The secret to a thriving agency lies in leveraging the right tools and software to streamline and automate as many aspects of the business as possible, allowing you to prioritize the individual needs of each client. Implementing effective tools to assist you and your leadership team in managing areas like operations, resource allocation, customer relationship management (CRM), and reporting will empower your team to concentrate on delivering exceptional value to your clients.

In this article, I’ve curated a list of tools and technologies designed to support you in crucial areas that ensure the smooth operation of your agency, enabling you to maintain a laser focus on your customers. [Free Guide: 11 Ways to Gain & Retain More Clients]

1. File Storage: Google Drive & File Stream

While numerous methods exist for managing files within an agency, the paramount concerns for any agency owner should be ease of access, robust security, and straightforward file synchronization options.

By utilizing Google Drive, agencies can adopt a cloud-based approach to file storage. Google Drive empowers staff to effortlessly synchronize files stored on different devices through Google Drive File Stream.

Google Drive (and Docs) is inherently designed for collaborative work, making it an ideal choice for agency environments. Whenever modifications are made to a file stored on Google Drive, the previous version is automatically archived, ensuring that everyone accesses the most up-to-date version regardless of whether they are accessing it from their iPhone or PC:

Google Drive also allows your entire agency to share folders internally or with external clients and contacts while retaining administrative control:

Naturally, you’ll want to consider implementing an additional layer of security, as some files will undoubtedly contain sensitive client information. Google addresses this concern by offering a range of options, including:

• 2-Step Verification
• Advanced protection using physical security keys

What happens if a file is accidentally modified or deleted?

If you need to revert to a previous version or recover a deleted file, you can easily do so within Google Drive or any Google document:

Furthermore, you have the option to restore deleted files via the Google Drive admin console.

2. CRM & Agency Management: Podio

Effective customer relationship management is paramount to running a successful agency. As your agency expands, you’ll require a robust system to help you manage data related to past, current, and prospective clients.

As an agency, you should aim to implement a CRM system that offers the following capabilities:

• Effortless storage and maintenance of accurate client information
• Streamlined tracking and management of client communication
• Tracking of billing details, invoice management, and billing contacts
• The ability for individuals across the agency to access up-to-date client information and details related to client-specific projects

At Hallam, we have implemented a project management tool called Podio to create a customized CRM and Project Management workspace accessible to our entire team. This centralized hub allows us to manage client data, maintain records of contacts at each organization, track client projects, monitor billable and non-billable hours, request resources from different departments, and generate mailing lists from our existing data for use with Mailchimp.

As a digital agency, meticulous tracking of how you and your team allocate, bill, and manage time is crucial. Podio empowers you to build bespoke applications to track this data and link it to other apps through relationship fields and automated workflows. For instance, all of our client projects are interconnected with applications such as billable hours, non-billable hours, and financial forecasts. This integration ensures that we have all the information pertaining to each project readily available in a single, centralized location:

Like many agencies, we began by using an Excel spreadsheet to track hours. However, as we expanded, maintaining accurate data using this method became increasingly time-consuming (and often cumbersome). For those still relying on spreadsheets, I highly recommend exploring customizable tools like Podio, which allow you to mold a system to the specific requirements of your business.

3. Project Management: Basecamp

Every agency needs a system for managing client projects, and numerous straightforward project management tools can significantly enhance your employees’ ability to complete work efficiently.

Basecamp stands out as an exceptional project management tool that simplifies cross-functional collaboration, both internally and with clients. Basecamp is structured around a few core functions:

• To-do lists: These should have defined deadlines and be assigned to members of each Basecamp project. Basecamp also enables users to attach files to to-do items and share lists with clients for updates and approvals.
• File sharing: Maintaining all project-related files within a central project workspace proves immensely beneficial, eliminating the need to sift through various file storage platforms to locate specific items. Basecamp allows users to link to files and documents stored on Google Drive.
• Chatting (campfire): This feature facilitates informal discussions related to client projects.
• Message board: Project updates can be posted here instead of being sent via email, creating an audit trail within the project workspace and preventing information from being lost in cluttered inboxes.
• Scheduling: Basecamp offers a calendar function that synchronizes with major third-party calendars like Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendar. Tasks with deadlines are automatically added to schedules, ensuring they appear in your preferred calendar if synchronized.
• Automatic check-in requests: Automatic check-ins allow you to establish milestones for each client project and send reminders to all involved parties at critical junctures.

Using Basecamp provides complete transparency by shifting communication away from email threads and into clearly structured workspaces where clients can be granted access. Notably, Basecamp allows for a clear distinction between “agency side” and “client side” interactions, enabling seamless yet secure communication that remains visible to agency managers.

