April 29, 2025 • 44 mins
Deciding whether to hire an Amazon agency is a pivotal choice for sellers, and this conversation offers a 360-degree view from people who have lived it. Drawing from experiences as agency owners, agency employees, and brand operators who've hired multiple agencies, we unpack the crucial factors to consider before signing any contracts.
Does hiring an agency even makes sense for your business? We explore how to identify your specific goals and needs, and whether those align with what agencies typically provide. This foundation proves essential for making a sound decision.
Not every agency is right for every Amazon business. We discuss how agencies that excel with low-priced products might flounder with premium brands, and how category expertise varies dramatically across firms. This leads to practical advice on vetting agencies by examining their experience with similar brands and asking targeted questions about their strategy for your specific business model.
Recognize frustrations when we detail common agency shortcomings - from overreliance on overseas freelancers without proper quality control, to the empty promises of dramatic results in unrealistic timeframes. The most successful agency relationships function as true partnerships rather than complete handoffs, with clear communication about brand strategy and business direction.
We share a critical red flag that signals deeper problems: when simple mistakes consistently reach you as the client. This points to fundamental process breakdowns that likely extend beyond what you can see. We also caution against outdated case studies, reminding listeners that Amazon strategies from even a few years ago may be completely ineffective in today's ecosystem.
For sellers navigating the complex decision of agency partnership, this conversation offers both strategic framework and tactical advice to find the right fit - or determine if keeping operations in-house might be the better choice for now.
🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.
➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com
⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to another Amazon Tactics Tuesday
for Brand Fortress, and todaywe're going to be talking about
a topic that I think we havesome really unique perspective
on, which is should I hire anAmazon agency.
And the reason why I think wehave a really unique perspective
on this topic amongst the threeof us is that so I've been an
owner of an Amazon agency forthe last five years.
(00:22):
I have seen the good, bad andugly that comes out of that.
Matt has worked at a number ofdifferent Amazon agencies and
also as a brand owner.
So he's that perspective.
And, mike, I know you've workedwith a number of different
Amazon agencies, you know, asyou've worked on building your
brand, and so there really is,you know, I think, a lot of
different perspectives on thedifferent side of the table,
(00:42):
both from the brand perspectiveand then also from the agency
perspective on, you know, whenshould I hire an agency, should
I hire an agency at all, whatare the pros and cons and how do
you get the most out of thatrelationship.
So I guess where do we want tostart with this discussion?
Mike?
You know I know we talked a lotbefore we hit record and we
were talking about, you knowsome of the challenges that
(01:02):
you've had in the past withAmazon agencies that you've
worked with, so is that a goodplace, do you think, to start
for this conversation?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we can start there.
I think the first thing that Isuppose I would say is that it
is definitely the case that youshouldn't just run into this
willy-nilly.
It should be.
You should really take sometime to think about whether it
makes sense to even walk downthe road of hiring an agency in
the first place, and part ofthat is determining what is your
(01:31):
goal in hiring them.
You know, I think that's thefirst and we can talk about that
in a little bit.
I think that's a good topic todiscuss.
But definitely you want tostart there with what is the
goal for hiring this particularagency and why.
But if we get into kind of thenuts and bolts of just having
done it and what my experiencehas been and kind of what my
(01:52):
thoughts are on that, I wouldsay one our experience has not
been amazing.
We have hired, I think, fivedifferent agencies over the
years for various differentaspects of our Amazon business
maybe six actually and the onething that can well okay, I'm
(02:12):
going to say this two differentways, two agencies, I think, if
I'm being as objective aspossible about the relationship,
I think two of those agenciesthat we hired, one of them
didn't have enough time for usto really see whether they would
(02:32):
have been a good fit for us,because we ended up having
another opportunity come alongthat made more sense for us in
the moment, at least, we thoughtit did and so we ended up
switching gears, and so thatreally was not their fault.
So they might have beenterrific to work with and they
came highly recommended.
The other agency that I thinkfalls somewhat into that
(02:53):
category is not so much thatthey didn't have time we gave
them plenty of time to be ableto have significant positive
impact on our account,significant positive impact on
our account.
But I think that it's alsoimportant to remember and I
think this is true of thisagency is that not every agency
is right for every Amazonbusiness 100%, I think what you
(03:16):
sell, the category that you'rein, and what their level of
experience is with that, theprice point that you sell at are
you a super premium priceproduct in your category or are
you the bargain basement priceproduct in your category?
Now, I hope you're not that.
If you're watching this podcast, I hope you're aware that
that's probably not your bestbet to be the lowest priced
(03:39):
individual in your category,unless it's a very strategic
move for you to do so.
But some agencies are better atdealing with premium products.
Some agencies are better atdealing with low price products.
Maybe the strategies thatthey're good at might work
better for a low price productin a category than it does for a
premium price product in acategory.
I actually think that thestrategies that one of these
(04:02):
agencies was employing for uswas really more purpose-built
for a product that could bepriced at the lower end of the
category Maybe not necessarilythe lowest price, but certainly
not a product like ours, wherewe're priced three to five times
as much as everybody else inthe category.
I just don't think that theirstrategy stack made sense for us
, made sense for us.
(04:26):
So that's the first thing isjust make sure you know, just
understand.
Not every agency is good foryour business, even though they
might be right for somebody else.
And that probably means askingsome questions on the front end
in terms of what are the brandshave you worked with that are
similar to us either?
Similar category to us, similarproduct to us, similar, you
know, similar price point bycomparison to the rest of our
(04:48):
category.
That sort of thing Get an ideaof what is their strategy stack.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
What do they?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
intend to do with your brand if you were to let
them take things over, reallyvet that ahead of time, and I
didn't do a good job of thatwith this agency that I was just
mentioning.
They're good people, I likedworking with them, they have a
lot of integrity, and I kind ofmade an assumption that, because
all of those pieces were true,they would be able to do good
(05:13):
work for us, and I do not haveany question that they tried to
do good work for us.
It just wasn't a good fit forour brand.
Beyond that, though, we'veworked with a number of other
agencies, and I will say so farI have not been impressed, and I
won't ever name names because,again, sometimes it's a result
of just they're not a good fitfor your company or your brand
(05:35):
or your category.
So I'm not going to throwanybody under the bus, but it's
been a difficult road,inexpensive overseas freelancers
, which I don't have a problemwith, but they are not properly
managing those freelancers andmaking sure that they're
(05:57):
verifying the quality of thework before it gets implemented
or before it gets submitted tothe brand owner, like myself,
and so I end up doing a lot morework that really should be the
agency's job.
You know I end up doing thework of vetting, you know, the
work product of theirfreelancers and if that's what I
have to do I might as well justhire the freelancer myself and
(06:19):
bring them in, you know,in-house.
So that's been kind of ourexperience thus far at a high
level.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You know we can talk about details, but Matt, I know
you've got a wealth ofexperience in this area as well,
so anything that you know youwant to kind of build off of
that Mike mentioned, or you knowother perspectives that you
think would be important forlisteners to know.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, so I think the majority of our specific
listeners are alreadyestablished on Amazon.
They're doing, you know, midsix figures to seven figures.
So it's not like they're thesame advice that I would give to
a brand new seller, like, Ithink, that a brand new seller.
I think there's a level ofinvolvement that you need to
have in the very beginning.
(07:01):
Specifically, if we're talkingabout PPC, I think you need to
get your hands dirty in thebeginning.
I think that you need to bevery, very actively involved in
the management and the setup ofthe initial campaign structure
and that kind of stuff.
I mean the challenge when you goright out of the gate with an
agency and you don't understandthe basics of PPC is that you
don't really understandreporting that you get.
(07:23):
You don't know how to ask theright questions.
So, again, I think that themajority of our listeners are
kind of established.
So you know from a I do haveexperience on both sides of the
table and, I think, from aseller, especially if it's your
first time approaching an agencyand trying to outsource in that
way.
Before I even attempted anactual agency, I hired
(07:44):
freelancers and I tried to do itin-house and I think that was
an important step for me is tounderstand also, like the
management of someone, and whatI wanted to hear and how
involved I wanted to be in theprocess and what I wanted to be
reported on.
So I went that route first and Ithink it prepared me for those
conversations with an agencyright out of the gate.
You know, the agency that Iused was it was mostly a tool.
(08:06):
When you know it was before AIwas a thing.
It was like a bid optimizationtool that then had a managed
service behind it and theproblem that I had with that
particular entity is that itreally didn't work.
My product at the time itwasn't like a garlic press or a
barbecue glove that I wascompeting against 100 other
(08:27):
sellers selling the exact samething.
It was a little bit innovative.
So, you know, there wasn't asmany keywords to dominate on as
there were in a lot of othercategories and this particular
tool was adding a lot ofirrelevant keywords to my
campaigns and it created a huge,giant mess.
And I don't think that, similarto what Mike was talking about,
(08:48):
where a lot of the management,you know the pushing of the
buttons and pulling the leverswere done by overseas
freelancers that I didn't reallyhave that much communication
with and I really don't thinkunderstood my product or brand,
and that was a huge challengethat took me once I severed that
relationship, it took me sixmonths to unravel the mess that
was created because of that, andI think one of my problems is
(09:11):
that I went in thinking thatthis was going to be the
opportunity for me to just wipemy hands of it and just get a
report every week, and it justthat wasn't the right solution
for me.
