4 Tips for Fostering a Successful Relationship with Your Marketing Partner
Whether you’re teaming up for a one-time advertising project, or creating a long-term partnership to manage your social media accounts, it’s important to foster a strong relationship with your digital marketing firm.
As with any relationship, the partnership between a client and their marketing specialist requires work and cooperation from both parties to make it function successfully. While the actual marketing work lies with your marketing partner, as the client, you still have your role to play to make sure your content best represents you and your brand and that every marketing campaign is executed well and on time.
Because your marketing can only be as successful as the relationship you have with your marketing specialist, here’s a few tips to keep in mind to foster the best relationship possible.
Maintain communication
The basis of any successful relationship is good communication. Luckily, a good marketing firm is literally made up of people who are professional communicators, so you won’t have to worry too much about their end of the relationship. Your marketing partner will tell you if they need extra information to fulfill specific pieces of content, and it’s important that you provide this information in a timely manner.
Similarly, letting your marketers know if you have any important events coming up that affect your content, or if your content needs to change, is important. Do you have staff birthdays or anniversaries coming up that you would like acknowledged on social media? Did a staff member retire who no longer needs to be mentioned on your socials? Are you running a special deal or holding a food drive that needs to be promoted? Please communicate this to us ahead of time! Producing quality marketing content takes time, which is why most marketers will work on content anywhere from one to several months in advance, so telling your marketing specialist about something that you need included in your content on the day of or night before it’s needed will not produce the results you want.
Give feedback/approval in a timely manner
As previously mentioned, we work at least a month ahead to give us time to produce quality marketing content for you. This also gives you time to look over all of your upcoming content and make sure it’s how you would like your brand to be represented and that it communicates and covers everything it needs to, so that it can be edited, if needed, by the time it’s meant to be shared. When it comes to social media, your content is a representation of your business, so we’re not going to post anything that doesn’t reflect your business in a positive light.
Provide any photos or videos that you’re asked for
The best marketing content, particularly for social media, has a real, organic feel to it. We achieve this by using pictures and videos that feature you, your staff, and your business, rather than stock photos or videos. Your potential customers want to see what you have to offer and get a feel for the vibe of your business; using pictures of your actual business in your content helps give your business personality, which will resonate with your customers.
With multiple clients on their roster, your marketing partner might find that the quickest and easiest way to get pictures and videos for your content is to have you take them yourself and then send them over to them. This can help your content be completed quicker, and gives you a chance to have fun and get a little bit more hands-on in the content creation process. Make sure to get the requested media to your marketing partner in a timely manner, to give them time to edit and assemble any reels, graphics, etc, that your content needs so that no one is scrambling to get things done at the last second.
That said, we know you’re human and that life gets hectic. If something comes up that delays you from getting your media to us in a timely manner, just let us know and we can come up with a backup plan.
Trust your marketing partner
We know how much your business means to you – you’ve labored for it, sacrificed for it and put in the work to make it what it is – so we understand that you may be hesitant to hand over the reins. However, you’ve invested in a strategic marketing partnership because you wanted expertise in an area that’s outside of your specialty, so it’s important to trust that your marketing partner has your business’s best interest in mind when creating your content. Keep in mind that hiring a marketing professional to do your marketing work, and then redoing their work yourself in your own style, is not only a waste of money and time, but undermines the partnership that’s so important to the success of your marketing content.
Just like you know your craft, we know ours; we’ve spent a lot of time studying social media trends, mastering graphic design, and learning what practices audiences respond to best. While you might have a favorite color or piece of clipart that you like included in your content, but the truth is, those elements don’t work for every post; your marketing partner, however, has honed their eye for design and can take your inspiration and make them work in ways that your potential clients will appreciate. You can rest assured we’re going to do our best to create high-quality content – from social media graphics to the captions on the posts – and we’re as invested in making sure your content supports your business as you are.
Partner with strategysmith marketing
At strategysmith marketing, we understand that a good marketing partnership is the cornerstone of a successful business, and we work hard to foster mutually beneficial partnerships with each of our clients to ensure they are well-represented in their marketing content. Contact us to talk strategy and to learn how we can make sure you are putting your best foot forward online.
