You’re about to outsource your online marketing to an external vendor. How can you get the best out of the client-vendor relationship? How do you close the gap between their understanding of your business needs, and yours?

We speak with Angela Chiu, who has worked for advertising/digital agencies in Asia and New York, and who is now the Interactive Marketing Manager of Vision Care, Johnson & Johnson. She gives us her views from having worked on ‘both sides of the fence’.

Q: How do you get the best results from working with digital marketing agencies?

“I think the general rule of thumb is ‘garbage in, garbage out’.  A good brief is everything!

It’s not about having all the blanks of the standard briefing form filled up, it’s about painting a clear picture of the business - what should be achieved, whom to talk to, what the market situation is, where the driving force is, what is being envisioned in the campaign, etc.  A shaky foundation will only lead to a collapse.

Try your best to get every agency person who is going to be involved in the campaigns to join the briefing session, so you can avoid the ‘lost in translation’ syndrome.  Imagine your brief being filtered from the Client Service team to the Strategic Planning and Creative team, and then to the Production team, and so on. What will be left at the end of the day?  Getting the Creative folks in at the start will at least provide some dialogue with those who will work on the campaign hands-on and a chance to make sure they understand the campaign objectives.

Frequent feedback to the agency is important.  Everyone wants to know what to improve, from a campaign performance standpoint as well as from an agency standpoint.  Don’t hesitate to share business results and issues with the agency, so that better solutions or processes can be figured out.

Actually, most of these tips would apply for most client-agency relationships. In digital marketing however, you have to stay on top of the trends even more. You need to be part of the online community, be a living creature in the digital world.  It will equip you with the skills to tell if a campaign concept/idea/execution makes sense.

Well, the agency will sometimes even welcome creative ideas from you too!  It’s sad, but that’s the reality. Digital marketing agencies in Asia are not as developed as those in the West.”

Q: What other advice would you give?

“Be meticulous, yet open.

Online communications is fluid, ever changing, and inter-woven (that’s why it is called the web). So you have to make conscientious and meticulous efforts to stay on top of trends.

At the same time, it’s better to avoid being ‘obsessive-compulsively in love’ with analytics (except when it comes to Search). Stay straightforward and be naive, a few crucial metrics will do.  A flood of data can be hazardous to the health of your business planning.”

Q: What are some advanced ways to track results/ROI from online campaigns?

“I once discussed this with a data analytics professional in New York, and we ended up concluding this question was almost equivalent to asking ‘what’s the meaning of life?’. I think it keeps every single CEO on earth up at night nowadays.

Always go back to the word ‘Investment’ (the ‘I’ of the ROI). ‘Investment’ does not only refer to the pennies being put behind online, but the entire marketing investment.  It is best to move away from the ‘last click’ mentality. In other words, don’t just attribute the Return to the last medium that a consumer touched.

Have you and I ever bought a product purely because of a standalone 6-frame banner?   In the U.S., this ‘meaning of life’ question is being addressed by media-mix modeling.  It takes every aspect of your Investment into consideration, including communications spending (TV, print, online, email, search PR, events, sponsorship, etc.); promotions (coupons, discounts); competitions (advertising, pricing, number of store locations, service ratings, etc); internal factors (product mix, sales force, trade deals, etc) and macro factors (seasonality, economic situation).

You should have a minimum of three years of data for the modeling system to determine the effectiveness of different variables in terms of bringing ‘Return’.”

Q: You have worked at online marketing agencies in New York and in the Asia Pacific. How do these two markets compare?

“The question naturally leads to a major difference between Asia and North America; the huge difference in the levels of investment in order to get to the bottom of the (online) matter.  Implementation of the above modeling system, as an example, requires loads of investment.

With much more resources, there is more risk-taking, conceptualising, wild-thoughts and ideation in New York. Asia is more practical, execution-driven, service-oriented and has a shorter-term mindset. Unless all markets in Asia can be aggregated, these two sides of the world will always operate from ‘different sides of the coin’. For me personally, I find my knowledge tank and creativity is always fueled by even a short visit to New York, while it is only being consumed when I return back to Asia.

Maybe there’s something different in the drinking water, I don’t know!”

For more information, please contact Manifesto