At the IPA Effectiveness Awards Conference (9th October), the IPA launched its new study into agency effectiveness levels. The report outlines the commercial benefits of embedding an effectiveness roadmap into agency work and shares recommendations for implementing effectiveness strategies.

The report, Building an Effectiveness Culture in Agencies: the latest results and recommendations (2024), comes at a time when effectiveness is top of mind for agencies. In 2022, just 29% of agencies reported having 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. Fast forward to the present day and 75% of agencies report having such a strategy or plan in place.

“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,” says Nick Milne, Report Author, Founder and Chief Effectiveness Officer of Go Ignite.

A roadmap for success

The report highlights some of the benefits of fully implementing an effectiveness roadmap to build a true culture of effectiveness. Agencies with an effectiveness roadmap score 19% higher for effectiveness culture than those who don’t have one.

A roadmap also improves focus and people scores for agencies. Where a roadmap helps to create buy-in and alignment with the C-suite, agencies see focus is 32% higher. While a roadmap's ability to create leadership support and enable better collaboration between teams brings with it increased learning and development opportunities.

“These results reveal the comprehensive commercial benefits of embedding an effectiveness roadmap into businesses,” says Laurence Green, Director of Effectiveness, IPA. “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.”

The effectiveness benefit

Aside from implementing a robust roadmap, the report spotlights other key areas that have helped to build marketing effectiveness in agencies.

A big area of focus is in strengthening client relationships. Agencies that focus on new business and onboarding clients with a clear focus on econometric analysis are able to create solid foundations for a client-agency relationship.

Other benefits include internal upskilling and a focus on training that equips teams with effectiveness tools, and better budgeting and investments where decisions are made looking to measurement and data with marketing effectiveness in mind.

Building an Effectiveness Culture in Agencies: the latest results and recommendations (2024), is available from the IPA website.