Whether your target audience is nationwide or just in Joplin, MO, advertising is always stronger when you have a marketing partner. These are experts who are up to date on the latest trends, technologies, and best practices, and who understand how to identify and communicate with not just audiences in general but the best audience for your business. They should be invested in the success of your business as much as you are — that’s what makes them a partner.

However, it’s critical to remember that partnerships require communication. In today’s post, we’ll look at four areas that need to be communicated to your marketing partner, or you’ll be undermining your own advertising strategy.

Goals

Businesses have a lot of moving parts, but you can’t afford to operate them siloed away from each other. Marketing especially can have huge impacts on other areas of your business, whether it’s sales, PR, or growth into new markets. Sharing your business and sales goals gives your marketing partner the insight they need to choose exactly the right medium and help you craft the best message possible, as well as examine the correct KPIs to gauge whether or not a campaign is working.

For instance, if your marketing partner knows that your company is trying to increase average ticket sales, they can work with you to highlight your higher price point items. If your marketing partner knows your end game, they can work with you on creative solutions that could include bundling products together in order to increase average sales.

Expectations

Marketing partners are very good at what they do, but they aren’t psychic. They need to know what it is you want out of your business’ relationship with them as well as what you expect them to achieve for you. For one thing, this is critical to ensure you’re choosing the best marketing partner possible; if a partner knows that what you expect is something they can’t deliver, they can and should tell you that they’re not the right fit.

More importantly, it helps maintain accountability and ensures everyone is on the same page for each project and campaign. This provides realistic perspective on how a campaign should progress, and when something isn’t matching expectations, your partner should be able to course correct on their own. You can focus on your business and trust your partner to do their job.

Promotions and Events

We hope that it’s obvious that you ought to share your schedule of promotions, special offers, and events with your marketing partner. After all, your partner will be responsible for ensuring your audience knows about them. But it’s important to understand that you need to tell your partner about these things as soon as possible, which is to say, as far in advance as possible. Marketing takes time to work, and often, the best campaigns operate with several stages to help raise awareness before inspiring action. Your marketing partner can’t work effectively if they don’t find out about important opportunities like these until the proverbial last minute.

Sales

One of the most important aspects of marketing is ROI, and one of the biggest gauges for ROI is sales. Event attendance, lead generation, CTR, and just about any other KPI won’t matter if the end result isn’t improving sales. While your marketing partner will be able to measure other KPIs, they’ll need you to let them know what sales look like, or related information, like the lifetime value of the customers you have and the customers you want to have. This is how both of you will be able to tell what is or is not working.

Remember, your marketing partner should be just that — a partner. Open communication will be key to having the best relationship with them, as well as enabling them to help you meet your business goals, rise to your expectations, craft the best promotions and events, and ultimately, lift what matters most — sales.