7 Signs Your Marketing Agency Isn't Worth the Money [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 180]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

[00:00:00] Bob Ruffolo: Do you actually know how much your company spends on marketing every month because once you add up the agencies, consultants, software, ad spend, events, and everything else scattered across your budget, that number might be a lot larger than you think. Now, with AI making decent marketing work easier and cheaper than ever, there's another question business owners might be asking: Why am I paying an agency to do this work that we just do ourselves?

[00:00:23] Bob Ruffolo: In this episode, John Becker and I break down seven red flags that may be telling you that your marketing agency is no longer worth what you're paying them. By the end of this episode, you'll have a simple way to audit where your marketing money is actually going, what's worth keeping, what should come in-house, and where you might be wasting money.

[00:00:41] Bob Ruffolo: Let's get into it.​

[00:01:26] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome back to the Endless Customers Podcast. We are here in the studio with a very special guest, one of my favorite people in the world, John Becker, Endless Customers coach. John, welcome to the show.

[00:01:37] John Becker: Thanks, Bob. Glad to be here. It's been

[00:01:39] Bob Ruffolo: a little while since you've been on the show, huh?

[00:01:40] John Becker: It has been a little while. Glad to be back. Studio looks great.

[00:01:43] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah.

[00:01:44] Bob Ruffolo: Well, John is an incredible Endless Customers coach. That's why we brought him on, and we're gonna talk about something very interesting today. Um, and John, I'll actually let you set this up because this is a topic you've become very passionate about, um, talking about marketing agencies and AI. And what are we [00:02:00] talking about today, John?

[00:02:01] John Becker: Yeah, Bob, this comes from things that I hear from companies of all different sizes all across the country and sometimes around the world, a pain point that they're experiencing right now, which is what I call the sneaky marketing spend. And if you were to ask the average business what they spend on marketing, even ones who are really savvy in terms of numbers, they often have no idea, because that marketing spend is, is sneaky, and you have a agency that just helps you with this and a consultant that works on that and someone else who manages your website, someone else who does social media, some who el- someone else who does AEO.

[00:02:36] John Becker: All of that is part of your marketing spend. Mm-hmm. And it's often hidden in different budgets, different line items. And so for an average business to say, "This is what we spend per month," they kind of can't do it. Yeah. And then when they start bringing it all together, they start to realize, "Ooh, it's a bigger number than we thought, and not sure we're getting exactly what we hoped."

[00:02:56] Bob Ruffolo: exactly what we hoped." And this is something you're seeing with our clients, I have to imagine.

[00:02:58] Bob Ruffolo: That's why you're, become so [00:03:00] passionate about it. It is. And you did a webinar on this. I did. And it was called The Great Agency Reckoning. Mm-hmm. Um, and you hosted this, uh, now when we're recording this, this was just, uh, a few days ago.

[00:03:10] John Becker: Yep.

[00:03:11] Bob Ruffolo: So th-this is fresh in your mind.

[00:03:12] John Becker: in my mind.

[00:03:13] Bob Ruffolo: All right. So, um, from your seat coaching business owners, uh, day to day, what is actually going on right now inside these agency relationships that made you wanna ha- give that webinar?

[00:03:23] John Becker: Yeah. The first thing that I'll say, a statistic that really interested me, is that 52% of SMBs outsource some of their marketing. Now, would you have thought that that was a higher number or a lower number?

[00:03:35] Bob Ruffolo: said 50 what? 52%

[00:03:37] John Becker: what? 52% outsource at least some of their marketing.

[00:03:41] Bob Ruffolo: Actually, I would think that's low. I know. Yeah.

[00:03:44] John Becker: So down from 70% just three or four years ago. Wow, okay. Which totally speaks to what you said before about AI. There's more capabilities to take things in-house, and I think there's more dissatisfaction with some traditional marketing tactics. You know, are these search ads [00:04:00] really worth it that we're paying for?

[00:04:01] John Becker: Are these social media ads really driving actual revenue for my business? Or what if we turn off that faucet, would things actually change? So it went from 70% down to 52% over the matter of three or four years.

[00:04:16] Bob Ruffolo: Wow. Do you-- If you had to guess, do you think it's going to go back up, or do you think it's gonna continue to go down?

