Signs Your Agency is the Right or Wrong Fit

James Lawrence: Welcome back to the Smarter Marketer Podcast. I'm here today with David Lawrence, baby, bro. Big bro. Could, could be, could be one, could be the other.

David Lawrence: I'll take, I'll take big bro today, I think.

James Lawrence: Um, so I'm not gonna give you an introduction, Dave. You've been on the pod a few times before. Well, the conversation today is around.

The signs that your marketing agency is the wrong or right it or the wrong or right partner for you. Um, which I think is an interesting topic is, and this is definitely us kind of taking our rocket hats off and objectively just looking at it and what are the signs that , you have the right agency partner, what are the signs you might have the right agency partner, and you just need to recalibrate things versus.

No, this is just not the right partner to, to solve the problem that I need. So they can, in discussing the, kind of the conversation today, Dave, you wanted to, I guess, frame the conversation in terms of , where this all fits.

David Lawrence: Yeah, definitely. I think big picture on this, that right for you, that for you part is , really important.

So there's so many agencies, digital agencies, um, creative agencies, there's ad agencies, there's.

James Lawrence: All right. And that's just in Surry Hills, Sydney.

David Lawrence: And that's just, it's probably just in Devon, she's straight. Sorry. He'll Sydney. Uh, they're everywhere, but, but I think there's not one single agency in the world that is right for everyone.

It's just not a thing. Now, sadly, there's probably some agencies that are right for no one. Um, but, but I don't think that's often the case. I think often when someone has a bad experience with an agency, Um, and so before we get into some really important points about how, you know, if things are going right or going wrong, I think it's really important that people understand there's decisions that get made or decisions that should be made before an agency is appointed because those decisions will completely determine whether it's going to be successful.

So if you're a smaller business and you've got tight ish budget, you're Going to an agency where you're going to be their smallest client, paying money that you can't really afford, it's probably going to be pretty underwhelming for you because you're not going to be that important to them. This could be really important to your P& L, probably going to hurt.

And likewise, conversely, going to an agency which is tiny when your budget and your needs are massive, it can flood them and it could actually just be something that they're not ready to do yet. Um, but I think just as important to that is Understanding clearly what your marketing strategy is and what part of the strategy this particular agency is going to fill in.

And we've definitely seen over the years, we say no to tons and tons of work. And often the reason we're saying no to it is because we genuinely don't think we're going to be able to help that client be successful. And that doesn't mean that client can't be successful. It doesn't mean some agency can't make them successful, but for our skills, the way we approach things and what we know about their preparedness for what we do, we just don't think it's going to work.

And, um, and not every agency will operate on that basis and not every agency will make the right decision as well. So just be really careful that, you know,

And you've communicated what success has to look like, and you've had a really mature conversation before you start. Cause sometimes it was just never going to work out. And the best decision would have been to not work together in the first place.

James Lawrence: Yeah, it's very true. It's kind of a lot of, um, square peg round hole stuff, right?

If you go to a SEO agency, the solution they're going to put forward is an SEO one. If you go to a creative agency, it'll be a creative solution. Um, so you just got to make sure that you're, first of all, you're, Engaging the right type of agency. Right. And then within that couldn't agree with you more. We often get asked that by prospective clients, like why are you the best agency or why you kind of thing.

And it's often quite disarming when I say, well, it's not about the best agency. It's about the best agency for you. And rocket may or may not be that let's kind of find out that that's established it, but yeah, I think that's, I think that's bang on. So let's presume though, that, um, listeners to the pod, they've got an agency.

By and large, that agency is trying to solve a problem that this client needs solve, um, and it's legitimate agency. It's not like we're dealing with someone that's, you know, just manifestly not willing to deliver on contractually what they deliver or anything like that. So with all that considered, put together, , the kind of key themes that we think are important in this area and I'll, I'll go first, Dave.

So the first one is results and how you respond if you're not getting the results you need. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

David Lawrence: And it's really good that you've mentioned how they respond to not getting the results you need. It would be dishonest for any agency to tell you that everything works great all the time.

Marketing's part science, part art, and they won't get it right every time. And you want to know how they're going to deal with, with challenges and failures. But absolutely people appoint an agency because they want an outcome. , and hopefully they're really clear on what that outcome is and they understand how they're going to measure it, , in terms of success.

