Managing your business is no easy task.  No matter how small or big the assignment is.  You could be a Brand Manager on one of 100’s of brands, or you could be the CMO of a large Fortune 100 company.  The challenges, while different, feel the same.

If it’s not pressure from the board or the CEO, it’s pressure from your Director of Marketing.

If it’s not competitive pressure from the new up and coming brand, it’s competitive pressure from the company located in the next state.

If it’s not pressure to prove out the returns on all that you invest in your brand’s marketing plan, it’s pressure to justify the return on a marketing spend for the entire company.

Pressures are the same…but different.

So where and how does your marketing agency fit into all of this?  Where can they help?  Where do they get in the way?  Where are they not operating now, where they should? And do they look at your business the same way you do?

If your agency isn’t feeling the same pressures you are (regardless the size or scope of your business management challenge), then either shame on them or shame on you.

If you don’t trust that your agency is well-equipped enough to dive into your business and sit along side of you to help you drive it forward, then you need a new agency.  Gone are the days of agencies that just “do” and “create” stuff.  Here are the days when agencies need to be your business.  They need to understand your business as well or better than you do today.  They need to be thinking about what’s a year ahead, 5 years ahead and think about and articulate to you what that means for your business.

And if you do trust your agency, but they haven’t stepped up – or you haven’t given them the rope to step up, then shame on one or both of you.  You have to give your agency some rope.  You have to be prepared for them to make a mistake or two along the way, but absent of choices and the rope to help you manage through those choices, the relationship is sure to stale.

Give your agency a seat at the planning table.

Ask your agency for their opinion on the changing digital/social landscape and its implications for your business.

Ask them to offer ideas on how to improve sales.

Push them in ways that they may have never been pushed before.

They’ll either embrace it and run with it.

Stare at you blankly and tremble with fear.

Or ignore you in the hopes that your request goes away.