How to Talk to Me: What Clients Really Think of Your Marketing

Having a point of view, presenting differentiated knowledge, and focusing on clients’ challenges are key learnings from our 2021 Insights Marketing Week panel discussion about what client-side insights teams are looking for from agency marketing. At our virtual event, run in partnership with GreenBook and Little Bird Marketing, I was joined by Dieter Deceuninck, Global Director of Strategy & Insights at Danone, Michelle Gansle, then Senior Director of Insights at Mars Wrigley and now at McDonald’s, and Nijat Mammadbayli, UX Researcher at payments platform Adyen. All shared their views on how they find out about agencies, what they would like from them, and what works or doesn’t in terms of making a positive impression. I was then joined by Nick Rich, Vice President at Insights & Analytics Carlsberg Group, and Dieter for a follow-up live Q&A session on the same topic.

Every panelist said that they are actively looking for ways to learn, to gain a valuable external perspective, and to continually improve, so interacting with the right agency can bring great value. With the constantly evolving landscape and the relentless pressure to make an impact, they are receptive to agencies who will be real business partners, proactively helping them to address questions and challenges that they face in their markets.

Michelle explained that while Mars Wrigley previously had a more structured approach and worked with large agencies who did every type of research, they are now experimenting with smaller, newer companies with different specialisms, and now they hire a mix of consultancy, research tech, and research agencies. “It’s a new behaviour that didn’t exist even 2 years ago,” Michelle said. Nick said that he worked with too few agencies and that he would like to be working with more. Due to COVID-19, Carlsberg had had to be selective and cut back on ad hoc work, but in 2022 there would be the opportunity to do more creative work and so he expected their agency work to increase.

Dieter spoke about how ‘initiate, recreate, and co-create’ were all very good ways of buildings relationships, not only in relation to client/agency interaction, but for being part of the wider research and insights community. Interestingly, he also discussed how much potential there is in getting competitive agencies with complementary skills to team up.

So, for an agency, what are the best ways to make yourself stand out and to initiate that first meeting? All highlighted the importance of conferences as a very useful forum for meeting new potential partners. Delivering a good case study in a session, for instance, can make a strong impression that the client will remember and can be a trigger for engagement. Making contact via email and LinkedIn are also viewed as effective ways for an agency to make contact – but with very important caveats. All of the panelists highlighted the absolute necessity of agencies doing the research to understand their world and to be specific about what they could do to add value before reaching out.

It is ironic that despite working in research, only a very small percentage of agencies do their own research. “Just spend five minutes on Google”, urges Nick, who also provides the following advice: “Take a small amount of time to understand our category and the challenges and then have a conversation”. Having someone from your new business team sending out emails that fail to show the agency’s particular strengths, specialism, or knowledge of what the client’s individual business issues might be, won’t make it. However, tailored approaches that offer new thinking or valuable intelligence can lead to the first conversation on the journey to working together.

“Make it clear what your unique point of view is and focus on what the one thing is that we’re interested in”, says Michelle, and the result can be a meeting. Nijat agrees that the personal factor is key – build a proper relationship and share how your company would benefit from working together with you, rather than providing a generic list of services.

As Nijat says, “We’re looking for the partner we can work with for a very long time”, a view that the others all share. In Nick’s words, “The partnerships that are deep-seated are where we can open up the business to that agency. I’m completely open to connecting any of the stakeholders of the business with the agency”. Get it right and the rewards are there.

Header Image: Cytonn Photography, Unsplash