But yeah, if they can't generate results. Then perhaps they're not the right agency or perhaps it just wasn't the right decision. Perhaps this is not an area that your business is going to find success in. , but yeah, if the agency has a great plan for version two or version three or version four of that campaign, and they've got another idea of how they want to roll it out, then, , You want to listen to people who know what they're talking about, the truer perspectives and um, and give them a shot if it's going to be worthwhile for you.

Yeah. That's how I feel. It's um, I think if, , if we got it right, 65 percent of the time would be complete geniuses when it comes to marketing. Like the reality isn't, you know, but fortunate that the audience and the potter are marketers, right? So you know that certain campaigns work, certain campaigns don't work.

That's why you should have a test budget, , test and learn all those things that we should all be doing. But I think for me, it's the way. That an agency responds when things do turn is a kind of a resistance to change strategies that just throw the hands in the air. Is it blaming things external, which.

David Lawrence: You know, quarter after quarter, month after month, start to feel a little bit not quite right. Um, I think it's that subtle balance between, yeah, it's just seasonality or, you know, it's tough economy at the moment or whatever it might be, or there's that campaign performed in a different way than what we thought, but to where you're engaging an agency, particularly, , if it's a digital marketing agency, like the space we're in, it probably is more metric driven.

David Lawrence: Results are probably, , easier in some ways to kind of, you know, we're all. Attached to monthly dashboards and all those types of things, but you want to see results moving in the right direction. And if they're not quite there, then hopefully you've got realistic expectations around that, but you'd want to see some, reasonable response to that.

David Lawrence: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's interesting, isn't it? I think when you ask a marketer what they want from their agency, the number one thing they think about is results. It's not the thing they spend the most time talking about when they start talking about ways agencies have blown them away or way agencies have let them down.

David Lawrence: Um, it's, it's probably the other points that in a funny way actually make more difference. I think you just have to assume the results are happening. It's important, it's got to be the flexibility, but let's get on to, let's get into maybe the next point, which is, , how mature are the people that are putting together your strategy at the agency and how focused are they on solving your particular business problem with the skills that they offer?

James Lawrence: Yeah. I think for, um, a lot of feedback that we get is. And once again, I'm just, this is kind of coming more from a digital marketing viewpoint, there's, um, much broader subset of agencies out there, but you want a team and you want an agency partner that is proficient in platform is proficient in the tools, but I think never loses sight of the business outcome that they're trying to focus and work towards that you want an agency partner that's commercially minded.

James Lawrence: Team, whether that's your account manager, whether that's a principal at the agency, whether that's a technician working on one of your accounts, I think you need to make sure there's an alignment, which is, yep, we're in platform and it's CPCs and ROAS or whatever those things might be, but you need, everyone should be singing from the same song sheet when it comes to understanding that for this particular client, we're trying to generate these types of leads.

James Lawrence: And this is the type of persona we're dealing with. And it's a long path to purchase or no, actually not. It's, you know, it's these SKUs over here and these are strategically important. I think there's, um, to me that's a big one. I think if you're dealing with just a practitioner who's technically strong, but weak in the commercial state of mind, then you're going to struggle eventually to get the results you need.

David Lawrence: Yeah, that's it. And we see it, um, not infrequently, , where. Well, we'll be, um, there'll be a specialist who will be celebrating enormous success on a campaign, high number of leads or a low cost per click or cost per acquisition, whatever it is, and then we'll speak to the client and discover they're actually really unhappy because yeah, the Google ads or the GF4 metrics look fantastic.

David Lawrence: The lead quality is not there. It's just not converting into sales. And conversely, we've got other times where specialists are actually quite worried a campaign's not working. Um, until we speak with the client and we find out, yeah, it's a really high value product or service they're offering. I don't want to make many sales and, and the sales cycle is very long, but hey, they've just landed their two biggest deals in the years and the work we've done.

David Lawrence: , they don't care what's happening in GA4. So just that maturity to understand what success is and what the metrics are you should be looking at and when you should be having good chats to the client about what's working and what's not working.

James Lawrence: A hundred percent. Um, next point is what doesn't apply to us because we've never had any staff member.

