How to Manage an Ad Agency

Your role as the manager of an ad agency requires a tenuous balance between flexibility and rigidity. You need to accommodate the diverse personalities in your creative staff while sticking to deadlines set by your clients. There are a number of tools that you can use to manage an ad agency effectively.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Provide Oversight for an Ad Agency

1. Write out a mission statement with the rest of your staff to guide your ad agency into the future. You need to know the scope of your agency's services before you begin to manage staff members and advertise to potential clients.
2. Establish limitations you wish to place on specific industries and clients. The agency that you manage may provide a specific type of marketing campaign, such as street teams and guerrilla marketing. You may also preclude certain clients based on an ongoing contract with a competitor.
3. Audit every department within your ad agency to keep a sharp focus on client needs. You can implement quarterly employee evaluations, surprise inspections and reviews of job descriptions to re-evaluate the structure of your agency.
4. Partner with local freelancers and production studios to decrease your annual design budget. You can develop ongoing relationships with freelance designers and writers for smaller projects to free up your creative team. Production studios can help lower your equipment and printing costs for deliverables.
5. Cultivate talented advertising professionals in your agency with an active internship program. You can assign interns to an experienced advertising professional to ease their workload while educating potential employees on company policy. You need to make contacts early with department heads at a local university to get the attention of eager students.
6. Develop an in-house training program for your entire staff to increase adherence to your policies. You should gauge the interest of veteran advertising professionals in teaching up-and-coming sales staff, copywriters and designers before proceeding.
7. Update your agency's website with the completion of each project to draw the attention of bigger clients. Many companies look for prolific agencies without regard to their size because these agencies get work done on time and on budget.
8. Sponsor community events with local clients to get low-cost advertising for your ad agency. You should focus your sponsorship on companies with a good public reputation and loyal customers to gain the best benefit for your efforts.

Tips & Warnings

• Break up tasks and personnel within your ad agency into compartments for easier management. You should utilize online messaging, regular check-ins and a specific chain of quality assurance to keep everyone on track.