Tips for selecting an agency
Season 5, Issue 2 - those bastards
I’ve had both the pleasure and displeasure of working with agencies. Sometimes you do find that genuinely good agency that feels like an extension of your team, gives you exactly what you need, and is a joy to have WIP calls with. More often than not though, the attention and polish you get during the selection process quickly fades away to reveal an ugly truth - you picked a bad agency.
This week we’re talking red flags and green flags to look for during the agency selection process! This advice assumes you’ve already got a brief and you’ve reached out to, or been referred to, let’s say at least 3-5 agencies, and you’re at the stage of making them jump through hoops to win your love.
See here for last week’s issue on what to consider before you put together a website rebuild brief! Today’s advice is generally around selecting an agency though, not limited to web design agencies!
Flag 1 - do they push back against your brief?
An agency that says “yes we can do that” to absolutely everything you ask for… might be lying. You’re not looking for “we don’t want to/can’t do that” - what you’re instead looking for is slight push back or requests for clarity. Here are a couple of easy things for them to push back on:
Unrealistic deadlines or targets
Asking for you to clarify what you mean by something
Calling out any assumptions you might have made
Making a recommendation not to do something
One great thing about seeing an agency push back at this very early stage is you can get a glimpse of what they’re like when there’s a bigger issue. You want to be able to clearly communicate during any disagreements without it being a right/wrong situation, and if they respond to a demanding brief with “yes we can do that, no questions” then will they proactively come to you when they’ve made a mistake or encounter a problem? You just don’t know, and that’s a risk.
Flag 2 - who do they address during pitching?
Every single time someone else has been in charge of selecting an agency and I’ve been the point of contact (i.e. when a boss has chosen on my behalf), if the agency did not actively engage with me and try to build a relationship with me (or reciprocate my efforts to do this with them), they’ve been a bad agency.
When the rep from the agency only gives attention to the person signing off on them, and not to the person they’ll be working with, you can bet they’re only interested in the sale. Unfortunately this can be a really hard situation to be in because the person selecting them always brushes off concerns with “they seem really great [to me]”.
If you’re selecting an agency, but you’re not the one working with them, I beg you to please bring the point of contact person into every meeting, and heavily weigh up how much they get along.
On the other hand, a huge green flag is an agency rep that equally addresses everyone from your team.
Flag 3 - do they ask questions?
An average agency will receive a brief and execute it. A great agency will receive a brief, ask you a lot of questions about what you want and how you arrived at what’s in the brief as the best way forward, and then either agree with you or make some suggestions.
Using last week’s website topic as an example, you might have in your brief that you want a headless website because you’ve heard it’s a great technology, and after a bit of probing the agency says ‘actually, that’s probably not something you’re going to be able to maintain on your own and you said you don’t want a retainer for maintenance, here’s what we recommend instead’.
Flag 4 - do they adjust to your needs?
I once was involved in an agency selection where the client said they quote was too high, can the agency please review and get the final number down, and the agency came back with a quote that was more expensive but had less included. Truly mind boggling stuff.
You should be able to have really transparent talks about budget and say “this is how much I am willing to pay, what can you get me for that price” and not have it feel like you’re pulling your fingernails off.
Flag 5 - do they introduce their team?
When you have questions, let’s say a technical SEO question, do they bring in the person who will work on that and introduce you, or do they just say they’ll ask and then send you the answer in an email? There’s trust in seeing someone’s face and getting a sense that quality control is in place.
Sometimes agencies work with a roster of contractors, and there’s nothing wrong with this, but they shouldn’t gatekeep who is doing the job.
From the brains trust
Dan Siepen was super generous in contributing his take on agency selection processes and red flags:
Naturally, there are a few signals and 'flags' that I look out for when it comes to engaging an agency.
It's important to state that there is context required here as it depends on what the business is looking for in an agency in the first place, and who's leading the vetting process from the business's side. In a couple of scenarios where I've advised startups/businesses, I've come in during the process where they're deciding on an agency, and they've started a dialogue/process of engagement. In these couple of scenarios, when engaging with the agencies at the time, you have to give them a chance to prove themselves, but the real kicker comes when they present a proposal or 'audit' with a lack of understanding about the competitor landscape/target market, and how specific channels perform within the particular industry/market.
What happened in these particular scenarios is that they relied too heavily on 'past successes' with non-relevant industries to justify that they can replicate similar successes, when in reality, they've brushed over the understanding of the end customer and industry in the first place.
Plus, there is some bias here, but I've seen the 'copy-paste' approach to proposals and decks where the above comes across really obvious that they don't 'really' understand.
The key factors to remember here that I would suggest to keep in mind include:
Know with confidence WHY you need an agency in the first place. What do you actually need them for? What are your expectations? Is engaging with an agency the right answer?
Ensure there is a strong marketer in-house (or engage in an advisor) to help you understand the 'ins' and 'outs' of agencies, and justify the resourcing required. Experience is certainly advantageous.
Be strict with the agency selection process. Go for agencies that really know your industry/market. Don't get sold on 'the dream'.
He also has a great website with heaps of marketing resources, highly recommend checking it out!
Red flags from other marketers
And some more brains trust contributions:
🚩 “Running ads from the agency’s account instead of the client’s account” - Natalie Alcock
🚩 “Once a brief and scope is completed, the agency should establish clear project milestone dates. These dates should be in the signed agreement. If they cannot commit to dates, the project will most likely be strung out way too long.” - Sam Wiebenga
🚩 “Guaranteed search rankings. Usually you will get a guarantee on an irrelevant list of keywords which no one searches for.” - James Norquay
And remember, ALWAYS ask to speak to a client for a referral! Don’t ignore a red flag, if they’re coming up this early, the agency will have even more coming for you later.
Links
The Startmate Women Fellowship applications are open! Self described as a program for “ambitious women looking to supercharge their career in startups” - I was a coach in the last cohort and will (hopefully) be a coach again for this upcoming cohort.
A new-to-me program, Assisterhood, also has applications open for their not-for-profit mentorship program for underreprested comms/marketing professionals.
I made a LinkedIn company page for Mehdeeka, because, as this post on my personal LinkedIn details, I am now a freelancer, needed somewhere to list as a “job”, and LinkedIn also gave me ad credit that had to be applied to a company page. I would appreciate any follows!
Lastly, a reminder that I keep a much more searchable archive of Mehdeeka and all the links and recommendations I share in a big Google Sheet, right here, and there’s now a link to it in the footer of every future issue in case you need to find it again.