Choosing a CRM for a small marketing agency

What's the best CRM for a small marketing agency?

There's no single best CRM for every small agency. The right one matches the way you sell, does the must-haves well, and gets used every day by the people who sell.

Use this list when you talk to sellers. Each must-have comes with the question that tests it.

Then run a short trial before you sign:

1. Pick a few live deals and a few past clients. Real names show you more than sample data does.
2. Load them in by hand. If setup is slow with a few, it'll be slower with all of them.
3. Move each deal through its stages. Move it when the deal moves in real life, not all at once.
4. Send real follow-ups from inside the tool. Check that the emails land on the right record.
5. Pull the one report you'd read every week. If it takes an export, note that.
6. Ask who went back to a spreadsheet or an inbox. Whoever did is telling you what the CRM is missing.

Picking is only half of it, because the setup decides whether people use it. For setting the CRM up, see how to set up an agency CRM.

How do CRM needs change for marketing agencies as the team grows?

With only the owner, a CRM is a pipeline and a reminder list. As people join, it has to hold shared deals, a clear owner for each one, and a clean way to pass a won deal to the people who do the work.

• You alone. You need stages, reminders and notes. Anything more can wait.
• A second person selling or managing accounts. Each deal needs a named owner, and notes need to live on the record, not in one person's inbox.
• People doing the client work. A won deal has to reach them with what was promised. Ask whether the CRM links to your project tool, or whether someone will retype the details.

Our view is that once leads, revenue and some team are steady, it's time to improve processes, write standard operating procedures and add software, so the agency can run without the owner every day. An SOP, short for standard operating procedure, is a set of written steps for doing one task the same way each time. The CRM is where your sales SOP lives in practice.

As you grow, ask a seller these too:

• What does each added user cost, and which features sit on bigger plans only?
• Can we limit who sees which deals and which clients?
• Can a won deal move into delivery without anyone typing it twice?

Growth can also change which kind of CRM fits you best. For the kinds of CRM side by side, see the kinds of agency CRM compared.

Do advertising agencies need anything different from a CRM?

An advertising agency asks a bit more of a CRM, because it tracks campaigns, budgets and creative sign-offs next to its deals. Test for those before you pick.

Ask a seller:

• Can a client record hold campaign details, such as channels, budgets and launch dates?
• Can we track creative approvals, with who signed off and when?
• Can leads from ad forms flow straight into the CRM, so none sit in a spreadsheet?
• Can we see which lead source each client came from?
• Does it connect to the reporting tools we already use?

If CRM setup is eating your evenings, you can hand it off. DeskTeam360's team works inside the CRM and other tools an agency already uses, so you don't switch systems and nothing has to move. CRM setup sits on its list of work beside funnels, email campaigns, websites, AI agents and automation.