Are you handling in-house marketing responsibilities? Do you have immense marketing skills and want to switch to agency life? If you are thinking so, it would be a better choice, as agency life can offer you much bigger exposure than in-house jobs. When you work for different companies and clients, you can understand about different marketing objectives and goals of organizations.
Besides, when you handle many accounts together, it will enhance your focus and attention more than before. You will have more work-handling skills, patience, job diversity, and many other aspects that can make you an efficient marketing executive. Transitioning from in-house marketing to agency life can be a little more intricate if you work for a brand for a long period. Your knowledge, sincerity, and hard work will prove you as a skilled executive in agency life.
Here are seven tips that will bring outstanding experience as an efficient marketing person in agency life:
1: Adhere to the 80/20 rule
Most people struggle during the transition because of time management. To handle small clients, hours are limited. You need to think first about where to apply the 80/20 rule. Therefore, agency life teaches you to work quickly and efficiently within a particular time frame. For example, if you have a client with 20 hours per monthly contract, you need to deliver the most marketing excellence using those hours. Delivering 100% poor business is less effective than adding value to 80% of work effectively. And as a marketing expert, convince the rule of your client. You can spend two hours keyword researching to get maximum information or you spend five hours for the same with some extra values. Think of what would be more effective if you put these extra hours into additional keyword research.
Competitive backlink research is what you need to consider. Spend hours effectively developing initial target lists, but be rational about the outcomes of the next few months. Spending hours on an infinite job, like keyword researching or reviewing backlinks, will not be wise but use time prudently and keep researching things to get better outcomes.
You should provide constant and consistent values to your clients without wasting time on petty matters. Don’t overthink perfection.
2: Plan strategically and create room for ad hoc projects
In agency life, as you handle multiple clients at a time, it can be difficult for some time to manage everything, like arranging meetings, talking with clients, sending monthly reports, etc. Try to build a weekly rhythm by balancing work and clients. To handle ad hoc projects, you need to be more dynamic and strategic. Keep 20% of your time for doing ad hoc projects with your clients or colleagues.
Use Friday afternoon as the planning time to plan next week’s agenda. It will help you get less stress in the coming week.
3: Get comfortable working with deficient information
When you were working in an in-house role, you put things untreated until you got all the information from a project. Otherwise, you researched hard for gathering complete information. As a marketing executive in an agency, learn how to work comfortably with imperfect information. Sometimes, many clients do not provide you with all data, such as audience demographics, historical performance data, or cost-per-lead targets. You get very petty information in agency life and yet you need to start the project with your assumption and research. Waiting for data will do nothing but waste days and weeks and you will not cope with this when you have a strict timeline. Time is money and you should understand this truth more vigilantly in agency life.
4: Sync with your peers to get up to speed quickly
As you handle different clients, you may face the phrase “and duties as assigned”. But simply you don’t know what the other duties are. it is the biggest problem to work for organizations or handle multiple projects. You are entering a new industry and it is quite tricky to understand each industry or client fast. So, take help from peers to figure out the issues of different clients rather than trying to solve everything by yourself. While you take hours talking with a client and understand issues or going through old emails, your peers have background information and will take less time to help you get started fast.
Sometimes you don’t have the help of experienced colleagues. In such a case, ask for a copy of the original work or you can check reports of previous months for your reference.
5: Respond quickly without dropping other priorities
Offering efficient service does not mean you drop off other work responsibilities and respond to an email or text immediately. It can disrupt your workflow unless it is an emergency. Check your email throughout the day and send some casual replies like “got it, will respond to you soon”. Don’t give any confirmation until you are very obvious about the subject.
For building a long-term relationship, set realistic timeframes and stick to your commitments. Work according to the priority. Don’t mix the words ‘important’ and ‘urgent’.
6: Control the conversation by planning
Right planning makes your work aim successful and you will make an impression on your clients and colleagues. When you were an in-house marketing executive, you tackled only some important tasks as per your agenda. Now you need to plan precisely according to your client’s preferences.
Some planning opportunities:
- Ask your clients if they have any meetings or important events in the coming month. And plan accordingly.
- Build small like one-month or two-month agendas for projects and initiatives.
- When you plan satisfactorily, mark it on your work calendar to get the work on time.
- Plans make you confident and help your clients understand you are serious about the project.
7: Learn to track your time
When people want to transition from in-house to agency life, it is very important to track time, though it is challenging. Time tracking helps agency leaders plan for capacity and staffing, understand client profitability, and bill clients accurately. Time-tracking tools are a good choice as it is said earlier that making small agendas helps you out of the stress of work. Agencies keep their close eyes on utilization time. So, keeping up with time tracking will reward you for your hard work and dedication.
Also, Read
Which Are The Top Digital Marketing Agencies In Kolkata?
Starting work as an agency executive may bring several challenges, but once you face these challenges with courage, this will bring multiple opportunities and rewards in your career life. Read and consider these seven points once more for a better and more successful start.