Mistake #1 - The client Cowboy

How to select a digital Agency

Mistake #1 - The Client Cowboy

The cattle call can be heard from one end of the company’s hallway to the other: “Yeeeee—ha! Round ‘em up and fence ‘em in!” Are there really 50 agencies eligible for a client’s business – or 25 or even 10? Yet it’s not uncommon for companies to solicit agency participation indiscriminately. The “all comers’ ” invitation is often assumed by clients to be the fairest approach to getting the most motivated -- or “hot but hidden” -- agencies to solicit their account. Sorting through the 80 responses received in this approach


generally yields the same agencies of which the client was already aware. After all, foreknowledge is the easiest filter to use. As a consequence, agencies are given false hope by the all comers’ invitation and, just as important, company time is wasted sifting

through candidates that were never genuinely in the running from the start -- or overlooking highly qualified agencies which didn’t respond to the cattle call for any reason in the first place.


Just as egregious is including agencies in the search process that are current client incumbents as mere courtesy candidates. If a non-performing client agency has been fairly advised of their shortcomings over a reasonable timeframe during which they had an opportunity to demonstrate improvement, nothing is going to change the company’s mind about their capabilities -- no matter how well the agency performed at the end of the search process. Be honest and terminate them before you initiate your search for their replacement. Similarly, don’t include agencies that may periodically handle projects for you to simply give them a good feeling about being included in the process. If you don’t believe they have the resources to be your agency of record from the outset, explain the reasons to them before the search is initiated. Again, honesty counts. No agency likes to be patronized.


Best Practice:

Cull the herd. If you don’t believe you have the knowledge or resources to do this inside your company, turn to outside resources – other marketers you may respect, industry associations and specialized search consultants are some the of resources you may wish to consider in creating a short, highly pre-qualified list of agency prospects.