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After 80-plus interviews with agency owners, Marketing Momentum for Agencies host Tracey Burnett says the pattern never changes: they chase a marketing tactic before fixing the positioning underneath it.
Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 00:00
No one was asking for another community, but I've made one anyway. So what's different? The dynamic agency community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at dynamicagency.community. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is Agency Forward. 80 episodes into interviewing agency owners, what is the like? What are the patterns that you just keep seeing repeating?
Speaker 1 01:00
I think probably the recurring pattern is that agencies are always looking for a marketing answer before diagnosing a business problem. So, you know what I hear regularly is we need more leads. LinkedIn isn't working. We need to produce more content. Should we start a podcast? Run outbound? Advertise? Do not more networking. Use AI, whatever. But underneath those questions, what you're really finding is there's unclear positioning, a proposition that sounds like every other agency over reliance on referrals, no real clear target audience, marketing that stops when delivery, client delivery becomes you know busy, too much dependence on the founder, and no clear idea. I think this is a big one actually. No clear idea what they have to do every day to get the sales they need. So you know, I think you need always to know how you know how many calls you need to make, how many emails you need to send, how many ads you need to run, you know how many conversations, how many pitches, how many proposals, whatever it is. You need to know those numbers. You need to know that math really, to know what you need to do to get you to where you want to be. And I think agencies tend to notice that they've got a pipeline problem far too late. So by the time that inquiries or revenue slows down, the conditions that cause that may have been developing for maybe six months, and that's a danger because new business doesn't appear overnight. I mean, it takes months. And again, what I always say to my clients is it could be six months. I mean, I had a sale. Not, I was going to say, drop in my lap. It didn't drop in my lap because I was in touch with this this company for 10 years. Now, obviously, it doesn't take 10 years, but it just goes. It just goes to show that you know, people isn't that the the figure is something like 4% at any one time. Any 4% of your target market is ready to buy, so I think the pattern is that agencies don't know. It's not that they don't know any marketing tactics; they obviously know dozens. But the problem is, is the tactics aren't connected to a a clear commercial strategy or what's right for them as a business or what their ideal clients either want or need. So the people that have been successful that I've talked to are those that are highly motivated to do whatever it takes. They've spent time learning marketing and sales because sometimes there's one software engineer trained that I spoke to now. You know, he definitely wasn't a marketing person, but he really is. He lives and breathes, you know, marketing and sales, and so he's willing to do whatever it takes. And you know, I've got another guest who runs a multi-million-pound mobile and digital marketing company in the states. You know, he moved his family from Israel to the US, and I mean, highly successful. And did loads of big things that would take real cojones to actually do to get him to where he wanted to be. So you need to spend time on marketing sales because that's your lifeblood, and you need to be consistent. People that are consistent always win through, and obviously hire people like you and me to get all those important foundations right.
Chris DuBois 04:30
Yeah. Would you say so? When looking at the reason for why agencies struggle to just map out their marketing, like figure out what they need to be doing every day, is it that they just they avoid, or it's like this delayed gratification issue, right? Is it that, or is it truly they they just don't know? Maybe they see so many people on social media talking about their successes and making it look easy that they feel like it should be easier, and so they're just trying to copy those tactics for the quick win. Like, yeah, I think especially
Speaker 1 04:59
yeah. Yeah, if if they don't have much experience, obviously it's human nature, isn't it? If we keep doing the same thing over and over, we don't get a result. You know, it does get pretty tedious and boring. And yeah, so I think, and if it's not your natural sort of skill set, so for example, if you're, if I'm talking to an agency that's led by a creative, you know, person, so somebody that's been trained as a designer, they're not naturally a sales and marketing person, generally speaking. So, yeah, I think when it comes to execution, although they, it's interesting, isn't it? So because I think people want to start with the execution. So if somebody says to me, "I don't have enough leads. I need more sales, and I say, "That's absolutely great. Let's start looking at you know what I call your business foundation. So you know, let's start looking at you know your positioning, your target audience. You know, they say no, no, no. I need to actually do some marketing. I think what they don't understand is that you need the foundations. You wouldn't build a house without the foundations. So why do you start your marketing? So if you start your marketing like now and you start posting or advertising or whatever other tactic you decide to use, I think that is you know that is definitely a problem because you could be it's like driving down a street really fast to get to your destination, but you're driving down the wrong street. I mean, where's the sense in that? You know, it's going to take you twice as long. So you know, in the you know, I have this sort of process called the Unshakable Business Foundation, which is what where I start. Which is you know the