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SOPs for Marketing Agency

by Mark Singletary
3 replies
The other day an ad for a set of SOPs for an offline agency popped up in my FB feed. It looks pretty good but not complete.

What do you use for SOPs for your employees/outsourcers? For example, Dr. Jones wants a new website built or a page ranked, or an email series written and hires your agency to help. Do you have a list, checklist, or manual you always use? Or just wing it?

Thanks.
Mark
#agency #marketing #offline #sops
  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Originally Posted by Mark Singletary View Post

    The other day an ad for a set of SOPs for an offline agency popped up in my FB feed. It looks pretty good but not complete.

    What do you use for SOPs for your employees/outsourcers? For example, Dr. Jones wants a new website built or a page ranked, or an email series written and hires your agency to help. Do you have a list, checklist, or manual you always use? Or just wing it?

    Thanks.
    Mark
    We use very specific SOP's that have been integrated into out backend job tracker. As an example if it a website, first step It goes out to design, which is "Structure" IE how many pages, what pages etc. From there the tracker then populates all of the tasks IE text and image requirements, the coding, and things get checked as completed.

    The same is true for Large format printing. The job goes in, size, quantity, paper choice, ink type and from there the system waits for the Image, and eventually throws it out to be printed work flow.

    SOP's create Consistency, Repeatability, and Accountability. You do enough of something and you start to see the bottle necks in the system. With Websites in particular... Text from the client is a huge major time suck. We do not allow the client to write text, UNLESS they already have it at the start. We set up a "Interview" and hammer out with questions and answers everything we need to write the text in house in a timely manor - Taking control of a what had been situation where we had no control. Same goes for images - we take the photos.

    Those 2 items alone is why my preferred market is LOCAL. Having the ability to control the controllable, and mitigating the uncontrollable.
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    • Profile picture of the author DABK
      I started by wanting them to provide their photos: authenticity, you know. And many insisted on providing text.

      I soon ran into the following problems:
      They did not have images but promised some shortly.

      Most never got around to providing them so starting the job and, therefore, my pay day got postponed. Till I'd get fed up and buy images or take my own photos. Which added costs to the time waste.

      They had images and sent me 847 if them. Of those 844 were garbage or almost and the 3 good ones were not the first 3 but we're buried deep in the pile. So, time wasted, so extra work for which I did not get paid extra.

      As regards text:
      Some just copied from other sites. If I used it, at best it was duplicate so they did not stand out, therefore they'd complain about my work.

      Some gave me text that was between utter crap to banal.

      If I had used it as provided, results would not have been good, they'd have complained about the quality of my work.

      If I reworked it, it worked but took me longer than starting from scratch.

      So, in short time I decided I get the images and the text.

      That increased profit per job, my income in general and life seemed much better.

      Insisting that I control things increased, without me intending it, the quality of my clients.

      It specifically weeded out control freaks, non-business business owners (they own a company but do not understand enough about the marketing and growing a business; they were good at appraising or selling home insurance only, for instance) and people who wanted to make changes for the sake, it seems, of making changes. Or because they could not decide?

      In any case, the more I control without thinking about it every time, the better everything is.

      T
      Originally Posted by savidge4 View Post

      We use very specific SOP's that have been integrated into out backend job tracker. As an example if it a website, first step It goes out to design, which is "Structure" IE how many pages, what pages etc. From there the tracker then populates all of the tasks IE text and image requirements, the coding, and things get checked as completed.

      The same is true for Large format printing. The job goes in, size, quantity, paper choice, ink type and from there the system waits for the Image, and eventually throws it out to be printed work flow.

      SOP's create Consistency, Repeatability, and Accountability. You do enough of something and you start to see the bottle necks in the system. With Websites in particular... Text from the client is a huge major time suck. We do not allow the client to write text, UNLESS they already have it at the start. We set up a "Interview" and hammer out with questions and answers everything we need to write the text in house in a timely manor - Taking control of a what had been situation where we had no control. Same goes for images - we take the photos.

      Those 2 items alone is why my preferred market is LOCAL. Having the ability to control the controllable, and mitigating the uncontrollable.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bram Billiet
    Lead generation: A set of procedures for identifying and nurturing leads, including the use of lead magnets, landing pages, and email campaigns.

    Campaign management: Procedures for planning, executing, and measuring the success of marketing campaigns, including the use of social media, email, and other channels.

    Content creation: Procedures for creating and publishing high-quality content, including blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, and case studies.

    Analytics and reporting: Procedures for tracking, analyzing, and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics to measure the success of marketing efforts.

    Social Media Management: Procedures for managing the company's social media accounts, such as creating and scheduling posts, engaging with followers, and analyzing the performance of social media campaigns.

    Email Marketing: Procedures for creating and implementing email marketing campaigns, including email list management, segmentation, and personalization.

    Using a digital platform like Whale can help to streamline the process of creating, implementing and managing SOPs for a marketing agency. Whale provides a central location for the documentation and communication of SOPs, as well as a way to monitor and track compliance, making it easier to ensure that tasks are completed consistently and efficiently.
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