December 23, 2024 • 17 mins
Unlock the secrets of maximizing collaboration with digital agencies as we reveal insider tips from our own experiences in running successful agencies. Ever wondered how to align your goals and expectations with your digital agency to prevent misalignments? This episode promises to arm you with strategies to ensure both you and your agency are measuring meaningful metrics like revenue and cost per acquisition, working together towards shared objectives. We'll also spotlight the indispensable role of having the right stakeholders involved from the outset and the importance of fostering open lines of communication about lead quality and industry trends.
Building trust with your digital agency is essential, but how do you maintain it while ensuring your business insights are fully utilized? Join us for a compelling discussion on striking the perfect balance between trusting your agency's expertise and sharing your unique knowledge to boost campaign outcomes. Learn how to set clear expectations and objectives from the start to cultivate a partnership based on both personal rapport and the agency’s capabilities. We'll address the frustration of unsolicited audits and discuss when it might be time to reconsider your partnership if results fall short of expectations. Tune in to discover how to create a thriving, trust-filled relationship with your digital agency.
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director WHD
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Making sure that you have the right people in the
room in those initial meetings,because there's been times where
we've done a whole onboardingthing and one person might be
the guy from the sales team andthen we're building stuff all
based on what information we'vebeen given.
But then down the track wemight be in a three month
strategy review and then thatperson's turned up and they're
like Whoa, hold on, you'vemissed a whole important piece
here.
That's not our current targetaudience.
(00:22):
It's not who we're getting ourmost sales from.
It's this.
Welcome back to DigitalHorizons, the channel for
marketers, small business ownersand e-commerce entrepreneurs,
and today we're talking abouthow to get the most out of
working with a digital agency.
Both Brian and I own and runour own digital agency, so I
guess, from firsthand experience, we can tell you what it's like
from agency side, as to what wefind when working with clients
(00:45):
allows us to get the bestresults for you.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I think there's a lot of things that seeing clients
over the years work with us thatif I was in their shoes I would
do differently to get the mostvalue out of us and there's been
a lot of clients I've seen thatthe way they operate does
generate the best version of therelationship and gets the most
value out of us as an agency andother agencies they work with.
So we've just got a few tipsthat we can run through of how
(01:10):
we would do it if we were in theshoes of the marketer or the
marketing team or the businessowner.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, definitely.
So, starting off, I think thatthe first thing that we look at
is making sure that expectationsand goals are aligned.
Nothing worse than going intoan engagement and then either
what we're measuring isn'taligned in terms of they think
we're measuring something andwe're actually measuring
something else, and so it'simpossible to get expectations
aligned because you're not evenlooking at the same thing or
there's expectations that Xresults are going to be achieved
(01:35):
within X timeframe, which hasnot been set or discussed.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's probably the key overarching one.
The rest are helpful and goingto be useful, but this one, I
think if you're both on the samepage with your goal setting and
what you want to achieve as abusiness, not just vanity
metrics that you want to seefrom the advertising itself,
share those goals.
(02:00):
Is it revenue?
Is it a return on ad spend?
Is it cost per acquisition?
What do you track as asuccessful client or a
conversion and share that withthe agency so that they can work
on the same targets you'reworking towards.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, and there's obviously more value in
different measurements that youcan use and different agencies
are going to work differently.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And that's fine.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Just be sure that what you're measuring and what
the agency is measuring is thesame and that it's a meaningful
metric for your business'sgrowth.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, that leads into another suggestion, which is
track the performance together.
So it's not just getting thereport from your agency on a
monthly basis.
Have a look at your results.
How's it working on yourbusiness's side and what's the
quality of the conversions andthe leads that you've had?
What's the feedback from withinthe business and how can you
enrich your agency'sunderstanding of what they're
(02:52):
seeing from the websiteanalytics and campaign
dashboards?
We don't have the whole pictureof how those leads have
converted and flowed through thebusiness.
We might be looking at theresults and thinking we've done
a really great job, we've got alow cost per acquisition, but
the margin might not be as highif the conversion metrics or the
revenue isn't tied to thecampaign dashboards.