positioning, the market, the target audience, your USP, your your niche, and not everybody can see the value in that because they're just like in their head. They're just going leads, leads. I need sales. I need revenue. I need growth, whatever, however they explain it to themselves. But you know, it's about that part is about getting a strategy in place. So you know something that they enjoy doing as an agency or as a founder and can do over time consistently that actually works. And then you know the strategy, the marketing content strategy-that's about getting the strategy in place, and you know, again, what do they enjoy doing? Can they do it over time? You know, let's plan that out so everybody involved knows what they need to do on a day-to-day basis, and then they start, you know, the marketing implementation, which is where they wanted to start in the first place. But when they get to this step, they get started in the day to day, and you know, making the effort, doing the task. But the enthusiasm can wear off really quickly. So unless you've got staying power, you are never ever going to succeed. So they, I think, they most commonly want to rush through that foundation and strategy piece because the implementation implementation feels like that's where all the action is. So they want to post email, do outbound events, videos, whatever. But they haven't settled the fundamental questions of, you know, what does the agency want to become? You know, what does profitable, sustainable growth mean for them? You know which clients and projects are generally going to be a good fit. What problem does it want to be known for solving? What evidence supports that claim? Is the offer still right for the current market? So you know implementation is the visible step and the ones everybody want to do wants to do, and that's why agencies are naturally drawn towards it. But if the first three steps a week implementation simply, you know, helps an unclear message meet, you know, reach more of the wrong people,
Chris DuBois 08:50
right? And that's yeah, I mean, I see that constantly. But the so something you brought up a couple times is like that need to be able to consistently market yourself, like once. So we got the foundation, and it's like, how do you got to keep doing it? Because it's it's gonna take time for it to work, right? You know, 5% rule. Like not everybody's looking right now, but you can plant those seeds to get in front of them. The what we talked about on your podcast, like when I was a guest with you, was like the delivery drag, and just had like delivery picks up, and now we use that. And it's like I feel like agency owners can use almost any excuse to not do the market. Well, I was busy with this, or like I had, I had to go take care of that. How do you help them install a system so that they do consistently market and don't just shut it off.
Speaker 1 09:41
Yeah. Okay. So I I mentioned this a little bit earlier in part in passing in that when I'm looking at the developing the strategy and the plan, I very much look at what they enjoy doing as a it could be. Person, you know, could be the founder or it could be the team. So we need to decide who can actually involve themselves throughout the the agency in the marketing and sales and new business process. So what skills do they have internally? Who wants to contribute? And also, what budget do they have if they're going to go externally for either paid for media, for example, or paid for support and help? So I work on the basis that if people enjoy what they're doing, then they're more likely to do it. The other, so it needs to be enjoyable. Obviously, I've always got in mind that they want to reach you know 2 million pound you know revenue by you know year four or whatever it is, so I've got that in mind. But at this point, I'm more interested because I know when I get like two steps down the line, I know that this is going to be ultra ultra important. So the other thing is that I've tried before is getting the owners of the business to actually write the tasks that they need to do for sales or marketing into their job description, so they're actually monitored and measured on what they're doing. Because it's very easy to say, "Oh, you know, Chris, can you do a video on LinkedIn every week? And then everybody gets busy and everybody forgets about it. So I think it needs to be enjoyable. It needs to be measurable. It needs to be, you know, people need to be monitored. People need to know that that's part of their job description. That is something that they need to do. It's important as delivery, and so those are three things that automatically spring to mind. And then consistency. I mean, you know, once we've got all that in place, just because they enjoy it and just because they're good at it doesn't mean they're going to do it. That's for sure. And you know, I always, I always try and work with them for six or 12 months after we've done that initial project, and they've, you know, I've got them on the road. I try and work with them for six to 12 months to try and keep them on track because what you often find is, is it might be great at that planning stage that this is the plan, but when you actually start it, then you realize that things need changing. So it also means that I can switch switch the plan, you know, make changes based on the experiences that we're actually having in real life. Because every agency is different, every market is different. So those are the things that sort of work,
Chris DuBois 12:39
right? Do you recommend they actually include that as like like having their own dashboard for like accountability, where like the team is looking at across the board. Hey, every Monday when we sit down as a team, we're looking at like who's producing what for our marketing. Like, are you looking at that level of granularity, or
Speaker 1 12:58
some sometimes, yeah, or or somebody in the agency is doing that, so somebody needs to coordinate it. Make sure everyone's doing what they say. I mean, smaller agencies is much easier to manage because it's obvious who's doing what.
