Understanding Marketing Agency Account Management

By now we all know that building a solid relationship with your marketing company is absolutely key to growing your home service business. But what if you feel you keep reaching out, trying to build that connection and you’re just not getting anywhere? Here are some reasons why you may be experiencing frustration. By understanding how account management works at agencies, you can choose the right one to work with and understand how to ask the right questions.

Your account manager is too busy

Take a second to think about the typical agency model. Instead of doing business with one person you’re doing business with another business that employs a bunch of different people who work in different areas and with different specialties. 

An agency typically employs what are commonly called account managers and these people become your point of contact with the agency for questions, concerns and collaboration. This is where home service owners usually run into issues with their relationship with the agency. 

It’s normal for account managers to have a set of clients that they service. But the problem with most agencies is that they overload account managers with too many clients. And there’s nothing worse than being bounced around to different account managers all the time. It’s like calling an insurance company with a problem and being transferred 5 times, explaining your issue each and every time. Exhausting. 

When account managers are overloaded:

• They don’t call you back or are hard to get ahold of
• They rush calls with you or even skip scheduled calls
• You don’t feel like they’re actually listening to you
• Your results suffer

This is why it’s important to talk to any agency you’re considering signing with about expectations for your account manager. Good questions to ask include:

• How often should I expect to hear from my account manager?
• Do I have a direct line to my AM?
• Will I have the same AM each time I contact your agency?
• How often do you change account managers for your clients?
• If my AM isn’t available when I contact them, what’s their promised response time?

One key question to ask about SEO

We’re mostly talking about account management in this article, but this is worth mentioning. SEO is foundational, necessary, and important for the growth of your business, so you’re likely paying for it now or will in the future.

When you’re in talks with a new agency for SEO services just ask the question:

“How many accounts do your SEO specialists manage?”

This is going to give you some real insight into how much time your account is actually going to get. Realistically, one SEO person can handle 10-15 accounts and still get good results on those accounts. Of course this can vary a little bit, depending on the size and goals of the accounts they manage.

Time spent working only on your account=results for your business. Make sure your SEO specialist isn’t going to be spread too thin. It takes time to do SEO right. Anyone else who tells you they have a “system” or “proprietary software” so their SEOs can manage 40, 50, 100 accounts at a time is blowing smoke. 

They don’t really know what they’re talking about

Think of your account manager as an advisor on your marketing system. Similar to how you may sell an HVAC system to a homeowner, you’d expect an account manager to know the ins and outs of your business, pros and cons of each option, and present you with information so you can collaboratively make a decision. 

Lots of account managers are new to digital marketing because there’s high turnover in this area. Why? Because it’s not an easy job and they’re typically underpaid for the level of service expected. Some agencies view this as a sales or customer service position (hint: it’s neither) so your account manager is not always someone who understands home service growth tactics and strategies.

This is a bad combination for your business if you’re trusting this person to help grow your company. A great partnership is made with a marketing agency acting as an extension of your business, and if your point person is questionable, the entire system suffers.

Their only job is to sell you more 

Lots of agencies require that their account managers sell add ons to existing service lines. When someone is incentivized and pressured to sell, that becomes their first priority, NOT the growth of your business.

This is why it’s important to choose a marketing company you trust from the get go. This means trusting their recommendations and collaborating with them on your success. An account manager that tries to upsell you on paid services or ancillary BS that doesn’t feed your bottom line doesn’t care about your business. Get an account manager who is educated and passionate about growing home service businesses, who’s interested in working with you to get you the best result, and who understands the competitive nature of your livelihood.

Your experience matters

Wit Digital employs a full time staff of growth oriented specialists ranging from account strategists, SEO experts, paid experts, creatives, user experience designers, customer experience gurus and more. 

Each team operates within set and understood guidelines and expectations for performance and growth. This ensures that each client gets the maximum amount of customized attention from each relevant specialist consistently- week after week, month after month. 

Our internal teams carefully track time spent on each account every week, actions taken on the account and what is coming up next. We carefully assign clients to specialists so that they have enough time to allocate to each client each week. 

All specialists work as a team on each client account so that everyone is pushing towards the same goals. If you’ve got SEO, paid, social and a website build going…ALL of those people are working together so that the best result comes the fastest for your home service business.

A partnership is a choice

Your experience and relationship with the agency you trust with the growth of your home service business matters a lot- it can mean the difference between growth and stagnation. Choose wisely!