Today’s top marketing agencies go beyond delivering assets based on creative briefs. They position themselves as integrated partners on a shared mission to achieve business success.
Doing so requires three key ingredients — shared vision, transparent communication, and commitment to collaboration, says Mark Kats, senior vice president, head of client services and growth at Manifest, which won the 2024 Content Marketing Award for Large Agency of the Year.
But what does it take to get those essential ingredients? How do award-winning agencies manage expectations, balance the needs of various stakeholders, and minimize friction so the work quality shines as desired outcomes get met?
Perhaps more importantly, what do these agencies do when client conflicts inevitably arise?
We spoke to leaders from four agencies that produced Content Marketing Award-winning campaigns to learn how they get the best out of their client engagements and what it takes to grow them into successful, long-lasting partnerships.
Start on the right foot
Trusted brand partnerships begin by getting everyone on the same page — and walking in the client’s shoes — early in the process. “It’s how we discover how to provide them with insights they need to take back to their stakeholders and move things across the finish line,” says Megan Gilbert, vice president of Fortune Brand Studio, which won the 2024 CMA for Best Agency/Client Partnership for its work with EY.
Manifest sets a collaborative tone from the first pitch call. “It is our job to intimately understand the business, to support that business, and to deliver wins for our client. [Part of that process is to] jointly agree on what that success looks like,” Mark says.
He asserts that laying the groundwork in advance cuts the time wasted on introductions during the official client kickoff call. “Instead, it’s an integrated client-agency team coming together to say we all know each other and what we’re going to accomplish together,” he explains.
Lean on data and outcomes
Nearly half (47%) of marketers say measuring the results of content efforts is a challenge, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2025.
Perhaps that’s why Message Lab, the 2024 CMA Small Agency of the Year begins each engagement by talking about objectives and KPIs, and tries to include analytics and performance reporting in all of its scopes. “From the very beginning, we focus on using data to prove the impact our content delivers,” says CEO Ben Worthen.
Not only does data help prospective clients connect the dots between their content investment and their expected outcomes, but, Ben says, it can help agencies illustrate how content strategies work and why others might not.
“We’ve all experienced meetings where the product person comes in and wants to add the product’s name 17 times in the first paragraph of a story,” Ben says. “But if you approach them with, ‘Look, here’s the data. When we do it this other way, you get three times the results,’ they’ll likely say, ‘Great. Do it your way,’ because they just care about the outcomes.”
Keep communication open and transparent
“I don’t do secrets with clients,” says Stella Morrison, founder and content strategist for CannaContent, a niche agency focused on the cannabis industry and CMA winner for Best Topic-Specific Blog. “Our clients know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
Stella thinks that level of communication should go both ways. “We don’t want to exist in a bubble or a vacuum. We want to be fully integrated into our client’s marketing calendar,” she says. “We want to know when they have a certain event or webinar coming up, so we can determine the right content to produce to promote it or how to reuse the content assets afterwards.”
Mark agrees that transparency is crucial. “We try to avoid a situation where [a client] briefs us on Oct. 17 and we say, ‘Great. We get the assignment, and we’ll talk to you on Dec. 17 when it’s done,’” he says. “Letting months go by without properly communicating or updating the client on your progress is usually a recipe for failing to achieve the expected outcomes.”
Megan says it’s also critical to use time together efficiently. “We have formal one-on-ones where our teams talk through deliverables and status. But those meetings are great opportunities to brainstorm and align on ideas.” Her agency also creates Slack channels to facilitate discussions in between big meetings for clients who are receptive to participating.
Address common collaborative challenges
Today’s marketing agencies cope with growing pains related to generative AI, shifts in service models, competition from in-house content studios, and diminishing profits. Just 7% of B2B brands turn to agencies for their content marketing, according to CMI’s B2B research.
To survive this challenging environment, agencies must reinforce their value as trusted content marketing partners.
Reset unrealistic expectations
With some direct marketing initiatives, strategies, and channels, the expectations are easily understood. “You run an ad, you sell things, success,” Mark says. “But content marketing doesn’t quite work this way.”
You need to have that discussion up front. “As we think about why we’re making the thing we’re making and how we’ll measure it, education and level-setting happen at that stage,” he says.
