This is a re-post of a brief article I wrote for The 60 Second Marketer “Ask The Expert” column.
I can’t recall the book, but years back I was reading a web design manual that offered a bit of agency advice that still resonates, year after year: Never let your agency become a pencil for the client.
In essence, it warns against allowing your client to drive the bus — especially the creative bus — by dictating ideas, because, though you may succeed in generating time-based revenue as an “outsourced production shop,” agency/client relationships founded on production generally hurt your business.
How so? Because, while you’re busy fulfilling their orders, which tend to be reactive, ill-founded and sometimes downright dumb, your company loses the opportunity to elevate its offerings as a thought leader. After all, didn’t the client come to you because you’re a great marketer (as opposed to an employee)? Why aren’t they letting you do the real work?
To take it even further, when clients drive you down that road (or you allow them to), it has a serious impact on everything — from work that can’t go into your portfolio, to staff satisfaction, to disruption of the work you’re doing for other clients. In the end, it has a negative impact on your bottom line.
So heed the advice: Your true value to a client comes from your thinking as well as your doing. Leave out the thinking and you may suffer some serious consequences.
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