James Lawrence: So never, never staff turnover. I think this is one that you have a, an opinion on. And I think,

David Lawrence: yeah, yeah, I really do. It's, it, this is really interesting one. We hear this a lot from, from clients that are coming to work with Rocket, which is the reason they're unhappy with their previous agency is because they kept on seeing, uh, staff churn, account managers leaving.

David Lawrence: And, and I have sort of two thoughts on this. One is. Show me the company, , with staff that doesn't have turnover. , it's a thing. It happens. People lose staff. Agencies are exactly the same. Many agencies probably do have higher churn, , than the average out there. Thankfully we're not one of those agencies, but of course we still lose staff.

David Lawrence: And often it's for great reasons. You know, , they're enormously skilled and they may not see the opportunities internally, or they might want to change or they might want a career change or a holiday, all these great things. So, stuff turnover is not necessarily a bad thing. What is a bad thing is when an agency doesn't have systems in place to preserve the IP and the knowledge of the campaign.

David Lawrence: So that, that's what would worry me. , it's obvious if you had a new AM every couple of months, that'd be very disturbing, , but largely, yeah, someone's leaving. That's okay. That's an opportunity to work with someone else. Do they know all the things they need to know to take your campaign to the next level, or are you going to be starting from scratch?

James Lawrence: That's right. And like the transition also of team member, I think obviously the transition of knowledge is important, but what does it look like? Do you have you been exposed to more than one person within a team? So that there's still some IP that stays there. Um, is there a process to make sure that the new contact is someone that's already been in the agency or if they're fresh, that there's oversight from, , an experienced member of the team, without wishing to turn like a negative into a positive.

James Lawrence: I actually think that turnover on an account can be for the best, right? I think it doesn't matter if you've had some of the greatest team members at Rocket, you can move on often fresh ideas, fresh perspective, kind of looking at things with a new lens can be really effective. , not to suggest that is the case every time, but I think, yeah, coming into it, knowing or expecting that you are going to have turnover at an agency.

James Lawrence: It is the nature of the game to some extent. Yep. Within LinkedIn, you can look at kind of churn of staff within a year and get average tenure within agencies. And we're pretty comfortable with how our team stacks up there. But, , yeah, I think staff turnover is a misnomer.

James Lawrence: It's about the effect of staff turnover on your campaigns. I think you have a right to not be regurgitating what you do as a business and explaining work that the agency itself did for you three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago.

David Lawrence: Yeah. That's it. Yeah. It's all about how it's handled for sure.

James Lawrence: Love it. For sure.

David Lawrence: Next one that I think is worth talking about is, uh, Who you have access to in the agency. So of course, you're probably going to have a team of people that you're working with depending on what the task is and they're going to be a mix of probably juniors and mids and some seniors.

David Lawrence: But as the client, do you feel you have access to senior people that have seen it all before and can make really sound strategic strategic decisions? It doesn't mean they're doing everything on your account, but can you get to them and are they adding value?

James Lawrence: Yeah, I think it's a big one. I think that comes massively back to, um, to the right agency for you and the right fit.

James Lawrence: In our book that we put together, there is a section on the right people for the job and one of the, litmus tests or want to have a better expression of is this the, you know, is this going to be the right agency for you? It's how seriously you're taken in that onboarding and, and, um, and pre sale phase.

James Lawrence: So, um, yeah. If you're not kind of getting access to senior people in the team, if you're not getting access to the MD, senior directors, co founders, et cetera, then you're like what's going to happen when you're actually on board and you've got an issue and yep, um, for me, it's about having the appropriate.

James Lawrence: Use of resourcing at all times. And I think most agencies are structured where the most experienced people, the people with the deep subject matter, expertise, strategic mouse, they're not going to be on your account full time. They're going to be leveraged across a handful of accounts. And, but you do want to have access and you want to reach out to them direct.

James Lawrence: Um, it might be still, you know, within account management function, depending on how that agency is structured, but if it's. You're kind of being landed by, you know, two people in shiny clothes with big promises and then you never get to see those people again, then you're probably not going to be getting the strategic direction on your account that you otherwise would want, right?

