If you’ve made it all the way here, to the creative ad agency questions. You are probably on your way to partnering with a creative ad agency. Maybe you need some help in managing your workloads. Or you are not satisfied with your current advertising firm.
If that is the case, let’s start off by congratulating you on entering an exciting phase in the evolution of business. But while it can bring a lot of benefits for your business, you will need to take proper steps to ensure that the agency you will be hiring is intent on taking your business to the next level.
If you are ready, let’s proceed to the questions below that will help you screen the prospective agencies that you’ve chosen to work with you.
Q: Who Are Some Of Their Previous Clients?
If you are looking for an agency, you need to know who their previous clients have been. While agencies may have provided proven and outstanding results but do they have experience working with your type of industry?
Remember, agencies may be versatile. But it would be better to work in an industry that doesn’t conflict with the interest of your competitors. And an agency that actually has an experience for your products.
You may refer to their case studies and blog posts that feature their recent clients and ask how well the creative ad agency understands your business. If they don’t have any recent work in your industry, you can still ask them how they will gain the knowledge that’s needed to increase your revenue and meet your goals.
Q: Will They Work With You To Achieve Your Company Goals?
The last things that you want from an agency is someone who is rowing towards a different direction than you. To avoid this, you need to look for an alignment from the start.
Ask them what their definition of advertising is. And if their deliverables would actually relate to your own company’s goals.
Overall, ensure that every campaign will underscore the vision and your missions for your future progress.
Q: How Do They Measure Success?
No matter how accomplished a creative ad agency may be, there isn’t a one-size fits all solution for your business ailments. Advertising is a long, hard road to traverse, it can take months to even years to successfully amplify what has been working and sort out the dead weight.
In addition, you must make sure that you are working alongside an agency that defines and sticks to what your unique brand looks and feels like.
But what’s crucial is that you ask how they will measure things like social media follows, website traffic and paid ad impressions. But even those metrics won’t tell the whole story.
So how does your agency present their results in numbers that their clients can easily understand? And will they be able to demonstrate the results effectively no matter how marginal or miniscule they may be.
Q: Is The Agency A One-Stop-Shop For Your Marketing And Advertising Needs Or Does It Only Specialize In One Area?
One good Creative Ad Agency questions to add is this, granted that there are agencies that have their own specialties, as a business owner, you will need to have a good idea of what you want your company to accomplish with them.
You can start asking about their capabilities, are they a better fit for designing websites, branding, outbound or inbound marketing, SEO, PR and social media marketing?
Depending on what you want to accomplish, you may want to take note of their strengths to get the most of your advertising efforts.
Q: How Much Content Will They Produce Per Month
Another Creative Ad Agency questions you need to ask is how much content they will be producing per month. That will be tied with your budget and your expectations. Always ask for the plan on how frequently can the agency produce the deliverables including how open they are in accepting follow-ups and urgent requests.
Q: How Much Work Will Be Outsourced?
If ever there are projects that require a special set of skills and the agency doesn’t have them. How will they manage those projects? Are they open to searching for that professional for you or will your team have to ask for a different third-party vendor.
Why is this question relevant? Well, imagine if you have a particular campaign. And then you want this included as a page on your website but the agency doesn’t have a web designer, you will need to either hire a freelancer for a one-time project or will the agency handle this request through their contacts?
Q: Who Will Be Assigned To Collaborate With You?
The people you work with can have a huge impact on your daily operations and success. So don’t forget that to hire a creative ad agency essentially means gaining new teammates. And for it to yield concrete results, you will need to work with them for a typical 8 to 12 months.
And to make sure that everything runs smoothly, the people assigned to you must be proficient in collaborating and communicating.
It may seem like you are already digging into the small stuff, but evaluating the agency must include how they are able to manage their clients.
The level of an agency’s sophistication in dealing with their clients will show the level of their experience. And there is no harm in making sure that you understand and feel confident in the agency’s process for setting the timeline, executing work, gathering your feedback, measuring and analyzing results and doing an on-going optimization
Q: How Frequently Will You Meet With The Agency? And What Will Be The Format For These Meetings?
This depends on you. Be honest with yourself, do you want someone to be on call if you have questions each day? Or do you completely feel comfortable just checking in bi-weekly?
Always communicate your expectations so that the agency can assemble a schedule that’ll meet your needs since let’s be honest. Calls and meetings can disrupt certain tasks and that may also affect your campaigns.
Even though we are already in the digital age, it can be difficult to hold online meetings. And so, voice out your concerns if you prefer to hold video conference meetings or do you want simple calls?
Your advertising agency may not even be in the same country as you and so does the agency have adequate communication tools and time zone schedules that can match with yours?
Q: How Will The Agency Report The Progress Month Over Month
To be more specific, will they provide you with access to the analytics dashboard so you can follow with their progress? Or do they have a spreadsheet that demonstrates positive results?