Share goals

“I’ve been very fortunate to enjoy many successful agency partnerships. The best ones have been where there’s a mutual understanding of the joint goals and a shared methodology on how to achieve them,” says Sharon Braude, Disney’s Director of Marketing Technology, Operations & CRM in EMEA from 2019-2023. With experience agency-side and in-house, Sharon has successfully led many martech collaboration projects between internal and external partners.

It’s a sentiment shared by Roxanne Lewington, Growth Marketing Manager at Canto, the leading digital asset management (DAM) platform. As Roxanne explains, “It’s important to set expectations and align on a shared vision from the offset, setting your rules of engagement and roadmap.”

Complement the team

The next tip for agencies is to ensure that you’re filling gaps and meeting needs for the client. Sharon explains: “From a client perspective, working with agencies is a great way to bring additional service and talent to complement your existing in-house team.”

“This can be in the form of tools that you utilise via the agency, and it can also be the team that the agency has in place,” she adds. “When I’ve had teams within my brand side, I’ve used the agencies to help educate those teams, but also create onboarding solutions so that everyone is up to speed at the same level.”

Be trendsetters

Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons for a brand to choose an agency is because their finger is on the pulse – they provide instant access to the latest creative and marketing innovations.

“What’s great about having an agency in place is that they can provide insight into industry trends,” says Sharon, about her time as in-house Director at Disney. “They seem to stay at the cutting edge of what’s happening and they can advise on the most suitable technology to support marketing functions [...] and ensure that internal teams on the client side are kept up-to-speed as well.”

Some of the high-impact topics that could be covered in this agency upskilling might include optimising team performance, automating processes, scaling up, and streamlining creative approvals. 

Bring fresh ideas

Closely linked to the top tip above, the next piece of advice is to bring fresh ideas to the client using your agency’s wide-ranging experience of different workplaces and ways of working.

Sharon explains how this appeals to the client mindset: “Agencies have experience across a broad set of clients, so they know how different clients work in different environments. At one specific client, you might have a certain way of doing things, but agencies can educate you on different ways of doing things. You can be assured that the agency has test driven solutions and can advise you on the most suitable solutions for your brand.”

Bring the right tech

The top agency take-away from Canto’s Roxanne Lewington is to bring the right tech into your client relationship. This means you can provide great value through developing optimal workflows and enabling the best collaboration. 

“A digital asset management – or DAM – platform is a fundamental tool to connect the agency with the in-house team,” says Roxanne, citing features like real-time collaboration on creative assets, tailored branded portals, and self-service features for brand-side teams to give extra agility and speed-to-market. Find out more about what Canto can do for agencies.

Counteract churn

A final, practical tip is to counteract the simple fact that agencies tend to have faster staff turnover than in-house teams. 

“Staff turnover can impact how a client’s account is managed because you have different people coming in and leaving,” explains Sharon. “To ensure that new team members on the agency-side are fully onboarded, I’d recommend that you have up-to-date guidelines on how to manage the client, what technology is utilised, and the roles of each person in the team.” 

And that’s it – no big final number, just simple tips to help your agency thrive, the Canto way. Roll credits.

Canto is an industry-leading digital asset management (DAM) solution, pioneering the way with innovative technology to help companies work smarter, smoother, and faster. For more tips, watch Canto’s From Chaos to Control podcast series.