(03:13):
So we rely on our clients tocome to those reporting meetings
with real feedback about whatthey saw from the leads or the
conversions.
And further to that, it's notthe agency's industry.
They're helping you within yourindustry.
So if there are ebbs and flowswithin your industry, they're
part of the running generalday-to-day running of your
(03:34):
business.
Your agency is just attemptingto work within that industry.
So if there is an increase indemand or a decrease in demand,
it's not something that theagency can generally manage your
brand demand, but there aregoing to be ebbs and flows
within the industry.
That's just the normal runningof business.
I think understanding that andsharing the challenges with your
(03:57):
agency, rather than blamingeach other for those challenges,
will result in a better andmore connected outcome between
yourself and your agency.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, and I think that ties in with setting
expectations, right.
Yeah, and this is something thatI guess, making sure that when
you're going Oracle, we want,say, 1,000 leads a month, but
your budget is only $100 a month, yeah, they're getting making
sure that.
And if you're being told so, ifyou're interviewing agencies and
you're being told, yep, I'vegot a budget of $1,000, say, for
example, and you're saying youwant 1,000 leads and one agency
(04:28):
is saying, yeah, of course we'llget you that, but then nine out
of 10 are saying that's just aridiculous number, those metrics
don't line.
Then just be cautious of that,because there are some agencies
who are just going to set yourexpectations very high and fall
very short and they just live onlow on churn and they have a
great sales team because they'llsell you everything you can
think of, but they're not goingto deliver.
Whereas if you've got realisticexpectations outlined from the
(04:52):
start that don't seem out ofcontrol and also are justified
because if we're working outexpectations we want to look at,
if you'd run a PPC campaign,what is your cost per click?
What is it that you're going tobe expecting to having to pay
for a new lead based onconversion rates on the current
conversion rates, but alsoexpecting that it might be
different based on this channelcompared to others.
So setting your expectationsbased on numbers and then
looking at it being aligned, andthen get realistic growth
(05:14):
patterns based on budgetincreases that are realistic in
terms of timeframe as well.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, absolutely.
I think that trust piece Iwould say is our next
recommendation is to trust theagency expertise, and that can
only come if you've selected theright agency or a trustworthy
agency as well.
So looking for those flagsupfront.
Are you being oversold or areyour expectations being set too
(05:40):
high on what the agency candeliver?
Is an agency promising youresults from an SEO campaign,
for instance, when it's reallyunlikely that you can promise or
even forecast results from SEO?
Is the agency over-promising anincrease in volume of leads for
the same budget?
There's a certain series offlags that you can use there to
(06:03):
select the right agency.
Then, once you trust that agency, the next step is to not
micromanage the management ofyour campaigns.
Entrust in that agency thatthey know what they're doing
within the platform.
They know what they're doingwithin the campaign testing and
optimization process.
Any suggestions or additions totechnical optimizations in the
(06:26):
campaign is just taking theirfocus away from doing their job.
But bring what they don't have,bring that information about
the last set of leads, what thatquality was like, information
about the industry and pricingand high value jobs that you
want to be getting leads for thetype of stuff that they don't
(06:47):
already know about your business.
That is worth sharing.
But where I think clients willstart to waste their time that
they're investing in the agencyor they're paying the agency for
optimization on is inmicromanaging of campaigns
themselves.
So asking so many questionsabout targeting options and ad
(07:10):
types and getting into the nittygritty well, that's what you're
paying the agency for.
But if the brief and theobjectives are clear at a top
level, you should be trustingthat agency to deliver within
those limitations or those guardrails.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, it's a really hard one because there is the
trust that you need to provide,but you need the results as well
, right?
So I guess, from a businessowner point of view or something
, if you're paying an agency andyou're not getting the results
you want, it's really hard justto sit there and trust.
If the expectations have beenlaid out from the start and
you're aligned and you'vedecided what you're measuring,
and then you're looking at theresults and you're going, hey,
we're just not doing this.
(07:46):
I guess that's where it's hardto be like all right, cool, what
are we doing?
And so I guess that trust,whilst it is important to trust,
it has to be earned to a degree.
