Full Steam 07: How to build a dream agency-client partnership
Full Steam is an ongoing conversation about the craft of B2B marketing. In each episode, experts from Iron Horse explore a single topic in depth, giving you practical takeaways and a fresh perspective on the challenges you're navigating every day.
The best agencies feel like a part of the team
The whole point of hiring an agency is to get good work and results. But the best partnerships work a bit differently to make that happen.
In this episode of Full Steam, principal content strategist Alex Jonathan Brown is joined by senior client engagement manager Stephanie Siemens. Together, they break down how to form agency-client partnerships that produce work everyone is proud of.
Stephanie shares her perspective as someone who’s hired agencies as an in-house marketer, as well as agency-side with Iron Horse. She and Alex discuss how to provide honest creative feedback, when to be flexible vs. sticking to the plan, and why she prefers meetings that end 15 minutes early vs. 15 minutes late.
Featuring
- Want to go faster? Give more context. Sharing your brand guidelines, audience details, competitors’ ads, and even your old brand helps your agency guess less and hit the ground running.
- Great work starts with honest feedback. The more specific and honest you are, the better the next round will be. Giving feedback to creatives is a skill — your agency contact is there to help.
- Most clients underestimate how much time they need. When projects touch multiple teams including outside vendors and your own reviewers, timelines stretch. Plan ahead to avoid scrambling.
How do I onboard a new marketing agency so they get up to speed fast?
Share more context than you think you need to, including the stuff you think they might already know.
Even if your agency does their due diligence to know your business, treat them like they’re new to your industry. Having that extra context upfront will help them avoid guessing and arrive at good work faster.
Share standard assets like brand guidelines, past designs, and details about your audience and competitors, as well as less obvious assets like your old brand and your reasoning for moving away from it. Knowing where you’ve been is just as helpful as where you want to go next.
How do you give good feedback to a marketing agency's creative team?
Be as specific as possible about what isn’t working and why.
Giving feedback to a creative team is a learned skill — giving vague feedback like “This isn’t quite right” can create confusion and slow down timelines. The more specific you are, the better the next version of work will be.
If you’re worried about how direct feedback will land, lean on your agency-side contact as a filter. Their role is to sit between your feedback and the creative team, making sure what gets passed along is actionable.
What causes marketing agency projects to take longer than expected?
Projects that touch multiple teams or require third-party involvement will take more time.
Clients typically underestimate timelines for projects that require handoff between multiple departments. Third-party vendors also add lead time that’s hard to compress, especially when paperwork and setup are involved.
Just as important, clients often overlook the length of their own internal review cycles. Many organizations underestimate how long it takes to get signoff from all the right people before a project is final. By planning and discussing these factors up front, clients and agencies can avoid surprises and set realistic timelines.