AI seems to be all the rage among agencies and marketers.

We’ve seen some agencies start to apply the technology to their efforts to generate content for their clients, gather research intel to help them more strategically plan and execute, and identify look-alike customer targets for their clients to pursue.

All that is great, but your agency needs to be doing more than just chasing the shiny AI object, they need to be well versed and plenty capable across all technology fronts.

In our most recent New Year Outlook survey (which isn’t due out until January, 2024, but you can take a look at last year’s survey), we’re seeing some early indications that marketers are more likely to think their current marketing agency is not ahead of trends and technology, than those marketers that do feel that way.

To-date, 58% of marketers answered “No” when asked if they felt that their marketing agency was ahead of trends and technology as they entered 2024.

We just finished a marketing agency search for BraunAbility, a mobility company that retrofits vans, autos, etc. with equipment that helps people with disabilities.

Tech stack, analytics, data and reporting were all hot topics among the marketers at BraunAbility.  Consequently, much of our focus was not only centered on agencies that had the right kind of industry experience, but agencies that were deep into the things that mattered most to the marketers.

The agencies needed to show BraunAbility how their skills could get the marketers to a better place.

We are in the middle of a big search for a large urgent care facility based in the Southwest.

Same thing here.

This client has multiple locations and some very specific goals they need to achieve.

Their current agency has been with them for nearly two decades and they simply aren’t armed to take this client to where they want to be – so as a result, they aren’t included in the search.

Our focus for the search, like BraunAbility, isn’t just on category experience, but also centered on finding those agencies that can legitimately showcase how their tech/analytics/reporting has been able to carry their clients to better places.