But I think that, as you said,once you've got that confidence
and you should have theconfidence I think if you're
engaging someone, you should bedoing your research, making sure
that you're working with thepeople that you want to be
working with anyway.
But if you are confident you'vemade the right decision, then
(08:07):
going through and having theconfidence that they've got your
best interest at heart and theyare doing the best thing in
your account to get the resultsthat you're after, you're after.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, I think there's two levels to why you should
trust an agency, or twocategories I would say that you
need to consider when decidingif you're going to trust your
agency.
There's the personalrelationship with someone.
They're a good person.
I do believe that they'reworking hard on trying to get me
the results and we come acrossthat where clients come to us
(08:33):
from another agency but theytrust the person and they really
are trying their best for theclient.
But the other side of it iscapability and experience.
It's not enough sometimes justto be doing the work and making
the changes and implementingoptimizations as an agency.
You have to have capability.
(08:54):
You have to have experiencedteam members who know what
they're doing and can implementcustom or tailored structures to
get better results.
So we see both in terms ofclients leaving their agencies
coming to us.
Some they might have thecapability, but the agency is
built for scale and volume, sothere's just no belief that the
(09:15):
work is happening on theiraccount.
I'm sure there's a seniorperson at that agency that could
do it, but they don't have thetime to do it.
Then there's the other side,where it might be a smaller
agency where they have trustedthe person that's worked on
their account implicitly foryears.
Whenever they call them up,they try to react and figure out
ways to improve, but there'snever any shifting in the
(09:37):
results.
That, to me, says that theperson is trying, but the
capability isn't there, thestrategic view or brain isn't
there to make the right changes.
So, yeah, we're not suggestingyou just sit back and let the
agency do whatever they want.
There has to be those momentswhere you call it and go.
I do trust you, but I don'tthink you've got what we need to
get there, or I don't think thework is happening on my account
(10:00):
.
That needs to happen, and inthat case it's time to make a
change.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, there's nothing , but just on the trust pieces,
nothing worse and morefrustrating that we find is I
don't know if you guys get this,but we'll get a email from a
client and normally it's in theearlier days where maybe they
haven't got the trust andconfidence in what we're doing
at that point.
And we'll get an email and belike oh hey, I've just had some
unsolicited email from someagency or something that's just
(10:26):
gone.
Hey, look at your account, wecan do this, this and this Is
your agency doing all thesethings.
And it's like they've offered afree audit, they've said yes,
but just because they're like ohsure, why not?
And then we get an email thatthen takes us an hour to reply
to all these stupid things thathave been suggested by this
place.
Who's trying to get yourbusiness?
So of course they're adding allthese ridiculous things in here
(10:47):
to make it sound like yep,we're going to just get you to
come work with us, and thenwe've just had to take an hour
out of our day to go respond tothis ridiculous thing.
So now we've got a policy thatwe just don't respond.
We're like if you get an auditfrom an external place, we're
not touching it.
It's like you.
You can trust we're doing theright thing or you can move to
another agency, but we're notgoing to sit there and justify
these things automatically.
As a strategy, because we'vealready discussed strategy,
(11:08):
we've already set the goals,we're getting the targets.
We don't need to sit there andthen justify some random email
that's come in and that could beeven from a Google rep Fucking.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Google reps yeah, the worst.
They're like hey call.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And then they'll sit and talk a whole bunch of shit
that is not in your bestinterest, why don't you turn up
the PMAX campaign?
Why don't you spend more togive you?
And then again it's just ussitting there going.
This time is better spentoptimizing and getting the
results for your account ratherthan justifying and giving you
reasons why this list of shitdoesn't work.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yes, yeah, I completely agree.
I think the trust needs to goand be felt both ways.
The agency needs to feel likethey're free to spend their time
focusing on the best thing foryour accounts and your campaign.
If their time is taken off thatto spend on convincing you
you're in the right place, theresults will suffer.
(11:58):
Yes, you're going to bedistracting them.
I'll give you a sort of a hint.
It only goes on for so longthat they'll do extra work on
your account.