So that was my first experience, and you know, then I've I've
evolved over the course of timeas a seller, working with
agencies that were not toolbased and were more human based,
and that was a much betterexperience, and I think what I
(09:31):
learned out of the gate wasfirst of all, I think you have
to be ready as a brandespecially if you're new to
outsourcing to an agency.
You're ready as a brand toreally understand what is your
superpower, what are the thingsI enjoy doing, what are the
things that might not be thebest use of my time, and put
those all in buckets and thenreally understand what it is
that you're outsourcing to anagency.
There are PPC specific agencies, there are full service
(09:54):
agencies and it really justdepends, and then everything in
between.
So it really just depends onwhat it is that you're looking
to outsource, but you have tounderstand that going in because
they're going to if thesalespeople are any good which
I've been in that role, by theway, for a couple of different
agencies.
If they're good, they're goingto sing a really interesting and
a story that speaks of, youknow, rainbows and butterflies
(10:16):
at the end of it.
But if you don't reallyunderstand what it is that their
strengths are as an agency andif that matches up with what
you're looking to outsource,you're going to run into issues
with alignment of vision and youknow expectation alignment and
things of that nature.
So I think you have to reallyunderstand what it is that
you're outsourcing, why you'reoutsourcing it, and then find an
(10:37):
agency that matches exactlywhat your deficiencies are and
what you're looking to outsource.
I think that's a very importantpart of it.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Before.
You probably should jump in here, John, because you've got a lot
of input, but I do want to saysomething regarding what Matt
just said that I think is kindof important and probably
something that I haven't paidenough attention to in the past.
So, as he mentioned, you've gotagencies that are very specific
to what they do, so, say, a PPCagency or a Google Ads agency or
(11:07):
whatever.
And then you've got agenciesthat are more full service and
do multiple different things,and I think one of the things
that is important to be carefulabout is oftentimes, I think
agencies have a superpower, andthen they have a bunch of other
ancillary services that theyhave now stacked around their
superpower, so they can kind offill out the boat a little bit,
(11:30):
and they're not nearly as goodat those fill-in services.
And so if any of those fill-inservices are ones that are
crucial to your business, youprobably don't want to just give
them to them if you haven'tdetermined that they are
actually that that's actuallyanother superpower of theirs.
You know, if it's just afill-in service, find somebody
else.
If it's critical to yourbusiness, if it's just kind of,
(11:50):
hey, it would be nice to havethat, but it's not critically
important, well then, maybe itmakes sense if it's an
inexpensive add-on, you know, tothat agency.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, I think so.
I guess, before I, you know,get too far down the rabbit
perspective, I can tell you oneof the reasons, even though
we've gotten a lot of requestsand almost pressure from clients
and prospects and stuff overthe last couple of years to get
on a different platform.
So Walmart was a good examplewhere people were like, hey, why
(12:21):
don't you start advertising atWalmart?
I mean, we tested it out for alittle bit and just realized
that that was going to be adifferent, a different skill set
.
And we're at that part withTikTok right now and, quite
frankly, the approach that we'vetaken is more of we know good
people that own agencies that dothose things and we would much
rather refer you know a clientto an agency who's really good
(12:45):
at that than for us to try andbe you know all things to all
people, because there's enoughhappening on Amazon in order to,
you know, stay up with all thetrends and everything that's
going on with ads and creativeand all that type of stuff that
you know.
We've got our hands full Now,zooming out to kind of the
(13:06):
10,000 foot level, what I'll sayfrom an agency perspective.
To kind of the 10,000 footlevel, what I'll say, from an
agency perspective, having donethis for, you know, five years
now is, I would say, the bestclients we have, is.
It's much more of a partnershipthan you know.
We're quote unquote doingeverything for them, and the
reason for that is becausethere's a lot of things that are
happening around the brandsthat you know that are happening
(13:33):
around the brands that you knowwe're.
We're there to support, but weneed to be a part of that
process.
As far as you know, when arethey launching new products?
What is the?
What is the brand strategy, oreven the product level strategy
right now?
Is it hey, we want, you know,profit optimization, in which
case how we manage their, youknow, ads campaigns are going to
be very, very different than ifit's hey, we want to take
(13:53):
market share and we want to grow, you know top line revenue.
And it's also you know where doyou fit into the marketplace?
Because if you're a premiumproduct, well that tells me that
you know we might have somemore flexibility with the price
lever to where you know it'svery possible, and we were just
talking about this before we hitrecord.
We're working with a clientright now that we were able to
(14:14):
significantly increase theirprice and increase their revenue
at the same time, and that'skind of the dream position to be
in, but not every brand is setup for that, especially if they
are designed to where they'renot a premium product.
That's not always the right fit, and so really understanding
it's not.
Yeah, you're delegating some ofthose day-to-day tasks of PPC
(14:36):
and those types of things tothat agency, but you're not
deserting that entire channel tothem, at least in order to be
successful in what we're seeingfrom most of our clients.
The other thing that I would sayis that as and people that are
listening to this and I knowboth Matt, you and Mike know
that the Amazon platform haschanged dramatically over the
(14:56):
last four to five years.
It used to be significantlybetter or I shouldn't say better
easier, really, when you startlooking at profitability and a
lot of those other aspects.
As a business, it used to be alot easier to build a profitable
product and a profitable brandand business off of Amazon.
Still tons of opportunity onAmazon, but that looks very
(15:17):
different, and so I think theother thing is that really
aligning what are yourexpectations with that agency?
And I would say now, as we'rerecording this in 2025, if you
have now is really around reallysolid PPC strategy, which a lot
(15:52):
of brands now are doing well,and conversion and listing
optimization and making surethat you are getting as much
visibility and as much as highconversion rate as possible out
of your listings, becauseotherwise, if you're just trying
to kind of adjust bid clicks orkeyword bids in order to hit an
(16:14):
ACOS goal, you really end upgetting left behind because your
listings aren't converting asmuch.
So therefore, you don't want tospend as much and you have to
spend less compared to yourcompetitors in order to keep the
same amount of market share andbefore you know it, you've lost
half your market share toeither overseas competitors,
which can be very aggressive, oreither competitors have been
(16:36):
around for a long time that justkind of got smarter and
invested in optimizing theirconversion rates.
And then the other things thatwe talk a lot about on the
podcast a lot which is buildingyour brand off of Amazon, or at
least having a customer list offof Amazon, and then having a
strategy for building up thebrand, of launching new products
(16:58):
and looking at you know how canyou continue to expand as a
brand?
So what I would say is, ifyou're looking for an agency,
look for an agency thatunderstands your brand strategy
and that their skillset alignsreally well with where you want
to take the brand in the next,you know, year to three years.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, I think.
I think there's a lot of goodmeat in there as far as like
what, what that relationshiplooks like with an agency.
And one thing I would say is,if, if you're going to bring on
an agency, the one thing I've atleast always tried to do as
best I could is give them enoughtime to be able to actually get
(17:44):
to know the brand well enoughand really get their feet under
themselves to start deliveringthe results that they're capable
of, because you can't come infresh to a brand that you don't
know, especially if you'recoming into a category that you
haven't done before.
So if you're an agency who'snever done pool tools or even
the pool category at all, ittakes a little time to get your
(18:07):
feet under you.
So you need to give a fewmonths probably at least two
months, I would say.
You know, to give them anopportunity to get to know the
category well enough and yourbrand well enough and all the.
You know the upper keywordusage and you know what your
messaging is and all that,before you really start making
any significant determinationsabout do do we continue, you
(18:30):
know, with that agency, and sothat's, that's kind of an
important piece.
The other thing you know thatyou mentioned was just kind of
that communication piece, andthat is so some of that probably
comes down to.
This is something I wasthinking of as, as you were
talking, john, was kind of thatdetermination of when to bring
on an agency and who to bring onwhat.
What aspects of your businessmight you want to bring on an
(18:52):
agency for.
And I think Matt said somethingreally important earlier, which
was that I don't know if this isalways true, but it definitely
is true, at least within theAmazon ecosystem is true.
So, in other words, like he wasmentioning, don't bring on a
PPC manager for your Amazonaccount if you don't already
know at least the basics and thefundamentals of how Amazon PPC
(19:16):
works and what the terminologymeans and what you should be
looking at.
You know what are the KPIs thatyou should be paying attention
to, that sort of thing.
If you don't know your categoryvery well, you know, and you
don't understand PPC on Amazon,you shouldn't be pulling on an
agency yet.
No-transcript, there's a lot ofexpertise that goes with
(19:51):
properly utilizing TikTok topush a brand and also how to
properly use it to push thebrand also on Amazon.
And if you don't know anythingabout TikTok, then you know.
Waiting until you do to bring onsomebody who actually knows
what they're doing especially ifyou can afford to pay them is
probably not the right move,because the longer you wait, the
(20:13):
more sales you're losing by notmaking use of TikTok if your
brand is one that really fitsthat platform well.
I don't think every brand does.
I'm not saying that probablyevery brand can make use of
TikTok to one degree or another,but we always have to make
decisions about what leverswe're going to pull and what
levers we're not going to pull,because we can't pull them all
at the same time, and sowhatever money you know, either
(20:36):
time or money that you wouldpotentially be investing in
making TikTok work for yourbrand is time and money that is
not being invested pulling someother level, unless you have
unlimited resources, which mostof us don't.
