Taking Your Brilliant Ideas to Market

The process for companies to take products and ideas to market was once straightforward. You or your marketing agency, would develop a few creative graphics and taglines and launch your messaging across the traditional channels available. Then you'd measure the results, making educated guesses about what worked best, and adjust for the next campaign.

Now your messages flow through an interconnected ecosystem of content and social platforms and are available for constant engagement. Meanwhile, you have lots of places to direct your spend and there are no shortage of data tools to employ in an attempt to make sense of it all.

And with fierce competition to reach and engage buyers, it's simply no longer enough to respond to @mentions of your company online or trust that your campaigns are resonating with your target audience. You must also be actively listening to what your potential customers are contemplating, what problems they are trying to solve.

Image by Sprout Social

It's a lot to take on. And one of the biggest mistakes early stage startups make is trying to do too many things at once and not knowing if they're really moving the needle. Capable agencies should be monitoring and decoding the data for you, going beyond top-level reporting and offering you a detailed understanding of the value generated for your media spend. Best-in-class commercial tools such as Sproutsocial.com, for instance, offers in-depth analytics and a host of other tools to measure and capitalize on engagement.

Agencies are crucial partners in driving growth and navigating a complex, expanding array of technologies, channels and platforms. Ensuring that your Marketing Agency is focused on the above will help build a stronger and more effective partnership (and more lead conversions!) this year and into the future.