Engaging marketing partners to help shape the success of your brand is an investment in your business. Talent and expertise come at a cost, and that cost should carry a return. So how do you know if the time, energy and money that you’re investing in your partners are worth it?

Ask yourself these six questions:

1.  Do they ask questions that challenge your thinking?

There is power in asking thought-provoking questions. Because good answers start with good questions, be sure your partners are asking a lot of them. It’s ok if you don’t know the answers.

2.  Do they effectively balance brand and promotion?

Both are necessary to create long-term value in the marketplace, and ensuring that brand and promotion work well together is critical for short-term results. Elegance isn’t always impactful but, when done right, it is.

3.  Are their recommendations right for the situation?

Ideas are everywhere. Do they bring the ones that are on strategy, on budget and in line with what you can—and should—do to make the desired impact? Simple ideas exquisitely executed can yield bragging-rights results.

4.  Does their work better your personal brand?

Whether you’ve engaged your marketing partners in strategy, execution or analysis, they should be able to accomplish more than you could do alone—and deliver it at a higher level of quality, too. So ask yourself: How is your work being elevated as a result of their involvement?

5.  What have you learned from them?

Are you smarter today as a result of working with your marketing partners? If they are generous with their expertise—and you gain knowledge that otherwise would have required a longer learning curve—they are valued partners.

6.  Do they share the story behind the numbers?

Dashboards and presentations with charts and graphs are certainly nice, but they lose their power without context. Do you know what you’re seeing and why? It’s important to provide metrics with meaning.

The value of your marketing partners can sometimes be hard to quantify, but it should never be hard to evaluate. You should feel like each of your marketing partners is a vital part of your team and a key contributor to your success. When they are, you can be confident recommending them to colleagues and friends.

 

This post first appeared on the Elevation blog at http://blog.elevationadvertising.com/blog/how-to-evaluate-the-value-of-your-marketing-partners