David Rodnitzky will be speaking on the “Beyond Thunderdome-When you run out of PPC fuel” panel at SearchFest 2014 which will take place on February 28th, 2014 in Portland, Oregon. For more information and to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’ve been doing digital marketing (mainly SEM) since 2000 and I started 3QDigital in 2008. We work with about 80 clients helping them with SEM, SEO, display, social media, and analytics.
2) You’ve taken over many accounts from other agencies…what are some of the top reasons clients make a change?
In my experience, there are two reasons clients switch agencies. First, and perhaps most obviously, is performance. Digital agencies live and die by performance and when performance goes south, clients start to look for alternatives. Second, is a change of management at the client. When a new VP of marketing comes in, the incumbent agency is often in trouble, either because the new VP has a prior relationship with another agency, or because the new VP just wants to make a change to put his or her stamp on the marketing org.
3) If you were to give clients 3 tips on how best to work with an agency, what would they be?
Tip #1: Think of your agency as a trusted partner. Share whatever information you can with the agency, trust them with your strategies, seek their insight, involve them in big decisions. If the client-agency relationship is adversarial or at arms-length, it will fail.
Tip #2: Outsource non-core functions to an agency, keep core functions internal. If your entire business is dependent on the success of your SEM program, it’s probably a bad idea to rely on an SEM agency to make or break your company success. Conversely, if marketing is important but not core to your business, use an agency to execute the marketing so you can focus on what matters.
Tip #3: Match agency size to your company size. If you are a small company, working with a big agency will likely result in subpar account management teams who are focused on bigger fish. If you are a big company, working with a small agency could end up overwhelming an already stretched-too-thin team.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.