Right Percent - Scale Your B2B Business with Paid Advertising
A specialized, direct response B2B ads agency
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B2B Resource Base

Managing In-House vs. Agency Responsibilities: A Guide for B2B Marketers

So, you’ve hired a B2B ad agency. You may be wondering: what should your in-house team focus on, and what should you rely on the agency to handle? Here’s a quick guide to help you balance responsibilities effectively:

In-House Focus Areas

As an in-house marketer working with an agency managing paid advertising channels, your primary focus should be on the following:

  1. Collaboration:

    • Internal Teams: Work closely with your sales, development, product, and marketing operations teams. These departments have a direct impact on marketing performance, and maintaining strong communication and collaboration with them is crucial.

2. Data and Attribution:

  • Measurement Confidence: Ensure you are confident in your data measurement and attribution models, particularly in understanding conversion events. This will allow you to make informed decisions and accurately assess the impact of your campaigns.

3. Creative Approvals:

  • Brand Consistency: Oversee the approval of creative assets to ensure they align with your brand’s voice and messaging.

4. Strategic Discussions:

  • Agency Alignment: Regularly engage in strategy discussions with your agency. Communicate your goals, budget, and broader company strategy to ensure the agency's efforts are aligned with your overall business objectives.

5. Resource Advocacy:

  • Internal Buy-In: Be prepared to make the case for additional resources when necessary, whether it’s budget, tools, or personnel, to support your marketing efforts.

 

Agency Responsibilities

Your agency should take charge of the following, allowing your team to focus on broader strategic initiatives:

  1. Specialized Expertise:

    • B2B Advertising: Leverage the agency’s specialized expertise in B2B advertising to develop and execute effective campaigns.

2. Ad Strategy Development:

  • Goal-Driven Planning: Transform your goals, budget, and broader company strategy into a tactical advertising plan that maximizes ROI.

3. Platform Execution:

  • Ad Platforms: Manage and optimize campaigns across platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Ads (AdWords).

4. Clear Communication:

  • Performance Updates: Ensure the agency provides clear communication on past performance, current projects, and future testing plans, keeping your team informed and aligned.

5. Data Reporting:

  • Transparent Reporting: Expect the agency to deliver clear and actionable reports on advertising data, helping you understand the effectiveness of your campaigns.

6. Attribution Assistance:

  • Pixel and Tracking: Rely on the agency for support with attribution modeling, pixel implementation, and any related technical issues.

7. Creative Development:

  • High-Performance Ads: Trust the agency to create copy and visual content that drives performance on the platforms you’re targeting.

Working with Agencies on Creative Production

If you’re a CMO with a background in traditional advertising (TV, radio, etc.), the shift to digital advertising can feel. daunting. 

Traditional ads offer little room for error and the reality is you only have one chance to get it right.your commercial either works or it doesn’t. There’s no algorithmic learning to optimize performance and a large portion of your marketing budget has gone down the drain for a “shot in the dark.”

Digital advertising operates under a different paradigm that follows a power law. Out of 20 ads you run, typically only one will emerge as a clear winner after the platform's algorithm optimizes it. This means that 19 of the ads, which your team invested significant effort into, might be seen by very few people before the algorithm decides they aren’t effective. With that being said, using a portion of your marketing budget to realize hard-line data that can be used for the life of a campaign is still a worthwhile investment. When testing, knowing what isn’t working is just as important.

Creative Production Key Takeaway:

In digital advertising, it’s more important to test a high volume of ads with various positioning statements and offers than to spend excessive time perfecting a single ad. While maintaining brand consistency is crucial, spending weeks on each ad could lead to underperformance in your campaigns.

A curiosity to test just about anything is the mindset to have. If an ad is on brand and it won’t offend anyone then just test it. As marketers, we need to stop being married to the content we produce and utilize it for the revenue driving tool that it is. At the end of the day, every ad that doesn't hit the platform because the team couldn’t decide if they wanted to use the oxford comma or not, is a potential home run that was missed. Naive marketers know what works. Seasoned marketers know what might work. The only reliable source of truth is the data.

Rachel Bahian