So you know, make sure thatyou're paying attention to that.
You know what levers should youactually be pulling in your
business.
What are the next most relevantlevers?
(20:56):
Maybe they're the same levers,just pulled harder, right?
Maybe you're already pullingthe right levers and you don't
have to step out and start doingsomething different.
You just have to do more ofwhat you're already doing.
Like, maybe you're really goodat launching products.
Well, if that's the case,launch a whole bunch more
products.
Like, if that's your superpoweris launching and you've got a
really good community to launchto and you can really rank.
(21:16):
Maybe TikTok and all of theseother things are not things that
you should be focusing on?
You don't need a new agency forsomething that you don't know.
You just need to launch moreproducts.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, a couple of one .
I want to circle back to thatconcept of you know, if you're
not very familiar with how and Imean, we've talked quite a bit
about ads and I feel like ads isprobably the most intimidating,
if you will, of the topics.
But there's, there's otherthings that you know listing,
optimization and that type ofstuff that happens.
That's important as well.
And if you're a brand owner outthere and you're looking at an
(21:51):
agency, what I would say is isthat it makes it a lot easier to
find a good agency if you havea strong understanding of the
fundamentals, because thenyou're going to know.
You know, yes, of course,there's going to be agencies out
there that will just take yourmoney and do nothing.
That's like any industry.
But I think what happens moreoften is there's agencies that
(22:14):
don't really fully understandwhat you're trying to do with
your brand, and it's just a.
You know.
There's just not that alignmentof strategy.
Yeah, and with that said, ifyou're someone who's like, hey,
I, you know, amazon ads arereally confusing for me, or I
just don't have the time, orwhatever in order to put it time
(22:36):
to put into that, what I wouldsay is, first of all.
I mean we spend a lot of timeon client education, of making
sure you know they understandwhy we're tracking the numbers
that we are, why we'reoptimizing for certain numbers
and how that aligns, and makingsure that we understand what
their brand strategy and brandgoals are.
To make sure that you knowwe're aligning all those
(22:58):
different numbers to go in thedirection that makes sense for
their brand strategy.
And then the.
So I mean, if you're gettingany agency that you end up
working with you, there shouldbe a very clear and easy for you
to understand and they shouldbe helping you understand what
strategy they would implementand why.
And the other thing that I wouldsay is that this is where
(23:21):
community comes into.
If you're talking to a coupleof different agencies and you
don't know which one to go with,or whatever, talk to a couple
of successful brand owners onAmazon and say, hey, I talked to
an agency and they said thatthey're going to, they want to
do this, and here's how you knowwhat they're kind of focusing
on, to get that sanity checkCause if you don't have that
background, you know that'swhere it's important to have you
(23:44):
know friends and how this is ateam sport and, you know,
bringing in a mentor or you knowsomeone at your level just to,
kind of sanity, check theinformation that you're
receiving from them.
Because I mean, I'll say, oneof the things that I see
agencies really push, thatsounds really cool but in the
end is actually not verybeneficial is, they'll say, oh
(24:06):
well, we're going to increaseyour ACOS and your profitability
.
Well, it's not very hard to orI mean, decrease your ACOS.
It's not very hard to decreaseyour ACOS.
But if I cut your sales in halfand, you know, decrease your
ACOS by 10%, have I really madeyour brand better at the end of
the day?
Right, and I don't think so.
(24:27):
And it's the same thing with,you know, their quote unquote
wasted ad spend.
Well, if you're doing thingsright, there is going to be a
percentage, and everybody wantsto be a small percentage, but
there's going to be a percentageof quote unquote wasted ad
spend.
If you cut that down to zero,what you're essentially saying
is that you're not willing totest any sort of new keywords or
(24:51):
anything else.
And so you've pretty much saidhey, I have no interest in
growing and competing on Amazon,which will make you a little
bit more profitable in the shortrun but will make you
completely not competitive inthe long run and will hurt your
brand over the long term.
So those are just kind of thethings that I see a lot used as
(25:15):
levers that brand owners don'tnecessarily fully understand the
long-term implications ofthings that sound cool but in
the long run might actually hurtyour brand.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I think a lot of what we've talked about so far goes
back to one thing that Mikementioned.
It talked about therelationship that you have with
your agency.
I've used agencies of alldifferent sizes as a brand owner
.
I've worked at all differentagency sizes as an employee, as
a consultant and what I wouldsay I think the most important
role in an agency both speakingwith my agency hat on, but also
(25:48):
speaking with my seller hat on.
If I was a seller looking atdifferent agencies, the first
thing that I would want to seeis that there's a separation
between managing PPC andmanaging the brand.
I think that having someonethat like a brand manager type
level or one of the agenciesthat I worked for that had kind
of a was a bigger agency, sothey had kind of middle
(26:09):
management type tiers, butthey're called there's customer
service manager, customerservice manager or customer
success manager, where you havea client facing person that is
not pushing the buttons andpulling the levers inside of PPC
campaigns but is competitorslooking at different things that
are happening in the market,understanding you know keywords
that are driving sales and notjust at what's the bid level,
(26:39):
cause I mean you can usesoftware to do that.
So I think that having a brandmanager that is client facing
and is really fostering thoserelationships with brand owners
we were just talking about oneof the brands that John and I
work with and you know we wereable to increase her price by
about 30% but also, at the sametime, increase sales, and a lot
of that was a collaborationbetween her and I.
(27:00):
Like it wasn't just hey, we'regoing to raise your price and
we're going to drop money out ofthe helicopter PPC ads Like
there was a lot of strategy thatwent into.
We had to fix their main image,we had to fix their, their SEO.
On pagepage SEO.
They weren't doing a great jobin their title of calling out
main keywords.
So there was a lot that wentinto the result, but a lot of it
was collaboration with thebrand owner and it wasn't just I
(27:21):
sent her a report at the end ofthe month.
It's this is what we're doing,this is why we're doing it, this
is the effect that we expect itto have and if it doesn't, this
is how we're going to roll itback.
So I really think that whenyou're looking at evaluating
agencies, I think having therebeing some a level of separation
from who's in spreadsheets allday and who's actually looking
at the strategy of the brand ata high level.
(27:42):
I feel like those have to betwo separate people and I feel
like the brand strategy just hasto be the one that's having the
communication with the client.
Well, the other thing that wementioned as you know, mike has
(28:03):
had experience with overseasfreelancers and you know feeling
like you've been just handedthis person that is using a
software and is just adjustingan ACoS target inside of a tool.
You know, I think havingsomeone who is very, speaks the
English language very well andunderstands how to have, how to
foster relationships, as opposedto just reading stats on a page
, I think evaluating that pieceof the process is important.
And who will you be speaking toon a regular basis?
What is the function of thatperson?
And is there someone drivinghigh level strategy, as opposed
(28:25):
to just pushing buttons insideof a PPC software?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Well, I think that's a great point too of you know
what is the level of that personand what's the impact in the
sense of I mean, just to use ouragency, for example, you know
we do have somebody who isoverseas who does a lot of our
(28:50):
catalog happens with that, andif something gets put into a
catalog wrong, the chances of itcosting a brand thousands of
dollars or tens of thousands ofdollars are a lot lower than
when you start looking at PPC.
(29:12):
When you're looking at hiringthe agency of not only like hey,
who's going to be my brandmanager, but give me a little
bit of background on the PPCspecialist that's going to be
working on my account, becauseyou know they're going to be
spending, you know, thousands ortens of thousands of dollars a
month for you.
And even if that means you'refinding someone who's 10% more
effective, just because you knowthey understand the English
language and they understand,you know American culture Well,
(29:37):
you know that's an extra.
Can anyone be anywhere from youknow extra thousand dollars a
month or tens of thousanddollars a month in you know
effectiveness that you have inyour account.
So just again, one one person'sopinion I really don't think it
makes sense in order to skimpout on PPC specialists and
(29:58):
people that are working on atleast the ad side of your
account?
Because I think really.
Yes, there are those diamondsin the rough that happen to be
overseas and there are reallysmart people For every one of
them.
There's a thousand people thatare somewhere between bad to
okay, slash, mediocre, andmediocre can cost you a lot of
(30:20):
money on your account,especially if you're spending
tens of thousands of dollars amonth on Amazon ads.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, honestly, john, I think that's a really good
point, and maybe that comes fullcircle back to that question of
what things do you farm out toan agency first of all.
So you probably need toevaluate is what is what is the,
what is the value of successlook like if an agency does this
(30:48):
right, whatever this thing isthat you're looking to farm out,
and also what is the degree ofloss that you might experience
if they do it wrong?
And to some degree, I thinkthat would probably establish
for you kind of a baseline interms of, like, how comfortable
am I bringing in an agency thatI don't necessarily know, and
how much vetting should I dobeforehand to you know, before
(31:08):
we give them the reins to startworking on something?
So that's something to thinkthrough.
