Managing agency relations during times of change

Quotes

• “One of the ways we work with our enterprise clients with their digital strategy, it often works very well to have a member of our team on-site with that particular brand. Often this is followed by intense communications where its important what the overall aim is for the business through the lens of SEO and content strategy.” -Glenn

• “If you want to make sure you are day-to-day involved with whatever constitutesthe SEO team on the client side, then you need to fully understand how they work and what the end goals are. Then, you need to make sure you made the right map for execution even if that means having a team onsite, that can help immensely.” -Glenn

• “Theres really no subsitute for being able to sit in front of someone and have a conversation about what it is that they need help with and then being able to articulate face to face how we can help with that, can never really be fully replicated in an online sense. It remains a challenge for everybody.” -Glenn

• “I think it takes more effort from the agencies to stay integrated and stay involved. To me that means you are regularly reaching out to not only your client or the person paying the bills but also theoperators as well.” -Ben

• “The tricks and tools for keeping those agency relationships alive, well, and healthy is things like getting on the Slack channel, in your organization, in your agency clients, checking in regularly, scheduling your one-on-one,your operating sessions.” -Ben

• “Its also the occasional gesture showing that you are staying engaged and trying to go above and beyond whether thats the well-placed bottle of wine, or some sort of token showing your appreciation for going the extra mile, pulling a report for your client whatever it can be.” -Ben

• “Trying to involve as many people from the outset in the conversation and the process is really, really important from the agency side when were talking to them. They may have one or maybe a couple of representatives and I guess theres also an issue of becoming too reliant on the rep to be the expert at everything.” -Glenn

• “Maybe if the agency can expand their scope of resources and people that are dealing with that client, it might be an opportunity for the client for some of the work to get checked, have second voices or second opinion on the relationship and the roadmap and there may be more resources in the agency that hasnt been exposed to that do have an experience with that brands particular industry and unique challenges at that point and all these things can help keep the roadmap on track.” -Glenn

• “At the end of the day, its all about regular communication whether its staying in communication with everyone thats relevant on the team or just communicating about the roadmap, those are the ways that you can try and stay in touch, have a regular roadmap meeting, letting them know what your strategies are, what youre trying to accomplish, where you stand in the process, your roadmap does not have to stay static for you to be seen as a success as an agency.” -Ben