If you keep being the squeakywheel and asking for responses
to audits and micromanaging thecampaign, the good optimization
work stops.
So that they can spend theirtime that they've got allocated
(12:19):
to you on answering yourquestions and doing your ad hoc
reports and those littlefeedback moments that aren't
really helping the campaign moveforward.
So that trust needs to go bothways and it can free up your
agency to do the good work theyneed to do.
But I think it is reallyimportant to be present in those
(12:40):
reporting meetings to set clearexpectations so that you don't
fall to the back of the queue.
There are some agencies thatare built for volume that if you
go quiet then you become theeasy client.
So it is important that you areof focus and you know what
they're going to be working onnext month and you know what
they've worked on in the lastmonth to help move you forward.
(13:02):
You don't want to get into aposition where nothing is
changing on your account becauseyou're the easy, hassle-free
client.
I had one more, and I think it'smore for the beginning of the
relationship with an agency.
It's providing clear, accurateinformation and access so that
the agency can get on with theirjob.
(13:23):
What do I mean by that?
So handing over of the accounts, usernames, passwords, access
to information about the product, granting the agency time to
brief them properly at thebeginning so that they can get
to the right answers in the adssooner.
There is so many occasionswhere the first two to three
(13:44):
months are sometimes spentlooking through or helping the
client trying to find access tothings like search console or
the analytics or whatever it maybe, or connections or data
connections to their CRM thingslike that that if you could have
your house in order and providea clean and neat handover to
your agency, they're spendingless of the campaign setup and
(14:08):
optimization time on organizingyou as a marketing team.
So keep a list or a, you know aone password or a password
vault of all your accounts andall the access you might need.
Make sure you own your accountsand you're giving agency access
to your accounts, not it livingwith an agency and you have to
extract it away from them.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, you want to make sure you're owning your
accounts.
That's a big thing that we findis when we talk to businesses
and sometimes they'll be like,oh, yeah, but I've been working
with this place for ages andwe're like, oh, do you have
access to your account?
And they're like, oh, I thinkso.
They've never even been in theaccount.
And then, when it comes down toit, they want to move and and
that's the biggest load of shitbecause it's your data, it's
(14:50):
your business' thing.
And there are agencies thatjust use this as a thing where
it's just like, yep, we'll justkeep your data and it's to keep
you there.
And again, it's the ones thataren't getting you the results
and they feel that they needthese tactics to keep you there.
But that's something that it'sreally important to understand
that you own your data.
If you don't already.
(15:14):
Continuation If you're workingwith a company for a while,
there is so much value in thatdata that you've generated over
the years pending that they'renot just wasting it all on brand
.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
If we're talking about Google Ads campaign, but
making sure that you have accessand ownership of your data,
yeah, I think that's worthsummarizing at the end If your
agency won't give you access toyour accounts, they're full of
shit and there's bigger problemswith that agency from the
get-go.
So, make them do it or tellthem they're lying.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
One part there as well, just on that initial stage
, when you're talking aboutgetting all the access and
everything.
One thing that we found as wellis that making sure that you
have the right people in theroom in those initial meetings,
because there's been times wherewe've done a whole onboarding
thing and one person might bethe guy from the sales team or
something like that who hascritical information or knows
just a little bit more aboutparts of the business that other
(16:01):
people don't, and then we'reprovided in the onboarding.
We're building stuff all basedon what information we've been
given, but then down the trackwe might be in a three-month
strategy review and then thatperson has turned up and they're
like well, hold on, you'vemissed a whole important piece
here.
That's not a current targetaudience, it's not who we're
getting our most sales from,it's this, and it's only because
they weren't in the room atthat time.
So I think that when you are inthe onboarding stage, make sure
(16:23):
that all the key people, allthe people who have knowledge on
what should happen, are thereand have a say, so that way
you're getting a really wellthought out campaign from the
start.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
And then finally, if all these things are happening
well, you should then budgetappropriately.
So move away from just a setbudget per month to a target
based budget.
What can we afford per lead orper conversion, and how far can
we push till we go over thatcost per conversion, rather than
just setting monthly budgetcaps of, say, $5,000 a month or
(16:54):
$50,000 a month.
