In March 2020, I started my career as a one-person marketing team in higher education at the beginning of a global pandemic. It wasn’t exactly what I pictured for my first job after graduation. I was wearing many hats: creative, digital, media, social, PR, print, and more. Like many higher ed teams, we had limited money, time, and resources, so I worked with agencies to take on projects we couldn’t handle alone.
Now, as I start my second year at Ologie, after spending five years working with different agencies from the client side, I have a better understanding of what an agency needs from its client partner. If you’re the client, you may not know yet what the final answer and deliverable should be, but you should be ready to explain the problem, share the context behind it, and know who will make decisions along the way.
Be clear about expectations, but not set on the answer.
For starters, you should have a clear understanding of what you want your project to accomplish. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you know exactly what the final result should be.
If you’re bringing in an agency because your internal team needs extra help getting something made, your assignment might be fairly defined. If you’re also looking for research, strategy, or creative thinking, you need to allow room for the agency to determine whether what you’re asking for will actually solve the problem.
Budgets, timelines, internal expectations, and limitations should always come up early. But remember: There’s a difference between giving an agency direction and giving it the answer.
Decide who gets a voice and who gets a vote.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on marketing efforts, especially in higher education. And you usually have plenty of people who should weigh in because they know your institution, audience, or subject best. This doesn’t mean, however, that every person has the same role.
Some people may contribute by providing background, while others need to review the work for accuracy, or make sure it can realistically be implemented. A much smaller group should be responsible for choosing a direction, with a clearly identified person or group that gives final approval.
When these roles are unclear, feedback starts coming from every direction, and the agency is left trying to resolve disagreements that you really need to work through internally. A smaller group is usually better when it comes to decision-makers, but more can be helpful almost everywhere else: more context, more perspectives, and more access to the people who know the institution best. The key is knowing when each person should contribute and who ultimately gets to decide.
Disclose the things your agency cannot see.
Agency partners can research your institution, learn your language, and talk to your audiences, but they still won’t know everything happening behind the scenes unless you tell them.
It may be that a similar approach has been tried in the past. Your leadership may be divided over a certain issue. Or another internal priority may be competing for time and attention. It can be tempting to leave out the messy parts, but that type of information will help the agency understand the project, instead of the cleaner version that exists in the brief.
The same holds when your priorities change. What feels obvious to you on the client side may look to the agency like confusing feedback that no longer matches the original ask. If your goal, timeline, or priority changes, be up front about it and talk through how that affects the budget, scope, and timeline.
Use your agency for more than an extra set of hands.
On the client side, capacity was one of the biggest reasons I worked with agencies, but you might have a different reason for doing so. It’s easy to shift into execution mode and focus on getting the next deliverable out the door. But an agency can also recognize when a request is being driven by unclear messaging, limited audience insight, or internal disagreement that the work itself may not fix.
That perspective is especially useful early in the process. Give your agency the opportunity to question the assignment, identify what may be missing, and suggest a different path when the original request doesn’t address the real problem. You may still decide to move forward as planned, but the conversation can help you make that decision with a clearer understanding of the tradeoffs.
You don’t have to accept every recommendation your agency makes. Your institution remains responsible for sharing the context, making the decisions, and ensuring the work is right for the people it needs to serve. But if you want outside thinking and new ideas, you have to give your agency enough room to provide them. Finding that balance can lead to a better working relationship and better work. Both teams have a stronger chance of creating something that reflects your institution’s reality, holds together through review, and accomplishes what the project was supposed to do in the first place.
