5 Questions Digital Marketing Agencies Can Ask Their Clients to Become Better Partners

One of the values that separates Workshop Digital from many digital marketing agencies is that we ask our clients to work with us as strategic partners, not just vendors. With that request comes a great responsibility on our end. In order for our clients to see us as partners, we have to look past the data and show genuine interest in their success.

This all starts with a conversation. There is a real temptation for digital marketing analysts to succumb to tunnel vision when looking at a report showing strong results in our key performance indicators (KPIs)—but we are doing ourselves and our client’s a disservice if we stop there. Digital marketers need to ask their clients the right questions in order to reveal if the success we are seeing on our end is translating into success for their business.

Engaging in higher-level conversations with our clients allows us to connect the performance we are seeing on our end to the results that the business is feeling. This can reveal many helpful insights, such as:

• If our great results are translating into success for the business
• If we are reaching the right people with our targeting
• If we are using the right message
• If there’s internal client data that can be used to prove value, set budgets or KPI targets, or otherwise optimize account performance.

5 Questions Digital Marketing Agencies Can Ask to Become Better Partners

1. Is Your Business Feeling A Lift?

I like this question because of how simple it is. A business does not have to have a superpowered CRM in place to answer whether they are feeling a positive impact on their bottom line from your marketing. Their answer will speak volumes about the perception of the value being added.

At Workshop Digital, we always set up tracking in order to accurately measure lead volume for our clients from the get-go. This allows us to tell our clients how their campaigns are performing in relation to shifts in lead related metrics such as lead volume, cost per lead, and conversion rate. Still, we recognize that it doesn’t matter how great our month-over-month or year-over-year lead volume indicators look if clients are not seeing an impact on their bottom line. If that’s the case, we want to determine what adjustments need to be made on either end to help move the needle in a positive direction.

2. How Is Lead Quality?

This is another really simple prompt that can lead to a great discussion about the quality of the audience you are reaching with your marketing efforts, and the perceived value in the eyes of the client. It’s also something that most businesses can get a sense of simply by speaking with their sales teams and paying attention to developing trends. If you recently started a new marketing initiative, you may want to check with your client to see if there have been any perceived changes in lead quality that correlate.

Lead scoring is one example of how you can take this conversation to the next level. Work with your clients and development teams to pair that with accurate attribution, and you have some super powerful data at your fingertips. This process has allowed us to answer questions like:

• “How many of the leads that we brought in were qualified?”
• “What is the average cost associated with generating a new customer?”

3. How Many Sales/Customers Have You Generated?

The purpose of asking this question is two-fold. First, you get a feel for your client’s business performance. Within this conversation you can tease out objective opinions on how this stacks up to expectations, and you can start to understand any internal or external pressure that the business may be facing.

Additionally, this is really useful data to have. You can combine this information with online lead tracking and an understanding of any offline lead drivers to find a client’s close rate. At Workshop, we’ve used this data to identify trends in close rate over time or to set smarter KPI goals or budgets.

4. What’s Your Close Rate?

Close rate can be simply defined as the percentage of leads that become customers. We talked about ways to determine a client’s close rate using their internal sales data—but some clients may already have this information readily available. If that is the case, you can use the close rate to make account decisions that are directly aligned with business goals.

If possible, try to take the data one step further and define close rate by channel. In addition to giving you information about the effectiveness of that channel, it will allow you to give even more informed budget and KPI suggestions.

5. How Many Sales/Customers Do You Need to Generate?

It should go without saying that before marketers can set smart goals, they need to understand the goals of their client’s business. Does their business have targets that they are working towards monthly, quarterly, or annually? Are they hitting them? What percentage of that target are you hoping to generate through your initiatives?

For example, let’s say a real estate company wants to earn 100 new customers next quarter. If you’re able to determine that, on average, they convert 10% of leads into customers, you can tell that client they will need to generate approximately 1,000 leads that quarter to hit their goal. Further understanding of all of the potential lead drivers and the associated cost per lead for each channel empowers us to set budget recommendations and KPI goals that will allow the business to earn 100 new customers! The numbers in this example were changed for simplicity, but this is a real example from a business that we work with at Workshop Digital.

How Tracking Users from Lead to Customer Can Boost Your Bottom Line

Tracking users from the moment they become a lead all the way through to the moment they become a new customer with attribution intact is one of the holy grails of marketing. Why? Because it tells us directly how impactful each channel is in terms of generating new business. Workshop Digital works with our clients and their developers to close this loop whenever possible because it empowers us to be better partners.

Once we have this information, we don’t have to ask questions like “Are you feeling a lift?” or “How is lead quality?” Instead, our data tells us the impact that our initiatives are having on the business’ bottom line. We then get to use this data to drive improvements in our accounts by optimizing towards customers, rather than just leads.

Whether you are searching for the holy grail of marketing, or just trying to get an idea of how marketing initiatives are impacting your bottom line, it all starts with a conversation. We’d love to start one about your business. Contact us today to chat about how we can help.