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Part 2
4. How do you go about an agency search?
5. What can I do to get the best advertising from my agency?
6. How do I evaluate results?
7. How do I determine a budget?

Part 3
8. Who is Fred Riger?
9. Who is Riger Advertising these days?
10. What is Riger’s definition of "Effective?"
11. What makes Riger tick?
12. How is my account team structured?
13. How do you charge for your services?
14. Where do I start?

4. How do you go about an agency search?

The first step is to decide what it is you hope to accomplish with the agency. Clearly stating your objectives in writing is a good way to bring focus to your thinking. And, it creates a "scorecard" on which you may wish to evaluate prospective agencies. For more on the important subject of the agency search, we recommend "How to Conduct an Agency Search," another in the AAAA’s "A Client’s Guide to…" series of booklets. Call us for a free copy.

5. What can I do to get the best advertising from my agency?

Here are a few of the keys to getting the most from your agency:

  - Set high standards
  - Set goals based on a broad internal understanding
    of what your marketing is designed to accomplish
  - Communicate, communicate, communicate
  - Have as few approval levels as possible
  - Recognize that when you work as a team
    with your agency, your agency will like to work with
    you—and it will show in your advertising
  - Have highly skilled people on your side of the table

See also, "Ideal Client Profile." For a copy, call Riger at
607-723-7441.

6. How do I evaluate results?
Advertising effectiveness can be measured using quantitative and/or qualitative techniques. The way you go about it depends on what you are trying to measure. Are you interested in building broad awareness for your brand? Do you need sales leads for your reps? Are you in a direct sale mode where you need to make the phone ring? Determining what you want to do will shape the way you go about evaluating effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Once you know that, it may be a matter of analyzing the number and types of leads you’re getting from your ad program. Or, you may want to "take the market’s temperature" using brand awareness surveys to evaluate your brand recognition. Anecdotal evidence is another way to measure success. Are your salespeople finding that their reputation precedes them? Do customers know your company and what product they are selling before they arrive on their doorstep? If so, your advertising is probably hitting the target.

One of an agency's roles is to help you form realistic and appropriate measures of effectiveness. Remember how the Internet brought a whole new set of metrics into play? Suddenly, companies could get instant feedback on which banner ad was driving the most people to click through to their website. While it may have appeared to be the holy grail in evaluating advertising effectiveness, it turned out not to be so. Click-through can be one way of measuring effectiveness, but it is only one way. Companies as large as P&G now look at not just click-throughs, but at branding and the power of the Web to help make or break a company’s image—the measure of a company being in the eyes of the beholder.

By helping to bring a proper perspective to your marketing strategies, means and goals, Riger will work with you to formulate truly useful measures of effectiveness and marketing success.

7. How do I determine a budget?
Historical spending is one way to set an ad budget, but not the best. Percent-of-sales is another approach, but should be guided by factors like company size and product stage (maturity). Another method—the one we usually advocate—is the "task to be accomplished" approach whereby a list of goals drives a list of strategies which in turn drives a list of tactics or tasks. Each task is then assigned a cost and the sum is a budget.

Consult your industry’s trade association for guidelines, or ask us. Through the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), we can track down the historical spending levels of businesses in just about any industry on the planet.

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