Once you trust the agency, thestrategy is firing and you can
afford $30 per conversion, youshould spend as much as humanly
possible until it costs $35 perconversion and then start
looking at optimizations orthings you can do or other
channels you can enter.
There's obviously more thingsyou can do to get the most out
(17:15):
of your agency, but they're theones that we would work on right
now.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, it's going to make your engagement, your
enjoyment and even the resultsthat you're getting throughout
the engagement far better.
Thanks for watching today.
We'll be back with anotherepisode shortly.
Making sure that you have the right people in the
room in those initial meetings,because there's been times where
we've done a whole onboardingthing and one person might be
the guy from the sales team andthen we're building stuff all
based on what information we'vebeen given.
But then down the track wemight be in a three month
strategy review and then thatperson's turned up and they're
like Whoa, hold on, you'vemissed a whole important piece
here.
That's not our current targetaudience.
(00:22):
It's not who we're getting ourmost sales from.
It's this.
Welcome back to DigitalHorizons, the channel for
marketers, small business ownersand e-commerce entrepreneurs,
and today we're talking abouthow to get the most out of
working with a digital agency.
Both Brian and I own and runour own digital agency, so I
guess, from firsthand experience, we can tell you what it's like
from agency side, as to what wefind when working with clients
(00:45):
allows us to get the bestresults for you.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I think there's a lot of things that seeing clients
over the years work with us thatif I was in their shoes I would
do differently to get the mostvalue out of us and there's been
a lot of clients I've seen thatthe way they operate does
generate the best version of therelationship and gets the most
value out of us as an agency andother agencies they work with.
So we've just got a few tipsthat we can run through of how
(01:10):
we would do it if we were in theshoes of the marketer or the
marketing team or the businessowner.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, definitely.
So, starting off, I think thatthe first thing that we look at
is making sure that expectationsand goals are aligned.
Nothing worse than going intoan engagement and then either
what we're measuring isn'taligned in terms of they think
we're measuring something andwe're actually measuring
something else, and so it'simpossible to get expectations
aligned because you're not evenlooking at the same thing or
there's expectations that Xresults are going to be achieved
(01:35):
within X timeframe, which hasnot been set or discussed.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's probably the key overarching one.
The rest are helpful and goingto be useful, but this one, I
think if you're both on the samepage with your goal setting and
what you want to achieve as abusiness, not just vanity
metrics that you want to seefrom the advertising itself,
share those goals.
(02:00):
Is it revenue?
Is it a return on ad spend?
Is it cost per acquisition?
What do you track as asuccessful client or a
conversion and share that withthe agency so that they can work
on the same targets you'reworking towards.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, and there's obviously more value in
different measurements that youcan use and different agencies
are going to work differently.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And that's fine.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Just be sure that what you're measuring and what
the agency is measuring is thesame and that it's a meaningful
metric for your business'sgrowth.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, that leads into another suggestion, which is
track the performance together.
So it's not just getting thereport from your agency on a
monthly basis.
Have a look at your results.
How's it working on yourbusiness's side and what's the
quality of the conversions andthe leads that you've had?
What's the feedback from withinthe business and how can you
enrich your agency'sunderstanding of what they're
(02:52):
seeing from the websiteanalytics and campaign
dashboards?
We don't have the whole pictureof how those leads have
converted and flowed through thebusiness.
We might be looking at theresults and thinking we've done
a really great job, we've got alow cost per acquisition, but
the margin might not be as highif the conversion metrics or the
revenue isn't tied to thecampaign dashboards.
(03:13):
So we rely on our clients tocome to those reporting meetings
with real feedback about whatthey saw from the leads or the
conversions.
And further to that, it's notthe agency's industry.
They're helping you within yourindustry.
So if there are ebbs and flowswithin your industry, they're
part of the running generalday-to-day running of your
(03:34):
business.
Your agency is just attemptingto work within that industry.
So if there is an increase indemand or a decrease in demand,
it's not something that theagency can generally manage your
brand demand, but there aregoing to be ebbs and flows
within the industry.
That's just the normal runningof business.
