So you’ve hired a public relations / P.R. firm, or an search engine optimization / search engine marketing shop, or a graphic design house, or an advertising agency. You’ve committed to investing the monthly retainer. Your job is done, right?

Wrong.

Marketing communications requires agency and client – driver and navigator, if you will – to work together to find their way along a new stretch of road, one where the destination is successful customer communications and outreach.

Effective marketing campaigns require the skills unique to each partner. Only the client knows the day-in, day-out details of the business. Try as they might, marketing executives cannot know this depth of detail. But what the marcom exec can do is solicit those details from the client in a way that can improve the messaging.

Smart clients are marketing savvy. They’re constantly looking for new angles to pursue – either for advertisements or public relations campaigns. And smart executives encourage their team to think like smart marketers. The client comes to the marketing firm and says, “I had a great idea for a news story,” or a blog post, or a Tweet, or a community service campaign, or…

How can you ensure your team thinks like marketers? Try this:

* Simplify input. Set up an email account (marketingideas@[yoururlhere].com). Encourage everyone to submit marketing news regularly.

* Email reminders. Truth is, everybody’s busy – too busy to remember to send ideas to the marketing team. So the marketing team should email everyone across the enterprise reminding them to submit an idea or two as they see them.

* Friday = Idea Day. Designate one day each week to have people brainstorm ideas.

* Reward good stories. If a media outlet runs a story submitted by an employee, reward the employee with a gift card for dinner, a movie, iTunes, etc.

Everybody in an organization must think like a marketer. If they see a statistic in the news, they should think, “How does this apply to me?” If they see a new product about to come out, and they think, “How did we do this?” Is human resources is filling out forms for a new senior-level hire? Maybe the industry trade journals or local business media would be interested to learn more.

Every idea must be vetted first. No employee or exec should submit an idea directly to the media. Information could be confidential or otherwise damaging if released. Instead, designate one employee to handle news approval and distribution.

Journalists and industry bloggers always are looking for unique or compelling stories. So, too, are your marketing vendors. This even works for those companies that don’t have a marketing firm on payroll. In fact, it’s even more important that they think like marketers.

Too often, companies hire marketing communications firms and say, “Marketing now is YOUR job.” It’s not. It’s a team effort. No marketing effort is better than that which has client and vendor partnering.