Build a Better Agency Podcast

Latest Episodes:

EP 403: Calculating lifetime customer value using data-driven metrics with Valentin Radu Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

With the elongated sales cycles we have all seen throughout 2023, knowing your lifetime customer value is more important than ever. It's essential not only for you as an agency but also to calculate that data for your clients.

Clients are looking for the most value for their money, and everyone is tightening their belts. Gone are the days of patient clients willing to wait around for results. Now, it's all about data-driven, proven results that your agency can provide ASAP. If you can't provide everything they need, they expect you to find the people who can partner with you to get it done.

In this episode, we're discussing how you can adapt to the new era of agency ownership with data-driven metrics and proven results for your clients and their customers. We know it's hard to adapt to a fast-changing and ever-adapting world of work, but we're here to help you work through it and find innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve.

A big thank you to our podcast's presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They're an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Defining lifetime customer value
How an agency can help a client calculate their lifetime customer value
The trends and metrics that non-commerce agencies can analyze for their LCV
How LCV calculations can help you and your clients get smarter about budgeting
Why agencies are struggling to acquire new customers and how to adapt
The growing importance of agency syndication
The swinging pendulum of agency hiring
The 3 pillars of customer value optimization
How agencies can troubleshoot for their clients and course-correct their offerings

EP 402: The ROI of making your existing clients happier with Susan Baier Jun 19, 2023

Show notes

It's that time of year again — we're evaluating the 2023 Agency Edge Research study, where we polled people who hire agencies about what they expect from agencies and what gets them to open their wallets for us.

Despite a challenging year of having to find creative ways to get existing clients to spend more money with us, a lot of good news came out of this study. Overall, existing clients with larger budgets are much more willing to stick with an agency and spend more money if we present them with a compelling reason to do so.

What do we do with that information? We've been preparing you for months leading up to this study, covering many of the topics we'll see today. So, if you missed any of those episodes, be sure to go back so you can be on top of your game going into 2024.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

The three main client archetypes
How the three archetypes spend their money
How clients use agencies to fill their different needs
The revenue and budget breakdowns of each existing client group
What makes a current client want to spend more money with us, and when
The biggest motivation existing clients have for increasing their spend
What clients believe makes the best agency
The increased importance of client love and getting to know their teams
Why we should be pitching new ideas to our clients and asking them to experiment with us

EP 401: Weaving creative innovation into agency best practices with Carla Johnson Jun 12, 2023

Show notes

Part of being an agency means that you solve problems for a living. Clients come to you with a problem, and it's up to you and your team to figure out the solution and present it to them in a neat package. Simply put, creative innovation is woven into the DNA of an agency.

Under pressure and deadlines, creative innovation can quickly be squashed, rushed, or underprioritized. But Carla Johnson, an ideation and innovation expert, has studied and produced an effective formula for how agencies can reinvigorate their creative strategies.

Her methodology can be incorporated with client projects and daily agency strategy to improve systems and processes. Innovation doesn't always have to be creative, but getting creative about innovation can change how your team solves problems and could even save you time and money when putting it to the test.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

What our clients are really hiring us to do
Figuring out how to connect the dots more efficiently
Innovative ways to approach creative ideation on your team
Bringing clients into the creative innovation process
Getting creative about systems and processes during growth moments in the agency
The 5-step Wheel of Innovation
Weaving creative thinking into everyday life
The intersection of business strategy and creative innovation

EP 400: The top agency trends to be aware of for 2023 with Drew and Danyel McLellan Jun 05, 2023

Show notes

It's that time of year again — we're going over the top agency trends we're noticing so far in 2023 and going into 2024. A lot has changed since the last time we went over the data, which means we have a ton of information that you'll hopefully find valuable and can use as a compass for where to lead your agency through the rest of the year heading into 2024.

As we exit the pandemic era and move into the AI era, there's a lot to consider in how agencies function regarding what our clients want, how fast our sales cycle moves, how we hire, where we should focus our biz dev, and more.

One thing is certain — many agency owners like you feel re-energized and reinvigorated coming out of 2022. Let this episode be a ray of light that gives you an extra boost of encouragement for the rest of 2023, and keep that momentum going for as long as possible.