I think understanding that andsharing the challenges with your
(03:57):
agency, rather than blamingeach other for those challenges,
will result in a better andmore connected outcome between
yourself and your agency.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, and I think that ties in with setting
expectations, right.
Yeah, and this is something thatI guess, making sure that when
you're going Oracle, we want,say, 1,000 leads a month, but
your budget is only $100 a month, yeah, they're getting making
sure that.
And if you're being told so, ifyou're interviewing agencies and
you're being told, yep, I'vegot a budget of $1,000, say, for
example, and you're saying youwant 1,000 leads and one agency
(04:28):
is saying, yeah, of course we'llget you that, but then nine out
of 10 are saying that's just aridiculous number, those metrics
don't line.
Then just be cautious of that,because there are some agencies
who are just going to set yourexpectations very high and fall
very short and they just live onlow on churn and they have a
great sales team because they'llsell you everything you can
think of, but they're not goingto deliver.
Whereas if you've got realisticexpectations outlined from the
(04:52):
start that don't seem out ofcontrol and also are justified
because if we're working outexpectations we want to look at,
if you'd run a PPC campaign,what is your cost per click?
What is it that you're going tobe expecting to having to pay
for a new lead based onconversion rates on the current
conversion rates, but alsoexpecting that it might be
different based on this channelcompared to others.
So setting your expectationsbased on numbers and then
looking at it being aligned, andthen get realistic growth
(05:14):
patterns based on budgetincreases that are realistic in
terms of timeframe as well.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, absolutely.
I think that trust piece Iwould say is our next
recommendation is to trust theagency expertise, and that can
only come if you've selected theright agency or a trustworthy
agency as well.
So looking for those flagsupfront.
Are you being oversold or areyour expectations being set too
(05:40):
high on what the agency candeliver?
Is an agency promising youresults from an SEO campaign,
for instance, when it's reallyunlikely that you can promise or
even forecast results from SEO?
Is the agency over-promising anincrease in volume of leads for
the same budget?
There's a certain series offlags that you can use there to
(06:03):
select the right agency.
Then, once you trust that agency, the next step is to not
micromanage the management ofyour campaigns.
Entrust in that agency thatthey know what they're doing
within the platform.
They know what they're doingwithin the campaign testing and
optimization process.
Any suggestions or additions totechnical optimizations in the
(06:26):
campaign is just taking theirfocus away from doing their job.
But bring what they don't have,bring that information about
the last set of leads, what thatquality was like, information
about the industry and pricingand high value jobs that you
want to be getting leads for thetype of stuff that they don't
(06:47):
already know about your business.
That is worth sharing.
But where I think clients willstart to waste their time that
they're investing in the agencyor they're paying the agency for
optimization on is inmicromanaging of campaigns
themselves.
So asking so many questionsabout targeting options and ad
(07:10):
types and getting into the nittygritty well, that's what you're
paying the agency for.
But if the brief and theobjectives are clear at a top
level, you should be trustingthat agency to deliver within
those limitations or those guardrails.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, it's a really hard one because there is the
trust that you need to provide,but you need the results as well
, right?
So I guess, from a businessowner point of view or something
, if you're paying an agency andyou're not getting the results
you want, it's really hard justto sit there and trust.
If the expectations have beenlaid out from the start and
you're aligned and you'vedecided what you're measuring,
and then you're looking at theresults and you're going, hey,
we're just not doing this.
(07:46):
I guess that's where it's hardto be like all right, cool, what
are we doing?
And so I guess that trust,whilst it is important to trust,
it has to be earned to a degree.
But I think that, as you said,once you've got that confidence
and you should have theconfidence I think if you're
engaging someone, you should bedoing your research, making sure
that you're working with thepeople that you want to be
working with anyway.
But if you are confident you'vemade the right decision, then
(08:07):
going through and having theconfidence that they've got your
best interest at heart and theyare doing the best thing in
your account to get the resultsthat you're after, you're after.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, I think there's two levels to why you should
trust an agency, or twocategories I would say that you
need to consider when decidingif you're going to trust your
agency.
There's the personalrelationship with someone.