I would say, one of the thingsthat I wanted to mention on this
is something that I think isone of those areas where, in my
opinion, what I've experiencedtells me that this is a red flag
(31:29):
that you should be payingattention to from day one, and
if this is something that you'redealing with from day one and
it doesn't get rectified quickly, it's probably a sign that you
need to move on, no matter whatyou think of the people who own
the agency, no matter what youthink of their ultimate goal and
what they're trying to buildout and how trustworthy you
(31:49):
think they are, you know, ifthis is happening, it probably
means there's some sort ofbreakdown in their processes or
their management structure orsomething, and you probably need
to move on, and that is this.
This is something that we'vedealt with with a number of
agencies.
It's something that at themoment, we're dealing with with
the current agency and it'smaking this question what we're
going to do.
(32:09):
But and that is when simplemistakes are coming back to you
and you, as the brand owner orsome member of the team, you
know the brand team is having towork with that agency to
correct those very simplemistakes that anybody that has a
(32:31):
good command of the Englishlanguage and has a good command
of the English language and hasa few brain cells probably would
know.
That's not right and itshouldn't have happened that way
.
If those things are regularlycoming to you and aren't being
caught by some manager on theagency team before it makes it
to you and you point it out andit doesn't get corrected fairly
quickly, in my opinion, that'sprobably a sign that you need to
(32:54):
decide whether to move on ornot.
Because my perspective is, ifthey're going to use overseas
freelancers which again, I don'thave any problem with that
there's certainly some goodoverseas freelancers and I've
used them and I use some now butif you're going to do that as
an agency, then you better havea strong management team that
(33:14):
sits above them, between themand the client, that is vetting
the work that they're puttingout and making sure that the
work that you're sending to theclient is quality work and that
you're not causing them morework on the client side than is
necessary.
You know like how much are theypaying you for your agency
services and how much work areyou putting on their plate
because you didn't take care ofit as a manager?
(33:36):
We're seeing some of that.
You know that there's a lot ofthat kind of you know I would
say some attention to detailthat's a little bit lacking on
some of that stuff and it'scoming through to us and we're
having to spend time on it thatwe shouldn't have to.
You need to make sure that thatstuff either isn't happening or
that it gets rectified quickly.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, two quick thoughts on that.
I mean one.
What I would share is is thatif you're seeing simple mistakes
like that, I a hundred percentagree with you I think that's a
huge red flag, cause I can tellyou that if those simple
mistakes are happening, there'sbigger mistakes that are
happening behind the scene.
It's like it's just like goinginto a restaurant and if you
happen to see that their tablesare dirty, you probably don't
want to know what's going on inthe kitchen.
The other thing that I wouldsay is is that I wouldn't get
(34:19):
super wrapped around that,because I think Mike, you and
Matt and I think all three of uskind of have this have a pretty
good level head around.
You know, overseas not versusoverseas, but for the listeners
out there, rather than thinkingabout where are these people
coming from, I would reallyfocus on what is the results
that that agency is delivering,because our focus is hey, it
(34:44):
doesn't really matter whetherthat person is sitting next to
me or halfway across the world.
That shouldn't matter to theclient.
What matters is the resultsthat we are delivering, and
that's where we've really beenfocused is delivering those
results for clients, andsometimes that looks like, you
know, increasing revenue whilemaking you know increasing.
(35:05):
You know total average cost ofsale, you know tacos numbers and
you know making that go down,whatever it happens to be, or
amazing graphics for them, thosetypes of things in order to
improve conversion rate onlistings.
But in that process, part ofthose results is when we send
something over to a client.
They shouldn't look at it andgo WTF on this image, because
(35:28):
then we have failed ondelivering the results.
And we're not perfect, but wedo put a lot of effort into
making sure that we areconsistently delivering results
for the clients that we have.
And I think I also want todouble click on something else
that you said, which is you know, once you decide on that agency
, well, and I, and I would sayeven during that conversation
(35:48):
process, if you have somebodythat an agency that says, hey,
we're going to double your sales, or whatever it happens to be,
in 30 days, it's either one oftwo things Either you know
they're just giving you the songand dance in order to get you
to sign, and then it's probablygoing to be a disaster, or
there's something massively thatyou are missing in how you're
running your business.
(36:09):
On Amazon, I would say 80% ofthe time it's, you're being
oversold a lot of results inorder for them to get you to
sign.
So if they say that they canmake massive improvements on
your account in a couple ofweeks, I would run the other way
.
To me, that's a huge red flagof how good an agency is, where
(36:31):
they're just over-promising andthey're going to way
under-deliver your expectationswhen you start working with them
.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Do you have anything more you feel like you want to
add to that Matt?
Speaker 3 (36:44):
No, I mean, I think that's a really, really good way
to say it.
I think that what I loved aboutthe process at a couple of the
different agencies that I'veworked out from the other side
of the table is them doing a bitof an analysis.
Now getting an analysis on youraccount, you need to make sure
that that that analysis isn'tself-serving for the agency Like
(37:06):
they're.
Like John was mentioning, youknow wasted ad spend.
I had.
I worked for one that I wasn't.
I didn't love the way that theyportrayed wasted ad spend in
the slide deck.
After the analysis that we did,it painted all wasted ad spend
as an enemy of the brand, whichJohn just mentioned.
There has to be a certain levelof testing going on at all times
(37:28):
, testing new keywords, new adtypes, stuff like that.
But I think having an analysisdone at the beginning and that's
more for a brand owner beingable to just understand what
does the agency think that theycan do for me, what are they
seeing?
What are our goals aligned,having very aligned goals in the
beginning and understandingtheir communication style and
(37:51):
how you're going to be reportedto, I think is also super
important.
But I think if they're doing ananalysis and you really
understand the strategy thatthey're going to implement to
get you to where your goals are,whatever those goals are,
understanding that and makingsure that it aligns and making
sure that it's not they're notblowing smoke.
I mean, you know, like, likeJohn said, I think that would be
a huge red flag if they saidthat they could move mountains
(38:13):
that you haven't been able tomove for yourself.
So I think that's an importantpart of the process as well.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You know what I like in what there probably is some
sort of an audit that theyshould and could do on your
brand.
That can help establish whatyour baseline is and what they
could do for you with whatevertheir service is you know,
whether it's creative or PPC, oryou know TikTok, or you know
social, whatever it is theyshould be able to do an audit.
(38:53):
And what I like about that ideais there's two things about that
.
One I think that any audit thatyou get back, if you can't
easily understand what it isthat they're going to try to do
with your brand that they thinkis going to improve things, then
either one you know they needto find a better way improve
things, then either one you knowthey need to find a better way
(39:15):
to explain it.
And maybe, you know, maybe aconversation with them, because
there are some things that aretechnically complex.
You know that might bedifficult to explain in a
document.
You know an audit document, butsomebody on the team ought to
understand the strategy wellenough that they can explain it
in layman's terms to somebodywho might not right.
If they can't do that, Ipersonally think that probably
(39:38):
is problematic in and of itself.
You need to be able tounderstand what the strategy is
they're going to employ, and ifthey can't explain it well
enough to you, either one it'sgobbledygook, or two, they don't
understand it well enough.
Otherwise they'd be able toexplain it.
So I think that's really avaluable piece is to get that
audit from whoever it is, andmake sure that you fully
understand what that strategylooks like and also that, quite
(40:00):
frankly, you agree that thatstrategy can accomplish or at
least has the potential.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Mike was going to say something really important.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You dropped what they're telling you.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Please, mike, you dropped right, as you said,
something really important.
So, and also.
And then all of a sudden it cutout and our listeners were like
, ah, that was the piece that Ineeded to hear.
So if you could, repeat that.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Well so I'm not sure where the also came in, but my
point was that so they need tobe able to explain it to you.
No-transcript, you're going tobe it's kind of going to be this
(40:59):
adversarial thing, yeah, whereit's like always.
You're always going to bebutting heads like hey, we're
not moving fast enough, or youknow, because you don't believe
for yourself that that strategycan actually work, like there's
there's a level of disbel there.
So make sure you understand itand that they can explain it to
you properly and that youbelieve that that strategy makes
sense for your brand.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah absolutely Well.
I think we've given listeners alot to think about.
I will wrap up with this onelast tip, and then I'd love to
hear any last tips from you guys, which is anytime you're
getting.
You know every agency has casestudies and testimonials, which
are great.
I would highly encouragelisteners to look at the dates
on those case studies andtestimonials, because they age
(41:39):
like milk, especially withAmazon.
Just because an agency wassuper successful in 2019 does
not mean that they know how togrow a brand in 2025.
They're completely differentskills.
So just make sure that you payattention to that when you get
those case studies andtestimonials.
And with that, I'll turn itover to you guys Any last tips
for our listeners before we wrapup for today.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
One tip that I would give that I actually very much
disliked as a sales rep foragencies is when a brand owner
asked to speak to someone on theteam the type of a person that
they would be interacting withon a weekly basis or a monthly
basis.
I didn't love that as a salesrep because it put me farther
away from getting a contractsigned, but from a brand owner
(42:23):
feeling comfortable with theagency that you're going to be
working with, I think it's avalid question and I think for
me to give me a warm fuzzy andreally believe that I think that
the agency can do what I'masking them to do, I think
making sure that you gel withthe person that you would be
having a conversation with on aregular basis is a really
important thing.
(42:43):
To ask the agency.
If they don't do that, I wouldbe a little bit leery.
You know there are some agenciesout there that are still kind
of owner operator and that'sunderstandable.
