How to get the most out of your agencies and freelancers

This month we'll be hearing from a panel of local freelancers and agencies, giving us some insight into how to get the best results when you work with external partners.

As marketers working either totally alone or in a small team, we often bring in outside help - from website developers or graphic designers to SEO experts or copywriters. As useful as those specialists are, it's not always a smooth ride - there might be communication issues, different working styles, mismatched expectations. So what can we do to make things better?

We'll be picking the brains of a group of different contractors, to hear things from their perspective and get their insights and advice on how to build a strong and productive partnership.

We'll start with some panel questions, then take questions from the floor, before having a shared discussion where we can all feed in ideas about the best ways of working together.

OUR PANEL:

> Cath McElroy, Comms Director at Bottle PR

> Matt Eastland-Jones, Founder and MD of Story Ninety-Four

> Tom Gair, Managing Director at Bounce

and our panel host Bethany Joy, freelance brand voice strategist

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How our gatherings usually go

🍻 6pm: Doors open for (free) drinks, marketing chit-chat, and - let's face it - probably at least some small talk about the weather

🧑‍🏫 6.15-7.15pm: A brilliant marketing talk from a knowledgeable and interesting human, plus some Q&A and informal group discussion

🤓 7.15-7.30pm: It’s GUS time (that’s Genuinely Useful Stuff)

🍻 7.30-8pm: More (still free) drinks and fun chat, hopefully about more interesting stuff than the weather by this point

Hosted by brand voice strategist Bethany Joy, in partnership with the fantastic Oxford College of Marketing.