David Lawrence: Yeah, that's it. And likewise, there's a flip side to that, isn't there? Which is if you've got really senior people on your account all the time and they're doing really low value tasks, then one of two things is happening. Either you're being charged a ton of money for tasks that could be done by, by less expensive people, um, or the agencies.

David Lawrence: Probably working themselves to death , or underperforming from a financial perspective because they're just chewing up all their senior time on low value tasks. So yeah, I think you would expect a healthy balance of, of different levels of seniority on your account in addition to access to those senior people when you need it.

James Lawrence: Yeah, and I think you'll feel that, you'll know that by, when you're speaking to your, your day-to-day, whether, yeah, I ran that by, you know, staff member X or staff member Y and I were talking about it and we thought this, and you'll start to feel that. The kind of, um, the more experienced people in the business are still thinking about your account and trying to still solve your problem strategically.

David Lawrence: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

James Lawrence: Next one is I think a big bugbear for listeners onto the pod, but respect your time.

David Lawrence: Yeah, I love this one. Brutal transparency there in parts of the agency world, there remains. A misunderstanding of the role of marketers on the client side. And the misunderstanding is that, Hey, those guys only work on one client.

David Lawrence: How busy can they really be here? Am I in an agency with two, three, four, five, 10 clients? Um, I'm super busy. My time's really valuable. And that can lead to disrespecting the time of an in house marketer. And the reality is it has marketers up easy. They might only have one client. That client has them 100 percent of the time.

David Lawrence: And they're dealing with all manner of stakeholders and approval processes and legal frameworks and business challenges, a whole bunch of stuff that never gets anywhere near the agency. The reason they're working with an agency is because they don't have time to do this stuff themselves quite often, so they haven't outsourced it to still be involved in every single thing and they haven't outsourced it to be sent work that's not of a sufficient quality, so if an agency is wasting a client's time, Poor work, meetings that don't have to happen, meetings that are too long or don't add value, then yeah, there should be some question marks or at least a realignment of what the client values and how the agency can fit into that.

James Lawrence: Yeah, that's it. I have very little to add because I couldn't agree with you more in the way you, you kind of answered that. Just to add to it, probably a more general point, which is if you have a relationship with an agency partner and certain things like this are popping up. You need to be giving feedback about that.

James Lawrence: And I think that's cause we had Darren Wooley on the pod recently who is involved in helping clients with through agency tenders and pitches and he's kind of a doctor and he's so well regarded in that space and he, despite his job, he's so often is this client should not be changing agencies.

James Lawrence: It's just a recalibration rather than a, cause there is a massive upheaval and going out to market and then having to onboard, et cetera. I'm sitting on something like that. Potentially, if you've got a partner who might be lacking that kind of maturity slash business focus, you might think that they think they're doing their job by dragging you into stuff and sending you spreadsheets that are, thousands of rows long and sending you the 140 page PowerPoint presentation.

James Lawrence: Like , that probably is an area where you can recalibrate things. And , if you can't, then you probably don't have the right partner.

David Lawrence: Yeah. That's it. And let's face it. There are some clients that love that level of detail. , not all of them for sure. And typically not more senior people, but yeah, you're right.

David Lawrence: If the client's getting, um, having to invest too much time or not enough time into the relationship, then recalibration is exactly the solution for that for sure. I think another important role that an agency can play, and so it can determine whether it's a good fit or a bad fit, , is how well they work to educate you on what it is that they do.

James Lawrence: Yeah, I agree. I'm kind of passionate about that one. It's often, probably kind of a bigger consideration than you might think. So often, particularly when you're dealing with senior marketers looking to onboard a new agency, it'll often be kind of one of those things that will casually be communicated to you, which is, you know, I've got two pretty junior marketers here, they're , great attitude, but I want them to be able to do a lot of this stuff in the future.

James Lawrence: , or it's going to be great for them to know this stuff. You should be being educated on the subject matter on the area that your agency is working within. And for me, , it then crosses really quickly into transparency and openness. And the, particularly in the space that we play, particularly in SEO, there's been so many smoke and mirrors, so much dark arts, so many kind of big players that have given the industry itself a pretty dodgy reputation for a lot of the practices and ways that those businesses have been run.

