The role of any good marketing agency is to build cohesive and effective brands, bring organizations closer to their customers and audience, and help drive sales through awareness. While many agencies promise to do this, your business can prove its worth and stand out in a vast field of competitors by possessing the ten traits outlined below. After all, organizations have a lot of marketing agencies to choose from when it comes to finding a company to represent and build their brand. What will make your business stand out from the crowd?

1. Great Staff

A marketing agency’s success is dependent on the skills and success of its staff. Your staff should work well together, understand each other’s individual roles, and be able to rely on one another to fulfill those roles. To meet all of a client’s needs, your staff should be varied in their talents and abilities. A successful marketing agency needs to have staff members who are experts in the fields of design, copywriting, data analytics, sales, and more.

2. Good Communication

You cannot run a successful marketing campaign without good communication. This pertains to good communication within your team, and also communication with your clients. One important aspect of developing good communication is ensuring that you have a present and personal connection with your team and clients. While so much communication is done digitally, it is important that those digital avenues are building upon established relationships, rather than defining them.

3. Creativity

Creativity is what ultimately will make your agency stand out. You need a team of people who think outside the box and push the boundaries. A fresh and original idea will likely win a client over more than any other marketing skill. Does your team keep a lookout for the latest trends and react to those initiatives, or does it set the trends? If you find your team is constantly playing catch-up, it may need some fresh blood.

4. Ability to Execute

A great idea will bring a client in the door, but long-term success will never happen if you fail to execute those ideas. A successful marketing agency has tried-and-true processes in place that allow it to deliver on promises to clients – and to do so within the promised deadline. Clients need to know that they can count on you to deliver results. Is your team all bark and no bite? If so, investing in producers should be a priority.

5. Problem-Solving Skills

No marketing campaign is going to go off without a hitch. It is not the ability to avoid problems that is important to a successful agency, but rather the ability to deal with problems as they develop. It is important to be able to recognize and address problems quickly so that you stay on track with promised deadlines.

6. Strong Online Presence

If you are going to show that you can market another business or product, you need to be able to market yourself. A successful marketing agency will have a strong online presence. You should consistently rank high on search engines and should make a big mark on social media. Any time that you are putting out material about your agency, it should be work that you would be proud to present to your clients.

7. Mastery of Data

The use of big data is a must for marketing agencies. You need to be able to use data management to gain a broader understanding of your client’s audience and customers. This will, of course, include parsing through Google Analytics to find areas in need of improvement, but it will also involve competitor and industry research. What does your client do, and how does this approach differ from its competitors? They’re going to ask you, so you better make sure you have the answer.

8. Global Branding

To be greatly successful, you need to reach a global audience. This does not mean that you need to have physical locations around the world, but you should be able to connect digitally to a worldwide audience. Knowing how customers from around the globe connect with your brand and understanding their digital behaviors, will help you expand your reach and provide clients with a broader customer base.

9. Digital Fluency

A successful marketing agency will meet the various marketing needs of a client, ranging from print to television to social media. Of course, all of these things have a digital connection, so digital fluency is a necessity. You should have a mastery of the latest technology while also anticipating and responding to technological changes as they approach. If your team finds itself scrambling every time that Google releases an update to its search algorithm, you may want to take some time to evaluate why you’re having to constantly change your approach – rather than anticipating what’s coming next.

10. Good Value and Transparent Billing

The bottom line in business almost always comes down to money, so an important trait of a successful marketing agency is value and transparent billing practices. Be upfront about your charges and make the billing process simple so that clients understand exactly what they are getting and for what price. While you don’t have to be the cheapest agency around, you need to offer services at prices that are comparable to other marketing agencies, unless you can demonstrate a clear reason for any pricing discrepancies.

That’s our top ten list of traits exhibited by successful marketing agencies. What’s on your list? Share them in the comments below.