This is January’s monthly Progress Report for ATTN Agency and we explore expanding our services a lot. We’re focused on explosive growth exploring every option before we move in any additional direction.
I had a conversation with another agency owner whos is offering all services. Anything his clients need he will do. We’ve explore website development and creative services recently and this conversation was helpful.
Account management and media buyers continues to be a topic of debate. Once we make a decision there will be a bend in the road and we know we can’t go back, so we’re being careful. The good news is that we’ve made a decision and our clients are going to benefit big time.
We encountered a couple of problems with our contract and made some improvements to avoid problems in the future.
Niche down your services
I was in conversation with an agency owner. It is a startup, about 2 years old. They have handled 12 different clients and were selling everything from creative services, e-mail, content management, Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO and every other possible service. This kind of scope of services just boggles me and I cannot even think about that as a strategy for our agency. I have talked about expanding our service offerings, but in a specialized and specific manner, without any randomness associated with it.
A jack of all trades and master of none, does not reflect an established business. It will not instil confidence in any brand wishing to hire them and use their services.
He is doing well in signing clients, but I think we can learn from the strategy they are deploying. Specialization is needed for any digital marketing agency, at the starting stages. There has to be some USP which draws your clients to you and based on which you begin to scale up. Once you build a good client base, with many case studies under your belt, you can slowly expand into the other offerings. That would be more organized behavior. Moreover, the business would remain unaffected even if I acquire or lose one client who probably chooses to request more creative work and controls my whole business to a different strategy of their choice. It is better to niche down the services offered in infancy and then scale up as you grow bigger and more established.
Account manager vs team member model Conclusion (AM Talk, Media Slack)
In our planning for growth discussions, one of the important points we discussed was about the account manager model vs. multiple team member model, for communication with clients. The conclusion we reached was that in order to really grow, we need to have the account manager talking to the clients and in charge of the success of the account. An Account Success Manager would be a more apt title for them.
That person would be in direct communication with the lead media buyer who continues to work on the account. The account manager would be the direct point of contact for the client. Communication could be in the form of any vocal communication video or in-person communication. The lead buyer on the account would be the direct point of communication for anything having to do with slack communication and media updates. Thereby, as a media buyer, you are always in touch with and updated on the account.
If a question comes up, the media buyer has to revert quickly to the client with a satisfactory answer. The account manager can question the lead managers and request an update or report. Ideally, I hope that we could have only the account manager communicating with the clients, but there will be times when this is not entirely possible.
Personally, as an Account Success Manager role, I have always found it helpful to have a buyer chime in and share exactly what they are doing, when a client requests updates or information. A media buyer will have to be the lead point of contact in slack, answering questions to make sure the client is heard and satisfied that his account is being well taken care of.
Scope creep & better contracts
Scope creep, which we are learning is basically when your clients continue to ask for more and more things to get done. We have faced this frequently and this affected us in a big way. The website work that I highlighted in the last report, is a good example of this. While doing the website work was really good for the company, more and more things kept being asked of us.
We messed up some early on because it was not our core business. We had no set boundaries of the scope of work we were agreeing to do, what clients were going to pay for and receive, the cut-off line, how many rounds of revisions and all other small jobs.
It is a lesson we learnt. Scope creep, make clear the scope of work to clients at the early stages itself and then put in on your contract.