whether it’s Glassdoor, Google, or any other review platform, be sure to peruse the agency’s reviews where you’ll oftentimes find insights from both past and current employees. If employees are unhappy, chances are, the turnover rate is high and the agency’s attitude towards its employees is not great.
A culture of stress, negativity, and disengaged employees can lead to poor productivity, lack of creativity, and can directly affect the work being done. This leads to underdelivered marketing efforts for your business and you never want to share anything with the world that has been worked on by a team of upset employees who didn’t pour their heart and passion into the project at hand.
If you’re in the market for a new marketing agency, don’t hesitate to reach out to some of the creative team via LinkedIn to ask them to meet you for coffee or lunch. In this type of environment, they’ll be more open to discussing their experience within the agency and will be able to give you insight as to what the internal culture is like. From there, you should be able to determine whether or not you believe the agency you’re interviewing to hire for your marketing is worth the risk or not.
One thing to bring up during this conversation is the agency’s mission, vision, and core values. What does the agency stand for? What matters to them? At The Marketing Squad, you can ask any team member what matters most to our company and the answer will most likely be our core values. At the Marketing Squad, we are:
These aren’t just creative graphics that we have posted on our office walls. We live these core values and practice them every single day. We encourage each other with these core values and we share them with our clients and the community in hopes to inspire others with them.
Finally, find out if the marketing agency that you’re interviewing has grown at all in the past year, five years, decade, and so on. Sometimes, agencies get stuck in their old ways and don’t focus on adapting to what’s new. This creates internal conflict as us creative-minded folks like a challenge. Beyond a challenge, we enjoy learning and growing. We like to learn about different things and acquire new skills. If a marketing agency isn’t providing the space for its employees to grow and move forward, it will inevitably lead to employee turnover, especially in the creative departments.
Ultimately, you’ve got to interview marketing agencies with an open mind, open ears, and an open heart. If something about the agency’s culture doesn’t feel right, then it’s probably best to keep searching until you find a great fit.
Currently searching? Let’s get together. You never know; we could be perfect for each other! Whether you're in Louisville, KY or Charlotte, NC (or anywhere in the U.S.) we're looking to help brands like yours tell their story.
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