Greg Bishop is an Associate Consultant of GDP Global and a freelance marketing consultant, based in London. He has seven years’ marketing experience with a focus on branding and new...In these tough times its tempting to drastically reduce or cut marketing spend, sack the design agency, and try doing everything in-house. There are several flaws with this approach.
· Loss of competitive advantage – Other Investment Promotion Agencies who continue to invest in marketing will be at an advantage in attracting new business investment to their country.
· Unexpected fees from your marketing agency – Your design agency may hold the intellectual property on the designs for the marketing material/ campaigns they have run for your IPA. Asking them for the designs may lead to release fees being issued or severe delays in passing on the artwork to you.
· Drawbacks of in-house design – Attempts to design marketing material in-house are likely to lead to literature appearing amateurish, which will ultimately negatively affect the overall brand (your country) image. Also, doing the design in-house will take up additional time and resources that you may not be able to spare.
Instead of taking these drastic measures there are ways in which you can work with your existing marketing agency to reduce costs whilst ensuring your agency maintains its market presence. Here are my top 5 tips:
1) Bring some agency services in-house – Although it is wise for your design agency to continue creating the look and feel of your marketing material there are a lot of practical services it provides which you could do in-house. For example, proofing copy, managing the printer or other suppliers and sourcing imagery (there are plenty of budget photo archives that you could browse through and select appropriate photos, here’s some of them: www.fotolia.com, www.dreamstime.com, www.shutterstock.com).
2) Source a printer directly. You can avoid the extra margin cost from your design agency by sourcing a printer directly. Be aware that you will need to manage the printing process, which would include writing a job specification (format, printing process, paper stock etc) proofing, and signing off the artwork for final print.
3) Provide a clear brief to your agency. It is worth taking some extra time to put together the marketing brief for your agency. Be clear on your objectives, target audience, and marketing messages that you want to communicate in the marketing material or campaign. This will reduce the risk of your agency misinterpreting the brief, which can result in re-designs and extra costs.
4) Reduce the number of meetings. Have meetings to discuss designs but reduce the number of management meetings, for example status reports/updates meetings. These can often be done over the phone or via email.
5) Buy in bulk. Try to buy a number of projects at the same time; you’ll be more likely to negotiate a better overall price. For example, rather than just doing one leaflet design, add an email shot, and an online advertising banner.
In the current economic climate, agencies are more amenable to changing the way they work in order to retain you as a client. So before you pull the plug, try to work things out with your agency.
