What is marketing agency strategy?
Marketing agency strategy is an agency's strategy for itself. It answers the questions every agency faces: what do we do, for whom, what makes us different, how do we find clients, how do we price, how big do we want to be, and what do we say no to? It covers positioning (the lane the agency owns), services (what it sells and what it partners for), clients (the industries and sizes it targets) and the operating model that makes all of that profitable.
It is distinct from the marketing strategy an agency writes for a client, though the same tools apply. An agency needs an audience, a proposition and a reason to believe, like any other brand.
Why it matters
Why marketing agency strategy matters
The agency market is crowded, and most agencies describe themselves in the same few words. Without a clear strategy, an agency competes on price and availability, takes whatever comes in and ends up with a client list that does not add up to a reputation. With one, it becomes the obvious choice for a certain kind of problem, which is the most efficient form of business development there is.
Strategy also decides the culture. The clients an agency chases decide the work its people make, and the work decides who wants to work there.
In practice
How marketing agency strategy works in practice
- 01
It starts with an honest look at where the agency already wins: which clients stayed longest, which work was best, which projects were most profitable and which the team was proudest of. The overlap usually points to the lane. From there, leadership defines the positioning, the services that support it, the industries to target and the ones to walk away from.
- 02
Then the strategy has to show up in everything: the website, the case studies chosen, the pitches entered, the people hired and the partnerships formed. It is revisited once a year, because markets shift, and an agency that defined itself around one platform or one format can find its lane disappearing underneath it.
At RIOT
Marketing agency strategy at RIOT
RIOT is an independent creative agency and production studio, not part of a holding company, and that independence is a large part of the strategy. Strategy, creative and production sit together, led by a founder and creative director who is still in the pitch, on set and in the edit. Our lanes are clear: fashion, luxury, sport and beauty brands that care how their work looks and feels, from more than a decade with Coach to Tiffany & Co. and the Washington Commanders. Alongside the client work we build our own products, from Krova, our production software, to AltSounds, our music video channel.
Watch out
What people get wrong about marketing agency strategy
Defining the agency by its services instead of its point of view. "We do branding, film and social" describes half the agencies in New York. The second mistake is being afraid to narrow: agencies fear that a clear lane will cost them work, when it usually brings more of the right kind. The third is writing a strategy and then taking every brief that arrives anyway.
