Agencies Confirm Clients Still Want Help with Strategy

July 30, 2021

Stirista What Clients Want From Agencies Jul2021In the past marketers have turned to agencies for advertising and content creation, but a growing number are looking for agencies to assist in strategy, even more so since the pandemic. In fact, a recent survey [download page] from Stirista shows that marketing strategy is the top area of marketing that agency clients are inquiring about.

A little more than half (52%) of the 150 executives at 50 agencies surveyed say that their clients are asking about marketing strategy. As a matter of comparison, it appears that fewer clients are asking about PR or reputation management (42%), content creation (41%), lead generation (39%), social media (36%) or branding (36%).

Research from Merkle found that about half (48%) of the large companies they surveyed in early 2020 outsource data sourcing. This more recent survey provides some things to be on the lookout for when marketers are looking for a data provider. At the top of the list, agency executives advise being aware of the quality of data provided — selected by 72% of respondents. They also recommend looking at the reputation of the provider (58%), the pricing structure of the service (54%), privacy and security protocols of the provider (49%) and the method they use to secure the data (41%).

Data isn’t only important to clients. When asked to rate the importance of data to the success of their organization (scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being extremely important), 6 in 10 (59% of) agency executives said data was important to their success, with 15% of those rating it as extremely important.

And, while businesses turn to agencies to help them out with strategy, PR, content creation and lead generation, agencies also outsource tasks. About half (49%) say they outsource data analysis, as they do not specialize in this area. Others outsource traditional advertising (43%), marketing research (43%) and creative services (41%). Fewer do not specialize in brand services or social media and therefore outsource those areas (30% for both).

The full report can be found here.

About the Data: Results are based on an April 2021 survey of 150 executives at 50 agencies.

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