Agencies reap commercial rewards of effectiveness roadmaps

 According to the report, Building an Effectiveness Culture in Agencies: the latest results and recommendations (2024), the percentage of respondents who report that their agency has an effectiveness roadmap – “a marketing effectiveness strategy or plan on a page, defining what effectiveness is, what success for any marketing-effectiveness approach looks like, and the key workstreams that should be delivered to overcome known pain points, and so helps deliver success” - has increased from 29% in the 2022 survey, to 75% today, and they are reaping the rewards.

Looking at the specific benefits, the report reveals that those agencies with an effectiveness roadmap score 19% higher for Effectiveness Culture than those who don’t have one (8.0 v 6.7), and that the improvements in the areas of Focus and People are even higher:

• Focus is 32% higher (7.9 v 6.0) because the roadmap helps create buy-in and alignment across the agency to the effectiveness approach
• People is 39% higher (8.1 v 5.8) because it helps create leadership support, which enables greater collaboration between teams, supporting training on effectiveness tools, and brings increased learning and development opportunities

In addition, it is clear from the results that those agencies that create shared roadmaps with their clients – a core recommendation of the previous report – gain further benefits. In this year’s results, 55% of agency respondents have a roadmap with their clients and score higher in all areas vs those that don’t: Effectiveness Culture is at 8.3 vs 6.7; Focus also 8.3 vs 6.5; People 8.1 vs 7.1; Data, Tools and Management 6.9% vs 6.3% and Process 8.1 vs 6.4.

Additional key report findings:

The Effectiveness Culture score for agencies has recovered from the COVID dip.

During COVID, it appeared that agencies found it harder to maintain an effectiveness culture. It is now at its highest level since then at 7.9 out of 10. The biggest challenge was from a people perspective, where there was a struggle to create a sense of understanding to the ‘why’ behind the work, and work became task-orientated. This has since seen the biggest increase, from 6.6 to 7.8.

There are four key areas respondents state have been of benefit to their marketing-effectiveness programme over the last 12 months

1. New business and growth opportunities: Agencies have onboarded new clients with an increased focus on econometric analysis and effectiveness solutions. This focus on measuring the success of marketing efforts has positioned agencies as value creators​.
2. Client-relationship strengthening: Marketing effectiveness has also led to stronger relationships between agencies and clients. By demonstrating the value of marketing investments, agencies have improved client retention and secured additional out-of-scope budgets​.
3. Internal focus and upskilling: Internally, many agencies have improved their training programmes to better equip their teams with effectiveness tools. This includes upskilling via IPA Effectiveness training and accreditation, which has become central to agency culture.
4. Budget increases and extended investments: Agencies have seen clients extend their budgets after proving the success of previous campaigns through marketing-effectiveness measurement.

Commenting on the findings:

Says Laurence Green, Director of Effectiveness, IPA:

"These results reveal the comprehensive commercial benefits of embedding an effectiveness roadmap into businesses. Importantly, the report is also able to pinpoint the areas in which agencies can improve their offerings – namely in the quality of briefs and the briefing process, and presses the need for agencies to stop looking at effectiveness retrospectively and instead to see how they can use experimentation and test-and-learn programmes to unlock innovation going forward. For those looking to raise their effectiveness and overall agency success – and indeed for those applying for official IPA Effectiveness Accreditation, this report is your manual."

Says Nick Milne, Report Author, Founder and Chief Effectiveness Officer of Go Ignite:

"It is brilliant to see how agencies are reaping the benefit of the work done over the last few years to build a culture of effectiveness, and that the impact is commercially positive for themselves and for their clients. We are seeing some significant challenges ahead where it is becoming easier for marketers to focus on what is under their control rather than what is under their influence which, if not addressed, could negatively impact ways of working. Agencies can take a position of leadership and really drive the effectiveness agenda with their clients and the findings in this report will help prioritise where to focus."