Last week I attended a 2-day Second Wind seminar on how to improve daily workflow and efficiency within a marketing agency with the hopes of in return providing clients with stronger, more creative campaigns. The seminar provided many great tips and strategies that when implemented can save the agency and most importantly our clients valuable dollars.

One main area of focus of the seminar was to improve overall communications within the agency and with clients.   In analyzing the daily activities and occurrences in the work place,  it is eye opening to see how much time can be lost to unnecessary meetings, constant interruptions, and miscommunications.  By simply streamlining communications both with clients and within our agency we not only save time but more importantly it will allow account executives to be more strategic in campaigns and creative teams to be more innovative with designs, thus producing deliverables that will increase the client’s ROI.

Although cliche, we often forget that communication is a two way street. As a client, you maximize your investment in an agency by providing clear and concise direction. Be sure to clearly think through what you want your marketing campaign to achieve prior to engaging the agency.  Doing this leg work and then communicating it clearly will allow the agency to creatively develop a successful campaign rather then trying to pull something together based on vague direction.  Vague direction usually results in more time and more money in the end. Also, be specific on your feedback to agency.  Saying you don’t like a certain aspect of a design is a start, but what specifically would you like changed? Is the copy? The image? The color scheme?

On the agency’s side, expect your agency to clearly and accurately identify project goals and establish creative direction based on your clear, concise project brief at the beginning stages of a project.  Your account executive should communicate the production expectations and project timeline so that both you and the agency are in accordance with what you want the marketing campaign to achieve.  Additionally, the account executive should be updating you throughout the project as to where the project stands in terms of budget and should submit any change orders for your approval if the project is going beyond the original scope of work.

Actively practicing good communication skills on a daily basis will prove to save agencies and clients time, money, and unnecessary headaches.