A Guide to Choosing an Advertising Agency in 2023.
Here are five questions to ask yourself when looking to choose an advertising agency.
1. Does the advertising agency advertise its own services?
Most Auckland advertising agencies will advertise their successes in an “aren’t we cool” fashion, in publications aimed at their peers and the industry as a whole. Still, almost all do not advertise in mainstream media.
If you asked around, you’d get told that advertising agencies work in a business-to-business environment and that their product is best suited to the business-to-consumer space. So there’s theoretically no real “fit”.
Many agencies have major clients that operate in a business-to-business environment, and these agencies happily manage to accept money for services rendered, so let’s scratch that excuse.
2. Does the size of the agency matter?
Working with a big advertising agency can be quite prestigious, but there are drawbacks:
Where will your business fit in its hierarchy?
Who will handle your account?
Are you more than a number?
In equal measure, you’ll find other questions when working with a smaller advertising agency:
Does the agency have the capacity, expertise, and vision to advance your brand?
Will they have the buying power and connections you need to deliver cost-effective advertising and marketing solutions?
Whether the agency is big or small, they are all capable of doing amazing work, especially with your guidance. Working with an advertising agency isn’t a one-way street. Your input is vital in creating work that builds connections, creates trust, and most importantly, delivers results.
3. How will the advertising results be measured?
Advertising isn’t an exact science and there’s no easy way to measure its overall effectiveness. While few adverts have absolutely zero effect, there’s no precise way to measure the success of an advertising campaign. In fact, it’s almost impossible to measure how many dollars of sales were generated by each advertising dollar that you spent.
A good advertising agency will have a number of methods that can give some kind of an idea as to whether its ads are hitting the mark or not. This needs to be in place over all the media platforms they use.
If you’re in any doubt about measurement, ask for tangible case studies that show this agency knows what it’s talking about.
4. What about the agency’s work?
An advertising agency’s portfolio of work needs to stand on its own merits, and you have to critically look at that work to make sure that the agency’s overall creative vision is what your business needs. Here are three tips:
Forget about how much they talk up past successes, including awards. You need to know if their work will drive sales for you.
Look at the agency’s creative track record and ask yourself how much of it is focused on winning awards, and how much is aimed at getting real results – the two are often very different things.
Ask the hard questions, pick one of their accounts and ask to see all the work done on that account in a year.
And most importantly, don’t forget the Jackson Pollock Rule. It’s a simple rule and it goes like this: some people will love what you created and others will totally loathe it.
5. What about the people that work there?
When you ask an advertising agency to pitch for your business, you’re likely to get a great response, and a team of smart-suited go-getters will arrive at your door, ready to promise the Earth and more. But what happens after they get your business? Be on the lookout for:
Changes in the people who are working on your account
Lack of time with upper management, such as creative directors
Slow progress on delivering your work
If points like these rear their head then it’s time to take things to the highest authority. You’ll soon be able to judge how important your business is to the advertising agency by the response you get. You might get told that it’s none of your business how the agency manages its people or its job flow, but they’re actually your people, and in all seriousness, that’s your job flow.
Take a look at some of these Advertising Agency Websites.