Agency-client Relationship: Trust key to increasing referrals for business growth
By Felicia Nwosu
Trust, transparency and mutual respect may sound very cheap but they appear very uncommon in the lexicon of most business men, not in the least, service providers in the IMC industry. Yet, trust and transparency remain key and pivotal to increasing the frontiers of business opportunities, especially through referrals. The lack and inadequacy of these valuable qualities and values have caused a wreck in the business of many. As a result of this, some experts in the industry therefore, advocate that, agencies should encourage their clients to see their agencies as an extension of their own business, not just as another service provider. They averred that, the key to building great relationships and achieving great results is to work together as partners to achieve a common goal.
Commenting on the relevance of trust between the agency and clients, creative amazon and Executive Director, Strategy and Innovation at Yellow Brick Road(YBR), Nnenna Onyewuchi, in her response, charged agencies in the integrated marketing communications(IMC) industry to re-think their present business models and relationship in order to promote a sustainable client-agency relationship amid the dwindling ad spend in the advertising ecosystem.
The marketing strategist noted that the present economic realities have changed the whole dynamics of client-agency relationship as clients now expect a more holistic and robust relationship from the agencies. She therefore urged agencies to re-think their business models and relationships to toe this new line of thinking in ensuring a sustainable relationship between clients and agencies
Her words: “I think the first step is to re-imagine our relationship with our clients. Many agencies are stuck in a place where they are a vendor; someone focused solely on executing campaigns. What clients want is a business partner. Someone who understands their sales process, the challenges they have with distribution, even internal culture issues. Agencies need to concern ourselves with the issues that keep the CEO up at night, not just the CMO. If a client’s management sees you as useful, as contributing to their bottom line, as opposed to just being a cost centre, that will go a long way to changing the relationship”.
Speaking in a similar vein, Ose Osundeko, Head, Digital Marketing at Starcom Media Perspectives, urged both client and agency to encourage true collaboration, describing it as the pillar of every brand success, whileadvising that the notion of a subservient relationship that exists between clients and agencies must be discarded as clients are only as good as their agencies and vice versa.
Ose explained that true collaboration should be encouraged in the form of getting the best of minds from the agency and client-side to participate equally by harnessing their uniqueness and sharing information that positively shapes the future of both partners.
The Head, Digital Marketing, charged both partners to work with integrity, reaffirming that integrity fosters a natural trusting relationship that permits open communication, good decision making and a strong moral compass that guides all decisions and actions to be focused on the brand and its needs.
In his own submission, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Towncriers Ltd., Kayode Olagesin opined that trust is the pinnacle of any relationship when genuine collaboration occurs between agency and clients. According to him, trust sets the tone for business andpropels partners to be willing to be empathic, considerate and loyal.
“The objective of hiring a full-service marketing agency is to build relationships, increase brand loyalty, and make more sales. He opined that mutual chemistry between partners edged out other high-ranking considerations, including understanding of the industry, professionalism and general creativity. “This is a normal thing, as clients at any point in time would want to work with agencies they have chemistry with. It is not all about knowledge on the job. They want to feel that, ‘Look, we have the same view; we have the same approach to business and to marketing communication’. So the chemistry is very important in a relationship.”
Experiential marketing Amazon, Tolulope Medebem, the Chief Executive Officer of Aster Integrated Marketing, and Vice President of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN), is of the view that relationships with clients is a major key element to accelerate the growth of the advertising industry. The agency boss, who emphasised the need for agency owners to nurture good relationships with clients, noted that “technology does not run a business, but good relationships do”.
The EXMAN VP stated this while sharing her experience on how she benefited immensely from business opportunities that were birthed out of sustained good relationship during the peak of the pandemic, she said: “I can say that one of the things that has kept us in business so far during the pandemic and even presently, is relationships. All through the period, those that kept working with us were actually those clients that we have relationship with, and strangely this year, based on words of mouth and relationships, we got a couple of new clients as well.”
For Ozoemena Mbanefo, founder of Nigeria’s foremost adschool of brands and marketing communications, Oxygen Academy, he proudly stated that the job of an agency is to proffer solutions for the industry. He therefore urged agencies to work harder in building trust by embracing the philosophy of being a people-centric brand while dealing with business partners.
His words: “When you take your client as a person and you deal with them personally because you understand what they are going through, business opportunities open.Clients come to agencies because they need help and have money to give to agencies for the help they need. Brand experts should understand that every brand that comes to them is like a patient coming to the hospital and what they need is brand health. I have seen people relate with clients on the basis of; So, what do you want? Clients will say, this is what I want and you create what they want and give them. You have to go beyond what the client wants to what they need. We shouldn’t just come to client to deliver marketing communication; we should come to deliver business solutions.”
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.