[00:04:21] John Becker: Up or you think it's gonna continue to go down I'll give you one more. 60% of SMBs switched their agency last year. So in the year of 2025, 60% made a change, meaning I think there's a high level of dissatisfaction. There's a high level of, of what I call this kind of big promise honeymoon period with an agency where everything seems great.

[00:04:43] John Becker: Maybe you see numbers go up for a little bit, you feel really happy, and then it starts to level off, maybe starts to come down, and the cycle repeats. You go on, you look for a different agency that's making other big promises, and you might find yourself in this same kind of hamster wheel experience where it's good for a little [00:05:00] while and then it kind of falls off.

[00:05:01] John Becker: And so there's this musical chairs game where people are moving agencies really quickly or trying to bring things in-house.

[00:05:07] Bob Ruffolo: in-house. You know, and John, I'm not surprised at that number. Um, when you first started here, we were more of an agency, and now I'd say we're much more of a coaching and training organization.

[00:05:19] Bob Ruffolo: Um, but the model for many agencies, many of the agencies I knew, and obviously we were very, um, big in the HubSpot space, the HubSpot partner channel, so I interact with hundreds and hundreds of agencies all the time and, uh, grew up in that world. But the model was that you'd have these senior level people that would be making these big promises, scoping out agreements, selling them, closing them, probably staying involved at a high level.

[00:05:43] Bob Ruffolo: Eventually, they would probably hand it off to their team, and they would go on to the next big deal or whatever they were doing. But their teams, what they were staffing, were usually very entry-level people, and they were s- a lot of them were right out of school, and they were being developed and groomed sort of, and [00:06:00] they had a lot of turnover in those, those roles.

[00:06:02] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Um, yeah, we're gonna go into all this. So the, the change of agencies I'm not surprised about, and there are-- I'm not saying all agencies are like that- Yeah ... because they're certainly not. There are some great ones, but that-- We've seen that time and time again. We were-- And listen, I'm not gonna lie, we have been around for 17 years.

[00:06:19] Bob Ruffolo: We were that agency for a period of time until we said we don't wanna be that anymore, and we completely changed our model.

[00:06:26] John Becker: Yeah. And, and so I, I think part of what you're describing, like I think there, there are two layers to what you're describing. One is exactly what you're, you're saying.

[00:06:36] John Becker: I, I, I'm never gonna say it's a bad decision to pay for expertise. If you're getting great service, if you're working with people who really understand your business, that is 100% worth it. But you're right that sometimes there are big promises and under-deliver, uh, that d- don't really get delivered on. And then I think the other le- the other layer is, is what I described before, is this kind of fatigue for a business who's working with three, [00:07:00] four, five different outside experts.

[00:07:02] John Becker: None of those talk to each other, and you're in the midst of kind of juggling, and we all know what that's like when, for a buyer, for your buyer, it's a weird experience because your social media posts were written by somebody, your sales collateral was created by somebody else, your Google business profile, like everyone's different.

[00:07:21] John Becker: You're in the midst trying to, you know, the, the center of the wheel trying to navigate it all, and that's an exhausting place to be in, and it feels incongruous for your buyers. It feels stressful for you. And then anytime any bit of that orchestration isn't working, you're left kind of figuring, is it that person?

[00:07:44] John Becker: Is it that agency? Is it the model that we're doing? Is it us? Is it somebody else? And so you are in this kind of juggling act between all of these different folks. We work with companies that have, uh, without exaggeration, [00:08:00] four different agencies and six different consultants that they work with at a given time.

[00:08:05] John Becker: And you know they're not all saying the same thing. You know they're all gonna be in a little bit of competition with each other for your attention. All might be upselling and trying to get more of your business, and you realize that you're being kind of pulled back and forth the whole time. Well-

[00:08:18] Bob Ruffolo: uh, uh, you know, again, I've seen this firsthand.

[00:08:21] Bob Ruffolo: Um, when there are multiple service providers, sometimes they work synergistically.

[00:08:27] John Becker: Right.

[00:08:28] Bob Ruffolo: Many times they do not. In fact, they're trying to almost sabotage and trying to talk to the company and say, "Stop spending that mon- money with

[00:08:35] John Becker: Put that money

[00:08:35] Bob Ruffolo: "Bring it all here. We'll control everything for you.

