– Agencies should prioritize understanding a client’s unit economics and product COGs before starting any marketing work.
– Many agencies prioritize accounts with larger ad spend without considering important factors like unit economics and COGs.
– Brands should be cautious when hiring agencies that don’t ask about unit economics, promise guaranteed results, or lack knowledge about the brand’s tone and customer journey.Fire any agency that you’re paying money to if they haven’t asked about your unit economics and a list of the products COGs that they are marketing for you.If you’re working with an agency that you’re paying money and they haven’t asked you about your unit economics and a list of the products’ COGs that they are marketing for you, fire them on the spot. Yup, I said it. The amount of things I’ve heard about agencies that hire, then push work off to templatize and f*ck off to just get things done to be the most profitable, has really started to make me mad. The fact that accounts with the biggest ad spend are prioritized because of the larger margins from said ad spend without any of the above should make everyone scratch their heads. This is the vast majority of agencies. It’s their business model. This has to change. There are too many bad digital agencies that get away with this sort of behavior. They have zero business knowledge and don’t even pretend to have any. For all the 90-day plans they throw out there for products, they don’t do the due diligence to know what’s even possible in relation to the company goals. In the words of someone that is popular on LinkedIn, “I only want to work with dumb marketers and founders.” Yes, someone told me that on a call. As brands in ecommerce, founders need a crash course in understanding what they’re purchasing and what they can expect from it. Or for the love of your business, hire someone that understands marketing strategy and what roles agencies play and what modern best practices are, not what people are telling you they are. (Full caveat, if you have someone in-house that does any of the same things, hire them help. They’re not advanced enough to materially add to your bottom line and you’ll lose velocity very quickly in the near future.) DO NOT HIRE AN AGENCY IF… 1. They don’t ask about unit economics, including shipping costs. You can’t market without knowing margins. 2. They have a 90-day plan and want to start immediately. You can’t start immediately and have success. There’s a list of micro changes that will massively impact any actions; it’s a full journey thing. 3. They promise guaranteed results. The only reason they do this and take you on is that you’re not doing things right and they can see that from looking at your accounts. 4. Their proposal requires them to create a bunch of things from scratch. Good agencies won’t do overhauls; they will optimize with what they have available and work the entirehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jivanco