James Lawrence: There shouldn't be anything smoke and mirrors about what we're doing. You know, you should be educating clients. There's probably a level of miniature, which most clients don't want to go into, but over time, like the team that you're working with should be imparting information. And I think for me, crucially, I was in a meeting this morning with a, an important client of ours.

James Lawrence: And I was actually so impressed with one of our subject matter experts. First of all, for just saying, I don't know on something you actually don't know the answer to that was a great question. And then there was a question around, um, And then he said, I think I've actually got too much for what you're, for what I can get out of this channel.

James Lawrence: And then kind of went on to explain the why of that. And I think that's the kind of, um, relationship you want to have where you are being educated. And I don't think it has to extend to things like, you know, Rocket has a podcast. Yes, we send it out to our clients, but I think it should be just in the day to day relationship , you know, when you are reporting back on what you've done and explaining to liberals.

David Lawrence: You really should be bringing the client along on the journey. Yeah, totally. And it helps the clients much because often, you know, you're, you're a marketer working in inside of an organization that may not be very marketing friendly. And if your agency tells you things are great and, and just tell you that and give you a bunch of reports, it can be really hard to then communicate that, um, up the line and convince people, um, that a great job is being done and that budget should continue to be invested in it.

David Lawrence: So a smart agency can actually be quite self serving and understand that educating their clients, um, is a really great way to make sure that good decisions are supported right through the organization. Uh, it's the right thing to do. It can really help the careers of our, of our clients prosper as well.

James Lawrence: I think the career growth is massive. I think anecdotally hearing , from clients, not, nothing to do with working with Rocket, but having worked with previous agencies in a whole bunch of different subject matter areas, how much they learned as a junior marketer or in their previous role, but then allows them to, when they are talking to MD or CMO or head of sales, they can actually explain and articulate.

James Lawrence: You know, the role of creative or the role of insights, whatever it might be. So I think , you're missing out as a marketer if your agency partners aren't helping you learn. Yep.

David Lawrence: Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Right. I think that the next interesting one is just the overall experience.

David Lawrence: , and this probably comes back to the whole, there's no agency that's right for everyone. Um, If you just don't like the way they work, if you don't like the people, if you don't like their values or their culture, it's probably not the right agency for you because those things are probably not going to change just because they don't suit you.

James Lawrence: Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And I think this comes so much down to the, um, the right agency, not the best agency. It's the, what's the right one for you and yeah, cultural alignment. It's, um, if you just don't like the vibe. It's not going to work. And I really don't like in business when it's like, yeah, let's, let's have some fun working together because I think it's just so cliched and, it's not really why we're here.

James Lawrence: Like, I think it's okay if it's a byproduct of, and we have lots of great relationships with lots of our clients and many have become friends and we've had lunches and all those things, but not about having fun, but it's actually about being on the same page as someone, um, having some, having a real cultural alignment.

James Lawrence: You're going to struggle. You're going to be pushing uphill forever if you just don't like them. And then you escalate something or maybe you want to change your contact and you kind of get in the same feeling, or there's just a disconnect in that relationship, I think you just never get it. You get a struggle to get the most out of each other , in that situation.

James Lawrence: Good thing. It's, it's such a cliche, but it is a partnership and it's not really that different to the people on your team. You know, if you've got good people around you that you're all working together, you'll get good outcomes. Good. So, um, if you're really in business or in team sports or anything like that, are you going to do well where you've just fundamentally got people that don't see eye to eye and don't really like each other?

David Lawrence: Yeah, that's it. , and chances are, if you don't like them, probably don't trust them. And if you don't trust them. Then when things don't go right, which we talked about right at the beginning is being a very real possibility in any marketing campaign. If you're not going to trust them when things aren't going right, you're not going to believe that they've done the right thing or that they're going to be able to get it back under control.

David Lawrence: So yeah, , if there's no alignment there, it's, it's, it's probably not going to be fixable. Um, and it's probably not going to work. That's it.

James Lawrence: With the exception of Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls who did a pretty good job, uh, despite not liking each other.

David Lawrence: That's very true. That's pretty true. And I was gonna, I was gonna say you commenting on, uh, you know, it's a cliche about things being fun, but, uh, you are the fun guy.

David Lawrence: You are the fun guy.

