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Head of Campaign Management
Integration
In this blog, we outline the essential steps to take to achieve an integrated strategy when working with multiple agencies. Having an integrated marketing strategy is a more effective and cost-efficient way to push users along the sales funnel than each channel work in silo.
For businesses that work with multiple agencies across various disciplines, integration can be difficult, particularly as different agencies can have altering points of contact. However, striving for integration in this situation is extremely crucial.
If not, a lack of communication can lead loss of budget, duplication of tasks across different teams and cannibalization of results. Opening communication between channels and nurturing a more integrated approach means you can maximize overall results with less time and resource.
When working with multiple agencies, it’s crucial that all work across all channels shares the same tone of voice. Creating and sharing a brand tone of voice document, and having external activity checked by an internal contact, creates a consistent cross-channel experience for your customers – which increases brand trust and purchase intent.
Depending on the location of each marketing agency, it can be that day to day communication and monthly catch-ups are conducted through emails or calls. However, it is important to organize an initial face to face immersion session as early as possible. Meeting face to face makes it easier to discuss the roles each agency has, where any overlap may lie, and encourages an open environment for everyone to share ideas. An immersion session also allows you set boundaries for each team’s responsibilities and outline your company KPIs.
“Organize an inter-agency ideation session at the start of the contract and get everyone involved in building the content strategy together. This ensures everyone is on the same page and provides opportunity to discuss roles and responsibilities for campaigns.”
– Zoe Schofield, Acting Head of Digital PR
It is easy for separate teams to focus solely on their channel-specific KPIs and forget that everyone is working together to help you achieve your wider business goals. When creating KPIs for channels, it is useful to work backwards – how will these help you to get where you want to be in one, two- and three-years’ time? Taking a top-level approach helps to highlight how each channel plays into these goals can help you to set the channel-specific KPIs and ensure there is minimal or no overlap on how success is measured by each team.
While everyone should be working towards the same wider goals, it is helpful to clearly define the role each agency plays. This might mean clarifying the types of campaigns your Digital PR agency focuses on versus what your SEO agency can run. It can also mean defining the social ads your social media team runs versus your programmatic team, or dividing which audiences your inhouse PPC targets versus those of your PPC agency.
Having an overarching umbrella strategy that includes key dates (such as product launches or sales periods) and themes for each team to work from is a great way to ensure consistent campaign themes and messaging across all channels at all times.
In addition to having access to the wider marketing strategy, each agency needs complete visibility of the individual channel strategies to avoid repeating campaigns. At an absolute minimum, this involves sharing an overview of strategies between agencies and teams.
“Bringing all parties together to plot out their campaigns in an overarching matrix can be beneficial, as it both prevents campaign crossovers and allows each team to identify where campaigns/ content can be repurposed across channels – for example, ranking content may be used for outreach purposes and social media.”
– Dan Yeo, Senior Content Manager
It’s easy for an individuals to be accidentally left off an email chain, or for an important document to get buried in a long email chain. That’s why setting up a central or cloud portal where you can put live any creative assets, company news, branding documents and promotions is an effective way of keeping all agencies updated on each aspect of your marketing plan.
For a more integrated approach to content marketing, consider bringing each team together for a collaborative brainstorm. This allows you to identify wider campaign themes and determine how each channel will help deliver this messaging. You can also use the time to agree on who is responsible for each aspect of the campaign and how the campaign can help everyone hit their KPIs.
Setting up a weekly call or monthly meeting allows each agency to keep in regular contact, helping to avoid issues and that the overarching strategy is adhered to. It also allows everyone to discuss past results, upcoming activity, making it easier to ensure all possible avenues are maximized.
“Using project management tools has really helped us to manage communication with other agencies. It gives shared visibility of communication to everyone involved and encourages open discussions on all topics, rather than relying on constant back and forth email chains.”
– Danny Sherne, Head of SEO Strategy
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