My Holiday Wish List

Sapient recently published a survey showing what Marketers wanted from their agencies over the next 12 months, based on a survey of 200 marketers. The 10 findings (well worth the read) were summarized in that “agencies don’t get social media or digital marketing”. To balance out the conversation from a agency-POV, I’ve been waiting for a month now for a call from Sapient asking what an agency wanted from their clients ;). I’ll be proactive with some wishful wants of the perfect client:

1. Marketing & IT harmony – IT departments that can see their changes effect the marketing and marketing that realizes IT’s changes can effect incoming traffic and sales

2. Sees “Search” as more than just 70-character paid text ads

3. Realizes that improving the website itself is a crucial lever in improving media ROI & conversion rates

4. Gives us access to web analytics and other campaign data for benchmarking and guidance (and that data being somewhat accurate is helpful)

5. Takes the opinions out of the decision making process, replaces with data driven decisions

6. Realizes online ROI goals aren’t created from X% increases over current performance, but from a financial analysis of business data which should include offline and cross-media impact

7. Provides a single, dedicated Search resource

8. Lets agencies direct engine-level budgets based on KPI performance. As much as we like to plan, some flexibility is needed as we can’t plan for search volume or performance for late 2009, perfectly.

9. Encourages us to educate them in Search and emerging media. And reciprocates by educating us on their business: profit margins, annual initiatives, marketing plans. We are in this together.

10. Open to new ideas and an unlimited budget to support them ;)

We can all make wish lists - ‘tis almost the season for giving. Sure, some items are already happening, and some are just wishful thinking, but hopefully you got a few laughs or new ideas from my holiday client wish list. Sapient: only 199 more agency folks to survey!