James Lawrence: Fun left hand guy, we've got a problem. Well, I'm definitely not the fun guy. So we give it to you. But I think it's okay to have fun, but it just kind of. It kind of grates on me because it's not what we're here for. Yeah. Um, but I think that's the reality. I think if you're with, um, people who you do just naturally have an inclination towards, it doesn't mean they have to be the same or anything like that.

James Lawrence: But I think it's. And I think everyone listening will know what it feels like when you feel like, yep, I can work with this person. It doesn't mean you have to have a whole lot of shared interests. You may, but it's, um, I think it's, you're going to struggle if you just, I think your points are right. Well, which is if you don't like them, you probably don't trust them.

David Lawrence: This is something that's probably changed. It's a bit of an aside, but I think it's something that's changed a lot. Not just because of COVID, but it's been happening for a long time. Back in the day, you know, I remember people. Would make it very clear that one of the reasons they appointed an agency was because they wanted to have fun and they would actually get you to take them out on regular things, or they'd, they'd say, Oh, I , told the boss that my agency asked and then what are we going to do?

David Lawrence: Kind of thing. Um, and that's gone now. I think there is an understanding that like and trust and values alignment is actually genuinely important. with something pure fun. Um, I don't think anyone has time for that anymore. Sadly, I'm not sadly. So

James Lawrence: yeah, I think it's true. And like, don't get me wrong. I think it's so valuable to break down that wall and have a proper relationship and understand to your point that builds trust.

James Lawrence: And I think when you, When you do social events with clients and you start to learn about their kids and what their interests are and whatever else. I think when something does go wrong, there's trust and it's very close to that first point around results. So it's like, you know, no, genuinely this was because of X or because of Y let's work on this and you cut each other some slack.

James Lawrence: So I think it's, um, you want to, and that probably lends itself nicely to the point, which is, you just want to have that alignment, the feeling of, , actually liking working together.

David Lawrence: Absolutely.

James Lawrence: Um, this one to me is a huge one. Proactivity.

David Lawrence: Yeah. This comes up all the time, doesn't it? When we're speaking to clients or prospects, or we're trying to understand why someone's existing agency is not the agency they want to work with anymore.

David Lawrence: Proactivity. Um, if you're getting results, just looking backwards and doing the basics. It just doesn't seem to be a relationship that people love. If people love it when their specialists and their account managers and the strategists are reaching out and saying, Hey, I had a thought about your campaign the other day.

David Lawrence: Have you ever considered doing ABC or read a really interesting article last week? Was thinking about you. Here it is. Let's have a chat. Next time we catch up, it can be little things that can be really big things, but Proactivity shows that you care. Um, and I think it's a really important part of a, a client agency relationship that's working.

James Lawrence: Yeah, I think that's right. I think it shows you care. And I think it also shows that you know, your stuff and you're confident, um, but yeah, I couldn't, couldn't agree more. It's why agencies are engaged. Like, uh, if you can do it yourself in house, then it's probably going to be cheaper to do it.

James Lawrence: And obviously if it's half a full time employee, then you know, an agency can help kind of smooth that out. But I think the big reason you're paying an agency is because they have vision and perspective into areas where you just can't go. An agency will be working with 10 clients or 20 clients, although they run 30 campaigns in a particular way.

James Lawrence: Um, and you want those learnings from those other experiences to be deployed onto, onto your work. And so I think if you're not, if, if an agency partner isn't being proactive in terms of, Hey, things have changed right now, GA4 is now where we should be, or we've been playing with this particular technology for the last six months with other clients and we're getting great results.

James Lawrence: Let's roll it out for yourself. Then I think that set and forget would suggest you probably don't have the right partner.

David Lawrence: Yeah, that's right. That's, that's right. So a good agency simply has to know things. Uh, above and beyond, um, what's happening inside the client or even within any one campaign.

David Lawrence: And if they're not sharing it, why not?

James Lawrence: Yeah. Cause there's no do it yourself if you could. Yep. Reality of it. Like that's, but you, you pay the agency to bring those insights that you otherwise just don't have.

David Lawrence: Yeah. That's it. You can't read the label from inside the bottle.

James Lawrence: We love that one.

David Lawrence: We do. We do. Um, and I think our last point we have on this little list here, is how well is the agency, , integrating things with other channels and partners?