There that are still kind ofowner operator and that's
understandable, and you know, Ithink that to me would would
even give me a little bit moreof a warm fuzzy that you know
I'm speaking with the guy thatis.
You know his livelihood is isdirectly tied to how well they
do with my brand.
(43:04):
So, you know, I think speakingto someone, as opposed to just
listening to a sales pitch, Ithink talking to someone that
actually manages brands, I thinkthat's a good step in the
vetting process.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
And.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
I think, I've talked plenty, so I don't really have
much to add, all right.
Well, I think we've definitelygiven listeners plenty to think
about as they think about hiringan Amazon agency, and so thank
everybody for listening andwe'll see you next time on
another Tactics Tuesday.
Welcome everybody to another Amazon Tactics Tuesday
for Brand Fortress, and todaywe're going to be talking about
a topic that I think we havesome really unique perspective
on, which is should I hire anAmazon agency.
And the reason why I think wehave a really unique perspective
on this topic amongst the threeof us is that so I've been an
owner of an Amazon agency forthe last five years.
(00:22):
I have seen the good, bad andugly that comes out of that.
Matt has worked at a number ofdifferent Amazon agencies and
also as a brand owner.
So he's that perspective.
And, mike, I know you've workedwith a number of different
Amazon agencies, you know, asyou've worked on building your
brand, and so there really is,you know, I think, a lot of
different perspectives on thedifferent side of the table,
(00:42):
both from the brand perspectiveand then also from the agency
perspective on, you know, whenshould I hire an agency, should
I hire an agency at all, whatare the pros and cons and how do
you get the most out of thatrelationship.
So I guess where do we want tostart with this discussion?
Mike?
You know I know we talked a lotbefore we hit record and we
were talking about, you knowsome of the challenges that
(01:02):
you've had in the past withAmazon agencies that you've
worked with, so is that a goodplace, do you think, to start
for this conversation?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we can start there.
I think the first thing that Isuppose I would say is that it
is definitely the case that youshouldn't just run into this
willy-nilly.
It should be.
You should really take sometime to think about whether it
makes sense to even walk downthe road of hiring an agency in
the first place, and part ofthat is determining what is your
(01:31):
goal in hiring them.
You know, I think that's thefirst and we can talk about that
in a little bit.
I think that's a good topic todiscuss.
But definitely you want tostart there with what is the
goal for hiring this particularagency and why.
But if we get into kind of thenuts and bolts of just having
done it and what my experiencehas been and kind of what my
(01:52):
thoughts are on that, I wouldsay one our experience has not
been amazing.
We have hired, I think, fivedifferent agencies over the
years for various differentaspects of our Amazon business
maybe six actually and the onething that can well okay, I'm
(02:12):
going to say this two differentways, two agencies, I think, if
I'm being as objective aspossible about the relationship,
I think two of those agenciesthat we hired, one of them
didn't have enough time for usto really see whether they would
(02:32):
have been a good fit for us,because we ended up having
another opportunity come alongthat made more sense for us in
the moment, at least, we thoughtit did and so we ended up
switching gears, and so thatreally was not their fault.
So they might have beenterrific to work with and they
came highly recommended.
The other agency that I thinkfalls somewhat into that
(02:53):
category is not so much thatthey didn't have time we gave
them plenty of time to be ableto have significant positive
impact on our account,significant positive impact on
our account.
But I think that it's alsoimportant to remember and I
think this is true of thisagency is that not every agency
is right for every Amazonbusiness 100%, I think what you
(03:16):
sell, the category that you'rein, and what their level of
experience is with that, theprice point that you sell at are
you a super premium priceproduct in your category or are
you the bargain basement priceproduct in your category?
Now, I hope you're not that.
If you're watching this podcast, I hope you're aware that
that's probably not your bestbet to be the lowest priced
(03:39):
individual in your category,unless it's a very strategic
move for you to do so.
But some agencies are better atdealing with premium products.
Some agencies are better atdealing with low price products.
Maybe the strategies thatthey're good at might work
better for a low price productin a category than it does for a
premium price product in acategory.
I actually think that thestrategies that one of these
(04:02):
agencies was employing for uswas really more purpose-built
for a product that could bepriced at the lower end of the
category Maybe not necessarilythe lowest price, but certainly
not a product like ours, wherewe're priced three to five times
as much as everybody else inthe category.
I just don't think that theirstrategy stack made sense for us
, made sense for us.
(04:26):
So that's the first thing isjust make sure you know, just
understand.
Not every agency is good foryour business, even though they
might be right for somebody else.
And that probably means askingsome questions on the front end
in terms of what are the brandshave you worked with that are
similar to us either?
Similar category to us, similarproduct to us, similar, you
know, similar price point bycomparison to the rest of our
(04:48):
category.
That sort of thing Get an ideaof what is their strategy stack.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
What do they?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
intend to do with your brand if you were to let
them take things over, reallyvet that ahead of time, and I
didn't do a good job of thatwith this agency that I was just
mentioning.
They're good people, I likedworking with them, they have a
lot of integrity, and I kind ofmade an assumption that, because
all of those pieces were true,they would be able to do good
(05:13):
work for us, and I do not haveany question that they tried to
do good work for us.
It just wasn't a good fit forour brand.
Beyond that, though, we'veworked with a number of other
agencies, and I will say so farI have not been impressed, and I
won't ever name names because,again, sometimes it's a result
of just they're not a good fitfor your company or your brand
(05:35):
or your category.
So I'm not going to throwanybody under the bus, but it's
been a difficult road,inexpensive overseas freelancers
, which I don't have a problemwith, but they are not properly
managing those freelancers andmaking sure that they're
(05:57):
verifying the quality of thework before it gets implemented
or before it gets submitted tothe brand owner, like myself,
and so I end up doing a lot morework that really should be the
agency's job.
You know I end up doing thework of vetting, you know, the
work product of theirfreelancers and if that's what I
have to do I might as well justhire the freelancer myself and
(06:19):
bring them in, you know,in-house.
So that's been kind of ourexperience thus far at a high
level.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You know we can talk about details, but Matt, I know
you've got a wealth ofexperience in this area as well,
so anything that you know youwant to kind of build off of
that Mike mentioned, or you knowother perspectives that you
think would be important forlisteners to know.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, so I think the majority of our specific
listeners are alreadyestablished on Amazon.
They're doing, you know, midsix figures to seven figures.
So it's not like they're thesame advice that I would give to
a brand new seller, like, Ithink, that a brand new seller.
I think there's a level ofinvolvement that you need to
have in the very beginning.
(07:01):
Specifically, if we're talkingabout PPC, I think you need to
get your hands dirty in thebeginning.
I think that you need to bevery, very actively involved in
the management and the setup ofthe initial campaign structure
and that kind of stuff.
I mean the challenge when you goright out of the gate with an
agency and you don't understandthe basics of PPC is that you
don't really understandreporting that you get.
(07:23):
You don't know how to ask theright questions.
So, again, I think that themajority of our listeners are
kind of established.
So you know from a I do haveexperience on both sides of the
table and, I think, from aseller, especially if it's your
first time approaching an agencyand trying to outsource in that
way.
Before I even attempted anactual agency, I hired
(07:44):
freelancers and I tried to do itin-house and I think that was
an important step for me is tounderstand also, like the
management of someone, and whatI wanted to hear and how
involved I wanted to be in theprocess and what I wanted to be
reported on.
So I went that route first and Ithink it prepared me for those
conversations with an agencyright out of the gate.
You know, the agency that Iused was it was mostly a tool.
(08:06):
When you know it was before AIwas a thing.
It was like a bid optimizationtool that then had a managed
service behind it and theproblem that I had with that
particular entity is that itreally didn't work.
My product at the time itwasn't like a garlic press or a
barbecue glove that I wascompeting against 100 other
(08:27):
sellers selling the exact samething.
It was a little bit innovative.
So, you know, there wasn't asmany keywords to dominate on as
there were in a lot of othercategories and this particular
tool was adding a lot ofirrelevant keywords to my
campaigns and it created a huge,giant mess.
And I don't think that, similarto what Mike was talking about,
(08:48):
where a lot of the management,you know the pushing of the
buttons and pulling the leverswere done by overseas
freelancers that I didn't reallyhave that much communication
with and I really don't thinkunderstood my product or brand,
and that was a huge challengethat took me once I severed that
relationship, it took me sixmonths to unravel the mess that
was created because of that, andI think one of my problems is
(09:11):
that I went in thinking thatthis was going to be the
opportunity for me to just wipemy hands of it and just get a
report every week, and it justthat wasn't the right solution
for me.
So that was my first experience, and you know, then I've I've
evolved over the course of timeas a seller, working with
agencies that were not toolbased and were more human based,
and that was a much betterexperience, and I think what I
(09:31):
learned out of the gate wasfirst of all, I think you have
to be ready as a brandespecially if you're new to
outsourcing to an agency.
You're ready as a brand toreally understand what is your
superpower, what are the thingsI enjoy doing, what are the
things that might not be thebest use of my time, and put
those all in buckets and thenreally understand what it is
that you're outsourcing to anagency.
There are PPC specific agencies, there are full service
(09:54):
agencies and it really justdepends, and then everything in
between.
