Consulting vs. Agency: How Agencies Can Come Out on Top

The power of agencies has always been in their creativity.

With compelling storytelling, agencies run meaningful campaigns that move consumers and build their client’s business.

In recent years, many big players in the consulting world have added media and creative units to their offerings, winning pitches and running campaigns that agencies traditionally won.

So how can you maintain your position with clients?

Enter analytics for agencies. Keep reading to find out the risks agencies face now and three tips to hold onto your clients and win more using the right data.

Agency vs. consultancy

Things have changed dramatically in the advertising sector since the heyday of the full-service agency, when brands could rely on one outfit to deliver both media and creative.

Forbes explains how the unbundling of these services ultimately led to today’s structure, with brands investing in both an agency, for the marketing strategy, and consulting services, for the business strategy. The agency works primarily to execute the vision of the CMO, while brands rely on consultants to identify issues in their wider strategy and to find solutions, solving problems that are top-of-mind for most executives.

Consultants are conquering creative

Now digital marketing is king, and with that changes in media planning, privacy laws, and popular marketing channels have made agencies vulnerable. They’ve also presented an opportunity for consulting firms to buy up media agencies and expand their offering.

Budget that was once allocated to advertising agencies now funnels through digital, leaving agencies with the tricky matter of how to tackle the ever-changing needs of their current and prospective clients in order to stay competitive.

Big names in consulting like Deloitte and Accenture have taken to acquiring digital media agencies in order to provide business owners with the marketing and communications services they need, effectively winning clients that agencies previously landed.

So what’s the best way to compete with consulting firms that encroach on agency business?

3 ways agencies can win back business

By adopting their practices, agencies can beat consulting firms at their own game:

1. Go beyond marketing and media

Creativity and communication are an agency’s calling card, and consulting firms need to acquire media agencies in order to compete for the same clients. In an effort to re-level the playing field and stay competitive, agencies must follow suit and expand their offering.

Lately, more creative agencies are taking the plunge toward providing consulting and strategy services in order to offer the same problem-solving skills that consulting firms do. By taking on consulting projects, agencies are able to address clients’ problems that go behind their marketing strategy and meet business goals.

As an agency, it’s important to play to your strengths, harness your creativity, and find imaginative ways to pivot toward a strategy that goes beyond the marketing team and the concerns of the CMO. By taking on a strategist role as well, you can make a real difference in meeting your client’s business goals.

In order to do this, agencies need an integrated perspective of their client’s business performance.

2. Gauge the competitive landscape

Once you’ve shifted your focus, it’s essential to properly measure your client’s standing within their industry. To serve consulting clients, you need to have a holistic view of the market and their business performance to see how they stack up and where untapped opportunities might exist.

Rewire Magazine explains how Spanish agency Good Rebels hosted a panel on the future relationship of agencies and consulting firms:

“Among the main touchpoints was the need for marketing agencies to get more involved with the business aspect and not rely just on their creative strengths…One key aspect in this is using data to measure the impact of the strategies implemented.”

With a data-driven approach, Good Rebels is able to take on the role of a consulting agency, building a measurable business strategy that shows their clients the direct impact of their work.

Similarweb company research and industry analysis tools provide a full view of how your client is performing compared to the market standard and their competitors.

By overseeing your client’s digital performance, you can observe important traffic and engagement metrics like visit duration, bounce rate, click-through rate, and the performance of various marketing channels. These key insights will help you understand how well your client’s website or app performs and where adjustments need to be made.

By benchmarking these metrics against the competition, you’ll be able to effectively assess the success of your client’s current marketing strategy and alter accordingly going forward.

Similarweb tools enable you to monitor the performance of different publishers and ad networks, as well as track keyword and referral opportunities. As these insights reveal opportunities for growth, you can put your knowledge into action and build a strategy for your client that’s both well-informed and actionable.

Whether you’re trying to win the business of a startup or a major brand, keep in mind that the number one concern of most CEOs is growth. By focusing on the growth of a business as a whole, you can move beyond the traditional role of an agency and into consulting territory, and you can prove the added value you’ve brought to your client.

3. Prove your value

Good consultants clearly communicate their value to client stakeholders. Whether you’re working with a small business or an enterprise, the most important thing is that you show results.

This is an area where consultants traditionally have the upper hand. Working with a consultant gives clients a level of transparency that proves the value of their work.

Agencies looking to take on consulting business need to adopt the practice of providing client reporting and regular follow-ups that summarize their successes in a clear way.

If agencies want to offer consulting services, it’s essential that they adapt in order to provide clients with concrete results. This means adopting new skill sets that weren’t previously necessary and focusing on how their expertise can improve the user experience and solve business problems.

Crafting a data-driven strategy allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your efforts. You can observe changes in traffic and engagement that are linked to marketing efforts and changes on the strategic level, and make adjustments based on what you learn.

With accurate real-time digital data, agencies can show clients the direct impact of their work and return on their investment. This will, in turn, attract new clients and keep creative and digital agencies competitive.

Looking for more tools to complement your marketing efforts? See our list of must-use agency tools.

Level up your client offering

Successful consulting is all about data. In order to fill a consulting firm’s shoes, you need the right analytics tool.

That’s where Similarweb comes in. Our proprietary data and insights give your agency the power to benchmark client performance against the competitive landscape and create an informed, measurable strategy that’s custom-made for their business.

Armed with powerful insights from Similarweb, creative agencies can provide their clients with high-level strategic analysis that highlights results.

by Chloe Dougherty

Email Marketing Specialist

Chloe specializes in email and content marketing. She enjoys podcasts, reading short stories, and baking, and lives in Tel Aviv with her cat.