Whether you’re an agency or an in-house brand marketer, the following scenario should sound very familiar.
You have multiple campaigns running across a variety of platforms. Now you’ve been tasked to add one more. Unfortunately, you just don’t have the bandwidth to handle it.
Enter the help of a third-party partner.
Finding an appropriate partner, however, can be just as arduous as running the campaigns you already have on your plate. If you’re a marketer that feels this way, don’t worry because you’re not alone. Infectious Media surveyed 200 marketers worldwide and found that close to 60 percent of respondents agreed that technology selection is a challenging process.
Despite today’s crowded marketplace, it’s possible to find the right ad tech partner, so long as you have a clear vision of your goals and objectives.
It’s also much easier to discover a quality partner if you go into your search with a sense of curiosity. With that said, outlined below are three important questions marketers should ask in their search for prospective vendors.
Question 1: What processes do you have in place to ensure smooth communication between you and your partners?
The difference between a successful and unsuccessful campaign can hinge upon the communication of everyone involved. Therefore, it can only help to find out how they’ve communicated with partners in the past.
Ask who they’ve worked with before. From there, see if you can reach out to their previous partners for feedback. Their insights can provide clues to whether that particular vendor is right for you.
Question 2: What’s your experience working with businesses in my industry?
If they’ve worked with companies similar to yours, chances are they’ll likely have solutions to the problems you might be facing. With previous experience on comparable projects, they should have proven strategies that can put you in a better position to succeed.
In the long run, it will be beneficial to partner with an ad tech provider that already has an idea of what it takes to accomplish your goals thanks to past success.
Question 3: How can we measure progress?
This might be the most critical and important question of all. Evaluating their response may lead you to find out that you’re both on the same page or that they value pieces of data that’s of little importance for you.
But to get the right answer, it’s necessary to have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve from a potential partnership. Therefore, determine your goals and figure out what you want to achieve from the ad tech vendor you’re talking to before asking this question.
Choosing an ad tech partner isn’t easy. But asking the right questions during your search can lighten the load. The three questions above are important, but also compile a list of your own questions that may be important to you. Asking better questions can only lead you to find better answers.