Chris DuBois 13:13
Right.
Speaker 1 13:13
Yeah, but you know, obviously, a weekly a weekly meeting is useful, and you soon know. You know, you can soon find out who's swinging the lead.
Chris DuBois 13:24
That was one of the challenges I was having with my own clients was that we'd we'd say, okay, publishing on LinkedIn as an example. It's like we know we need to publish on LinkedIn, so we'd get to into a meeting. I'd say, all right, how did publishing go last week? And they'd say, oh, like awesome, we're doing great for publishing. Like, all right, how many posts you get out? I said one. Okay, so we're not quite there. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1 13:47
in that case, I think it needs to be a little bit more planned. In that, you know, how I I would do that is to work out what right at the beginning what their their key sort of pillars are, and so maybe four or five different pillars, and then you know have a schedule. What happens Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Who's responsible for it? What sort of post it is? And so it's it's there's no doubt in anybody's mind what needs to happen.
Chris DuBois 14:17
That's a yeah. I think even with these clients, I didn't think there was doubt. And then when it comes time to do the work, they're like, so I literally built a platform to have accountability, so I can see what they're posting, when they're posting, and all that to work for you that side. But yeah, it's it's such an interesting piece, right? Anyway, let's let's go into like a philosophical portion of that. Like, why do you think that like we're working with marketing agencies, right? And some like creative agencies, different things like that. They're really good at marketing for their clients. Like, they have they have great examples. They have they can prove like a return for. All of their clients, then it comes to marketing themselves, and like, and they start to struggle. Like, what is that blocker? That
Speaker 1 15:09
I think it's easy to fall back on client work because client work has structure. So, you know, client marketing normally has a brief deadlines, budget, responsibilities. You know, set meetings, measurement in place, you know, consequences if it isn't delivered. But often the agency's own marketing has has none of those things. You know, it's fitted around sort of chargeable work and and treated as optional. But I think agencies can identify what makes a client interesting or different, but they struggle to do it themselves. It's a little bit, you know, like all of us, you know. I'm sure you found the same that, you know, when I've looked over the years at, you know, maybe repositioning my business or, you know, updating it or whatever, it's just, it's just too hard, you know. They're too close to the business, and they often try to include often every service, every capability, every type of client that they could possibly serve, with the idea that you know, if they offer everything, including the kitchen sink, then surely there must be something you know in that list a prospect wants to buy. But you know, given a buyer too much choice causes choice overload. I mean, this is a real thing. It just leads to anxiety, decision paralysis, and ultimately low sales.
Chris DuBois 16:21
Yeah, the man. So on that one, a quick story. When my youngest daughter was like fourish, she loved it. If like when she was taking her bath that night, if I would bring my guitar and just play her some songs, and I would let her choose what songs. But so one night I said, "What what song do you want to hear? And she chose the same song we'd played every every night. So I was like, "You sure you don't want to pick something else? And she said, "If you want me to choose something, you should tell me what to pick. And I was like, "Oh, like that is probably the most profound thing that that I could use in in marketing.
Speaker 1 16:58
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I totally agree with her. You know, it's it's a definite thing. I mean, I and I think also finishing a client project, you know, or moving it along, seems you know feels and is productive. But as we said earlier, marketing's not going to produce the same immediate results, so it's just so much easier to postpone. I mean, you know, I've got you know my house is dirty at the moment, and I've got a pile of ironing that's been there just you know piling up for weeks. And you know, I'd much rather be working or doing something different. You know, it's the same with it's the same with marketing and sales. If that's not your thing, then you're more likely to leave it. And you know, the ironing and cleaning hasn't got much implication. You know, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Implication. You know, doesn't really matter. Although I have got a friend coming on Friday, so I'm going to need to do something. Yeah, so there's some
Chris DuBois 17:51
sort of motivation, right? Exactly.
