How to Manage a Marketing Agency
Manage a marketing agency for direction and execution, not strategy. Agencies are channel specialists: expect a disciplined process that gets to good creative, correct targeting, and honest reporting, and expect them to do what you direct, on time. Do not expect them to set your strategy, allocate your budget, or understand your business better than you do. Companies that get this division of labor right keep agencies for years and get real value from them.
The division of labor
Most agency frustration traces to a role confusion: businesses asking agencies for strategy, and agencies selling it. An agency's real value is execution depth inside its channels. The strategy, who the customer is, what the business is trying to accomplish, which programs deserve budget, has to come from the business, because the business is the only party accountable for the commercial result.
Two tests tell you whether an agency deserves the relationship. First: do they understand the business, or only the platform? Second, and more telling: when you tell them what to do, do they do it, on time, responsively, and as specified? Timeliness and responsiveness are not politeness metrics. They are the clearest signal of whether your account matters to them.
Expect a process, not magic
A professional agency should have a visible, repeatable process for getting to good work: how ad creative gets developed, how targeting gets chosen, how programs get compared against each other, how dashboards and reports are structured, how budget is allocated across the work, and how hypotheses get formed from your internal data and tested. Test, test, test is the operating rhythm; the process is what makes the testing cumulative rather than random.
The equation the process must answer is simple: who are we talking to, where do we reach them, and what are we saying? If the agency cannot show you how it arrives at those three answers, it does not have a process. It has a subscription.
Run them inside your cadence
Vendors managed by monthly recap deck drift. Vendors managed inside the operating cadence perform. Bring agencies into the weekly business review for their scope, in front of the same numbers and the same priorities as the internal team, with their work held to the same performance management standard: reporting that supports decisions, not reporting that defends the retainer. Quarterly reviews then handle the relationship itself: scope, fees, staffing, and whether the process is still producing.
And give them a complete assignment. An agency with responsibility for results but no clear direction or authority over its scope fails the same way an employee does in that position, the incomplete triangle described in the iron triangle of getting things done. If the relationship is failing even with clear direction, the question becomes a different one: when to fire your marketing agency. And when the answer is a new agency, the selection deserves a real process, like this agency RFP engagement for a publishing company.
Frequently asked questions
What should you expect from a marketing agency?
Direction and execution, not strategy. Expect a disciplined process that gets to good creative, correct targeting, and clean reporting; timeliness and responsiveness; and honest performance against the direction they are given. Strategy, priorities, and budget allocation belong to the business, not the vendor.
What are the two tests of a good agency?
First, do they understand the business, not just the channel? Second, when you tell them what to do, do they do it: on time, as specified, with the result reported honestly? Agencies that pass both are valuable execution partners. Agencies that fail the second are not partners at all.
How should agency work be reviewed?
Inside the same cadence as internal work. Agencies join the weekly business review for their scope, present against the same KPIs, and participate in the same test-and-learn hypotheses. Quarterly business reviews then cover the relationship itself: scope, fees, staffing, and whether the process is still producing.
Who should set the budget allocation between channels?
The business, with the agency contributing evidence. An agency asked to allocate budget across channels it bills against has an unresolvable conflict of interest. The equation of who to talk to, where to reach them, and what to say is set by whoever owns the strategy, informed by internal data and the agency's channel expertise.
Is anyone directing your agencies?
A discovery call is a focused conversation about how your vendors are directed, measured, and held accountable today.