Marketing Agency Processes: An Ultimate Guide

We’ll explore each step in detail, providing practical tips and best practices along the way. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear roadmap for improving your agency operations while maintaining creativity and delivering exceptional results for your clients.

Understanding marketing agency processes

Having well-defined marketing agency processes ensures that tasks are completed efficiently, consistently, and to a high standard, which eventually leads to better client satisfaction and business success.

However, some of these processes will inevitably vary from agency to agency. While client onboarding and performance tracking will be shared, campaign planning in a creative agency will be different from the same advertising agency process.

What is an agency process?

An agency process refers to the pre-set framework and procedures that a marketing agency uses to complete its goals. These processes include different aspects of running an agency business such as:

• Roles and responsibilities across teams
• Stakeholders involved in meeting goals
• Technology that is used
• Documenting project progress
• Measuring and tracking goals
• Client communication and updates

Unlike agency workflows, which focus on steps that bring a project from idea to completion, processes provide a structure that allows your agency to reach larger business goals.

Common challenges marketing agencies face in managing their processes

Let’s start by identifying the typical challenges that prevent agencies from setting up effective processes.

Lack of standardization

Inconsistent procedures can lead to variability in project quality and efficiency. Without standardized procedures, the quality of work can vary significantly from project to project. Different team members may follow their own methods, leading to inconsistent deliverables. As a result of inconsistent work, clients may lose trust in the agency’s expertise, which can further harm the agency’s reputation.

Lack of standardized procedures can also lead to time wastage and duplication of efforts, as team members may unknowingly repeat tasks that have already been completed. In another scenario, the entire team may spend too much time on tasks that could be optimized.

Even onboarding new team members is challenging without standardized agency procedures. Each team member may receive different instructions, which leads to confusion and inefficiency.

This confusion becomes more evident as the agency grows and takes on more clients to manage. The lack of standardized procedures makes it difficult to manage multiple clients and campaigns effectively, without sacrificing the creativity and quality of work.

Communication breakdowns

Poor communication within the team or with clients can result in misunderstandings and project delays. For example, clients may have unclear expectations, while team members may have a different understanding of project goals. Teams may prioritize different tasks, which leads to fragmented efforts, delays, and inconsistent results.

Another problem with ineffective communication is that it may create isolated silos, where each department works separately instead of collaborating. Finally, poor communication harms team spirit, making it difficult for teams to work together effectively, especially in a fully remote environment.

When instructions are not communicated clearly, errors are more likely to occur. This can lead to significant rework, which, in return, wastes additional time and resources. Inadequate communication also blurs the status of tasks and projects, making it difficult for team leads to monitor progress and identify issues early.

Poor resource management

Balancing workloads and ensuring the optimal use of resources can be difficult without clear processes. When resources, particularly staff, are overworked due to poor management, it leads to burnout, decreased morale, and reduced productivity. On the other hand, underutilized staff may feel not valued enough or demotivated.

Marketing agencies that have difficulties managing time risk missed deadlines and delays in project delivery. This way, ineffective time management often results in last-minute fixes that compromise the quality of work.

Without effective budget management, projects can easily exceed their financial limits, leading to reduced profitability. On the other hand, limited budgets can result in insufficient resources being allocated to client campaigns, putting their success at risk.

Agencies that fail to use the available tools and technologies to their full potential can also miss opportunities to streamline their processes. Conversely, using too many tools without reliable integrations can complicate and slow down workflows.

Ampilio is just one example of an agency that used less-than-ideal technology for its data monitoring and client reporting. This marketing agency from Sweden used Looker Studio and an array of third-party connectors that kept breaking off and slowing down the performance. This situation compromised both the accuracy of reports and the agency reputation in the eyes of clients. Here’s a full story on how Ampilio managed to streamline their client reporting process.

Poor resource management often prompts marketing agencies to operate reactively and deal with problems when they arise instead of proactively planning and strategically distributing resources.

Failing to adapt

Keeping processes flexible enough to adapt to changing client needs and market conditions while maintaining efficiency. Relying on outdated processes and technologies can lead to inefficiencies and wasted resources.

Why is flexibility important?

Because relying on outdated processes and technologies may be prone to errors and inconsistencies that modern solutions can easily address.

