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

At Workshop Digital, we pride ourselves on building strategic partnerships with our clients—not just functioning as vendors. This distinction requires responsibility on our part. To ensure clients view us as partners, we must go beyond the data and show genuine interest in their success.

This all begins with a conversation. It's easy for digital marketing analysts to focus on reports that show strong KPIs (key performance indicators), but stopping there does a disservice to the client. To truly understand the impact of our efforts, we need to ask clients the right questions to determine whether our success translates into their success.

Big-picture conversations help bridge the gap between performance metrics and real business outcomes. These conversations often uncover valuable insights, such as:

• Whether our results are driving success for the business

• Whether we’re reaching the right audience

• Whether our messaging resonates

• Whether there’s internal data that could help optimize performance, set budgets, or define better KPIs

5 Key Questions Digital Marketing Agencies Should Ask to Become Better Partners:

1. Is Your Business Feeling a Lift?

I like this question because of how simple it is. Businesses don’t need sophisticated CRM systems to answer this. Rising tides lift all ships, and improved business performance can often help prove the value of our work.

At Workshop Digital, we track metrics like lead volume, cost per lead, and conversion rates from the start. However, if clients don’t feel a positive impact on their bottom line, these metrics lose their significance. This question opens the door to discussing necessary adjustments that could help drive more meaningful results.

Why it works: It gets right to the heart of how marketing efforts impact business performance, moving beyond just the numbers.

2. How Is Lead Quality?

This is another straightforward question that leads to insightful discussions about the effectiveness of your targeting and messaging. It also gives clients the opportunity to share feedback from their sales teams on lead quality. If new marketing initiatives have recently launched, this question can help you gauge whether they’ve influenced lead quality in a noticeable way.

According to Adam Connell, 31% of B2B marketers think that lead quality is the most important. And, in my opinion, that percentage should be higher. High-quality leads should be the goal of any successful marketing strategy, as they directly impact the client’s ability to convert prospects into paying customers. Focusing on lead quality helps ensure that marketing efforts aren’t just bringing in more leads, but the right leads that align with the client’s target audience and business objectives. Focusing on lead quality can significantly enhance a marketing campaign's return on investment (ROI).

For deeper insights, consider implementing lead scoring. By collaborating with clients and their teams, you can accurately attribute the quality of leads and optimize your campaigns accordingly. This type of data helps answer questions like:

• “How many of the leads we brought in were qualified?”

• “What’s the cost associated with generating a new customer?”

To take this strategy to the next level, digital marketers can work with their clients to set up closed-loop analytics. Closed-loop analytics allows marketers to track which efforts lead to actual sales, providing deeper insights into the true ROI of each marketing initiative. It’s especially crucial for businesses with longer sales cycles, where understanding how leads progress through each stage can help optimize campaigns and improve decision-making.

Why it works: It helps you and your client evaluate the actual value of your marketing efforts, getting the true ROI behind the strategies and tactics.

3. How Many Sales or Customers Have You Generated?

This question serves two purposes. First, it provides insight into how well the client’s business is performing. Second, it gives you important data to understand conversion rates and internal or external pressures the business may experience.

With this information, you can tie your online lead tracking to actual customer conversions and identify trends in close rates. At Workshop Digital, we’ve used this data to set smarter KPIs and make budget adjustments that align with client goals and objectives.

Why it works: It adds a layer of data-driven decision-making that connects your digital marketing efforts to the client’s overall business success.

4. What’s Your Close Rate?

Close rate is defined as the % of leads that convert into customers. Knowing your client's close rate is crucial for marketing strategic account decisions. Understanding close rates can help you suggest KPIs and budgets that are directly tied to business outcomes.

Taking this a step further, try to define close rates by channel. This gives insight into the effectiveness of each marketing channel and allows you to optimize campaigns for stronger impact.

While some clients may already have this data available, others may need help determining it. Once you know the formula, it’s pretty easy to determine an average close rate.

If you know your client’s average order value, you can easily calculate the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) as follows:

Why it works: It connects marketing activity to revenue, providing both you and the client with a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not.

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

Understanding the client’s business goals is important for setting meaningful KPIs. This question helps you align your efforts with their targets, whether they’re aiming for monthly, quarterly, or annual growth. Knowing the client’s close rates and sales goals as allows you to calculate how many leads you need to generate to meet those targets.

For example, if a manufacturing company aims to generate 100 new customers in the next quarter and their close rate is 10%, you know they’ll need approximately 1,000 leads to meet that goal. (100/.1 =1,000). With further insights into each lead channel and the associated cost per lead, you can set data-driven budgets and KPI targets to ensure success.

Why it works: It ensures that marketing goals are directly tied to the client’s business objectives, allowing for more precise budget allocation and KPI targets.

Closing the Loop: Tracking Leads to Customers

One of the most powerful ways to enhance partnership value is through full lead-to-customer tracking with attribution. At Workshop Digital, we work closely with clients and developers to achieve this whenever possible. This gives us a clear view of which channels drive new customers.

With this data in hand, we can avoid relying on subjective questions like "Are you feeling a lift?" Instead, we can focus on data-driven insights to drive optimization, improving digital marketing performance in ways that directly impact the client’s bottom line.

Whether you’re seeking the holy grail of attribution or simply trying to better understand how your marketing efforts impact a business’s bottom line, it all starts with a conversation. Asking the right questions not only deepens the partnership but also ensures that your marketing efforts are aligned with the client’s true business needs.

If you're ready to have that conversation, we’d love to connect and discuss how Workshop Digital can help your business thrive. Contact us today to get started.

This blog post was originally published on April 23, 2020, and was updated and republished on October 29, 2024.