So it really just depends onwhat it is that you're looking
to outsource, but you have tounderstand that going in because
they're going to if thesalespeople are any good which
I've been in that role, by theway, for a couple of different
agencies.
If they're good, they're goingto sing a really interesting and
a story that speaks of, youknow, rainbows and butterflies
(10:16):
at the end of it.
But if you don't reallyunderstand what it is that their
strengths are as an agency andif that matches up with what
you're looking to outsource,you're going to run into issues
with alignment of vision and youknow expectation alignment and
things of that nature.
So I think you have to reallyunderstand what it is that
you're outsourcing, why you'reoutsourcing it, and then find an
(10:37):
agency that matches exactlywhat your deficiencies are and
what you're looking to outsource.
I think that's a very importantpart of it.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Before.
You probably should jump in here, John, because you've got a lot
of input, but I do want to saysomething regarding what Matt
just said that I think is kindof important and probably
something that I haven't paidenough attention to in the past.
So, as he mentioned, you've gotagencies that are very specific
to what they do, so, say, a PPCagency or a Google Ads agency or
(11:07):
whatever.
And then you've got agenciesthat are more full service and
do multiple different things,and I think one of the things
that is important to be carefulabout is oftentimes, I think
agencies have a superpower, andthen they have a bunch of other
ancillary services that theyhave now stacked around their
superpower, so they can kind offill out the boat a little bit,
(11:30):
and they're not nearly as goodat those fill-in services.
And so if any of those fill-inservices are ones that are
crucial to your business, youprobably don't want to just give
them to them if you haven'tdetermined that they are
actually that that's actuallyanother superpower of theirs.
You know, if it's just afill-in service, find somebody
else.
If it's critical to yourbusiness, if it's just kind of,
(11:50):
hey, it would be nice to havethat, but it's not critically
important, well then, maybe itmakes sense if it's an
inexpensive add-on, you know, tothat agency.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, I think so.
I guess, before I, you know,get too far down the rabbit
perspective, I can tell you oneof the reasons, even though
we've gotten a lot of requestsand almost pressure from clients
and prospects and stuff overthe last couple of years to get
on a different platform.
So Walmart was a good examplewhere people were like, hey, why
(12:21):
don't you start advertising atWalmart?
I mean, we tested it out for alittle bit and just realized
that that was going to be adifferent, a different skill set
.
And we're at that part withTikTok right now and, quite
frankly, the approach that we'vetaken is more of we know good
people that own agencies that dothose things and we would much
rather refer you know a clientto an agency who's really good
(12:45):
at that than for us to try andbe you know all things to all
people, because there's enoughhappening on Amazon in order to,
you know, stay up with all thetrends and everything that's
going on with ads and creativeand all that type of stuff that
you know.
We've got our hands full Now,zooming out to kind of the
(13:06):
10,000 foot level, what I'll sayfrom an agency perspective.
To kind of the 10,000 footlevel, what I'll say, from an
agency perspective, having donethis for, you know, five years
now is, I would say, the bestclients we have, is.
It's much more of a partnershipthan you know.
We're quote unquote doingeverything for them, and the
reason for that is becausethere's a lot of things that are
happening around the brandsthat you know that are happening
(13:33):
around the brands that you knowwe're.
We're there to support, but weneed to be a part of that
process.
As far as you know, when arethey launching new products?
What is the?
What is the brand strategy, oreven the product level strategy
right now?
Is it hey, we want, you know,profit optimization, in which
case how we manage their, youknow, ads campaigns are going to
be very, very different than ifit's hey, we want to take
(13:53):
market share and we want to grow, you know top line revenue.
And it's also you know where doyou fit into the marketplace?
Because if you're a premiumproduct, well that tells me that
you know we might have somemore flexibility with the price
lever to where you know it'svery possible, and we were just
talking about this before we hitrecord.
We're working with a clientright now that we were able to
(14:14):
significantly increase theirprice and increase their revenue
at the same time, and that'skind of the dream position to be
in, but not every brand is setup for that, especially if they
are designed to where they'renot a premium product.
That's not always the right fit, and so really understanding
it's not.
Yeah, you're delegating some ofthose day-to-day tasks of PPC
(14:36):
and those types of things tothat agency, but you're not
deserting that entire channel tothem, at least in order to be
successful in what we're seeingfrom most of our clients.
The other thing that I would sayis that as and people that are
listening to this and I knowboth Matt, you and Mike know
that the Amazon platform haschanged dramatically over the
(14:56):
last four to five years.
It used to be significantlybetter or I shouldn't say better
easier, really, when you startlooking at profitability and a
lot of those other aspects.
As a business, it used to be alot easier to build a profitable
product and a profitable brandand business off of Amazon.
Still tons of opportunity onAmazon, but that looks very
(15:17):
different, and so I think theother thing is that really
aligning what are yourexpectations with that agency?
And I would say now, as we'rerecording this in 2025, if you
have now is really around reallysolid PPC strategy, which a lot
(15:52):
of brands now are doing well,and conversion and listing
optimization and making surethat you are getting as much
visibility and as much as highconversion rate as possible out
of your listings, becauseotherwise, if you're just trying
to kind of adjust bid clicks orkeyword bids in order to hit an
(16:14):
ACOS goal, you really end upgetting left behind because your
listings aren't converting asmuch.
So therefore, you don't want tospend as much and you have to
spend less compared to yourcompetitors in order to keep the
same amount of market share andbefore you know it, you've lost
half your market share toeither overseas competitors,
which can be very aggressive, oreither competitors have been
(16:36):
around for a long time that justkind of got smarter and
invested in optimizing theirconversion rates.
And then the other things thatwe talk a lot about on the
podcast a lot which is buildingyour brand off of Amazon, or at
least having a customer list offof Amazon, and then having a
strategy for building up thebrand, of launching new products
(16:58):
and looking at you know how canyou continue to expand as a
brand?
So what I would say is, ifyou're looking for an agency,
look for an agency thatunderstands your brand strategy
and that their skillset alignsreally well with where you want
to take the brand in the next,you know, year to three years.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, I think.
I think there's a lot of goodmeat in there as far as like
what, what that relationshiplooks like with an agency.
And one thing I would say is,if, if you're going to bring on
an agency, the one thing I've atleast always tried to do as
best I could is give them enoughtime to be able to actually get
(17:44):
to know the brand well enoughand really get their feet under
themselves to start deliveringthe results that they're capable
of, because you can't come infresh to a brand that you don't
know, especially if you'recoming into a category that you
haven't done before.
So if you're an agency who'snever done pool tools or even
the pool category at all, ittakes a little time to get your
(18:07):
feet under you.
So you need to give a fewmonths probably at least two
months, I would say.
You know, to give them anopportunity to get to know the
category well enough and yourbrand well enough and all the.
You know the upper keywordusage and you know what your
messaging is and all that,before you really start making
any significant determinationsabout do do we continue, you
(18:30):
know, with that agency, and sothat's, that's kind of an
important piece.
The other thing you know thatyou mentioned was just kind of
that communication piece, andthat is so some of that probably
comes down to.
This is something I wasthinking of as, as you were
talking, john, was kind of thatdetermination of when to bring
on an agency and who to bring onwhat.
What aspects of your businessmight you want to bring on an
(18:52):
agency for.
And I think Matt said somethingreally important earlier, which
was that I don't know if this isalways true, but it definitely
is true, at least within theAmazon ecosystem is true.
So, in other words, like he wasmentioning, don't bring on a
PPC manager for your Amazonaccount if you don't already
know at least the basics and thefundamentals of how Amazon PPC
(19:16):
works and what the terminologymeans and what you should be
looking at.
You know what are the KPIs thatyou should be paying attention
to, that sort of thing.
If you don't know your categoryvery well, you know, and you
don't understand PPC on Amazon,you shouldn't be pulling on an
agency yet.
No-transcript, there's a lot ofexpertise that goes with
(19:51):
properly utilizing TikTok topush a brand and also how to
properly use it to push thebrand also on Amazon.
And if you don't know anythingabout TikTok, then you know.
Waiting until you do to bring onsomebody who actually knows
what they're doing especially ifyou can afford to pay them is
probably not the right move,because the longer you wait, the
(20:13):
more sales you're losing by notmaking use of TikTok if your
brand is one that really fitsthat platform well.
I don't think every brand does.
I'm not saying that probablyevery brand can make use of
TikTok to one degree or another,but we always have to make
decisions about what leverswe're going to pull and what
levers we're not going to pull,because we can't pull them all
at the same time, and sowhatever money you know, either
(20:36):
time or money that you wouldpotentially be investing in
making TikTok work for yourbrand is time and money that is
not being invested pulling someother level, unless you have
unlimited resources, which mostof us don't.
So you know, make sure thatyou're paying attention to that.
You know what levers should youactually be pulling in your
business.
What are the next most relevantlevers?
(20:56):
Maybe they're the same levers,just pulled harder, right?
Maybe you're already pullingthe right levers and you don't
have to step out and start doingsomething different.
You just have to do more ofwhat you're already doing.
Like, maybe you're really goodat launching products.
Well, if that's the case,launch a whole bunch more
products.
Like, if that's your superpoweris launching and you've got a
really good community to launchto and you can really rank.
