Five Important Aspects of Operations Management in a Digital Marketing Agency

Use the right CRM system

One of the most important operational factors to have in place within a digital marketing agency is the right customer relationship management system (CRM). A CRM is a tool that essentially provides a central place where businesses can store customer and prospect data, track customer interactions, and share this information with colleagues. It allows businesses to manage relationships with customers, helping the business to grow.

Having the right CRM system for your digital agency will allow you to track everyday tasks that are completed for each service department whether that is SEO, PPC, Social Media, Accounts, Sales, and Operations. It can quite literally track any area of your business that you want if it is used correctly. In a service based industry, clients should consistently see the value and return on investment throughout. Using the right CRM system in a digital agency helps to ensure that each clients’ progress is tracked and recorded every single day in the same location and is readily viewable to be shared with clients whether this is for weekly updates or monthly reports.

Get to know the team

Digital agencies are extremely fast-paced and teams can grow very quickly, this can lead to some potential risks such as work becoming poorly managed or rushed.  

Getting to understand what each team member’s day to day is like is the only way that you can really understand that specific service area. Finding ways to help improve all aspects of an agency means listening to people and understanding their job roles, asking questions about the way they perform their tasks. Only once you start to have the insight into the day to day behaviour can you really implement helpful changes in the way people work. A key theme between the team should be to consistently ‘work smarter not harder’, this is something that is a lot easier said than done but there are a few main points that will help this be achievable as discussed by Forbes;

• Try and limit meetings to 30 minutes- one hour
• Encourage people to control their work habits
• Slow down
• Do one task at a time

Get to know the clients

Within an operations department of a digital agency, it is very easy to only focus on the numbers, the hours and the internal processes rather than the full 360 view. That’s why when working closely with the delivery team, it is important to also consider the progress of the client and their marketing goals. Are they on track? Are they being achieved? Knowing this information and understanding that a client’s campaign results or rankings aren’t quite where they should be, allows both the operations and delivery team to prioritise their time and expertise wisely. Converge hub writes that understanding customers is the key to giving them good service which in turn results in strong customer relationships and new sales through positive word-of-mouth recommendation.

Time & Study = Efficiency

Much like the well-known marketing motto ‘content is king’, team operations focus on a slightly different equation which is ‘time & study = efficiency’. Taking a look at each department within an agency and breaking down how many hours are spent throughout the month per team member, and service (whether it is SEO, PPC or social), provides extremely vital information. What this data does is allows you to identify the following:

• Whether clients are being under or over serviced
• Whether there is capacity for more clients to be taken on per department
• How many clients can be taken on in order to reach the teams’ capacity
• Whether team members could be working more efficiently in their day to day tasks.
• Whether tasks could be recorded more suitably within the CRM system

As digital agencies can grow rapidly it is important to carry out time and study reports monthly and to communicate the findings to the team. This will help the company mindset to consistently be working as efficiently as possible whilst ensuring they are recording their daily tasks accurately.

Take a step back and look at the results

Whilst taking into account the above four key aspects for operations management within a digital agency, one final detrimental point to remember is to always take a step back and look at the results. Data analysis is a necessity for making well-informed and efficient decisions. Data analysis is what helps organisations determine their positions in the market relative to competitors. It is what helps us identify the potential risks that need to be avoided and the opportunities that must be grabbed in order to grow.

It is, in fact, data analysis that enables us to gauge the satisfaction level of the customers and their needs in order to come up with new products and services that provide greater satisfaction to them. Therefore, it is an understatement to say that data analysis is important for the success of businesses.

To conclude our key aspects, agency life is constantly evolving, and fast-paced, so it is very easy to get into the habit of going straight from one task to the next without taking a good look at the data that is available right in front of you. Just remember to take a step back and look at the results from the data you are gathering in order for the business to be working as smooth and efficient as possible! To learn more about what we can offer your business as a Digital Marketing Agency, call us today on 0161 327 2635 and we will be happy to help!