Hiring a great agency doesn’t stop when the contract is signed. To know that you’ve hired a great agency, you need tangible, data-driven results that you can grasp and understand.
The best way to do this is to have a quarterly check-in (every three months) after you begin the engagement. The metrics they report should be agreed upon ahead of time (these are in the questions in the previous section above). But this is not just a metrics review session as they should be providing you reports frequently based on the work that is being done.
After hiring, consider a weekly check-in for the first month. You can get a feel for how the agency works, how they meet deadlines, and how they handle new clients in general.
After that—and if you’re satisfied—check in every quarter. During that check-in, try to take stock of how the engagement is going from a quantitative and qualitative point of view.
Quantitive data is numerical data that is derived and measured objectively. As you hire or review with a new agency, you should look at metrics and the work that has been delivered. This should also be a time to review how quickly work is being delivered and implemented.
Because marketing progress (especially SEO progress) is only seen once changes have occurred and campaigns have begun being executed, this is a very important indicator to track in order to improve the quality of the project.
Qualitative data is related to the feel of things. This can include how an agency handles unscheduled calls to how they present deliverables in your hiring or check-in meetings.
As the marketing lead or hiring manager, you should be communicating with your team member or project manager about how the hiring process or new project is progressing.
For ongoing projects, you owe it to yourself to make sure that both sides are happy and productive within the relationship. If you are not able to fill this role or if either side is disgruntled, then the chances that the relationship will not succeed increase substantially.
There’s that word again! One of the first things a good agency will do is help you define the metrics by which the project’s success will be measured. From there, they should help set up your analytics so that those are being tracked by everyone—if not already being done.
This dashboard can be as simple or complex as you prefer. The first thing many agencies do with a new client is build a dashboard within Google Analytics (or their dashboard of choice). Then, all stakeholders have transparency any time they want in a few clicks.
This page last updated on January 17, 2023 by John Doherty
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