[00:08:38] Bob Ruffolo: You have one..." So there's actually more competition going on. Uh, I think you're, you're, you're bringing up a really good point there.

[00:08:43] John Becker: I think there are some agencies that sell a model where what they provide in the first month or two is fantastic, and then it's kind of incur- maintenance that keeps going retainer month after retainer month.

[00:08:57] John Becker: I think of a company that we work with that pays for, uh, [00:09:00] an agency to, first it was to optimize their Google business profile, which is probably money well spent. You need that to be really strong. You want good examples of your work. You want, uh, reviews, all of that, but now there's ongoing maintenance- Yeah

[00:09:14] John Becker: of your Google business profile, and is that worth the same fee month after month after month? And where do you get to a point where you pull the plug and you think, "I don't know if this is really where I want my dollars going"? Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:09:26] Bob Ruffolo: I know we're gonna go on to the, the seven, uh, red flags here. Um, but you know, I think it's i- it's challenging for business owners because there are so many channels that are out there. You got social media, you got... And you break that down, that's, that's an unlimited amount of channels. I mean, you talk about TikTok and Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube.

[00:09:46] Bob Ruffolo: You have so many different, like specialists helping you with different things there. Um, a- and, and you know, you talk about, you know, Google Reviews or Google Profiles and, and other platforms. Um, and then you have all these softwares constantly like [00:10:00] saying, "Hey, you should hire us to do this, hire us to do that."

[00:10:02] Bob Ruffolo: A, a business owner will get probably anywhere between 50 and 100 impressions a day of people trying to sell them stuff to h- improve their marketing. But we don't have these unlimited budgets, right? And it's really hard to decide what is the right thing for us to do, who are the right people, and, and keep that, you know, controlled.

[00:10:19] Bob Ruffolo: It's, it's a challenge.

[00:10:21] John Becker: And everything's promising to be the next big thing. Everything's promising to be the silver bullet. And I, I work with business owners all the time who say, "You know, how could I be spending all this on marketing and some guy who lives down the street from our office has still never heard of us?"

[00:10:36] John Becker: You know? And, and that, that kind of strange experience where you feel like you've been shouting it out in a million different ways about what your business does, how it helps, and, you know, it might be you run into somebody in the grocery store line, talk them up, and they've never heard of you. And, and it's, that's how sometimes leads work.

[00:10:54] John Becker: And we all know that word of mouth is obviously the strongest marketing that there ever is. And, and I, I think some of the [00:11:00] marketing channels that people use today mimic word of mouth and can feel really trustworthy, but you're right, everyone is in this quandary of, where do I put my money? Um, and sometimes what worked really well last year might not be working as well this year because the algorithm changed or because your buyers are, have changed.

[00:11:17] John Becker: You're spending time in different places. You know, ultimately, every business is finding this balance of, um, what Marcus Sheridan would say is building on your own land versus building on rented land. You know? You, you create, you, you own and, uh, have control over your own website, to an extent your social profiles, but when you're building in something like LinkedIn or TikTok or YouTube, you know, that's ultimately, they can change the algorithm.

[00:11:44] John Becker: They can devalue something that you've done. A client that we work with, uh, their YouTube channel just two weeks ago was completely wiped off of YouTube for a very bizarre reason, and they're trying to, they're trying to get it back with really limited success. So there [00:12:00] are things that can just completely come out of nowhere and, and, and knock you sideways.

[00:12:04] John Becker: So having a, a, a trusted agency can be really valuable, but agencies can be just an amplification of that same noise of trying to get you to spread yourself too thin, go on platform after platform after platform, and it ultimately might not work.

[00:12:20] Bob Ruffolo: So you talked in the webinar, which everybody, if you're watching this and you wanna go even deeper into this topic, go watch the webinar.

[00:12:28] Bob Ruffolo: Um, you mentioned seven specific red flags. Mm-hmm. Uh, so walk us through the ones that show up the most often, um, and which ones tend to surprise bus- business owners the most when you point them out.

[00:12:38] John Becker: Yeah, and, and these are red flags. They could be things that you look for in a sales conversation in the very beginning of working with an agency, but they're also moments to just kind of take a look in the mirror and, and see if this is what you're experiencing and- It's been three months, been six months, been a year.

