Prior to partnering with an agency, there are a lot of questions and answers that go back and forth about everything from services to set up to daily communication. Here are 5 questions we get asked often and our answers. Whether you’re looking to partner with any agency or partner with 97th Floor specifically, we hope these help you in knowing a little bit more about the internal workings of this agency and how it may fit with your goals, objectives and working style.
Let’s get to it!
Question #1: Who will I be working with once I jump into a project with an agency?
Here’s a little bit about how the teams are structured at 97th Floor. Your main point of contact is your campaign manager. He or she oversees the team of digital marketers, content managers, designers and specialists assigned to your project or campaign.
You will meet your campaign manager on or potentially before your kickoff call where they will be ready to:
- Review the scope of work
- Share what they’ve already started in terms of research and strategy
- Ask you a few key questions
- And set up communication cadence...which brings me to the next question on our list, which is...
Question #2: How often do you check in?
Short answer is often and, more often than you’d expect, especially if you’ve worked with a fulfillment house type agency where they typically check in once a month to review your account.
Here are 97th Floor, we are your strategic partners and that means we connect to collaborate, review, edit and work as often as necessary to meet the goals we’ve created together. During the kickoff call the campaign manager will set a time for a weekly check-in. There will also be monthly reports and ongoing reviews of the statement of work.
And, of course, you have access to your team via email which is as often as is necessary and probably a bit more frequently at the start of any scope of work.
Communication tools include but are not limited to:
- GoToMeeting for conference calls
- Slack
- Asana, trello, basecamp or whatever project management you prefer your team integrate into
- Google docs
- And face-to-face, usually once per six months or more often if within driving distance
Question #3: What kind of reports can I expect?
Monthly reports typically look like this (images) and can be customized to not only the scope of work but the data and assets you need to properly report to your team and direct manager.
Renewal reports are a great way to check in before the end of contract and make adjustments and or additions before starting your next scope of work with your team.
We believe in transparency so we report on the metrics that matter in terms of your contract and business development. And, as with everything, customize to what you need in order to be most effective with your team, both at 97th Floor and within your company.
Question #4: How do I know what you’re doing is working?
It’s hard to see in the day-to-day tracking if something is working, especially something new. Growth is ultimately more visible week over week and better than that, month over month. So how do we know if what we’re doing is working in terms of getting us to the goal we’re both after? The answer is data. The immense amount of research and data mining that goes into any scope of work is to understand the marketplace; everything from the volume of average monthly searches, which tells us how many potential buyers are out there, to how engaged those buyers are, to how they convert. ALL OF THIS to ensure we go in with a plan with predictable returns.
Question #5: How is 97th Floor different?
We’ve already covered a few ways 97th Floor is different than other agencies, with how we onboard to how we communicate on a weekly and daily cadence to the level of transparency in reporting to how we use data to build innovate strategy. However, the short and simple is we are your strategic partner with eyes focused on business development and producing bottom-line value.
That’s it, 5 frequently asked questions and answers. Until next time!