The value of data-driven business models for agencies

Utilizing data in the right way offers several (recurring) revenue possibilities for agencies. Many (online) marketing efforts can be measured and logged as data, but the biggest struggle agencies face is to turn this data into strategically valuable dashboards or analyses that they can use in projects or as stand alone products. 

Making valuable reports is time consuming - and the way most people do it - sensitive to errors and technologically complicated. Often it takes agencies more time than the perceived value by clients makes it worth. But when done right, agency analytics can create a lot of value for your clients and through that, generate a new revenue stream for your agency. We would like to tell you more about that in this blog.

The value of data-driven business models

Research shows that many agencies spend hours per week on reporting for a single client. And due to lack of perceived value, sometimes clients don’t even (really) look at the report. 

Almost half of all agency clients are not happy with the reporting they receive, because either the reports don’t include the right metrics or clients don’t know how to read these metrics and how to gain insights from them. But with a data-driven business model you can change that. When your clients know how to read reports the right way and know how to gain the right insights from them, that makes it super valuable and gives your clients a competitive advantage. 

A truly valuable agency analytics product combines data from different sources into strategic and otherwise overlooked insights. Being able to produce these analyses depends on a combination of subject-matter knowledge and the ability to build stable and complex data pipelines. Most agencies definitely possess the first, but lack the latter.

If agencies are able to procure data engineering capacity, either through human resources, or technological solutions, this enables them to produce high quality analyses and reporting which provides a big opportunity for recurring revenue. 

So where do you start? 

Creating value through data-driven business models does not have to be hard. Here’s 3 steps to help you get there.

1. Make data a fixed subject from the start

Even in the early stages of building a relationship with your clients, ask them what they want to gain from their data. Some clients might have a very clear vision and some clients might need a little help. But either way, discussing it from the start positions you as data driven and gives you the opportunity to make them a better and more personalized offer that includes data products.

2. Show data value

Are your clients reading the reports you make? Are they really? It often happens that clients say ‘thank you’ and ‘yes, we’ve read it’, when that’s not the case. Simply because they don’t understand it or don’t know how to gain the right insights from it. 

This is a missed opportunity. For you and your client. So, help them interpret your reports, tell them how you leverage the insights and show them how they too can gain valuable insights from your analyses

3. Don’t be afraid to charge for insights

Many agencies still don’t charge for analyses & reports. This is a missed opportunity and also sends out a signal that your analyses & reports have no value. Which we by now, of course, know is not the case. 

So, put a price on it. Make clients not take it for granted. The value is there. Either include it in your management fee or better yet, make it a line item under your retainer fee.

More data = more success

This is a great time to be a data-driven agency.

The move to a data-centric view represents a paradigm shift and a major driver of the digital transformation for previously non-data-driven agencies. In the future, every successful agency will not just invoice the hours they’ve made, but create data products based on their knowledge and skills that drive recurring revenue and, more importantly, build long lasting valuable relationships with their customers.

Data-driven agencies have always been able to solve problems for their clients using technology, but now they are able to do so with data-centric views in mind - and that makes all the difference.

About Eyk

Eyk is the new way to power your marketing insights. Manually preparing your data is time consuming and unreliable and therefore blocks marketers from adding true value to the business. 

With the Eyk platform you can automate the infrastructure by extracting, loading and transforming components of your data flow. By doing so, you can spend more time driving value from your data analytics.

With Eyk you can:

• Deploy pre-built models to join data across sources
• Automatically push data from marketing tools to dashboards
• Monitor your data pipelines for freshness and quality
• And get analyses inspiration through the data model library

Eyk is now in beta. Interested? Apply for our beta-program.

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