With a professional history that includes both agency and in-house communications positions, I’ve come to appreciate both perspectives, including the unique challenges each position faces, and what it takes to make a client-agency relationship work.
As an in-house communications professional, I’ve managed a variety of external PR agencies: large, small and with varying budgets. From the agency perspective, I’ve worked with fantastic and challenging clients; some who know PR intimately and those with a broader marketing or program management background.
Interestingly, I have yet to find a direct correlation between any of the above qualifications and what makes or breaks a client-agency relationship. Whether the agency is big or small and whatever the budget, I’ve seen good and bad examples. Likewise, I’ve had good and bad clients – with little correlation to their PR knowledge base.
- Set expectations
- Touch base often
- Provide feedback
How do these apply specifically to the client-agency relationship?
Set expectations. Before any work is done, the agency and the client should clearly discuss the scope of work, go over what’s expected and what would be considered incremental. Be as specific as possible, especially when working on a tight budget. I can’t stress enough – the size of the budget should never affect the quality of the work, but it may limit the amount of time the agency can spend on programs. Trying to squeeze too much into a small budget means something’s got to give, which is why it’s important to set boundaries and expectations early on. These expectation-setting guidelines apply to individual programs as well, as it’s important for the client to communicate what he/she expects out of a program, and for the agency to communicate what they plan to deliver – both in terms of format and results.
Touch base often. One of the agencies I managed previously was notorious for failing to communicate during the process of a project. I would have to ask them how outreach was going or what the ETA was on a press release they were writing. We all get busy, but one of the easiest ways to ensure a frequent touch-base is to hold regular status meetings — weekly if possible. If geography permits, I recommend doing these in person as often as possible as it goes a long way in fostering relationships. These meetings can be brief – with some of my current clients we regularly accomplish these in 15 minutes or less, so you don’t have to worry about eating a large chunk of administrative budget.
Provide feedback. On a broad scale, it’s important for both the client and the agency to be communicating with one another on what’s working and what could use improvement. I’m a firm believer in addressing things that have the potential to become an issue early on before they reach the point of being truly problematic. On a more granular level, it’s important to debrief after a project or campaign to discuss what went well, what could have been done differently and what should be changed next time (if applicable). Treat each project as a learning experience, and over time the agency and client will be more in tune with one another. By far the best client-agency relationships I’ve had have been the ones where the agency truly feels like an extension of the in-house communications and/or marketing team. Here at Sterling Communications, that’s reflected in our tagline, “The Inside Agency,” and it’s what we strive for with each of our clients.
Tell us – communication or otherwise, what do you think makes or breaks a client-agency relationship?
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