They're a good person.
I do believe that they'reworking hard on trying to get me
the results and we come acrossthat where clients come to us
(08:33):
from another agency but theytrust the person and they really
are trying their best for theclient.
But the other side of it iscapability and experience.
It's not enough sometimes justto be doing the work and making
the changes and implementingoptimizations as an agency.
You have to have capability.
(08:54):
You have to have experiencedteam members who know what
they're doing and can implementcustom or tailored structures to
get better results.
So we see both in terms ofclients leaving their agencies
coming to us.
Some they might have thecapability, but the agency is
built for scale and volume, sothere's just no belief that the
(09:15):
work is happening on theiraccount.
I'm sure there's a seniorperson at that agency that could
do it, but they don't have thetime to do it.
Then there's the other side,where it might be a smaller
agency where they have trustedthe person that's worked on
their account implicitly foryears.
Whenever they call them up,they try to react and figure out
ways to improve, but there'snever any shifting in the
(09:37):
results.
That, to me, says that theperson is trying, but the
capability isn't there, thestrategic view or brain isn't
there to make the right changes.
So, yeah, we're not suggestingyou just sit back and let the
agency do whatever they want.
There has to be those momentswhere you call it and go.
I do trust you, but I don'tthink you've got what we need to
get there, or I don't think thework is happening on my account
(10:00):
.
That needs to happen, and inthat case it's time to make a
change.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, there's nothing , but just on the trust pieces,
nothing worse and morefrustrating that we find is I
don't know if you guys get this,but we'll get a email from a
client and normally it's in theearlier days where maybe they
haven't got the trust andconfidence in what we're doing
at that point.
And we'll get an email and belike oh hey, I've just had some
unsolicited email from someagency or something that's just
(10:26):
gone.
Hey, look at your account, wecan do this, this and this Is
your agency doing all thesethings.
And it's like they've offered afree audit, they've said yes,
but just because they're like ohsure, why not?
And then we get an email thatthen takes us an hour to reply
to all these stupid things thathave been suggested by this
place.
Who's trying to get yourbusiness?
So of course they're adding allthese ridiculous things in here
(10:47):
to make it sound like yep,we're going to just get you to
come work with us, and thenwe've just had to take an hour
out of our day to go respond tothis ridiculous thing.
So now we've got a policy thatwe just don't respond.
We're like if you get an auditfrom an external place, we're
not touching it.
It's like you.
You can trust we're doing theright thing or you can move to
another agency, but we're notgoing to sit there and justify
these things automatically.
As a strategy, because we'vealready discussed strategy,
(11:08):
we've already set the goals,we're getting the targets.
We don't need to sit there andthen justify some random email
that's come in and that could beeven from a Google rep Fucking.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Google reps yeah, the worst.
They're like hey call.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
And then they'll sit and talk a whole bunch of shit
that is not in your bestinterest, why don't you turn up
the PMAX campaign?
Why don't you spend more togive you?
And then again it's just ussitting there going.
This time is better spentoptimizing and getting the
results for your account ratherthan justifying and giving you
reasons why this list of shitdoesn't work.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yes, yeah, I completely agree.
I think the trust needs to goand be felt both ways.
The agency needs to feel likethey're free to spend their time
focusing on the best thing foryour accounts and your campaign.
If their time is taken off thatto spend on convincing you
you're in the right place, theresults will suffer.
(11:58):
Yes, you're going to bedistracting them.
I'll give you a sort of a hint.
It only goes on for so longthat they'll do extra work on
your account.
If you keep being the squeakywheel and asking for responses
to audits and micromanaging thecampaign, the good optimization
work stops.
So that they can spend theirtime that they've got allocated
(12:19):
to you on answering yourquestions and doing your ad hoc
reports and those littlefeedback moments that aren't
really helping the campaign moveforward.
So that trust needs to go bothways and it can free up your
agency to do the good work theyneed to do.
But I think it is reallyimportant to be present in those
(12:40):
reporting meetings to set clearexpectations so that you don't
fall to the back of the queue.
There are some agencies thatare built for volume that if you
go quiet then you become theeasy client.
