Actively assessing the performance of your outsourcing partner’s creative efforts is a critical component of any outsourcing partnership. By measuring the success of your campaigns, you can ensure your outsourced team is helping you make informed decisions, optimizing your resources, and enhancing your overall marketing performance. 

If you aren’t sure how to gauge the impact and effectiveness of your creative services, Jim Battista, SEBPO’s Senior Director of Creative Services, shares some valuable insights for evaluating your outsourcing partner’s quality and contributions:

How can clients measure the success/performance of their outsourcing partner’s creative services?

Because design is subjective, measuring your outsourcing partner’s success can be complex. To begin, it is important to fully understand what your main business objectives are when measuring success rates, as those can be subjective, too. Here are a few tricks to nail down concrete design checkpoints: 

“You can create your designs based on color theory, best practices, or even manual data,” says Battista. “But in the long run, it really comes down to the number of clicks each designed ad gets.” 

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By employing more metrics-based tracking, you naturally remove some of the subjectivity and develop an objective method of identifying success or areas of improvement. One way to do this is by tracking every little nuance within an ad, using the right kind of trackers and development. For example, you can track where someone’s cursor is over an ad, where they start and stop the video, and even how long it’s up on their screen. 

Battista adds, “Another great way to measure is through A-B testing, which means designing two different ads and delivering them both so you can see which one is more successful. I highly recommend this method because it allows you to adjust accordingly based on  data from your research.”

What are some tell-tale signs that the creative efforts aren’t paying off?

The quality or lack of quality of the final deliverable is a telltale sign that creative efforts might not be working “If your partner or team is not delivering creatives that are of the highest quality, error- and pixelation-free, or are not the correct spec size, then the partnership will never work,” says Battista. 

Going back and forth too often with your creative partner to resolve errors wastes your organization’s time and money, as well as exhausts internal resources. An ideal creative partner should bring additional technology and thought processes that, in turn, streamline your organization, increase revenue and allow your teams to focus on strategy. That’s what makes the right partner valuable to your team. 

How does a client know when their creative partners are a good fit? 

“The best way to know when your outsourcing partner is working best with your team is when there is a free flow of information back and forth,” says Battista. It doesn’t come down to the design at that point; it’s about how in sync the companies are together. If there’s never a question, they are not doing your business much justice. The expertise your outsourcing partner brings to you provides the most value.”

What do clients want to avoid when vetting new partners for outsourced creative services?

Battista says the biggest thing to avoid is the “Black Box”. In the context of outsourcing, this refers to a situation where a company outsources a particular process or task to an external provider but has limited visibility or understanding of the inner workings of their processes.

“You want somebody with a full design background, who is constantly learning and has a wide range of skills.” Seeing that a partner is willing, able, and excited to share and educate people on those skills and best practices is also a positive sign. 

“You want a partner that knows everything about what you are doing, but is also willing to learn little nuances of your company, your clients, and their specifications.” 

Read also: 4 questions to ask when vetting an outsourcing partner, answered by SEBPO’s Chief Strategy Officer Lauren Kochan.

The SEBPO Creative Services Team consists of full-stack and front-end developers, as well as designers. These professionals efficiently deliver client tasks and support six regions worldwide over three shifts daily, five days a week. Our Creative Services Teams provide core services and can meet various unique creative design needs. Get in touch today to see how we can assist with your next campaign!