Speaker 1 17:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So agencies don't usually neglect neglect their marketing because they don't value it. Because you know if they are if you ask them they would they neglect it because client delivery is urgent, measurable and paid for today and their own marketing is important but important keeps losing out to the urgent I suppose you could say so the agency gets busy marketing stops the work is delivered the pipeline looks thin everybody panics you know. Marketing then restarts as an emergency response rather than continue as a continuing as a new business function, normal business function. And if you do that, you know we all know that if we're in a panic, we make bad decisions and we just do what you know the first thing that springs to mind. So that isn't going to work.
Chris DuBois 18:42
So something we had done when I was running an agency was we would we created like a separate client account that was our agency, and we would put our most junior marketer as like the account manager, and they were running that account, and they had to pitch whatever to myself and the founder. But so it gave us like a kind of a proving ground for them to be able to work things. They could see how we were thinking about it, but it always it meant that they also they wanted to prove themselves. They wanted to do the marketing, and so our marketing was always happening. Have you had clients try any like strategies like that or anything different that other agencies could kind of pick up on benefit from.
Speaker 1 19:27
No, I mean the only company that is a consultancy actually that springs to mind and ultimately didn't really work, but I can tell you why it didn't work and why why it might work for somebody else is I was working for this consultancy and it was about 35 people strong, and for some reason they did not want to hire a member of staff to manage marketing. And so my task, or I was tasked with, trying to get these consultants to do the marketing. So I did the normal, you know, spoke to them all. What do you like doing? You know, do you want to get involved? Blah blah blah. The problem was, I mean, a it was like herding cats-that sort of, you know, 35 people trying to organize how we deliver that plan. But the other thing was, is that they were all on a timesheet, and so if the mark and this is one reason why I say it's good idea to build it into your job description because if you do that and it's it's sort of you know it doesn't impinge so much on billable time I mean it does but you know it becomes more important people see it as more important so that sort of fell down really because people weren't the consultants that were on timesheets. They weren't really willing to spend too much time on marketing, and so what actually happened was there wasn't enough happening. So ultimately, they had to move to hiring somebody whose job it was.
Chris DuBois 20:59
I think that's so one of one of the struggles we had the most with when I was running an agency. We worked with SaaS companies, and getting we needed information from the sales team to define what we were doing with marketing. Like, well, people are bringing up this feature a lot, and they care about these, and they're asking these questions, and and it was just so hard to get them to connect. Like super beneficial that AI now I can just grab those recordings and like work that piece. But I found even within the agency space, it's like the people on the sales calls aren't always the people who are doing the marketing. But then it's like they have this treasure trove of content to be able to pull. But unpaid sales time is is real. Like they, why would someone want to go? Like if I'm paid on commission and like to do all these things, right? Why would I go spend time with marketing when I could just go close more deals here? And so, like incentivizing people to work together on the marketing and figuring out like what do we have to do in order for everyone to actually care about this is, I think it's a struggle for like. Obviously, I've seen it in SaaS companies, but even with agencies, you know, same thing.
Speaker 1 22:08
Yeah, you know, I think everybody has to be working towards same sort of mission. I think that you know that really helps. Another important point you raised there was people that are on commission, and you're more likely to get because they get sometimes get desperate for results. Then you can end up having leads that aren't right for you, and you're wasting time on you know pitches that you're never going to win.
Chris DuBois 22:37
Yeah, that's a definite definite piece. Okay, so what what would you say? Like, if we had to use the 8020 principle, where should agencies be focusing in order to ensure that their marketing is is set?
Speaker 1 23:00
Where should they focus? Obviously, that's individual to the agency concerned, but I think it really comes back to what you and I believe in, really, which is, you know, make sure that you've got your your you know your positioning right. So, you know, who are you talking to? Why why do they want to talk to you? You know, prospects need to see that your agency is particularly relevant to them. So you know, increasing the number of prospects simply increases the number of people who don't understand why they should choose you. So I think you know those those basic you know what I, as I said earlier, what I call the Unshapeable Business Foundation is just such a strong way of of starting. Really, you know, you don't want to have a full pipeline put full of you know poor fit opportunities. That's not, you know, that's not a healthy pipeline. The wrong opportunity, as I said earlier, just consumes time and proposal effort and senior attention can be more expensive than a lost pitch. So I think, you know, get get your foundation right. You know, get to the point where you know you've got that plan. You know what you're doing day to day, and I think why that's so important. When I said earlier about knowing the math, you know, if you know at its most basic, if you need to make 10 sales calls every day, and you know you're going to get to you know your 2 million revenue at the end of the year, then you know if you've only done five, you're only going to get to a million. I mean, this is putting in simple terms.