So it is important that you areof focus and you know what
they're going to be working onnext month and you know what
they've worked on in the lastmonth to help move you forward.
(13:02):
You don't want to get into aposition where nothing is
changing on your account becauseyou're the easy, hassle-free
client.
I had one more, and I think it'smore for the beginning of the
relationship with an agency.
It's providing clear, accurateinformation and access so that
the agency can get on with theirjob.
(13:23):
What do I mean by that?
So handing over of the accounts, usernames, passwords, access
to information about the product, granting the agency time to
brief them properly at thebeginning so that they can get
to the right answers in the adssooner.
There is so many occasionswhere the first two to three
(13:44):
months are sometimes spentlooking through or helping the
client trying to find access tothings like search console or
the analytics or whatever it maybe, or connections or data
connections to their CRM thingslike that that if you could have
your house in order and providea clean and neat handover to
your agency, they're spendingless of the campaign setup and
(14:08):
optimization time on organizingyou as a marketing team.
So keep a list or a, you know aone password or a password
vault of all your accounts andall the access you might need.
Make sure you own your accountsand you're giving agency access
to your accounts, not it livingwith an agency and you have to
extract it away from them.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, you want to make sure you're owning your
accounts.
That's a big thing that we findis when we talk to businesses
and sometimes they'll be like,oh, yeah, but I've been working
with this place for ages andwe're like, oh, do you have
access to your account?
And they're like, oh, I thinkso.
They've never even been in theaccount.
And then, when it comes down toit, they want to move and and
that's the biggest load of shitbecause it's your data, it's
(14:50):
your business' thing.
And there are agencies thatjust use this as a thing where
it's just like, yep, we'll justkeep your data and it's to keep
you there.
And again, it's the ones thataren't getting you the results
and they feel that they needthese tactics to keep you there.
But that's something that it'sreally important to understand
that you own your data.
If you don't already.
(15:14):
Continuation If you're workingwith a company for a while,
there is so much value in thatdata that you've generated over
the years pending that they'renot just wasting it all on brand
.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
If we're talking about Google Ads campaign, but
making sure that you have accessand ownership of your data,
yeah, I think that's worthsummarizing at the end If your
agency won't give you access toyour accounts, they're full of
shit and there's bigger problemswith that agency from the
get-go.
So, make them do it or tellthem they're lying.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
One part there as well, just on that initial stage
, when you're talking aboutgetting all the access and
everything.
One thing that we found as wellis that making sure that you
have the right people in theroom in those initial meetings,
because there's been times wherewe've done a whole onboarding
thing and one person might bethe guy from the sales team or
something like that who hascritical information or knows
just a little bit more aboutparts of the business that other
(16:01):
people don't, and then we'reprovided in the onboarding.
We're building stuff all basedon what information we've been
given, but then down the trackwe might be in a three-month
strategy review and then thatperson has turned up and they're
like well, hold on, you'vemissed a whole important piece
here.
That's not a current targetaudience, it's not who we're
getting our most sales from,it's this, and it's only because
they weren't in the room atthat time.
So I think that when you are inthe onboarding stage, make sure
(16:23):
that all the key people, allthe people who have knowledge on
what should happen, are thereand have a say, so that way
you're getting a really wellthought out campaign from the
start.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
And then finally, if all these things are happening
well, you should then budgetappropriately.
So move away from just a setbudget per month to a target
based budget.
What can we afford per lead orper conversion, and how far can
we push till we go over thatcost per conversion, rather than
just setting monthly budgetcaps of, say, $5,000 a month or
(16:54):
$50,000 a month.
Once you trust the agency, thestrategy is firing and you can
afford $30 per conversion, youshould spend as much as humanly
possible until it costs $35 perconversion and then start
looking at optimizations orthings you can do or other
channels you can enter.
There's obviously more thingsyou can do to get the most out
(17:15):
of your agency, but they're theones that we would work on right
now.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, it's going to make your engagement, your
enjoyment and even the resultsthat you're getting throughout
the engagement far better.
Thanks for watching today.
We'll be back with anotherepisode shortly.
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