What makes Consultations with Creative Agencies so important?!?!

The call was from a new yoga studio, where I’d been a sporadic-at-best member for a couple of weeks. I reluctantly answered and braced myself for some sales pitch. Would it be joining our membership? A nutrition programs? Or maybe a I could buy all the clothes for all the yoga I wasn’t doing?

But this wasn’t a guilt trip or a sales call. It wasn’t even a salesperson; it was one of the yoga studios coaches on the other end of the line. She had reviewed my file, saw my sad amount of attendance, and wanted to see how we could change that.

After chatting for a few minutes about my workout preferences, she recommended I try one of her classes. I went. I had fun. Then I started going all the time. It was mostly me and sometime familiar faces, but it got into it.

That one call increased their ROI and made me a more valuable customer. I was on track to give up, and walk away with a poor experience. Instead, I remained a loyal and active member until I moved away a few years later.

Usually, when you hear from your gym it’s because they want more of your money, not to have a no-strings-attached conversation about what was and wasn’t working for me. I didn’t know it then — I wasn’t in the sales world back in those days — but it was an optimization call.

The fear of getting caught up in those expensive strings plays into why a lot of folks shy away from scheduling an optimization call with their B2B content provider. But we’re string-free here at Agency Rye. Our team is invested in you and want to help. This post will show you how a non-sales-y, constructive optimization call can help you improve the ROI of your Creative Content.

I call it LFBD. L stands for Listening. This is where we listen to you and talk about what messages you want to convey. What your pie in the sky ideas are. What you would want and do if there were no constraints about budget, time, workflow, and execution. We want to not only understand you as a company and brand, but we want to understand YOU, the human behind the company and brand.

Then we (the team) go away and start on F (Formulate). This is where we come up with the crazy, beautiful, insane ideas that match up to your brand and personality. We formulate our ideas to fit you. You and only you. This isn’t a cheap factory where everyone gets a version of the same thing. What we learn about you in the Listening stage gets translated into Formulate.

After formulating is where we decide to work together or not. We’re not a high-pressure sales machine. In fact, sometimes we’ve had to do the hard thing and tell a client that WE didn’t think we were a good fit for them.

We don’t see ourselves as a vendor to your team, but an extension of it, and visa-versa.

This is what we call Build. We start putting your project together. Whether it’s video, animation, a hybrid event, or a virtual event (I’d include live events, but Covid has changed the landscape for a LONG time on them). But we get the deliverables built, on time, on budget. You play a part in build, because you see bits and pieces of it as we put it together just to make sure we’re headed in the right direction. We get your approval as we move through build/Execute and then…

(Execution is still part of build.) You tell your story, and your audience goes connects with you! They get the message. Narrative is SO important right now. You want your viewer to connect with you, your brand, and or your company in a human way. Why? Because we’ve all been sitting in our basements for the past year missing that human connection. That’s right, you want to talk to your audience, and have them feel like you are talking to them and only them.

Then after the execution is over, is the most important and most missed part of the experience. Debrief. Feedback. Summary. What went really well? What didn’t? What did your audience think or say when you sent them your survey? Again, we’re part of your team, and it matters to us. That feedback is so important to fine tuning your messaging.

So, in summary, y0u should talk to us, or whomever you like. Just make sure that that they Listen, Formulate, Build/Execute, and Debrief so that you can fine tune your message, connection and outreach for each application that you use it.

After all, perception is reality.