With the crazy pace of digital transformation, businesses are finding it hard to cope with all the variables that come with the necessity of having the various skills required for the new competitive landscape. Therefore, their most logical way is to entrust marketing agencies with handling the job. And this is where things start getting seriously complicated.

 There are many factors that affect this relationship and they can be divided into three sections 

1. The internal challenges of the business 
2. The internal challenges of the agency 
3. The dynamics between the two entities 

1. The internal challenges of the business

• Most of the midsized businesses are run by multitasking managers who handle several functions and have no time to upgrade their skills at the needed pace.

This is what causes the “decision myopia” which makes them use their biases to decide on something that they are not expert at, or they just delegate it in a disengaged way; trusting the assigned party.

As realistic as this is, as dangerous as it is on the business, especially on the strategic direction.

• Lack of budget for the services needed to stay competitive and all the pressure that this creates on both the internal team and the provider.

• Lack of the ability to give a compelling brief that reflects the reactive nature of the internal decisions at the business and the lack of clarity in the defined strategic objectives, which makes the creative team deliver something “creative” that either gets accepted or rejected for the wrong reasons. 

If accepted, it will have sometimes not only less positive impact, it could be bad for the business.

If rejected, this leads to delays in the process, setbacks in the launch, and postponed business-driven results.

2. The internal challenges of the agency

• Knowledge gaps and practical inexperience: 

The vast majority of agency team members are juniors or fresh graduates, which brings the positive benefit of fresh perspectives and creative ideas, but they lack two major vital components for the success of their job.

• The lack of understanding of the business process and professional conduct in the interaction with the customers. This comes due to the lack of orientation from seniors and pressure of the day-to-day work 
• The lack of experience in the actual business aspect of their job and the commercial needs of the real-world.
• The lack of understanding of the nuances and differences among the businesses they deal with.

This issue creates a lot of pressure and disorientation on the individuals and their managers.

• Fast-paced growth of their sales:
  • Given the sky-rocketing demand, agencies are not able to set a process that can cope with all the needed dynamics.

• High turnover:
  • Most agencies are facing an uncontrollable employees’ turnover, which is multiplying the burden. 

This is largely driven by the abundance of freelance opportunities available to these employees, as well as the exceptionally high demand for truly skilled professionals across agencies. On top of that, many individuals are prematurely launching their own agencies before fully mastering the business and its intricacies.

The dynamics between the two 

• All the points mentioned above, and others not listed, directly influence the communication dynamics between the two entities. This, in turn, impacts the underlying flow of the project and ultimately affects the bottom-line business results.”

• To secure better results, here are some actions to take: 

• Creating a clear process by project based on the standardized systems 
• Getting a third party (consultant) at least for the brief and alignment 
• Making sure to give the project the contextuality it needs from a business perspective as well as from a dynamic’s perspective 
• Spending time internally upgrading the skills (other than the creative ones) 
• Being open to considering being wrong and admitting the need to change instead of mastering the blame game
• Pause & Zoom-Out, everything seems clearer from a birds-eye perspective.