Something has changed in marketing departments everywhere. For 7 out of 10 CEOs, the #1 goal of marketing is generating revenue. And as a result, marketers are increasingly focusing on ways to employ reliable revenue attribution to their campaigns and are adopting metrics that are tied directly to revenue-related business goals. Marketing departments once seen as cost centers are now expected to be profit centers and CMOs are being tasked to lead disruptive growth within the company.

What hasn’t changed much, however, is that agency partners are still focusing on KPIs that are not necessarily impacting business goals such as likes, followers, reach and impressions. These are very passive metrics. However, CMOs and marketing managers are looking at hard metrics such as qualified leads, conversions and return on advertising spend (ROAS).

A new breed of agency has developed to fill the need for conversion-focused digital and traditional marketing. Marketing firms like Conversion Alliance combine sophisticated data analytics, advanced marketing technology and multichannel strategic thinking — all working together to convert your prospects into customers. So what can marketers look for in agency partners?

Are they data-centric in their approach?

Many marketing firms openly admit that they don’t use data to drive important marketing decisions. At best, that’s lazy and at worst, it’s downright irresponsible.

Marketing firms that meet and exceed client KPIs have a passion for data that runs throughout the entire organization. Those companies are filled with strategists, analysts, writers and designers – but overall, are simply data geeks. They have first-hand  experience with strategies built around data-driven insights consistently outperforming campaigns based on hunches, instinct and a “we’ve always done it that way” attitude. They analyze in-depth analytic services including: customer and lookalike modeling; online and offline attribution; analytics and data systems integration; data visualization and on-demand results dashboards.

Do they approach all strategies in a multi-channel fashion?

One of the top concerns of marketing managers today is the lack of strategic thinking coming from their agency partners. In fact, 33% of agencies confess that strategic thinking is not in their wheelhouse.

You will likely notice that firms suffer from what we can call “tactical tunnel vision”. It’s a particular focus, almost to a fault, on a very specialized tactic, which makes it impossible to for these agencies to devise the kind of multichannel strategies required to effectively target consumers through today’s nonlinear purchase funnel.

Do they embrace marketing technology?

Being held increasingly accountable for revenue generation means that marketers can’t afford to get bogged down in the mechanics of executing multichannel marketing campaigns. Marketing technology designed to collect and manage data, push out campaigns and automate mundane marketing functions enable CMOs to focus on performance rather than process.

Still, one in four CMOs struggle to find the right technology solutions for their marketing needs. Having an agency partner that understands that one-size-fits-all solutions simply don’t work in today’s hyper-automated marketing environment. Streamlining, automating and measuring a wide variety of marketing tasks and metrics is key in selecting the right agency partner.