For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

The impacts of recession fears on AGI and revenue
ROI — the new agency buzzword
A growing agency trend in having amazing teams
Rebalancing overservicing and overstaffing issues
The fading trend of over-specialization of agencies
The PPC, SEO, and data analyst job boom
A positive trend in agency owner happiness
The continued importance of thought leadership and community spaces
The agency employee trends of 2023
Embracing AI and using it as a tool for your work

EP 399: Reducing liability for agency owners, one data protection policy at a time with Hans Skillrud May 29, 2023

Show notes

Keeping up with data protection and privacy laws is exhausting. Nearly every month, new legislation is being introduced state by state to help keep users' data protected online. And while this is overall a good thing, it can get really messy if agency owners aren't educated and informing their clients about what this means when they build out their websites. Luckily, our guest today, Hans Skillrud, has collaborated with his wife to create an easy, self-updating tool that agency owners can implement on their own websites and the sites they build for their clients. He has committed himself to ensuring that data protection tools and documentation are easily accessible for anyone without needing a legal degree to make sense of it all.

In this episode, you'll learn why you must educate yourself and your clients on the most current privacy policy and data protection laws, why not to cut corners in this department, and why you should never collect more data than you actually need.

Even if it doesn't seem like a big deal right now, with the constantly changing environment of privacy laws, you never know when you could end up in a mess, even five years later. Don't delay on this, and get your documentation in check today.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

What is Termageddon?
What agencies are required to provide to their clients in terms of documentation
The risks for smaller businesses and agencies for not practicing good data protection
Why agencies should embrace data protection policies, even if it seems complicated
Can chatGPT write our policies for us?
Why copying and pasting someone else's policies is a bad idea
How data protection lawsuits happen
How the Termageddon team keeps up with constantly changing data protection laws
The confusing future of privacy law
Three best data protection practices for agencies and website builders

EP 398: The ins and outs of data analytics for agency leaders with Jim Sterne May 22, 2023

Show notes

Marketing today is not absolute. It's experimental, iterative, and ever-changing. And with that comes many challenges that we have to overcome and adapt to as agency leaders. One of those challenges is offering data analytics services to our clients. Many of us got into the industry, hoping to avoid doing math. And yet, here we are again, going over another way tech and mathematics are imperative in our industry. While it might be exhausting or frustrating, a subject matter expert is joining us to help make it a little less confusing for everyone.

This week, I'm interviewing Jim Sterne, a data analytics expert who knows so much about the industry. Jim started the Data Analytics Association and wrote 12 books on the topic.

In this episode, he'll share the importance of offering data analytics expertise to better serve clients, how to hire either in-house or third-party data analysts, and tons of resources on where to look for advice and find other experts to help get you started.

Those who adapt survive. Don't wait on this one, and don't try to be a hero. The more we can help our clients reach their goals, the better off we are as an industry. Get help, look to the experts, and start offering your clients data analytics services as soon as possible.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Why data analytics is more about the questions you ask rather than the answers you get
The biggest hurdles agencies face when presenting data to clients
Should you go third-party or stay in-house?
What to look for when hiring a third-party data analytics expert
How to make data useful to the client
Data reports vs. data alerts, which is better?
How to become a data storyteller
Helping clients embrace experimental results over having absolute certainty
The best resources for wannabe data analysts or those just starting out

EP 397: The legal impact of AI-generated content on your agency with Sharon Toerek May 15, 2023

Show notes

AI-generated content is rapidly finding its way into professional spaces and changing the way we work forever. This fact is especially important for creative agencies that are quickly realizing there could be legal implications for using AI to create work proposals, creative IPs, legal documents, and more. And like most legal questions, the answer to "Can I use AI to generate work for clients?" is, "It depends." We're in such a gray area with AI right now that the legal system hasn't had a chance to catch up to technological advances. So how do agencies protect themselves, their workers, clients, and their IP when everything is so up in the air right now?