(21:16):
Maybe TikTok and all of theseother things are not things that
you should be focusing on?
You don't need a new agency forsomething that you don't know.
You just need to launch moreproducts.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, a couple of one .
I want to circle back to thatconcept of you know, if you're
not very familiar with how and Imean, we've talked quite a bit
about ads and I feel like ads isprobably the most intimidating,
if you will, of the topics.
But there's, there's otherthings that you know listing,
optimization and that type ofstuff that happens.
That's important as well.
And if you're a brand owner outthere and you're looking at an
(21:51):
agency, what I would say is isthat it makes it a lot easier to
find a good agency if you havea strong understanding of the
fundamentals, because thenyou're going to know.
You know, yes, of course,there's going to be agencies out
there that will just take yourmoney and do nothing.
That's like any industry.
But I think what happens moreoften is there's agencies that
(22:14):
don't really fully understandwhat you're trying to do with
your brand, and it's just a.
You know.
There's just not that alignmentof strategy.
Yeah, and with that said, ifyou're someone who's like, hey,
I, you know, amazon ads arereally confusing for me, or I
just don't have the time, orwhatever in order to put it time
(22:36):
to put into that, what I wouldsay is, first of all.
I mean we spend a lot of timeon client education, of making
sure you know they understandwhy we're tracking the numbers
that we are, why we'reoptimizing for certain numbers
and how that aligns, and makingsure that we understand what
their brand strategy and brandgoals are.
To make sure that you knowwe're aligning all those
(22:58):
different numbers to go in thedirection that makes sense for
their brand strategy.
And then the.
So I mean, if you're gettingany agency that you end up
working with you, there shouldbe a very clear and easy for you
to understand and they shouldbe helping you understand what
strategy they would implementand why.
And the other thing that I wouldsay is that this is where
(23:21):
community comes into.
If you're talking to a coupleof different agencies and you
don't know which one to go with,or whatever, talk to a couple
of successful brand owners onAmazon and say, hey, I talked to
an agency and they said thatthey're going to, they want to
do this, and here's how you knowwhat they're kind of focusing
on, to get that sanity checkCause if you don't have that
background, you know that'swhere it's important to have you
(23:44):
know friends and how this is ateam sport and, you know,
bringing in a mentor or you knowsomeone at your level just to,
kind of sanity, check theinformation that you're
receiving from them.
Because I mean, I'll say, oneof the things that I see
agencies really push, thatsounds really cool but in the
end is actually not verybeneficial is, they'll say, oh
(24:06):
well, we're going to increaseyour ACOS and your profitability
.
Well, it's not very hard to orI mean, decrease your ACOS.
It's not very hard to decreaseyour ACOS.
But if I cut your sales in halfand, you know, decrease your
ACOS by 10%, have I really madeyour brand better at the end of
the day?
Right, and I don't think so.
(24:27):
And it's the same thing with,you know, their quote unquote
wasted ad spend.
Well, if you're doing thingsright, there is going to be a
percentage, and everybody wantsto be a small percentage, but
there's going to be a percentageof quote unquote wasted ad
spend.
If you cut that down to zero,what you're essentially saying
is that you're not willing totest any sort of new keywords or
(24:51):
anything else.
And so you've pretty much saidhey, I have no interest in
growing and competing on Amazon,which will make you a little
bit more profitable in the shortrun but will make you
completely not competitive inthe long run and will hurt your
brand over the long term.
So those are just kind of thethings that I see a lot used as
(25:15):
levers that brand owners don'tnecessarily fully understand the
long-term implications ofthings that sound cool but in
the long run might actually hurtyour brand.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I think a lot of what we've talked about so far goes
back to one thing that Mikementioned.
It talked about therelationship that you have with
your agency.
I've used agencies of alldifferent sizes as a brand owner
.
I've worked at all differentagency sizes as an employee, as
a consultant and what I wouldsay I think the most important
role in an agency both speakingwith my agency hat on, but also
(25:48):
speaking with my seller hat on.
If I was a seller looking atdifferent agencies, the first
thing that I would want to seeis that there's a separation
between managing PPC andmanaging the brand.
I think that having someonethat like a brand manager type
level or one of the agenciesthat I worked for that had kind
of a was a bigger agency, sothey had kind of middle
(26:09):
management type tiers, butthey're called there's customer
service manager, customerservice manager or customer
success manager, where you havea client facing person that is
not pushing the buttons andpulling the levers inside of PPC
campaigns but is competitorslooking at different things that
are happening in the market,understanding you know keywords
that are driving sales and notjust at what's the bid level,
(26:39):
cause I mean you can usesoftware to do that.
So I think that having a brandmanager that is client facing
and is really fostering thoserelationships with brand owners
we were just talking about oneof the brands that John and I
work with and you know we wereable to increase her price by
about 30% but also, at the sametime, increase sales, and a lot
of that was a collaborationbetween her and I.
(27:00):
Like it wasn't just hey, we'regoing to raise your price and
we're going to drop money out ofthe helicopter PPC ads Like
there was a lot of strategy thatwent into.
We had to fix their main image,we had to fix their, their SEO.
On pagepage SEO.
They weren't doing a great jobin their title of calling out
main keywords.
So there was a lot that wentinto the result, but a lot of it
was collaboration with thebrand owner and it wasn't just I
(27:21):
sent her a report at the end ofthe month.
It's this is what we're doing,this is why we're doing it, this
is the effect that we expect itto have and if it doesn't, this
is how we're going to roll itback.
So I really think that whenyou're looking at evaluating
agencies, I think having therebeing some a level of separation
from who's in spreadsheets allday and who's actually looking
at the strategy of the brand ata high level.
(27:42):
I feel like those have to betwo separate people and I feel
like the brand strategy just hasto be the one that's having the
communication with the client.
Well, the other thing that wementioned as you know, mike has
(28:03):
had experience with overseasfreelancers and you know feeling
like you've been just handedthis person that is using a
software and is just adjustingan ACoS target inside of a tool.
You know, I think havingsomeone who is very, speaks the
English language very well andunderstands how to have, how to
foster relationships, as opposedto just reading stats on a page
, I think evaluating that pieceof the process is important.
And who will you be speaking toon a regular basis?
What is the function of thatperson?
And is there someone drivinghigh level strategy, as opposed
(28:25):
to just pushing buttons insideof a PPC software?
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Well, I think that's a great point too of you know
what is the level of that personand what's the impact in the
sense of I mean, just to use ouragency, for example, you know
we do have somebody who isoverseas who does a lot of our
(28:50):
catalog happens with that, andif something gets put into a
catalog wrong, the chances of itcosting a brand thousands of
dollars or tens of thousands ofdollars are a lot lower than
when you start looking at PPC.
(29:12):
When you're looking at hiringthe agency of not only like hey,
who's going to be my brandmanager, but give me a little
bit of background on the PPCspecialist that's going to be
working on my account, becauseyou know they're going to be
spending, you know, thousands ortens of thousands of dollars a
month for you.
And even if that means you'refinding someone who's 10% more
effective, just because you knowthey understand the English
language and they understand,you know American culture Well,
(29:37):
you know that's an extra.
Can anyone be anywhere from youknow extra thousand dollars a
month or tens of thousanddollars a month in you know
effectiveness that you have inyour account.
So just again, one one person'sopinion I really don't think it
makes sense in order to skimpout on PPC specialists and
(29:58):
people that are working on atleast the ad side of your
account?
Because I think really.
Yes, there are those diamondsin the rough that happen to be
overseas and there are reallysmart people For every one of
them.
There's a thousand people thatare somewhere between bad to
okay, slash, mediocre, andmediocre can cost you a lot of
(30:20):
money on your account,especially if you're spending
tens of thousands of dollars amonth on Amazon ads.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, honestly, john, I think that's a really good
point, and maybe that comes fullcircle back to that question of
what things do you farm out toan agency first of all.
So you probably need toevaluate is what is what is the,
what is the value of successlook like if an agency does this
(30:48):
right, whatever this thing isthat you're looking to farm out,
and also what is the degree ofloss that you might experience
if they do it wrong?
And to some degree, I thinkthat would probably establish
for you kind of a baseline interms of, like, how comfortable
am I bringing in an agency thatI don't necessarily know, and
how much vetting should I dobeforehand to you know, before
(31:08):
we give them the reins to startworking on something?
So that's something to thinkthrough.
I would say, one of the thingsthat I wanted to mention on this
is something that I think isone of those areas where, in my
opinion, what I've experiencedtells me that this is a red flag
(31:29):
that you should be payingattention to from day one, and
if this is something that you'redealing with from day one and
it doesn't get rectified quickly, it's probably a sign that you
need to move on, no matter whatyou think of the people who own
the agency, no matter what youthink of their ultimate goal and
what they're trying to buildout and how trustworthy you
(31:49):
think they are, you know, ifthis is happening, it probably
means there's some sort ofbreakdown in their processes or
their management structure orsomething, and you probably need
to move on, and that is this.
This is something that we'vedealt with with a number of
agencies.
It's something that at themoment, we're dealing with with
the current agency and it'smaking this question what we're
going to do.
(32:09):
But and that is when simplemistakes are coming back to you
and you, as the brand owner orsome member of the team, you
know the brand team is having towork with that agency to
correct those very simplemistakes that anybody that has a
(32:31):
good command of the Englishlanguage and has a good command
of the English language and hasa few brain cells probably would
know.
