Source: Shutterstock Blog

Here’s how to utilize digital transformation to streamline your team’s workflow and boost your agency’s content creation.

The agency-client relationship is a complicated one built on trust and collaboration. These relationships breed results that benefit everyone, and digital transformation helps to foster those relationships.

According to research from Forrester, the number of agencies reporting relationship improvements with their clients fell from from 70% to 53% between 2016-2017. Mutual trust and respect is an important factor that goes into developing the best creative content. When the two sides have limited trust in each other, they can undermine each other’s creative integrity instead.

Brands rely on agencies to help scale quality visual content production. But agencies and clients often clash in the creative process, particularly about priorities, deadlines, and branding.

This often happens when creating content for social or PPC campaigns. Disputes erupt over things like the look and feel of the content, the resources available for production, and the speed to push out the content.

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Convincing Clients Social Media Creative is Worthwhile

Image via SFIO CRACHO.

Sometimes, the biggest challenge is to convince brands that time spent creating quality content for social media is worth the effort.

The social media fact sheet from the Pew Research Centre offers a convincing timeline showing how Americans have continuously adopted social media channels into their lives dating back to the inception of several of the platforms. Since 2006 social media use has steadily risen with now 69% of the U.S. public using some type of social media.

Social media is how people connect to content and to each other. It’s also how they spend many hours of their free time. The average person spends up to 35 minutes per day on Facebook, and the platform remains the top social media channel for content consumption.

Facebook encourages brands to use their platform for advertising campaigns. The company controls the display ad market and will grow their market share to 43.7%, or $23.9 billion, by 2019.

Brands are pumping money into social media advertising. There’s a massive audience, optimal campaign tools, and click-throughs that provide new opportunities for revenue. Facebook even offers tips and best practices to help improve the quality of ad content. There’s also a CTR industry benchmark to set realistic goals for campaigns.

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Collaborating with the Right Partners

There are so many different companies working in the digital marketing world. Millions of brands seek to capture people’s attention and earn new business. Thousands of agencies offer services to help those brands achieve their goals.

But the needs of each business vary by company size, the scope of the industry, the types of content they require, and many other variables. There are new businesses with innovative solutions, and agencies reinventing their areas of expertise.

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Agencies are Creating Video Content

Image via ronstik.

In fact, agencies that once specialized in public relations are becoming digital video content production firms. Digital transformation has blurred the lines between traditional creative agencies and public relations. Now PR firms are taking the lead in video content production.

John Clinton, Head of Creative and Content at Edelman, says social and digital media have made this shift possible.

“With the emergence of social media, a key success factor is the ability to develop compelling stories that drive word-of-mouth. It has become about producing not just good content, but content that people will want to share. So despite everybody jumping to claim the market, PR firms have an edge because they have always had to earn attention, while ad agencies have bought attention.”

Videos are a vital part of current social advertising. If a brand’s goal is to produce more video content, collaborating on video production could help move the process along.

That being said, social media engine is fast. There needs to be fresh, authentic content on an ongoing basis. Producing videos, or any other type of content, needs to be done in an agile and scalable way.

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Technology Enables the Agency-Client Relationship

Image via Jacob Lund.

Consumer demand for content is at an all-time high. Brands need to pump out more and more content to keep their customers satisfied. Deadlines for deliverables are set to “as soon as possible.” Companies and their agency partners need the most agile processes to meet those tight deadlines.

That’s where technology comes into the equation. Brands and agencies are streamlining operations using technology solutions, becoming more agile and nimble as a result. These solutions improve collaboration between teams and allow all parties to share important information regarding branding, timelines, and deliverables.

Adding technology to existing workflows is all part of the digital transformation process. Teams within agencies can collaborate with one another. Those agencies can also strategize with their clients to create content that’s agile and cost-effective. Digital transformation fosters creativity and communication without sacrificing quality.

Denise Blasevick, CEO of The S3 Agency, says technology improved the content creation process for her team and their clients.

“We can all work together remotely, share concepts on our phones, and still meet the client’s deadline.”

Technology saves time on both production and review. Everyone involved in a creative project or campaign can review content in one fell swoop, which eliminates the need for rounds of approval meetings.

Technology allows agencies to focus on project execution and meeting client deadlines. The client can devote their time and energy towards strategy and measuring the performance of the content. Everyone plays a part in the creation of content.

Empowering agencies and their clients with technology is part of what we do at Shutterstock. If your agency is working with important clients and needs a more agile way to scale content creation, reach out to us to and speak to one of our specialists for insights into how our technology will help you deliver results.