What Clients Expect From Your Agency-3 Takeaways Ep. 75

Ad agencies, we just released a brand-new report on marketing tech and agency new business tools you will want to hear more about and specifically in this episode, a recent trend you need to be aware of, what clients expect from your agency, and a few key categories you can use to help increase your client retention in the future. 

Welcome to “3 Takeaways”, your agency new business video series where we focus on one new business category and give you three takeaways to help improve your new business program.

 Organic growth and client retention are top of mind for ad agencies-check out episode 68, where we get into that, it’s a nice complement to this episode. 

Another one is marketing technology, and we recently released a brand new report, RSW/US 2021 Marketing Technology & Agency New Business Tools.

You’ll want to download it, because we surveyed marketers on a specific, brief set of questions around Martech tools and their potential challenges in relation to the agencies they work with, and then performed a more in-depth survey of ad agencies, with a total of 19 tool categories: 12 on the tools you and your peers use to support clients, and 7 on the tools you and your peers use to help drive agency new business.

Let’s jump into a couple of the initial stats from our report-your first takeaway: 

67% of marketers say their company’s spending on analytics and marketing tech tools is increasing. 

And as a bonus takeaway: 88% of agencies recognize the need for these tools.

Your clients, if they don’t, will come to expect it. 

At the enterprise level, they already do, and that will continue to those non-enterprise clients. 

If your firm has already started investing in these tools, you’re ahead of the curve and you should consider including language to that effect in your positioning. 

And along with those two stats, there’s another, recent stat, that you and your ad agency team need to be aware of and it’s your second takeaway: 

CMO tenure slipped to just 40 months in 2020, the lowest average since 2009. 

CMO tenure has always been a roller coaster, but the lowest since 2009 is worth paying attention to. 

And one of the quotes from the Drum piece this stat came from,

Top marketers are coming under severe pressure from ever-tightening budgets coupled with a need to improve return on investment.

And further in our report, when marketers were asked what techniques/tasks their companies would work to improve, over the next 1-2 years, they zeroed in on “experience optimization” and “general audience analytics”.

These stats certainly represent more potential opportunities for agencies to deliver value, ROI, and ultimately increase client retention.

Certainly for those agencies that take advantage.

I’ll leave you with one last stat from our report and your third takeaway:

Only 56% of agencies have specific individuals that “own” activities related to finding marketing analytics and tech tools at their agency.

This is short of the 70% of marketers who responded saying they have dedicated people exploring new ways to use tech to drive their business.

For small and mid-sized agencies, understandably you typically won’t be able to dedicate someone full time to that activity, but you can certainly have an individual who “owns it” as part of their job description.  

Or, as we do here at RSW, have a revolving group of individuals who meet monthly, for example, to examine current/new tools.

Thanks for watching 3 Takeaways-lots of new business content our site at rswus.com, just hit the resources drop down.  Thanks and see you next time.