Here’s an example of how an ad agency process can be improved:

• An advertising agency optimizes the user journey using insights from Google Analytics 4 reports. However, GA4 sometimes samples data from large data sets to cut the querying time – which can lead to inaccurate data in reports.
• By moving the Google Analytics 4 data to a data warehouse and integrating data to a proper reporting solution, a marketing agency is able to overcome the inefficient GA4 reports and replace them with a much more flexible Google Analytics 4 dashboard that always presents accurate client data.

Technology aside, client expectations also evolve rapidly. Agencies that fail to meet new demands, such as AI-assisted insights and forecasting, risk client dissatisfaction and churn. Clients may be more inclined towards competitors who embrace innovation and offer better solutions.

Technology integration

Marketing agencies should ensure that various tools and platforms integrate smoothly to support the processes. When different tools and systems are not integrated, they create silos within the agency.

This lack of integration between tools can result in duplicate data, inconsistencies across systems, and even inaccurate or outdated data that undermines decision-making.

The teams may turn to manual data transfers between non-integrated systems, using spreadsheets, which only increases the risk of errors and compromises the reliability of information.

Without seamless integration between the agency tools, employees spend more time on administrative tasks such as data entry and report generation, which leaves them less time for strategic and creative activities.

To make the problem worse, when data is scattered across multiple unintegrated systems, getting a comprehensive view of clients’ campaigns, performance metrics, and overall agency health becomes challenging.

An elegant solution is to use an overview dashboard, which brings data from multiple channels, campaigns, and locations into one unified view, automatically highlighting metrics that reach targets or limits.

The Agency Overview dashboard created in Whatagraph

Incompatibility between marketing platforms and manual workarounds can also impact client satisfaction. Clients may want real-time updates and insights, which are difficult to provide without integrated reporting solutions.

A solution would be a live dashboard that clients can access using a provided link at any time and from anywhere. All marketing tools that provide source data are natively integrated with the dashboard, so no time is wasted on manual transfers.

By automating our data collection and reporting, we have not only made our own operations more efficient, but above all improved our customers' access to information. They can now benefit in real time from deeper insights presented in a clear and user-friendly way. We can now together make faster and even better decisions!

Andreas Sandgren - CEO @ Market Solutions

Finally, there’s the scalability challenge. As the agency grows, it may find it difficult to integrate more systems and data sources, creating a bottleneck. Managing larger volumes of data (i.e. serving a larger number of clients) will inevitably strain resources and reduce the effectiveness of any marketing agency that fails to integrate client’s marketing platforms into its data stack.

How to set up key marketing agency processes?

Let’s now dive deeper into the key digital marketing agency processes that keep the wheels turning and the business thriving. This is a step-by-step guide on how to properly set up the essential digital marketing agency processes.

1. Client onboarding

An effective client onboarding process is vital for marketing agencies to build strong relationships with new clients, set clear expectations, and ensure smooth cooperation.

On one hand, it keeps clients valued and informed, and on the other, it allows the agency to collect essential information about the client's business and align on the goals.

How to set up an effective client onboarding process?

• Pre-onboarding preparation: Prepare a welcome packet that includes an introduction to your agency, key team members, contact information, and an overview of the services. Run an internal briefing with your team to review the client’s background, industry, and initial project scope.
• Initial client meeting: Schedule a kickoff call to introduce the team, discuss the project scope, and set expectations. Ensure all key stakeholders from both sides are present. Also, send a detailed questionnaire before the call to gather important information about the client’s business, goals, target audience, and competitors.
• Prepare documentation and contracts: Make sure the client has reviewed and signed the service agreement or contract outlining the terms of engagement, deliverables, timelines, and pricing. If necessary, include a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to protect sensitive information.
• Project planning and timelines: The client onboarding is the stage where you need to develop a detailed project plan that includes key milestones, timelines, and responsibilities. Once finished, share this plan with the client for feedback and approval.
• Next, you should establish a communication plan that outlines how often updates will be provided, preferred communication channels, and points of contact.
• Set access to shared resources: Set up access to necessary tools and platforms for both you and the client. This includes the project management software, shared drives, and communication stools. Collect any resources the client can provide, such as brand guidelines, previous marketing materials, and access to analytics platforms.
• Onboarding deliverables: Create a discovery report summarizing the information you gathered about the client’s business and industry. This would be a good point to present an initial marketing strategy or plan that outlines the proposed approach, tactics and outcomes.
• Maintain regular check-ins: Schedule regular check-ins to provide updates on progress, address any concerns, and gather feedback from the client. Provide monthly reports with detailed performance metrics, campaign status, and adjustments or recommendations for the strategy.

