Marketing is no longer about being a jack-of-all-trades.
Agencies, particularly those of scale, tend to focus on a
specific niche to deliver powerful campaigns for their clients. With so many actors in the agency market, competition is only natural. However, collaboration might be in your best interest – and that of your clients.
Imagine your client decides to branch out from their primary offerings to offer a new product to a different target customer who is far outside of your niche. You don’t want to lose the client, but your team doesn’t have the experience to deliver high-performance marketing for their new market.
To continue providing the best possible service to your client, you partner with another agency who can help you take on your client’s marketing needs.
But how do you work together and ensure your efforts are aligned? Here are a few tips to help your team collaborate with another agency partner.
1. Find a partner that complements your niche.
Your partnership will be much more effective if you can build a long-term relationship with an agency that provides complementary services to your own.
Rather than working together on just one project, you can share clients back-and-forth in a way that benefits both companies. You can even mention the availability of these extra services when you take on new clients to help them realize the benefit of working with you.
For example, you run an agency that focuses exclusively on English-language marketing, but your client is planning to expand into the Latin American market. You could build a partnership with a Spanish-language marketing agency to maintain your client relationship by providing them with the additional services they need.
2. Create a shared online workspace.
You need to be able to share client information with your partners easily so you can collaborate. With
GAIN, you can set up channels for each client where you can keep resources and share essential documents with the right stakeholders.
Using GAIN, you can also keep track of your efforts with shared content calendars, and create an automated approval flow so that managers on each team can review and leave feedback on content as needed.
3. Make time for organic communication.
Excellent marketing requires creativity. By working with a partner from another niche, you might able to come up with ideas that would have never come to you otherwise.
However, coming up with new marketing plans requires open communication with the other agency that might not arise naturally over email or chat.
Schedule a weekly or bi-weekly video call with your partners to bounce new ideas off of each other and discuss how you can improve your joint services. It is much easier to communicate openly and honestly when you can see your partner’s face.
4. Put your clients’ needs first.
If you’re still wondering how partnering with another agency can advance your business, consider your mission. You want to provide your clients with the best possible marketing services, whatever their needs.
Rather than trying to step outside of your niche and providing suboptimal service, you can elevate your client’s outcomes by working alongside a complementary organization.
By helping a client expand their marketing campaigns without having to find a new agency themselves, you can maintain and delight a loyal client, rather than risk losing them.
While collaborating with an outside team can pose challenges, the key to success is open communication. Keep channels open for dialogue so you can align your efforts and extend your clients’ marketing reach.
