Client-agency relationships are at the heart of true marketing success. Over time, with the right amount of chemistry and process, bonds only strengthen and together you’re be able to deliver projects seamlessly. However, there may be one other way to supercharge your marketing potential – a tactic to forge even greater performance. 

Here’s where secondments can really come into their own. By embedding agency talent within your organisation, any existing problems are more equally shared and understood, new approaches found and fostered, and results achieved.  

At KINESSO UK&I, we’ve been offering secondments for some time, placing our digital experts into client teams, where it makes sense. The result? A truly joined-up approach helping you to align work patterns, expectations, cultures or processes where the traditional agency-client model needs a refresh.  

Reimagining the Role of Secondments 

The standard concept of a secondment is, of course, nothing new. From tech to finance, plenty of sectors have embraced it down the years.  

The government and civil service regularly utilise secondments with third-party organisations, while around 64% of UK workers surveyed said that sabbatical opportunities – allowing them a change from their usual day-to-day job – were an attractive prospect.  

The idea is simple yet compelling. Staff are temporarily reassigned to another role or team – usually within their own company, but potentially with a client. This might be to increase capacity, support with a specific project, or to inject some extra fresh thinking. 

However, in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, secondments are fast becoming a way to innovate – and enhance the partnerships between agencies and their clients. 

Seconding agency talent would mean embedding staff into your teams, systems and ways of working. While still officially employed by the agency, they effectively serve as your staff, and at KINESSO UK&I, this process has brought a range of tangible benefits to our clients.  

Streamlining Operations and Driving Growth 

Client secondments deliver plenty of practical benefits such as boosting capacity and easing workload pressures. 

Granting secondees client-side logins, email addresses, server access and communication tools can dramatically increase speed and efficiencies. By streamlining operations, you’re maximising the potential to drive results. 

During a recent secondment, some of our copywriters improved the turnaround of content delivery by reducing production timelines on a compliance-complex account from two weeks to just two days. By being completely embedded in the client’s own team and systems, increased efficiency proved an almost inevitable result.

Breaking Down Barriers 

One recent experience saw members of our SEO and editorial teams trained in and given direct access to a client’s content management systems. By sitting alongside our client for part of the week, they could implement technical fixes and oversee content creation from start to finish – from initial keyword research and briefing, right through to copywriting, building webpages, and securing stakeholder sign-off before publication.  

From an SEO perspective, it also allowed for closer performance monitoring, ensuring pages had the intended impact once live. 

This agency-client secondment helped to align two organisations, bridge work culture divides and build mutual understanding and respect – our team members became even more valuable to the ongoing success of the relationship by the end of the period. 

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Boosting Knowledge and Understanding 

Embedding talent means an agency can also gain a first-hand view of the obstacles, pain points and opportunities faced by clients. Often, it highlights the realities of resources, timelines and processes client-side – and may shed light on why certain challenges have previously arisen, as well as highlighting potential solutions.  

By seeing both sides of the story and offering a fresh pair of eyes, the agency is then in a much stronger position to free up potential blockers or simply find common ground. It also puts marketing experts in a direct position to share their expertise and experience first-hand, exactly where it is best needed.  

Building a Shared Vision 

Hard deliverables and deadlines are one thing. But a secondment builds softer skills and personal bonds too. By working side by side with client teams, embedded staff can develop a genuine rapport with key stakeholders, getting to know them better as both individual human beings and professionals. 

Developing more meaningful relationships with the personalities behind the projects increases buy-in, helps agency talent and client contacts truly align at every stage, and leads to a more joined-up vision – ensuring your goals are met. 

The Keys to Secondment Success 

Launching a successful agency-client secondment doesn’t happen just like that. It’s a collaborative process, requiring careful preparation, a structured plan of action, and 100% commitment from both parties – but the results are often worth the effort. 

Best practices we follow with our secondments include:  

  • Securing internal buy-in and support. It’s vital to brief client teams on the value of the secondment, double-checking everyone is aligned on the main aims and purpose of what we’re trying to achieve. 
  • Creating a clear induction and training plan. Sorting logins and system access in advance helps secondees hit the ground running. A detailed roadmap of tasks, intro calls, and training meanwhile also offers a clear sense of direction.   
  • Setting standard ways of working. Nailing down working hours, essential meetings to attend, key performance indicators, and other expectations should help minimise any misunderstandings and help the individual integrate seamlessly.  
  • Building a proper support structure. Allocating line-managers to secondees both client-side and agency-side creates a two-way street. It’s an easy way to keep everyone up to date – and flag any concerns or opportunities that may arise. 

To learn more about our capabilities and experience, including secondment possibilities, get in touch here.