Invest time in understanding their unique needs, setting clear expectations and providing tailored solutions that prioritise long term growth. Consistently communicate, educate and demonstrate - your value is in what you do, not what you say.

Sarah Tikfesis - CEO & Head of Operations @ Megaphone

Best practices for client onboarding

1. Maintain open and transparent communication throughout the onboarding process to build trust and ensure alignment.
2. Adapt the onboarding experience to clients' specific needs and preferences to make them feel valued and understood.
3. Ensure that all onboarding materials reflect your agency’s brand identity and values to create a consistent client experience. For an extra length, you can use a white-label reporting tool to build reports with the client’s branding so they feel valued from the very start.
4. Thoroughly document all communications, agreements, and project details to provide a clear reference point for both the agency and the client.
5. Follow the agreed timelines and promptly address any issues or concerns that arise during the onboarding process.

2. Campaign planning and strategy

The next process an agency needs to tackle is the plan on how to deliver measurable results to clients. A well-structured planning process ensures that client goals are defined and achievable, while all team members are aligned.

How to plan efficient campaigns and strategies

• Send clients a questionnaire: You can do this during the initial client consultation. A detailed questionnaire can tell you a lot about the clients’ marketing history, specific objectives, and current efforts.
• Analyze the market and competitors: Run deep market research to understand industry trends, customer behavior, and market opportunities. You should also analyze the strategies of the client’s top competitors. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do they position themselves? Are there any gaps that your client can fit?
• Define goals and objectives: Work together with clients to define Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals. The key performance indicators that you establish for measuring the marketing strategy at this point should align with the client’s business objectives.
• Segment the client’s audience: Segment the client’s target audience based on demographics, behavior, and needs. Develop detailed buyer personas that represent the key segments of the target audience. This includes defining their pain points, motivations, and decision-making process.
• Formulate the strategy: Define the client’s unique value proposition that stands out from the competitors and resonates with their target audience. What are the client’s most effective marketing channels based on audience behavior and campaign objectives— social media, email, PPC, SEO? Apart from selecting the most promising channels, you should develop a content creation strategy that would outline the types of content you need to reach the target audience.
• Plan out each campaign: Define the specific objectives for each campaign to make sure they align with the overall marketing goals. It’s also important to determine the budget for each campaign and allocate resources accordingly. Next, you should develop a detailed timeline with key milestones and deadlines so each campaign is executed on time.
• Plan campaign executions: This is the part where you assign tasks to team members based on their expertise and availability. A project management tool can help you manage workflows, monitor progress, and ensure all the tasks are completed on time. Use collaboration tools to add an extra layer of coordination among team members.
• Monitor and optimize: Use marketing analytics tools to monitor the performance of marketing campaigns in real time. Also, you should provide the client with regular reports that let you easily highlight key metrics and insights. However, you should continuously analyze data to identify opportunities for improvement and optimize strategies for better performance.
• Review and adjust: It goes without saying that you should run regular performance reviews with the clients to discuss results, insights, and areas for improvement. To ensure that your strategies are effective in the long run, adjust them periodically based on performance data, market changes, and client feedback.

Ensure strategic plans are aligned to business goals, not just serving more ads on the internet or selling products/services that need to be strategically aligned.

Brian Maher - Director @ Adaptive

Best practices for planning and strategy development

1. Base all strategic decisions on data and insights, not on assumptions.
2. Involve the client in different stages of the planning process to ensure buy-in.
3. Be ready to adapt strategies to changing market conditions and new data.
4. Keep detailed documentation of all plans, strategies, and processes to ensure clarity.
5. Keep the pace with industry trends, new technologies and best practices.

3. Creative development

This marketing agency process is essential for producing high-quality create work that meets client objectives.

How to set up an effective creative process?

