The industry ebbs and flows with what’s in and what’s out when it comes to agency delivery. This year it might be boutique agencies – brands hire a different company for each specialism – next year it may be back to being in favour of a one-stop-shop for all things off and online.

This makes it very difficult for traditional adverting, design, PR or media agencies to figure out how to add in digital and/or social media to their mix. Do you offer it, but don’t do it well? Is it a guessing game? Can you deliver with your current set-up or do you need to look at a bit of a restructure? Should you even be offering digital or social – is there a partner you could use instead? What does digital even mean to your organisation? Are you planning on offering full web builds or just community management for social channels?

It is a minefield and takes thought, consideration, due diligence and planning to be successful. The biggest misconception is that since digital activity is pretty much instant, becoming digital experts is as well, and from my experience, that is most certainly not the case.

This is where I believe I can add significant value to your organisation.

Example

Requests or statements:

• Our clients are asking for social media support, and we are doing some, but we want to professionalise it.
• We do social, but we want to do it better.
• All our competitors do digital – should we be in that space? And if so, how do we get there? Who do we hire? How much will it cost?
• Our grad can do SEO, so now we want to offer it. We should offer paid social as well then, right?
• We do digital, but we don’t really know how to measure it or what it means…
• We are hiring a digital account manager – they’ll be able to sell in and deliver all things digital, right?
• We’ve hired a digital director – they’ll have all the experience and can lead the way, right?
• We need our digital/social media offering to be profitable – how does that work?

Solution:

All of these questions and statements can be easily answered. We would organise an initial meeting to get an idea of your current state of play, what your goal is and if I can help you get there.

Following on from this, I would undertake a deep dive into your organisational setup, offering, deliverables etc (depending on the objective). This may include one or more workshops with your team(s), reviewing your outputs, individual sessions with team members and final planning session with the senior team.

The deliverables may include a landscape audit of your competitors – where you do sit in the mix and how can you catch up, move past them or just differentiate?

Based on agreed requirements I would deliver elements such as a digital or social proposition, requirements to get there, routes that need to be taken internally and how the brand should present itself externally, steps to get there, timelines and requirements from the business.

The above activity results in a more confident team, stronger brand marketing collateral, efficiencies across the business and more valuable and effective work being delivered – therefore a better return on investment for not only the client but the organisation itself.

Whether you have a team in place that you feel could be functioning better or you are just being reactive but would like to move to a space of doing elements of digital and/or social media properly, I would love to have a chat and see if I can help.