This week on the Marketing Smarts Podcast, we discuss the evolving relationship between agencies and clients in the era of social media. Our guest is Glenn Engler, CEO of Digital Influence Group, a full-service digital agency with “social media at the core” of everything they do.
The jumping-off point for our interview was that “social at the core” position. I wanted to know what that meant, and Glenn explained that, in a nutshell, it doesn’t make sense for an agency to offer “social” as a capability to its clients (as in, “We can also do print!”). Instead, social needs to be integrated into everything a digital agency has to offer and that “every skill set, every area of expertise” needs to have social built in.
Because social media brings with it an expectation of authenticity—when engaging with a company via social media, I assume I’m engaging with the company and not their agency—I also asked Glenn how this plays out in the real world. Who manages Facebook pages? Who Tweets? Who creates content? And so forth.
As is the case whenever one asks questions like this, the answer was, “It depends.” Depending on the client’s sophistication with social
media and their internal readiness to engage at the levels expected by their audience and customers, Glenn’s agency will be involved, to varying degrees, in training and helping the clients develop systems and resources where necessary. The key, he said, is that you have to be “above board” and make it crystal clear who is doing what on behalf of whom.
Helping companies integrate social media into their digital campaigns and online presence brings with it a certain level of intimacy with the client and even requires the agency to make recommendations, not just about marketing and advertising but also about internal operations, processes, and businesses goals. For this reason, the rising demand for social media engagement highlights another step that agencies are taking—and must take—towards becoming true business partners with their clients (and even, at some level, competing with business consultancies).
In the last part of our interview, we discuss this aspect of the evolving relationship between agencies and their clients, and Glenn insisted that, whether an agency is enabling social media campaigns or helping a client with more traditional forms of advertising, its contribution has “to drive brand and classic brand/purchase funnel metrics, and it’s got to drive the business.”
Because if you aren’t helping your client achieve business objectives, then you’re not really helping your client at all.
If you’d like to read a detailed description of how the Digital Influence Group has put these ideas into practice with their client Glidden Paint, as well as listen to this podcast episode in its entirety, you may do so here.
I also encourage you to check out past episodes or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
So, how have you seen social media change the agency/client relationship?
Tags: Agency, digital agencies, integrated marketing, Social Media
Integrating social media into large companies with layers of red tape has been one obstacle faced by marketing professionals. Slowly social media is being accepted but for many companies who choose to ignore it as a passing trend they face being behind the curve.