5 C’s Every Agency Should Know About Their Clients

A multitude of frameworks for analysing customers, clients, marketing plans, etc. exist in both academic and professional literature. I have personally adapted a combination of these frameworks useful to holistically understand each of our clients at Adrenalin.

This 5Cs framework gives me a ground level view of where, how, and why a brand plays in their industry. The concept primarily focuses on helping me assess their current state when discussing their future growth plans. So here goes:

Client Organisation & Culture

I’ve banged on about this before: every organisation is different, and no single strategy can be equally and successfully executed by two different organisations. Unless of course both firms have the same structure, organisational capabilities, and culture (resources, behaviours, incentives, processes, etc.) to execute the strategic vision – which is almost impossible to find. Here I tend to ask (or research):

• How is the organisation structure setup? (Hierarchy, functional, matrix, holocracy, etc.)

• What are the key business goals and objectives, and how do these align to the specific client’s department that I speaking to?

• What resources & capabilities do they currently have and what are they building?

• Who are the key decision makers?

• What are their core services and products that makes them relevant in the market?

Note: annual reports of publicly listed companies are a great way to understand goals, KPIs, and growth strategies.

Customer Needs & Behaviours

Brands exists to create value for customers. This value is best delivered when a firm has a good understanding of their customer needs, expectations and behaviours. The questions to think about when speaking to the client are:

• Tell me about your typical qualified customer profile

• How do they find out about your brand and what makes them select you over your competitors?

• How do you engage them – from the initial touchpoint and ongoing thereafter?

• How do you measure customer satisfaction and what is your customer retention rate?

• Are there other customer types that you are missing out on or want to capture?

Commercials

Without fully understanding how a brand makes and spends money, agencies will find it very difficult to understand the value their services or products create for the brand (and ultimately the end user). Here, I focus on:

• Annual reports are great to understand market share, revenue, COGS, expenses, etc.

• Ability to understand how our agency can create grow or new revenue streams – or improving their EBITA by reducing COGS / expenses

• Dive into KPIs that are financially focused

I find this component of the framework valuable when discussing value-based pricing or being able to justify the ROI on a digital project.

Challenges & Climate

No business exists without challenges or external factors that can influence their ability to succeed. Challenges generally stem from a shortfall between where the organisation is now and where their strategic vision asks them to be. Examples could include lack of internal resources and capabilities, market conditions, competitor reactions (more on this later), shifts in customer behaviour, etc.

Industry reports and research are also a great way to complete a PESTLE analysis. PESTLE is a solid framework that identifies 7 (Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal, and Environmental) factors that can externally influence the firm’s day to day operations and long-term strategic vision. Large organisations generally fail to cascade such information down to decision makers – and often strategic decisions are made without lower-level departments fully understanding the motives. Senior executives, however, are great at identifying, capturing and planning around these external factors and are definitely worth speaking to when clarify your assumptions.

Competitor Landscape

Finally, all great brands have competitors – some that have largely existed for a while, and others that are new entrants with innovative solutions. These disruptive innovators tend to target a small percentage of a large organisation’s core products and services to slowly attract one customer group at a time. Take for example Adobe – a large design software maker that has in recent times been disrupted with Software-as-a-Service products such as Canva, Sketch, Figma, etc. Canva focused on luring designers away from Adobe’s expensive and sophisticated products such as Photoshop with its simple to use interface, cloud-based product (removing the need for high-end hardware to run Photoshop), with a very attractive price point (in fact, could be used for free!). Adobe responded with Adobe Spark but is yet to convince designers to return.
Focus on asking:

• Who are you established and up and coming competitors?

• What do they do well that you currently don’t?

• What impact does this have to the firm’s market share, customers, revenue, etc.?

• What R&D projects and big bets are they investing in to defend their space?

• Similar to the above, what other projects are they investing in to get ahead in the market?

Simon Sinek said: “a worthy rival inspires us to take an attitude of improvement”. Firms that always react to competitors will rarely take the top position in the market. Therefore, does your client look to react to their competitors’ every move, or do they focus on improving themselves through process, innovation, and developing new strengths?