James Lawrence: Yeah. And it kind of links up probably quite nicely to maturity and understanding the business outcomes. Right. But a good agency partner should be working really well with your other agencies in the agency village. And they also should be working in a way takes into account the other marketing activities you're running.

James Lawrence: Right. You're running outdoor advertising, you're running TV, PR agency. Um, it's kind of interesting in our space. Like we'll, for a lot of our clients, we're, we're doing their organic search. We're doing their paid search. We're doing their paid social, but for some, we're just running their

James Lawrence: search, both organic and paid.

James Lawrence: They'll have media agencies running that type of stuff. For others, they'll view paid media as one bucket, which is, you know, paid search and paid media, they'll have an external other agency. We have a creative agency within our agency and yet lots of our clients have other, other creative firms they're using, um, and so it's really important to get the best results for our clients.

James Lawrence: We need to be working in alignment with those, those partners. Um, and you know, it's, it's probably getting a little bit granular, but it's the classic SEO and paid search stuff, right? Like if you just, if we're just running paid search, then we'll just bid on brand and get conversions, but that might cannibalise organic activity.

James Lawrence: And if we're running organic activity, we'll, you know, performance agency, tell them, tell the client to turn off branded search and neither is necessarily acting in the best interest of the client. You want to be working collaboratively to drive the best outcome possible. Yeah.

David Lawrence: Yeah. That's so true. Yeah.

I've always thought it's a bit strange when. Whether it's an agency or an individual sees the other people working on the wider team as an enemy or, or something to be sort of managed, you know, in a negative kind of way, like, Oh, I choose to go work at the creative agency. Like, no, that's a fantastic opportunity to look at the same problem from a different perspective.

Ultimately, we're all being paid to do the same thing, which is get results.

James Lawrence: A hundred percent. And from sharing common clients, we've built great relationships with agencies that do very similar things to what we do or agencies that kind of nicely overlap and work together. We refer work around and solve problems together and, and learn, right?

Like I've learned so much from different creative agencies that we've worked with, um, web development agencies, PR agencies. And it is, a cliche, but I think we, you do stand so much more.

You stand to gain so much more. Working collaboratively rather than seeing it as a threat.

David Lawrence: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that, that's right. There should be a level of enthusiasm there rather than it being a negative.

James Lawrence: Yeah. So I think that's a good look. I feel those nine points are, litmus tests of whether your agency relationship is working or not. And, and I do feel that, um, if you're being let down on a few of those things, that doesn't necessarily mean sack the agency, put a big RFP together and then go out to, you know, 10 agencies , and try to jump ship.

I think it is about. looking at those things and going, Hey, I think they've actually got the capacity or the capability to deliver on these things, but maybe the, we just haven't got things structured quite right. Yeah, I think you'll know, I think you'll know if you kind of listen to this conversation that, you know, I find larger agencies do a great job, or conversely, you're just never going to get there.

David Lawrence: Yeah, that's it. It sort of comes down to that. I don't know if you read the book, but difficult conversations, I think sometimes, um, and , this is not a client agency thing, but people would rather avoid a confronting or a difficult conversation. They'd rather avoid that conversation than just fix the problems.

And sometimes when not having that conversation, you're opening yourselves up to so much work in terms of getting rid of an agency, finding new agencies who might make the same mistakes, the current agency making, so have that difficult conversation, have a frank conversation with your current agency.

And, and that will ultimately determine whether they were actually the right agency or the wrong agency.

James Lawrence: And I think being realistic, right. It is, um, we'll often pass on a lot of work where you hear clients, you know, Perspective clients coming to you and they'll be rattling off these things. And you're like, that's, that's just a classic agency client dynamic.

And that's something where you haven't kind of stood up for yourself or you came into that with a pretty unrealistic expectation. Yeah. Um, so it is very much about having a pretty reasonable perspective on what a high functioning relationship will look like and how to change it if it's not.

David Lawrence: Yep. Yeah.

That's it. Good. Honest conversation.

James Lawrence: Awesome. Love it, Dave. Thanks for the conversation. I think there's some, um, some really good insights in there.

David Lawrence: Yeah, no, that's good fun. Always enjoy these conversations.

James Lawrence: Thanks, Dave.