One of Basecamp’s most significant advantages is its remarkable simplicity compared to many other project management systems. We experimented with using Podio for client collaboration by creating individual client workspaces. However, almost all clients, even those who are tech-savvy, found it challenging to navigate. In contrast, Basecamp essentially only requires clients to respond to an email for everyone to have visibility into the conversation.

Based on my experience, Basecamp excels as a tool for client collaboration, enabling efficient getting sign-off on various tasks and streamlined tracking of client communication. You can even integrate Basecamp with CRM systems (like Podio) using Zapier, allowing agencies to maintain a unified view of each customer.

4. Resource Planning: Podio & HighCharts

A clear understanding of your workforce’s capacity is fundamental to effective project management and empowers your sales team to confidently onboard new clients.

Beyond simply having visibility into projects and their associated billable hours, it’s essential for agency owners to have a firm grasp of:

• Employee utilization rates by individual, team, and department
• Non-billable hours dedicated to client projects (over-servicing)
• Non-billable hours invested in pre-sales activities and the conversion rate of those efforts

Your team and their time represent your most valuable assets. It’s incumbent upon you and your project managers to ensure that they are directing their attention to the right projects and tasks. Utilizing software that provides a transparent view of staff availability and utilization can aid in workload management and inform recruitment decisions.

In my view, this data should be captured within any agency’s CRM system, which for us translates to Podio. Numerous third-party tools are available to assist in extracting and visualizing data from widely used CRM or agency management systems.

One tool I highly recommend for this purpose is Highcharts. Highcharts enables us to extract data from Podio and present it visually through a variety of customizable graphs, allowing us to generate reports on metrics like utilization and capacity. This data can be further segmented by individual, team, or department across various date ranges.

We also leverage Highcharts to report on our business KPIs during our monthly senior management team meetings, once again extracting the data from our CRM system and visualizing it using Highcharts.

If you’re already collecting data in these areas, I encourage you to explore Highcharts to determine if it can help you gain deeper insights into performance across your agency.

5. Client Reporting: Google Sheets & Data Studio

In the past, we relied on Google sheets for all our client reporting, connecting it to our system to extract and display our clients’ Google Analytics data.

This solution yielded substantial time savings compared to manually compiling reports while allowing us to create highly customized analytics dashboards for each client. These dashboards provide our clients with a concise overview of their performance, updated automatically each month.

You can delve deeper into the setup process here.

6. Social Media Management: Sendible

If social media management forms part of your agency’s service offerings, the right social media management tool can be a game-changer. The days of requiring your team to log in to each social media platform individually on weekends to post for clients, scour the internet for suitable content, and manually generate and send reports are long gone.

Sendible is a feature-rich social media management tool designed specifically for growing agencies. Sendible is committed to helping agencies craft compelling narratives on social media, ensuring they consistently present a professional image to their clients.

Sendible’s agency team collaboration features are among the best in the industry. From a single primary account, you can add multiple users to your dashboard, establish a user hierarchy that aligns with your team’s structure, assign conversations to the most relevant team member for response, and even ensure that every post receives approval from the appropriate individual before scheduling. This collaborative approach within Sendible guarantees that the work your agency produces consistently meets your clients’ needs.

Sendible further streamlines your workflow by automating the delivery of visually appealing, branded PDF reports to your clients via email. You can even include an optional cover page to introduce the report and customize the email frequency to align with your clients’ expectations, providing an even higher level of service.

Here are just a few of Sendible’s notable features:

• Assign posts to different team members and manage the approval process.
• Grant or restrict custom access for clients.
• Seamless integration with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and YouTube.
• Effortlessly upload content in bulk using the bulk scheduling feature.
• Access insightful client reports to track performance.
• Utilize the content library to store images, copy, and even hashtags for future use.

Bonus! Feed Management: DataFeedWatch

As an agency, you may often find yourself seeking ways to reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks like data feed maintenance while simultaneously outperforming your competitors. Optimized product feeds are the bedrock of any successful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. In today’s competitive digital landscape, differentiation is crucial for achieving sales objectives.

Using a feed management solution such as DataFeedWatch empowers agencies to create fully optimized product feeds based on existing data. Optimized listings contribute to increased sales across multiple channels and help prevent the undesirable scenario of advertising out-of-stock products.

What Agency Tools Do You Rely On?

This article has explored a selection of essential tools that we use to effectively manage our marketing agency. Naturally, we utilize a wide array of other tools to assist our management team in ensuring the smooth operation of our business.

We’re always eager to learn from other agency owners and managers. We invite you to share insights into the tools you rely on to effectively manage your agency in the comments section below.