For example, the explanation might be something like: “We want the audience to respond this way. But we’re doing an organic initiative, so you can expect limited reach or limited engagement based on how we’re going to market. If you want to reach X more people, consider doing this thing instead or pulling this paid media lever in addition.”
Unite when things go awry
Megan acknowledges that no matter how much planning is done, sometimes campaigns don’t pan out as expected, or a disconnect occurs along the way. In those instances, her team puts their heads together internally and then presents solutions to the client. “We don’t like to leave any kind of bad feeling or disappointment, even if the client is just buying one article,” she says.
Brokering a mutually agreeable resolution may mean offering a rewrite or developing a contingency plan to prevent the problem from recurring. Megan says, “It’s not just, ‘Let’s make it go away.’ We want to get in there, get our hands dirty, and show that leadership is pulling everyone together so the client feels we’re doing all we can.”
Seek the source of micromanagement struggles
Agencies also experience clients for whom the feedback rounds seem endless or who insist that multiple teams (often with competing interests) all weigh in.
“I find if a client is super involved in every aspect of the work, it’s worth probing to understand the underlying cause,” Mark says. “Is it because we’re not meeting the market in some way? Does the client want to be more closely involved in driving the outcome? There’s likely a core concern we should think about differently so we don’t keep running into the same roadblocks.”
Megan agrees. Her team refers to these situations as “ping-ponging” — there’s a lot of back and forth, but nothing moves toward approval.
She believes the best approach is to pause and address the issue directly. “Is there a holdup on your side in terms of legal? An executive who is rethinking the go-to-market message? When this happens, we love to get on a call to determine how to unstick the process,” she says.
Treat creative pushback as a learning opportunity
Working with passionate brand partners can be wonderful until it leads to ongoing disagreements about creative direction. That’s when Message Lab’s Ben Worthen recommends being open-minded and following the data.
“When you have data and a framework where you can test and learn, I think you should try both options. Frankly, you should try multiple versions of both, but be purposeful about it,” Ben says. That means documenting and codifying the things you’re testing.
Ben shares a common saying at his agency: “If all of your experiments succeed, you’re not actually experimenting hard enough.” The key, he says, is to try to be correct and successful on the big experiments and willing to fail and learn from the small ones.
Expect the unexpected
While many client conflicts are easily overcome with clear communication, others require more finesse and proactive planning. That includes complying with industry-specific content requirements and addressing the unpredictability of a digital landscape.
Be prepared for industry-specific conditions
CannaContent’s Stella Morrison says content teams in highly regulated industries may be forced to get creative to win their clients’ hearts and minds.
With cannabis, for instance, the lexicon for referencing the plant can vary from state to state. “You have to work within and understand those compliance confines very well to keep your client on the right side of the regulations,” Stella says. When state laws change, you may need to educate some clients.
Platform-specific rules can also make it difficult to post content about the plant on social media or send email campaigns on the topic. Falling afoul of the rules risks your client’s presence on those platforms.
Prepare to address AI
Though AI is the (artificial) elephant in the content room, it’s not overly concerning for leading agencies yet. “It seems like it’s a quick, easy way to scale,” Mark says.
These agencies use AI to help with efficiency tasks, ideation, and back-end processes.
However, as reliance on AI tools increases, Mark sees the potential for their usefulness to decline. “I’m not sure it’s going to be effective if we’re all scaling in the same way using the same tools,” he says.
Regardless, agencies must be prepared to answer clients’ questions about the role AI will and won’t play in their engagements.
Here’s one way Ben Worthen approaches those conversations: “Our value proposition is that you’re going to have a very high-quality reporter and writer, and things are going to be edited by a quality expert. The deliverables we provide will be camera-ready and great,” Ben says. “AI just can’t do that yet from a content creation standpoint.”
Award-winning agency-client relationships don’t happen by accident
Mark says that with content knowledge, audience and subject matter expertise, and other technical best practices, successful content marketing agencies must first and foremost know how to cultivate and forge strong relationships.
“When you can accomplish that ideal state as an integrated team with the same mission, you’ll make hypotheses together,” he says. “As long as you’re transparent and collaborative, it will be a productive and positive partnership.”
