Any decent agency should be able to secure consistent editorial coverage for new product releases. Heck, my 92-year-old grandma could get media coverage for a sweet product if she had the right names and phone numbers. Echoing that same sentiment, any social media agency can grow your number of channel followers, with no regard to the type of people they’re attracting.

So, your agency gets your products and services press coverage, and your social media channel numbers are consistently growing — now what?

There comes a time for every organization to take a look at their agency and see what value they are adding and if they can be considered a true business partner. A regular, open dialog with your agency is imperative and neither party should have issue being transparent with their progress and goals.

What questions should your firm be asking? Below are five that indicate whether you have a good agency partner — one that is looking to evolve their campaigns as your marketing and sales strategies inevitably change:

What are your sales and marketing goals for the next quarter?

If your agency doesn’t ask you this question, how will they position your products and services correctly, and to the right audience? Your goal may be to gain market share in consumer electronics trade space, but your firm may be spending all their time pitching your product to parenting media. Or, your goal is to increase sales from IT decision makers, but your agency team is spending all their effort on Facebook. Both parties need to be working in the same direction, so be sure your firm knows which way you are headed.

What is your retail strategy and new retailer (reseller/distributor, etc.) timeline?

At BLAST, we know how to position our clients as valuable partners to their retailers, while at the same time helping them look attractive to new, potential retailers/resellers/distributors. Utilizing social media channels is an excellent way to amplify a retailer’s in-store or online promotion for your products, and retailers love to see partners making an effort on their behalf. Retail trade press and promotion should always be part of the overall campaign outreach and your agency needs to show an interest in this aspect of your business.

What is your primary goal for creating a social media presence?

Deciding on which social media platforms to engage with consumers depends on what yours goals are as an organization. It doesn’t make sense for every company to have a Facebook fan page, nor does it make sense to only focus on growing your number of channel followers/fans/friends/connections without qualifying those people.

Before you hire an agency to execute social media efforts on your behalf, make sure they ask you the central question of WHY you want a presence online — is it primarily for customer service, do you want to use your followers as a focus group, or are you looking to target CEOs of SMBs? Each answer has a different social media strategy built around it; one that will show measurable and quantifiable results if executed the right way.

What type of award opportunities would you like us to pursue?

Whether it’s a product-, company-, or executive-targeted award, it’s important that your agency knows which types of awards will help leverage your organization and/or its products to the right audience. Why have your agency spend time writing lengthy award submissions? Winning an award can help your organization make the transition from start-up to established, while other types of awards can help increase your company’s visibility to potential investors (if this is a goal of yours),  or position your executives as leaders in your industry, to name few.

Who would you like us to leverage as the organization’s expert?

There are many opportunities to utilize the expert knowledge of our client’s executives to get the company’s name in the news and regularly appear throughout social media channels — and we’re not talking about the canned executive quote found in a press release. Having regular discussions with our clients gives us insight into the topics about which they are most comfortable speaking, as well as new messages they’d like to communicate to the press. Bylined articles, Q&As, speaking engagements, Top Ten Lists, reactive pitching and commenting on their behalf on LinkedIn discussions are all tactics we use to further saturate the public with our clients’ messages and expertise in their various industries.

A client recently said that one of the things he likes best about working with BLASTmedia is our “entrepreneurial spirit” –  a sense of how crucial it is to be timely, results-driven and adaptable to the changing needs of their business. Bottom line, you need to hire an agency with people who know how to get you where you want to go, and that will never happen if they aren’t asking the right questions (and more importantly, listening to what you have to say.)

If you’d like to learn more about our integrated communications campaigns, contact Patrick at patrick@blastmedia.com.

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