The Tools That Will Keep Your Digital Agencies on Track
Digital agencies are always looking for ways to streamline and enhance projects. As the online world grows increasingly complicated, the right tools and software ensure that agencies can:
- Manage campaigns
- Collaborate with customers and teams
- Automate client management
Implementing the right resources ensures that agencies give teams everything they need to deliver exceptional value and unbeatable results for their clients as well as streamline their own work schedules.
As more options emerge within the marketplace it can be difficult to decide which tools are the most valuable for you. Let’s look at some of the tools designed to keep your business running smoothly, from project management to customer relationships.
1. CRM and Agency Management Tools
As any digital agency, today will know, customer relationship management is often the key to success. As your business continues to grow, you’ll need a powerful system that allows you to easily manage data relating to your former, current, and potential clients. This means that you need a CRM system which:
- Allows you to store and maintain accurate information
- Provides simple communication solutions between brands and clients
- Ensures everyone in the agency can view updated client information.
By adding agency management tools to the mix, alongside their CRM strategy, today’s companies can ensure that they have a complete solution that’s not only easy to use but flexible too.
There are many useful tools to improve both customer relationships and agency management. Customizable data collection forms help to streamline communication between customers and agencies. Preview tools can decrease the amount of reworking a site requires. A system that allows you to change the amount of access each client has to edit their website depending on their experience, helps keep sites stable while still be being able to accommodate the more hands-on clients. Asset sharing tools allow team members to tweak templates, widgets, and other things created by their agency instead of spending extra time starting from scratch.
Duda is an all-in-one platform that supports all of these management features. Their extensive team collaboration and client management tools also include the ability to automate sending analytics reports, generate SSL certifications, and create groups within your agency, and on your clients’ side, with customized access to projects and tools. It has a white-labeled environment that allows you to create a proprietary system for your brand using your logos and aesthetics, without having to design it all yourself or even letting your customer know that Duda is your secret sauce.
2. Project Management Options
Every agency needs a reliable way to manage client projects. Fortunately, there are a number of simple and effective project management tools out there that can significantly improve your ability to complete essential work quickly.
Tools like Basecamp, Asana, and Trello make it easier to ensure better internal and external collaborations within a team. With the right project management tools, today’s agencies can ensure that each member within their team has access to the right support through granular-level permissions and administration settings.
Many tools also offer sections within the user dashboard that ensures leaders can distribute the right tasks to essential experts within their team. If the system has white-label features, you can also give your clients access to back-end tools, which enable safe and seamless communication between agency managers and customers.
3. Client Reporting
Agencies need to be able to show their clients that they’re making a difference in their online presence. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools out there that allow companies to create visual graphs and tables that demonstrate their value in an easy-to-absorb way.
For instance, Google Analytics and Google Data Studio help today’s agencies pull together reports from across the web and set up highly-customizable dashboards for their clients – giving them a complete overview of how their website is doing online.
4. Value-Added Service Solutions
Finally, today’s agencies exist in a highly competitive marketplace. They need a way to deliver as much value to their customers as possible if they want to stand out from the crowd. This might mean building widgets for customers as well as websites and portfolios, or it may even mean using special APIs so they can sell their own site-building platforms to third-parties.
The key to success for digital agencies is finding out what their customers need and providing it in a unique and empowering way. While any digital agency might be able to offer website design and client reporting solutions, the few that can take their services to the next level will often get the best return on their investment.
Finding the Right Tools for Your Digital Agency
There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for the perfect digital toolset. Some will want to add single-purpose tools as they become necessary. Others will prefer to use a system with multiple tools included that allows for better integration and a smaller learning curve. However, the most important thing that agencies must keep in mind is that their resources should help them to create an unforgettable experience for their audience. Whether it’s a system that allows you to automate communications with clients or a tool that makes assigning tasks simple, it’s up to you to find the service that truly empowers your team.