Your marketing consultant: The importance of a strategic match

A study by Frontify and Ad Age, detailed the all too frequent disconnect between marketing consulting firms and their clients. The survey noted that there is a perception that only the client can see the big picture in terms of customer journey and experiences and agencies can only see from their own area of expertise. Unfortunately, this disconnect as well as performance related to processes and communication typically result in a failure to match expectations.

Interestingly, the study showcased what clients typically look for in an agency. The key attributes clients seek from their marketing partner are as follows:

1. The agency team is easy, pleasant and convenient to work with

2. Ability to build successful, distinctive brands

3. Dedication to sustaining long-lasting successful client relationships

4. Experience in helping stretch the budget with great impact

5. Excellent creativity and inventiveness

6. Proven ideas for saving time and money with improved processes

7. And, at the forefront of offering leading technology and platforms

Having just completed AOE’s new strategic plan, I am pleased that we hold so many of these items on the aforementioned wish list as essential and part of our core values. With our 20-year track record of building long-term relationships with our clients, helping them stretch their budgets to build their brands, we are dedicated to providing our services in an efficient and easy manner. In fact, we’ve been told we become a seamless extension of your staff, and that is the highest compliment we can receive related to our ability to be a convenient solution! And, we are pleased to announce that we are investing time and money this year in a variety of new software tools such as DemandJump to help better target our content development, Feathr so we can maximize ROI for your social media spend, as well as the launch of our DEI Analysis Benchmarking tool. With that said, we are a work in progress and we encourage feedback on how we can improve in all areas of this list. Some of our best process improvements have come from our treasured clients.

Please reach out to me or our team today with any feedback on our team and services.