Sharon Toerek has some common sense advice for approaching AI in the workplace to avoid a potential legal nightmare. In this episode, we'll cover human-generated vs. AI-generated content, the gray areas we need to look out for when using AI, how to protect client and agency copyrights, how to avoid infringing other copyrighted content, and so much more.

AI-generated content is an incredibly important and ever-changing topic. And if you're an agency owner, this needs to be addressed in your agency today.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

The top 3 questions lawyers are receiving about AI
Having conversations with clients about the use of AI-generated content
The gray area between AI-generated and human-generated content
The ownability of AI-generated output
Creating documentation about implementing AI tools in a typical workflow
Including AI prompt strategies in trade secrets documentation
Can we protect the data we're inputting into the collective that is AI?
Addressing the use of AI in SOWs
Should we use AI tools to create legal documents?

EP 396: Ending the cycle of fear-based pricing with Casey Brown May 08, 2023

Show notes

We all want to get paid what we're worth. But it's more than likely that we're downplaying our agency's value because we're too worried about pricing ourselves out or overcharging. This week, our guest, Casey Brown, will explain why that's wrong and how to get out of a fear-based pricing mindset for good. Casey has been serving small to mid-sized agencies for the past 15 years to bring her corporate pricing expertise to private companies. She'll teach us why it's probable that we're talking ourselves out of charging what we're worth and giving discounts where they're not needed.

Our time is valuable in a typically creative industry, and we deserve to be paid what we're worth. Get ready to take action after listening to this episode so you can start having better pricing conversations with customers and stand up for your true worth as an agency.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Why you should never pre-discount in pricing conversations
The questions you should be asking when a client pushes back on price
How to establish pricing integrity that establishes trust between you and the customer
How to gauge if a client's low budget is real
Building confidence in your pricing
How to get out of a fear-based mindset
The best approach to raising prices on legacy clients
Protecting your margins in this current economy
How to know if your pricing is right

EP 395: Mapping out an ideal day for agency owners with Drew McLellan May 01, 2023

Show notes

This week, I'm covering an important topic I haven't covered on a solocast before — agency owner work balance. Often, agency owners get pulled into too much of the day-to-day client work or aren't correctly staffing the agency to get the support they need on the work they have.

There's a formula you should be following for how you break down your workday or workweek to be a successful business leader, and I'm going to map it out in an easily applicable formula. It's not always easy to get ourselves out of the daily client tasks, but the recipe I'm sharing with you today will help you block out more time for the things that matter the most.

If you're not doing your job, nobody else is going to do it, either. And your job is the most important job in the entire agency. So tune in to learn how to map out your days better, get out of the day-to-day, and focus your attention where you're needed most.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

Getting out of the day-to-day client work
The percentage breakdown of how an agency owner should spend their day
Why blocking your time efficiently and effectively is incredibly important
The key factors that add value to your agency
How to shift to this new breakdown of work
Why biz dev is the most important task
How to delegate and divide tasks between you and your business partner
The importance of making yourself unavailable sometimes

EP 394: How podcasting is shaping future advertising habits with Tom Webster Apr 24, 2023

Show notes

Podcasts, radio, and TV are all similar mediums with a broad reach across the US. But over the years, younger audiences have moved away from radio and TV in favor of other platforms that offer ad-free subscriptions. Quickly rising to the top amongst millennials and Gen Z is podcasting. So how do we still reach people who are consistently opting out of popular advertising avenues? Tom Webster has some answers for us.

He's on the podcast today to break down the findings from The Media Moves the Message study that his firm, Sounds Profitable, did on advertising performance between cable TV, AM/FM radio, and podcasting.

This deep dive will give you all the evidence you need to understand that podcasting has a bright future. And as long as we don't oversaturate it with advertising, it will be here to stay amongst audiences, both old and young, as the medium grows.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

How we can take advantage of the podcasting medium as advertisers
The Media Moves the Message study
The most noteworthy takeaways from the study
How podcast listeners skew age-wise and where we can make improvements
What the study results mean for agency owners and leaders
Will we eventually oversaturate podcasts with ads?
What the study means for content creators and podcast hosts
Trusting that a podcast host knows how to advertise to their audience
Areas where podcasting is lacking
The power of small podcasts

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