Managing The Growth
Good times bring serious issues to agencies.
Good times bring serious issues to agencies.
Let me risk stating the obvious: our industry is booming. At this point, it’s likely all you have to do is answer the phone and the person on the other end wants you to help them with their online advertising. Clients are banging down your door. What can be bad about that? Nothing, so long as you’re managing your growth. These good times are good, no doubt about it. But there are also some serious issues an agency can run into if you’re not careful.
If you haven’t already, you’ll likely be running (sooner rather than later) into challenges associated with growing your agency. I’ve got a few thoughts and recommendations about how you might want to approach managing your agency’s growth.
If you’re a great place to work, let people know. Offer to meet with people even if you’re not currently hiring for the position they’re seeking. I know it can be time-consuming. But I make it a practice. We’re always willing to meet smart, qualified people with whom we have a cultural match. Our business changes in the blink of an eye. That person you didn’t need yesterday could be the person you’ve simply got to have today.
The option you don’t want to pursue is to do something less than what you know is best. You know what interactive marketing is capable of. It’s one of the most powerful, dynamic media for branding or direct response. But in these situations, you might be asked to “scale back” your level of service to reduce costs. When they as, “Can’t you just plan it, place it, and let it run? We don’t need to do any real in-depth performance tracking.” Be careful. Doing so might result in the client thinking interactive advertising has failed. Make sure you give yourself and the medium every opportunity to succeed.
This is by no means a comprehensive list. Nor is it rocket science. We just need to be reminded of these things from time to time. It’s important for the continued growth and long-term good fortune of our industry, our agencies, our employees, and, of course, the work.
I’ve said it before — heck, I’ll tell it to pretty much anybody who will listen — this is a great time to be in this industry. If you have interesting approaches to the challenges we face, in terms of managing your agency’s growth or any other aspect of our industry, I’d love to hear them. And, as a friend of mine in the industry says,”Be great!”