Clarity is crucial at all stages of a brand-agency relationship. It allows both parties to be on the same page, to know exactly what to expect within a project and it gives you the confidence to have more productive negotiations, and ultimately receive better work.
Being clear in your scope of work is crucial in setting out what you’re looking for and what an agency will be providing. Clarity works in a triad: between procurement and marketing, and marketing and agencies; so it is key to get that clear from the outset.
This includes having clarity around the type of work, talent needed and the time frame it needs to be delivered by. This will allow agencies to plan more precisely for the nature of the work, and also potentially provide a more accurate fee for what you as a brand are looking for.
Clarity also translates to better alignment within internal teams; your marketing teams need to be clear on the output they are expecting and procurement need to be able to understand how much is needed for that work. In order to achieve this, marketing and procurement must have an open dialogue and strong communication to be able to speak each other’s language.
Having both your marketing and procurement at scoping meetings, can enable clarity from the get-go, and enable an appreciation for both sides of the table; without that, it is difficult for teams to be aligned and speak the same language.
Clarity can, of course, be found via benchmarking: allowing brands to know what being competitive actually looks like and be able to make an informed decision. RightSpend allows your marketing and marketing procurement to attain benchmark data and track projects in order to confidently negotiate with agency partners, knowing exactly what their budgets and plans should look like.
Internal clarity also leads to a better quality of work and relationships with your agency, because they will be clear on expectations, deliverables and deadlines…
The exercise of negotiation will ultimately be an easier task. Not only will both sides be a lot clearer on what is actually to be negotiated, but it will allow them to focus on the important elements of the discussion.
RightSpend data mitigates the emotion and mystery that sometimes lurks beneath negotiations and breeds a better ground for discussion between agency and brand. Giving you the confidence to question the detail of the scope of works, the rates, the hours, and the profit margins.
This aligns with the need for being transparent within negotiations, and also bleeds into the important practical considerations, like terms in contract.
Aside from transparency on terms, agencies and marketing need to be aligned from the outset and this is only achieved by being clear and defined with the goals and objectives.
By having a metric of what a piece of work is worth, and being able to benchmark that, brands can internally manage expectations and know that they are getting value for money. It will enable key KPIs to be laid out and mean that agencies will be able to meet certain deliverables and manage expectations.
This is a benefit from a C-Suite perspective too, as it provides accountability and gives procurement a justification and direction for certain strategic budget decisions. This trickles down into planning and ultimately means that these will be better decisions.