One of the things I loved most about the hospitality industry was being able to set the stage for the entire experience. When someone walked in, my job wasn’t just to take an order. It was about asking the right questions to understand what they actually wanted and guiding them toward something they’d enjoy, sometimes even more than they expected.
In a lot of ways, working with a marketing agency should feel the same. As a client at a restaurant or an agency, you’re looking for a solution, whether that’s a good meal, more leads, more traffic, or better performance. Each role may know exactly what they want, or they may just know the outcome they’re hoping for. Either way, they’re trusting the place they chose to help them get there.
Key Takeaways
- A marketing agency should act as a strategic partner, not just an execution vendor.
- Strong strategy starts with the right questions about goals, audience, KPIs, budget, and past performance.
- Good execution can still fall short when the message, landing page, audience, and campaign goal are not aligned.
- Your business plays an active role by sharing industry knowledge, customer insight, goals, and internal limits.
What Is a Strong Marketing Agency Strategy?
It is a partnership that defines the goal and roadmap to achieve that goal. If you have or are planning to hire an agency to support your marketing efforts, they shouldn’t be order takers. A strategy is made when two parties come together and learn from each other, get aligned, and decide on the next course of action.
Should Your Agency Guide Strategy or Just Execute?
Let’s talk about your marketing efforts with this analogy of a restaurant. Your marketing dollars can be used to execute ad placement, but your strategy depends on the agency. Execution is taking your money to a fast food restaurant and getting a value meal. There is an outcome, and typically promptly. However, the meal keeps you full for only so long and may or may not have you coming back.
With a strategy, your marketing dollars are more like a five-star restaurant. You spend time in the restaurant chatting with your company, reviewing the menu, and your server guides you through the menu, asking important questions to determine the experience you will have. When you think about your next ideal meal, the experience you want to have, you keep coming back to the restaurant that thought to tailor your needs and wants to get a better outcome than you expected.
When you are working with your marketing agency, it should feel like a five-star restaurant. There should be thoughtful discussion and education about services, targeting, and overall desired outcomes. This is the way you will achieve a strategic marketing plan.
What Questions Should a Marketing Agency Ask Clients?
Anytime you’re going into strategic planning with your agency, you should be hearing the following questions.
- What is the goal of these marketing efforts?
- How are you determining the success of the campaign?
- What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
- Who do you define your audience to be?
- Have you promoted this service/product before? How have your marketing efforts historically performed?
- What is the ideal budget?
Over time, working with your agency, they will learn the answers to these questions. They might even start identifying new goals, KPIs, and audiences for your business. But the bottom line is that if your agency isn’t asking questions, they are order takers, not strategic partners.
Why Campaigns Fail Even With Good Execution
There are times when a campaign might fall flat or fail even with good execution. Execution is doing what is told. If you are giving your agency creative, landing pages, and direction without any feedback, there is a possibility that they are not reviewing your assets to make sure they align with your goals or KPIs.
An example of this would be you send creative to your agency, and the messaging is brand awareness, but your landing page is directing current customers to get 10% off with their next referral for being a loyal customer. This overall screams bad user experience for the audience, but also, it wouldn’t achieve your KPI of increased calls for new service contracts.
Execution does not mean strategy.
Your Role in a Strong Marketing Agency Strategy
Now you might think to yourself that you don’t have a role in making a strong marketing strategy if you hire an agency. That is purely not true!
Without your knowledge of your industry, messaging, goals, and overall business strategy, your agency is going in blind when it comes to developing a strategy. It takes significant time to identify the audience, goals, creatives, messaging, and more for a marketing strategy to be successful, and if none of them are aligned, your dollars are a waste.
Do you go to a restaurant and ask your server to pick whatever for you? Not likely, unless you don’t have any food allergies, like every single food in the world, and love surprises. Even if you don’t know exactly what you want, you have valuable information that gives your server the right information to pick something you would enjoy and appreciate the results.
Great Agencies Don’t Just Deliver; They Guide
Just like you’d choose a restaurant based on reputation, reviews, and overall experience, the same goes for choosing an agency. But what really makes the experience stand out isn’t just the brand; it’s the person guiding you through it. A great server doesn’t just take your order; they ask thoughtful questions. What are your preferences? Any restrictions? How hungry are you? What’s your budget?
A great agency should be doing the same thing—understanding your goals, your constraints, your expectations, and helping guide you to the right strategy, not just taking orders.
What should a marketing agency do before creating a strategy?
A marketing agency should start by learning your goals, audience, budget, past performance, internal capacity, and definition of success. Strong strategy starts with context, not assumptions.
How do you know if a marketing agency is just taking orders?
An agency may be acting like an order taker if they only complete assigned tasks without asking questions, giving feedback, reviewing goals, or explaining why a tactic does or does not fit the bigger plan.
What questions should a marketing agency ask during planning?
A marketing agency should ask about your goals, KPIs, target audience, budget, past campaign performance, service priorities, sales process, and what success should look like for your business.
Can a campaign fail with good execution?
Yes. A campaign can be built well from a technical standpoint and still miss the mark if the message, audience, landing page, offer, or KPI is not aligned with the main goal.
What role does a business play in marketing strategy?
A business brings the agency the context needed to make stronger decisions. Your knowledge of your customers, services, goals, sales process, and limitations helps shape a strategy that fits the business.