That's not right and itshouldn't have happened that way
.
If those things are regularlycoming to you and aren't being
caught by some manager on theagency team before it makes it
to you and you point it out andit doesn't get corrected fairly
quickly, in my opinion, that'sprobably a sign that you need to
(32:54):
decide whether to move on ornot.
Because my perspective is, ifthey're going to use overseas
freelancers which again, I don'thave any problem with that
there's certainly some goodoverseas freelancers and I've
used them and I use some now butif you're going to do that as
an agency, then you better havea strong management team that
(33:14):
sits above them, between themand the client, that is vetting
the work that they're puttingout and making sure that the
work that you're sending to theclient is quality work and that
you're not causing them morework on the client side than is
necessary.
You know like how much are theypaying you for your agency
services and how much work areyou putting on their plate
because you didn't take care ofit as a manager?
(33:36):
We're seeing some of that.
You know that there's a lot ofthat kind of you know I would
say some attention to detailthat's a little bit lacking on
some of that stuff and it'scoming through to us and we're
having to spend time on it thatwe shouldn't have to.
You need to make sure that thatstuff either isn't happening or
that it gets rectified quickly.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, two quick thoughts on that.
I mean one.
What I would share is is thatif you're seeing simple mistakes
like that, I a hundred percentagree with you I think that's a
huge red flag, cause I can tellyou that if those simple
mistakes are happening, there'sbigger mistakes that are
happening behind the scene.
It's like it's just like goinginto a restaurant and if you
happen to see that their tablesare dirty, you probably don't
want to know what's going on inthe kitchen.
The other thing that I wouldsay is is that I wouldn't get
(34:19):
super wrapped around that,because I think Mike, you and
Matt and I think all three of uskind of have this have a pretty
good level head around.
You know, overseas not versusoverseas, but for the listeners
out there, rather than thinkingabout where are these people
coming from, I would reallyfocus on what is the results
that that agency is delivering,because our focus is hey, it
(34:44):
doesn't really matter whetherthat person is sitting next to
me or halfway across the world.
That shouldn't matter to theclient.
What matters is the resultsthat we are delivering, and
that's where we've really beenfocused is delivering those
results for clients, andsometimes that looks like, you
know, increasing revenue whilemaking you know increasing.
(35:05):
You know total average cost ofsale, you know tacos numbers and
you know making that go down,whatever it happens to be, or
amazing graphics for them, thosetypes of things in order to
improve conversion rate onlistings.
But in that process, part ofthose results is when we send
something over to a client.
They shouldn't look at it andgo WTF on this image, because
(35:28):
then we have failed ondelivering the results.
And we're not perfect, but wedo put a lot of effort into
making sure that we areconsistently delivering results
for the clients that we have.
And I think I also want todouble click on something else
that you said, which is you know, once you decide on that agency
, well, and I, and I would sayeven during that conversation
(35:48):
process, if you have somebodythat an agency that says, hey,
we're going to double your sales, or whatever it happens to be,
in 30 days, it's either one oftwo things Either you know
they're just giving you the songand dance in order to get you
to sign, and then it's probablygoing to be a disaster, or
there's something massively thatyou are missing in how you're
running your business.
(36:09):
On Amazon, I would say 80% ofthe time it's, you're being
oversold a lot of results inorder for them to get you to
sign.
So if they say that they canmake massive improvements on
your account in a couple ofweeks, I would run the other way
.
To me, that's a huge red flagof how good an agency is, where
(36:31):
they're just over-promising andthey're going to way
under-deliver your expectationswhen you start working with them
.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Do you have anything more you feel like you want to
add to that Matt?
Speaker 3 (36:44):
No, I mean, I think that's a really, really good way
to say it.
I think that what I loved aboutthe process at a couple of the
different agencies that I'veworked out from the other side
of the table is them doing a bitof an analysis.
Now getting an analysis on youraccount, you need to make sure
that that that analysis isn'tself-serving for the agency Like
(37:06):
they're.
Like John was mentioning, youknow wasted ad spend.
I had.
I worked for one that I wasn't.
I didn't love the way that theyportrayed wasted ad spend in
the slide deck.
After the analysis that we did,it painted all wasted ad spend
as an enemy of the brand, whichJohn just mentioned.
There has to be a certain levelof testing going on at all times
(37:28):
, testing new keywords, new adtypes, stuff like that.
But I think having an analysisdone at the beginning and that's
more for a brand owner beingable to just understand what
does the agency think that theycan do for me, what are they
seeing?
What are our goals aligned,having very aligned goals in the
beginning and understandingtheir communication style and
(37:51):
how you're going to be reportedto, I think is also super
important.
But I think if they're doing ananalysis and you really
understand the strategy thatthey're going to implement to
get you to where your goals are,whatever those goals are,
understanding that and makingsure that it aligns and making
sure that it's not they're notblowing smoke.
I mean, you know, like, likeJohn said, I think that would be
a huge red flag if they saidthat they could move mountains
(38:13):
that you haven't been able tomove for yourself.
So I think that's an importantpart of the process as well.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You know what I like in what there probably is some
sort of an audit that theyshould and could do on your
brand.
That can help establish whatyour baseline is and what they
could do for you with whatevertheir service is you know,
whether it's creative or PPC, oryou know TikTok, or you know
social, whatever it is theyshould be able to do an audit.
(38:53):
And what I like about that ideais there's two things about that
.
One I think that any audit thatyou get back, if you can't
easily understand what it isthat they're going to try to do
with your brand that they thinkis going to improve things, then
either one you know they needto find a better way improve
things, then either one you knowthey need to find a better way
(39:15):
to explain it.
And maybe, you know, maybe aconversation with them, because
there are some things that aretechnically complex.
You know that might bedifficult to explain in a
document.
You know an audit document, butsomebody on the team ought to
understand the strategy wellenough that they can explain it
in layman's terms to somebodywho might not right.
If they can't do that, Ipersonally think that probably
(39:38):
is problematic in and of itself.
You need to be able tounderstand what the strategy is
they're going to employ, and ifthey can't explain it well
enough to you, either one it'sgobbledygook, or two, they don't
understand it well enough.
Otherwise they'd be able toexplain it.
So I think that's really avaluable piece is to get that
audit from whoever it is, andmake sure that you fully
understand what that strategylooks like and also that, quite
(40:00):
frankly, you agree that thatstrategy can accomplish or at
least has the potential.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Mike was going to say something really important.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You dropped what they're telling you.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Please, mike, you dropped right, as you said,
something really important.
So, and also.
And then all of a sudden it cutout and our listeners were like
, ah, that was the piece that Ineeded to hear.
So if you could, repeat that.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Well so I'm not sure where the also came in, but my
point was that so they need tobe able to explain it to you.
No-transcript, you're going tobe it's kind of going to be this
(40:59):
adversarial thing, yeah, whereit's like always.
You're always going to bebutting heads like hey, we're
not moving fast enough, or youknow, because you don't believe
for yourself that that strategycan actually work, like there's
there's a level of disbel there.
So make sure you understand itand that they can explain it to
you properly and that youbelieve that that strategy makes
sense for your brand.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah absolutely Well.
I think we've given listeners alot to think about.
I will wrap up with this onelast tip, and then I'd love to
hear any last tips from you guys, which is anytime you're
getting.
You know every agency has casestudies and testimonials, which
are great.
I would highly encouragelisteners to look at the dates
on those case studies andtestimonials, because they age
(41:39):
like milk, especially withAmazon.
Just because an agency wassuper successful in 2019 does
not mean that they know how togrow a brand in 2025.
They're completely differentskills.
So just make sure that you payattention to that when you get
those case studies andtestimonials.
And with that, I'll turn itover to you guys Any last tips
for our listeners before we wrapup for today.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
One tip that I would give that I actually very much
disliked as a sales rep foragencies is when a brand owner
asked to speak to someone on theteam the type of a person that
they would be interacting withon a weekly basis or a monthly
basis.
I didn't love that as a salesrep because it put me farther
away from getting a contractsigned, but from a brand owner
(42:23):
feeling comfortable with theagency that you're going to be
working with, I think it's avalid question and I think for
me to give me a warm fuzzy andreally believe that I think that
the agency can do what I'masking them to do, I think
making sure that you gel withthe person that you would be
having a conversation with on aregular basis is a really
important thing.
(42:43):
To ask the agency.
If they don't do that, I wouldbe a little bit leery.
You know there are some agenciesout there that are still kind
of owner operator and that'sunderstandable.
There that are still kind ofowner operator and that's
understandable, and you know, Ithink that to me would would
even give me a little bit moreof a warm fuzzy that you know
I'm speaking with the guy thatis.
You know his livelihood is isdirectly tied to how well they
do with my brand.
(43:04):
So, you know, I think speakingto someone, as opposed to just
listening to a sales pitch, Ithink talking to someone that
actually manages brands, I thinkthat's a good step in the
vetting process.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
And.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
I think, I've talked plenty, so I don't really have
much to add, all right.
Well, I think we've definitelygiven listeners plenty to think
about as they think about hiringan Amazon agency, and so thank
everybody for listening andwe'll see you next time on
another Tactics Tuesday.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.