Marketing Runs Deep- Episode 8

Hey everybody. This is Bryan Hatch, founder of AutomateBIG, and I'm excited to be here with you in a little different setting than I usually am to be able to share with you some of my thoughts about this week's episode of Marketing Runs Deep. Now, we have a lot going on in our businesses, and I know that you do as well. There are a lot of things you have to do. I mean, as a business owner, they say you wear a lot of hats. That's kind of an old phrase that we hear a lot of, but really what it comes down to is you have to be in a lot of roles as a business owner. There's a lot of things you have to do, a lot of things you have to accomplish, and if you're a small business owner with a small team, you might be doing the majority of it yourself, which is a struggle.

It's a challenge. It's not something that I would ever say flippantly. I would never say it like, "Oh yeah, it's no big deal. You're doing everything." No. When you're doing everything, that's a lot. There's a lot to handle and to get done, but at the same token, you will still have to rely on a team as you grow and scale and build your business up. You may have a small team or a bigger team, my question to you is, what are you doing to rely on other people to help you? Now obviously, when you hire people into your company and you say, "This is your role. I need you to do this role, do it and rock it and kick butt at it," right?

That's a way to delegate and to get help in your business. There are many people nowadays turning to virtual assistants or VAs. They're turning to outsource companies or to agencies, people like me, to be able to help them with their marketing, their message, their digital courses, whatever it is they're working through. I want you to think about today like what are you doing to rely on other people? Here's the conundrum, I've talked to many people about this specific subject as far as agency work. I know some people are very burned out and have a hard time, either the business owner has a hard time trusting agencies, or the agency owners themselves are having struggle keeping up or whatever the case is.

There's a lot of things that happen between business owners and agencies, especially in the marketing space. When you're growing and scaling your team, you want to rely on people that have the expertise and the skills to get you there. There are pros about an agency, and I'm not just saying this because I would love to be able to help you, but I'm saying this sincerely, no matter who you're working with, there are some pros about agencies.

Typically when you hire somebody into your office, you have them do that full time, right? You're either going to have to pay for someone that's not as skilled, and you're going to pay them a lower salary so you can get things done. You're going to teach them or have them learn or to get trained and get better at what they're doing, but you're not paying for experience at that point. You're going to have some mistakes and have some problems you're going to have to deal with, that's just part of the role.

You could hire someone at a high salary. Maybe you've got some funding, or you have some extra dollars, and you're like, "Man, I need someone highly skilled," so you bring somebody in full time. It's going to be 100% focused on what you do. That's a great way to do things when you can do it. But I've found that more business owners nowadays aren't able to do that because they're not able to pay a $150,000 salary to make sure that their marketing team member, director, manager, or whatever it is that you're working through. If they have the experience and the skillset, they're going to require a decent salary to do your thing full time.

Those are a couple of things you're dealing with. Now, why an agency can be right is because you can generally get an agency to do work kind of between the two. Maybe not your lowest, cheapest, getting someone off the street that doesn't know anything about it and teaching them, right? That's one way to do things, which you're going to have a lot of error and issue you're going to have to deal with with your customers, or if you could get the high pay. So basically, between that level is your agency. That's going to be a little higher price than someone that doesn't know what they're doing, but they bring the experience.

Here's one of the cons, they're not focusing 100% on your business, it's a challenge, right? If you find those that are genuine about what they do, they love what you do as a company, and they're behind what your product or service accomplishes for your clientele; that's a great agency to get around. You can get work done quicker, easier with someone that has experience than if you don't. And so, that's one thing. I'm not pitching that every agency out there in the world is the best. Some are good, some are not, and depending on how you interview and how you get to know your agency, you may have struggles or difficulty in that.

When you look for an agency, you want to make sure that again, the alignment is there. That's the critical component of it. Alignment, meaning they align with your product or service. They have experience in your product or service or your industry. That's helpful as well. A lot of agencies will take on customers that are kind of outside the box of what they've done, and when they do that, they learn with you, which is akin to maybe getting a little bit more of a discount, and they might even throw you a discount saying, "Hey..." And the best agencies will say, "We have not worked in this industry that you are in," and let you know that upfront, so you're usually going to get a little bit of a discount that way.

An agency can be beneficial because they want your results, and so what you need to do is tie your agency to your goals. If the agency doing things for you is not tied to your goals longterm, then they will not stick with you long term. I mean, we love doing projects. If someone says, "I need an affiliate module created. I need this funnel created, I need this campaign created." cool. We can get those things running. If you want us to maintain and work with it long term and over long periods of months, then you need something for an agency to keep their invested interest and energy in what you're doing. You always want to make sure that you're compensating your agency in a way that ties into your results as long as you possibly can. If they're aligned with your product or service, they have experience in it, then you're going to be doing an excellent thing, and you'll learn. Here's the thing guys, you're going to learn.

The last thing I want to share with you in this episode, that I want you to think of a little bit, you or more accurately, your business, are a unique challenge in and of itself. I could work with your business and your friend's business that even are the same type of business. Let's say you're in the same industry, but the challenges you face, the challenges they face to be able to market and sustain your campaigns to get you leads and sales are different, because of the challenges that you create as a leader of your organization. I've found that every single business that I've worked with, there have been challenges.

If you have no digital presence, if you've never posted on social media, and you are now relying on ads to be your sole source of leads, just be prepared to work through that. It doesn't mean shy away or get scared of it. It's just like hey, you've got to get through that period of time and learn what it's going to take, because you can't expect that if you have no traction. I've worked with clients that have 10,000 people on their list, and it's like okay, how many people are actually engaging with your posts, engaging with your emails, engaging with your messages to them, and it's usually one percent or less.

Well, that's a big deal. If one percent of your audience is checking out your message, that's a problem. So I want you to know that a lot of people and a lot of agencies get a bad rap because of this, or they didn't get this result for me, but a lot of business owners also look and say, "I want you, Mr. Agency Owner to solve everything in my business." And that's a big feat. That's your job as a CEO. That's your job as a leader of your business, as the owner of your business. If you're relying on an agency to do everything for you and expecting results as if you are the one doing it, you may have to temper that back a little.

So I think a lot of the discussion around yes, get an agency, no, don't get an agency because of yay or nay, and I've heard arguments for on behalf of both sides of the fence here, I think that you have to own what you have done wrong in your business and what is not working. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that it can't get better, but you have to realize that you're a part of the reason why you're struggling to get these campaigns to work. And then the agency also, you need to make sure that you're getting the right agency that's aligned to what you do, that loves the products or services that you offer to the world.

If that's the case, if you get that alignment, and they care and you care, you're going to learn together. You're going to be able to get better results because you don't have to pay somebody full time and have payroll and the whole bit. So I just wanted to share that message with you as far as why an agency is a good thing, and why an agency might not be the right thing, depending on where you are in your stage of business, but note that we all share the same goal, is to make your business better.

If you're getting with an agency that cares about that and is transparent about the things they do or don't do, then you're going to be winning. And so get there. Use people that will help you get involved with agencies that care, digital agencies like AutomateBIG. We are one of them that really care about our clients. We don't flippantly take on a client. We want to make sure that we're aligned, and we're taking care of our clients' needs as they need it. So this is another episode of Marketing Runs Deep, and I hope you've enjoyed this in a little different setting than I usually do. And this is just one small way to AutomateBIG.