Marketing today can be chaotic – bombarded with an overload of messaging – leading many to question trustworthiness. Anymore, people are simply starving for authenticity. To combat this battle with credibility, Go Local Interactive has joined forces with a some of the top marketing agencies, including Moz and Brandify, to form the Local Marketing Transparency Initiative (LMTI) in an effort to better solidify client relationships and trust. The LMTI works to promote transparency within the marketing industry while arming businesses with knowledge to make more informed decisions when it comes to their marketing plans.
The LMTI sets clear standards for all of its members that covers a variety of commonalities such as being transparent with contract terms, products and practices. The goal is to give businesses the knowledge and tools they need to create and maintain successful relationships with their marketing agencies. Product Director Caleb Ross says,
“Go Local is proud to be a founding member of the Local Marketing Transparency Initiative. Transparency has always been a fundamental aspect of our relationships with our clients. We are proud to have the opportunity to share the importance of agency transparency with companies looking to enter a partnership with marketing agencies.”
The LMTI, more specifically, works to identify and clarify common gray areas within marketing, including:
1. Promoting Transparency
Marketing professionals must provide clarity in all transactions. This would mean that they must be clear with contracts and ownership rights of assets during and after the partnership.
2. Clarifying Misconceptions
Marketing professionals must identify and clarify ambiguities and misconceptions. It should be clear when signing what type of results the business should expect. This means that agencies cannot promise to provide positive results – in terms of things such as number of followers or keyword ranking – that may be distorted because they can’t be guaranteed.
3. Standardizing Language
Marketing professionals will actively work to bring definition and standardization to verbiage to ensure that discussions and transactions are clear and easy to understand by constituents.
4. Best Practices
Marketing professionals will identify, document and distribute the best practices to enable more valuable transactions.
The initiative also provides questions and prompts for businesses to use regarding expectations, transparent dealings and understanding assets. For a greater list of these prompts, check out the LMTI website.
Go Local knows this is just one step in our goal of forming meaningful partnerships with our clients. Ross says, “Transparency is fundamental to a healthy relationship between a marketing agency and a client. Without transparency, there can be no trust. A marketing agency lives and dies on the amount of trust a client has in their services.”