Chris DuBois 24:40
Yeah.
Speaker 1 24:40
But but there's a certain comfort to knowing that you need to do those 10 calls a day because you don't need to worry about anything else. All you need to worry about is what's happening today. Whereas I think if you do the knee jerk reaction, you don't know where you're going or what you should be doing because you're in panic mode. Then. It's just it's worrying, it's time consuming, and it's ultimately useless effort. So I think do your numbers, know where you want to go, know what you need to do, and work out what works for you. So the if if you don't if you don't know, then the best thing you can do is to look at what has happened over the last, say, three years. So, where have you got all your clients from? Because that is where that is where you need to start. So, if all your businesses come from referrals. Then maybe that's your that's your area. Maybe that's where you should be concentrating. So yeah, foundation, getting getting a team in place because the more man hours you've got, making sure it's the you know you're going driving down the right road. I think the other thing, just going back to the foundation, one thing people often miss is when I say who's your market. Even people that give a relatively good answer, they don't really know the sort of language that people are, you know, their prospects are using and what really keeps them up at night. So I think more in-depth research. So there's plenty of people around. In fact, I interviewed somebody called Remini Armitage. She talks to clients, lapsed clients, companies that you've pitched for and not won the business. So you get a really honest opinion, and you, and more importantly, more importantly, you hear the language, you hear how they're explaining what they like, what they don't like, what their needs are, what they want, how they want to be treated, etc. And that, and you can use that language to feed back into your marketing. You know whether or not that's your website or post or video, whatever you do, doesn't really matter. So I think that's that's really important. Yeah, and and consistency and persistency. You know, it's like I know it's really boring, but it's just it's just so key. I mean, I always feel sort of embarrassed saying consistency, but it's you know consistency consistently doing the right thing, and when you're knocked down, you know, get up and get up and do it again. You know, I I do door to door canvassing for a political party here, and you know, there's a lot of people that swear at you and sort of you know shout and tell you to get off their land, but there's other people that sort of come to the garden gate and go hi, come and speak to me, and we're definitely going to vote for you. So I think you know those positive reactions can they need to keep you going, but you just can't let the the the non action or the the people that aren't interested or the people that put the phone down on you, the people that don't want to talk to you, you can't let them, you know, rule what happens on the next call or in your next five minutes. So I think you know, look at the last two years, write down, you know, I know three things that produce most of your you know new business, and then then ask yourself, would I confidently rely on those same three things for the next two years. There may be reasons, especially now, that there may not. But you know, if not, don't just begin with more activity. Work out what needs to change across your positioning, your proposition, your marketing and sales process, and then just build the smallest rhythm that you can genuinely sustain, and also call you obviously and get your help. That's probably a good answer.
Chris DuBois 28:46
Yeah, chris. But I think we we are very well aligned on just how agency should attack that. So I've got two more questions for you as we wind down here. With the first man, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read.
Speaker 1 29:02
It's a very old book, actually published about 60 years ago, called "How to Win Friends and Influence People, which you know we've all probably heard of by Del Carnegie. And I think these days, especially with the advent of AI, you know, human contact and building relationships is so important, really, really important. So, if you can win friends and influence people, then I think you know you're a winner. It is one
Chris DuBois 29:31
of those books that it's like I read it years ago. Like, should probably go back to it every so often just to like make sure you're taking those things, like all of the advice, but the last question is: Where can people find you?
Speaker 1 29:46
Well, I'm on LinkedIn, just sort of forward slash Tracy Burnett, and then the my podcast website is marketingmomentumforagegencies.com, and I think it's. A good sort of sister podcast of yours, so it's all about marketing, lead gen, sales, just inspiration, insight, wisdom, opinions, and it's generally sort of what I call no fluff, no no noise, just momentum. So yeah,
Chris DuBois 30:18
awesome, yeah, and I will happily send people there via the show notes, Tracy. Thanks for joining.
Speaker 1 30:23
Absolute pleasure. It's been delightful. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Chris DuBois 30:31
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