Do Marketers Need Agencies to Get ‘Ahead of the Curve’?

The agency-client relationship is in good standing, but recent research finds that the number of those relationships is falling. For agencies to continue to attract clients, they’ll need to prove their ability to drive improvement so customers can get ahead of the competition.

A January 2015 study by Econsultancy for SoDA found that client-side marketers worldwide were cutting back on the number of digital agencies they used. More than one-quarter of respondents had taken digital efforts entirely in-house—over double the percentage last year—while the number using just one agency rose from 23% to 32% between 2014 and 2015. Meanwhile, about four in 10 were using two or more digital agencies, down drastically from 64% the prior year.

Clients were most likely to value agencies for their experience in emerging trends, and further results suggested that despite marketers’ attempts to bring digital efforts in-house, pain points existed that could benefit from outside help.

More marketers reported being “ahead of the curve or state of the art” than “behind the times or hopeless” in just two areas: data usage to drive digital marketing effectiveness and user experience. Meanwhile, respondents lagged in emergent digital interaction (augmented or virtual reality, for example), return on investment analysis, place-based digital experiences (such as interactive installations and place-based mobile tech) and innovative engagement models—that is, engaging with agency partners in innovative and highly collaborative ways. So while marketers are pulling back from outsourcing, SoDA noted that plenty of opportunities exist for agencies to help marketers innovate and outpace the competition.

However, if agencies are unable to help marketers get ahead of the curve, they risk getting canned. Client-side marketers were most likely to have terminated an agency partnership because their needs had outgrown the agency’s abilities.

Courtesy of eMarketer