15 Ways Agencies Can Thrive In The Digital Transformation Era

Before the written word, “marketing” of goods and services was done exclusively via images, signage and word-of-mouth. Along with the printing press came new methods of reaching potential buyers, and the same kind of revolution occurred later with the rise of radio and again with television. As the channels marketers use to connect with prospective consumers continue to expand and evolve over time, like many other aspects of our lives, a great deal of marketing happens in the digital domain today.

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With marketing becoming more data-driven, real-time and automated, agencies have found themselves on the front lines of digital transformation. To consistently enable clients to reach their strategic goals, agencies have to constantly evolve their own capabilities. Below, 15 members of Forbes Agency Council share what their agencies are doing to keep up with the demands of DT and leverage new must-have competencies across enterprises and industries to drive better returns on their clients’ investments.

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1. Invest In Advanced Analytics

Recognizing the critical role of data in driving marketing decisions and campaign optimizations, we have heavily invested in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence technologies—not just recently, but for many years. These tools enable the team to process and analyze vast amounts of data in real time, uncovering actionable insights that inform more effective and targeted marketing strategies. – Joschka Weltgen, Compado

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2. Integrate Media Channels

Our platform undergoes continuous transformations to address the demands of data-driven, real-time, automated marketing. This includes deeper integrations with media channels, enhanced workflow and trigger-based automation, real-time engagement and personalization, and continuously finding new ways to engage and service our customers. – Tanuj Joshi, Eulerity

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3. Narrow Your Services And Focus

We have narrowed our services and focus. Through niching down, we have narrowed the amount of subject matter that we have to be experts in and, in turn, have become a resource and partner for others who don’t specialize in our services. By picking just two things and going deep in them, we’re not fighting broadly to be everything to everyone. We’re boldly not a “full-service” or “integrated” anything agency. – Corey Morris, Voltage

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4. Leverage Tech Tools For Reporting

Our agency leverages technology tools to deliver data-driven results that show the value of public relations. To report on ROI, we use tools such as Google Analytics to prove the business impact of PR—such as direct clicks to our clients’ websites from media placements we secure—and BuzzSumo to show how much an earned media placement is resonating with our target audience through social media engagements. – Heather Kelly, Next PR

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5. Invest In First-Party Data Sources

We have invested heavily in first-party data sources to effectively perform campaign optimizations with real-time accuracy. Focusing on this type of data also gives us the ability to segment audience types far more effectively for personalized messaging, creatives, nurturing and so on. It’s not just access to better data that moves the needle; it’s the actions being taken from that data. – Bernard May, National Positions

6. Form Small Teams To Explore Emerging Tech

For over a decade, our agency has embedded digital at its core. We form internal “tiger teams”—small groups of cross-functional experts—to explore emerging technologies, influencing client impact and agency operations. With a growth mindset, we focus on meaningful technology adoption to create value, balancing data research with leadership insight and providing insight for our clients. – Tom Hileman, Global Prairie

7. Stay Agile

We have a simple approach: Stay agile. Adapt new tools, test innovations and learn new methods to stay efficient. We are always open to growing our potential. The worst thing to do is become obsolete by remaining stagnant and unwilling to learn new tricks. Like the applications we are using, we self-update ourselves constantly to stay current with the digital landscape. That’s our model. – Monica Alvarez-Mitchell, Pulse Creative, LLC

8. Use Data To Keep Clients Informed

Data has always been a critical component of our marketing strategy. We have begun bringing the data to our clients as a way to keep them informed and either reassure them that what we’re doing is working or provide reasons to shift strategies. Data provides real, tangible results. – Trey Robinson, Story Amplify

9. Use AI To Facilitate Influencer Marketing

We enhanced our internal AI tool to improve the search for influencers by expanding our database of influencers. Also, we improved fraud detection and developed additional metrics for influencer analytics, including the quality of their posts. This allows us to keep pace with data-driven marketing, making the influencer marketing industry more technologically advanced. – Michael Kuzminov, HypeFactory

10. Consider Clients’ Digital KPIs Holistically

Our market offer today is a deep dive into clients’ business processes to reveal areas to improve and automate, identifying the data points that signal success. Holistic consideration of the most informative digital key performance indicators makes our clients’ digital presence actionable and brings business results. Marketing funnel monitoring helps prove the benefits of our chosen directions. – Oksana Matviichuk, OM Strategic Forecasting

11. Automate Media Buying

Our agency has used automation to increase the quality of our work. The technological advances in media buying have removed a lot of mundane tasks that consumed time, so our team can now focus more heavily on customer service, strategic direction and thought leadership. This has transformed our approach to account management, campaign optimization and planning. – Geoff Crain, Kingstar Media

12. Develop Custom GPTs For Each Client

We’ve developed custom generative pre-trained transformers tailored to each client (using GPT Builder in ChatGPT plus), enabling the integration of their marketing analytics data for in-depth analysis. This allows our marketing team to leverage these custom GPTs as personal assistants, enhancing their efficiency and enabling our team to focus on higher-level strategic tasks. – Vaibhav Kakkar, Digital Web Solutions

13. Adopt The Latest Technologies

Transformation is fundamental to all our endeavors, and we cannot afford to lag in adopting technology. Thus, we are integrating the latest technologies (such as AI) into our processes, utilizing data to enhance our clients’ projects, measuring and learning, adopting Agile methodologies in our approaches, and most importantly, transforming ourselves to lead by example. – Nataliya Andreychuk, Viseven

14. Automate ‘The Boring Stuff’

Our focus is on using AI and automation to automate “the boring stuff” so our team can focus on providing human insights to our clients and solving complex and challenging problems. What once required a full-day manual task is now in a specialist’s hands near-instantaneously. This creates more capacity to spend time on brainwork that truly moves the needle for clients. – Brock Murray, seoplus+

15. Commit To Continuous Learning

Our agency has transformed by leveraging real-time insights to optimize campaigns and has streamlined processes through automation, enabling us to deliver targeted solutions promptly. Our commitment to agility and continuous learning ensures we remain at the forefront of the dynamic digital space. – Ajay Prasad, GMR Web Team

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