• Start with client briefing: There’s a good reason why many creative agency processes start with gathering detailed information from clients. In the case of creative work, you want to learn as much as possible about the target audience, key messages, brand guidelines, and specific requirements. Your agency’s creative team should meet with the client to clarify the brief, discuss expectations, and answer any questions.
• Conduct your research: The goal of this research is to understand industry trends, competitor’s creative work, and the preferences of the target audience. Mood boards can help you visualize creative direction and gather ideas that resonate with the client’s brand and objectives.
• Develop the concept: Set up brainstorming sessions where your creative team can generate various ideas. Encourage open and collaborative discussion. The goal of these sessions is to present the client with multiple options for feedback. Be open to client input and make revisions where needed. Once the approval process is through, you can move to the next stage.
• Creative execution: Expand the approved concept into detailed designs, together with all necessary components such as graphics, copy, layouts, and multimedia. Make sure designers, copywriters, and other creative roles collaborate in order to keep the consistency of the final design.

Best practices for creative development

1. Be flexible and open to changes in approach based on client feedback.
2. Ensure consistency in creative work by following the brand guidelines and maintaining a uniform visual and messaging style.
3. Keep detailed documentation of all creative briefs, client feedback, revisions, and approvals to ensure clarity and accountability.

4. Performance tracking and reporting

An efficient performance tracking and reporting process is essential for marketing agencies to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, demonstrate value to clients, and make data-driven decisions.

How to set up an efficient performance tracking and reporting process?

• Define objectives and key metrics: The KPIs that you will use to measure the success of your campaigns may include conversion rate, engagement rate, return on investment (ROI), and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Select tracking tools and platforms: Choose the appropriate analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, Matomo, Adobe Analytics, or other tools, to track and measure performance. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot or Salesforce can help you integrate data from your email and e-commerce tools for a unified campaign view.
• Create custom dashboards: Your clients may use a variety of marketing channels — from web analytics to social media to paid advertising. You may also work on improving their organic search performance for selected keywords. However, there’s a point when this abundance of data is difficult both to monitor and report.

In this case, you should use a dedicated marketing performance monitoring and reporting platform.

Whatagraph allows agency users to easily create custom dashboards for every client using pre-made templates, highlighting the goals and showcasing the running campaigns with metrics from tools that are specific to each client.

Agency Dashboard created in Whatagraph

• Collect and organize data: To create unified views, you should consolidate data from scattered sources into a single unified system. Luckily, you don’t need to have a data analyst to do that. Whatagraph lets you create custom rules to organize data so it’s easier both to analyze and present to clients.

For example, you can group countries into tiers, unify metrics names from different tools to get a total value or give more understandable names to metrics that appear too technical for clients.

The capability to see the granular data comes in handy when you need to monitor marketing data from over 200 venues spread across Europe, divided by brand names and custom styles.

Rekom Group, a multinational player in the nightlife industry uses Whatagraph to connect scattered marketing data under one roof and present the insights through cross-channel dashboards, for both executive-level reports and more granular-analytics. Here’s a full case study of Rekom Group’s success in managing marketing data.

• Analyze the insights: Use the collected data to evaluate campaign performance against the defined objectives and KPIs. Identify trends, patterns, and anomalies in the data to gain a deeper knowledge of the campaign's effectiveness. Translate this data into actionable insights and recommendations for optimizing future campaigns.
• Report regularly: Set up a regular reporting schedule, e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly, based on client preferences and campaign needs. For this, you should develop standardized report formats which clearly present key metrics, insights, and recommendations. Use visualizations like charts, graphs, and dashboards to make data easily accessible and understandable.

Still, reporting to clients shouldn’t take much of your account managers’ time, especially if you use a reporting solution that allows you to automate the way you share reports.

Once you agree on the report format and sources that it includes, you can automate the whole process. The data will refresh automatically before each scheduled send-out, while you can add a review step to add personal recommendations or explanations for a specific table or chart.

Clearly and transparently display the results from your campaigns, in addition, ensure that you include the work undertaken with commentary, and future work to be done. A bonus is to include any industry updates in reports to explain how things may impact them and how you are navigating them, such as new Google algorithm updates.

Matt Pyke - Founder @ Fly High Media

By automating much of the reporting process, you not only eliminate repetitive tasks but also give your account executives more time to win new business.

• Improve continuously: A successful agency benchmarks performance against industry standards and past campaign results to set realistic goals and expectations. Use A/B testing to continuously experiment with different strategies and tactics and identify what works best. Also, establish a feedback loop with clients so you can gather their input and adjust strategies based on their insights.

Best practices for performance tracking and reporting

1. Automate data collection and reporting processes where possible to save time and reduce the risk of errors.
2. Customize reports to meet the specific needs and preferences of each client, focusing on the metrics that matter most to them.
3. Keep the tracking and reporting processes consistent to ensure comparability of data over time.
4. Educate clients about key metrics and the importance of data-driven decision-making.

