Marketing Profs

Partnering, open communication, collaboration and celebrating success... sounds like advice for any perfect relationship.

Well, it is. Only, in this case, that relationship is with your design agency.

Building and maintaining a trusting relationship with your agency is key to project success. Many relationships with agencies fail because clients treat them like vendors instead of partners. They don't value agency advice when they really need to get a fresh perspective in solving a communication challenge.

You can learn that lesson the hard way—becoming battle scarred in the skirmishes with your design agency. Or you can follow these 10 golden rules—and find great teamwork and stronger results in the end.

To get great work from your design agency...

1. Build mutual respect

Treat your agency like a partner and value its perspective. Sometimes, you are so close to the project that you can't see how your own customers perceive it. Work as a team; it will make everyone's life more pleasant. Similar to any long-term relationship, it takes a lot of hard work and clear communication to make a strong relationship.

2. Define your goals

Brief the agency with the key players on both teams. Hopefully, this meeting takes place in the same room or (second best) over the telephone. Start with a communications/design brief and make sure that everyone agrees with the objective for the project.

Sometimes, the smaller projects seem like they don't need this type of communication. Those are usually the projects that get derailed, because not as much thought is put into the project up front and people have not agreed about direction. Even a shortened version of a brief is very helpful