How not to waste money on a digital agency?

The information in the article will be useful if you plan to apply to a digital agency (hereinafter referred to as DA) or worked with it but gained negative experience.

What should you do when applying to a digital agency?

Each paragraph is mandatory. Work with an agency like a partner and you’ll find a pleasant change in your company.

Tell the agency about its role in your coordinate system.

Tell the DA what place it will take in the company: for example, it will be an outsourcing department tied to an internal schedule. Or you are willing to accept it as an independent company and respect the need for information 24/7. If there is a disagreement, do not cooperate.

Conclude a mutually beneficial contract.

Familiarize yourself with the DA contract. If necessary, draw up a protocol of disagreements.

It is important to understand that at the stage of signing the contract, there is no one specialist who can guarantee specific terms, traffic, and positions. The contract of the paid rendering of services and its subject matter – actions and processes, but not result in any way. The subject of the contract to promote the site can not be the final and measurable result. About “in the top-3 for 2 months” or “increase in attendance by 4 times for six months” can not be said.

To begin with, experts assess the status of your project, give general recommendations and forecasts of the results, which can be achieved with the initial data. If you have a different vision of the goals, discuss with the project team their feasibility and after preliminary agreement of the goals, agree on a supplementary agreement, in which you will be able to prescribe specific figures and deadlines after 2-3 months of cooperation.

I recommend adding attachments with the following information (if available):

• Description of the target audience to be reached;
• economic expediency of concluding a contract – indicate for what reasons you are applying to DA and whether it makes sense (promotion of new goods is an economically profitable investment; writing texts on the dead site of the catalog – no);
• permissible methods of execution of works, permission to use copyrights.

Record new agreements in writing: in the mail, messengers, Skype. Duplicate all discussions with a voice in writing, so that in the future there were no further discrepancies in the readings of the agreements.

Be honest about the budget at the beginning of the cooperation.

Do not avoid the question about money: the strategy of business promotion is based on the available resources. If you promise golden mountains, but at the right moment you are pouring a pile of river sand, be prepared to lose the results.

Give access to the business.

Inform DA about the company: about employees and relationships in the team, suppliers, how clients react to changes, etc. This will help to identify weak points at the stage of product and service development.

Spare no time in negotiations with the contractor to provide business expertise.

If you send him or her to look for information on the Internet, prepare for the same level of strategy development as available sources. You can find out a point of view of Fuselabcreative in this article.

Identify the structure of the company.

Appoint those responsibly. In addition, inform DA of your contacts:

• Accountant – save marketers from financial issues;
• The courier and his or her supervisor if you hand over the paper/product samples in a traditional format.
• Sales staff to clarify customer information;
• Advertisers and SMM-specialists (if any) to analyze and improve their work.

Report the dismissals of key individuals and individuals whose assistance may theoretically be needed by DA. Immediately assign other employees to the vacated positions so as not to drag out the interaction process.

Decide on deadlines within the company.

Allow time for responsible employees to communicate with DAs if their work does not involve abrupt breakdowns. Agree with the agency’s specialists.

Standardize and systemize.

Agree on the reporting forms and the delivery algorithm. Sort the documents you submit to DA by a group – financial separately, product separately. This will save time on organizing issues.

Do not hide your dissatisfaction, but express it correctly.

Speak out any dissatisfaction. You have people working with you, not robots – they may be mistaken, do not understand the actual aspects of the business or have a different point of view on its development.

Conduct an audit in your company.

When you get the result from DA, check the work of your employees. It is not enough to start working according to the strategy – it is necessary that the staff does not prevent changes and can work on new applications.