Check out our guide for more agency reporting tips.

5. Client communication and relationship management

Strong client relationships build trust, improve client satisfaction, and lead to long-term partnerships. It can be argued that everything that is said plays a role in client satisfaction, but let’s just cross the few remaining T’s in the client management area.

How to set up an efficient client communication and relationship management process?

• Define communication protocols: Agree on preferred communication channels for different types of interactions and set clear guidelines for response times. This will ensure timely and constant communication. Also establish a schedule for regular updates, such as weekly status emails, bi-weekly check ins, or monthly performance reports.
• Build client relationships: Organize client appreciation events, webinars, or workshops to engage clients and demonstrate value beyond project work. Also, send personalized messages, holiday greetings, and appreciation notes to strengthen client relationships. Schedule regular check-ins outside of project updates to discuss the client’s broader business goals and how the agency can support them.

Marketing agencies can elevate their client relationships by setting realistic and measurable goals, deep diving into the client's business needs. They can achieve that through active listening and continuous share of insights between both parties.

Liliana Reis - Marketing & Brand Consultant @ Wise Pirates

Best practices for client communication and relationship management

1. Maintain transparent communication to build trust and foster a collaborative partnership.
2. Keep the messaging and updates consistent to avoid confusion and keep clients well-informed.
3. Be proactive in addressing potential issues, providing updates, and suggesting improvements.
4. Show empathy and understanding towards client concerns and needs, demonstrating genuine interest in their success.

6. Talent acquisition

An efficient talent acquisition process ensures that the agency can quickly fill roles with qualified candidates who fit the company culture and meet the skill requirements.

How to set up a structured talent acquisition process in an agency?

• Define hiring needs and roles: Assess current and future hiring needs based on project demands and agency growth plans. This includes clearly defined job roles, responsibilities, and skills. You can make it easier by defining detailed job descriptions for each position.
• Keep your values visible: Maintain an attractive and informative careers page on your agency’s website. Use social media to promote the agency as a great place to work. Potential candidates should be able to grasp all the benefits of joining you even before they hop on an interview.
• Set up a recruitment strategy: Think of the best sourcing channels — job boards, social media, recruitment agencies, or platforms specific to your industry. Implement an employee referral program so you can encourage current employees to refer qualified candidates from their pool of connections.
• Structure the interview process: Develop structured interview guidelines with standardized questions so each candidate gets a fair chance. You should include multiple team members in the interview process to get a well-rounded view of the candidates. Don’t forget to include practical skills assessment by giving each candidate a task relevant to their role.
• Decision making: Use consistent evaluation criteria to compare candidates and make decisions. Discuss with team members who they think is the best candidate for the role. At the end, forward a formal letter to the selected candidate, outlining the role, salary, and benefits.
• New hire onboarding: Provide new hires with necessary information and resources before their start date. Introduce them to the agency’s culture, processes, and teams. You should have a structured onboarding plan that includes training and integration activities that would help new hires settle in and become productive quickly.

Best practices for talent acquisition

1. Proactively source candidates even when there are no immediate openings to build a strong talent pipeline.
2. Prioritize diversity and inclusion in the recruitment process to build a more innovative and effective team.
3. Clearly communicate the agency’s employer value proposition to attract top talent.
4. Maintain relationships with past candidates and potential future hires to keep the talent pipeline active.

FAQs

1. What are agency processes?

Agency processes are pre-set procedures and frameworks that agencies use to complete their goals. These processes include different aspects of running an agency such as client relation management, campaign and strategy planning, performance tracking, talent acquisition, and more.

2. What is the process of a marketing agency?

The process of a marketing agency is a structured framework that you can depend on while successfully executing different marketing agency operations like creative development, hiring new talent, retaining existing clients, winning new clients, etc.

Conclusion

Tuning marketing agency processes can be overwhelming, but with the right approach, agencies can streamline their operations, improve client satisfaction, and achieve remarkable results.

As you refine and optimize client onboarding, campaign planning, and performance tracking, you’ll discover that clear and consistent communication, data-driven actions, and innovation are the winning combination for your agency growth.

And while building relationships and planning strategies take time, use the opportunity to save time wherever possible.

Sign up for a free trial of Whatagraph and see how much time you can save on connecting scattered data and reporting.