[00:12:55] Bob Ruffolo: Also moments to just kind of take a look in the mirror and, and see if this is what you're experiencing It's been three months, been six months, been a year. We're about to renew

[00:12:56] John Becker: Something new. Especially, yeah, you get through that honeymoon period, and all of a sudden it [00:13:00] feels like a couple of these things start happening, and we don't need to go into all of them necessarily, but one you alluded to before, um, you're facing the brunt of high turnover. We know that this can happen at agencies where people leave, and sometimes people leave for perfectly normal reasons, or they have a baby, or they, you know, move across the country.

[00:13:19] John Becker: But you don't want your business to face the brunt of that, and you know that experience of having to reestablish a relationship, re-explain everything. And when that person leaves, you... That, that's, that's a hole that they leave behind, and if it's your business that's affected, that puts you in a tough spot, and again, it can happen and it's normal, but the right agency should talk about that ahead of time, should have redundancies in place so that you don't find yourself starting fresh with the same agency because you have a totally different person, you're facing the brunt of their

[00:13:54] Bob Ruffolo: different person you're facing the next day. Great, great point. Great point. Um, and that I, I will say, um, [00:14:00] again, when we were doing more agency services, that was one of the number one reasons why people were shopping, is because they lost a relationship with the person that they were at another agency, and now they're start-- they feel like they're starting over.

[00:14:13] Bob Ruffolo: So that if we're gonna start over, might as well

[00:14:15] John Becker: as well be

[00:14:15] Bob Ruffolo: look at the market, see what else is out there.

[00:14:18] John Becker: Absolutely.

[00:14:19] Bob Ruffolo: So what was number two?

[00:14:21] John Becker: So what's your tip? Uh, you know, connected to that is you want to make sure that whatever agency you work with, you have some sort of regular meeting cadence.

[00:14:28] John Becker: It should not be on you to schedule meetings. It should not be on you to track them down to try to get on calls with them. Yeah. That needs to be a, a regular occurrence that you can plan on, that is consistently checking in with whatever goals you have, with whatever objectives or campaigns or anything else that's happening, so that you don't have to track down what is working or not working.

[00:14:51] John Becker: They're coming to you with it. Yeah.

[00:14:53] Bob Ruffolo: have some sort of regular meeting cadence. It should not be on you to schedule meetings. It should not be on you to track them down- Mm ... to try to get on calls with them. Yeah. That needs to be a, a regular occurrence that you can plan on that is consistently checking in with whatever goals you have, with whatever objectives- Yeah

[00:14:54] Bob Ruffolo: or campaigns or anything else that's happening, so that you don't have to track down what is working or not working. They're coming to you with that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, uh, uh, we, um, we put a practice in place and that we've had several vendors that we've used over the years,

[00:14:59] John Becker: consultants

[00:14:59] Bob Ruffolo: [00:15:00] for different things.

[00:15:01] Bob Ruffolo: Um, and as the company gets bigger, it's easier to delegate this stuff, stuff down to your team, right? Like, listen, work with my head of marketing. I'm over here, but I'm still the one chi- signing the checks. And the best contractors we ever worked with, even if I wasn't working with them directly, they would call me at least once every month or every two months, "Hey, I just-- You need to know what's going on.

[00:15:22] Bob Ruffolo: Here's what's working. Here's what we're working on. This is where I'm a little nervous, so this is how we're addressing that." Like, that is value. And if, to your point, you're paying any vendor, marketing, sales, business consulting, finance, whatever it is, and they are like out of sight, out of mind- Yeah ... that is a red

[00:15:43] John Becker: Red flag, 100%.

[00:15:45] Bob Ruffolo: 100%.

[00:15:46] John Becker: You know, which, which connects to, to my third point, which is you want your agency to push back.

[00:15:52] John Becker: You know, we can all be surrounded by yes-men who say, "Oh, great idea, we'll try that next," and if they're just trying to appease you to get that [00:16:00] extra month of, of revenue month after month after month, you know, you want someone who challenges you, who pushes back on ideas that you have, who plays devil's advocate, thinks about things in different ways, because that's ultimately a sign that they're invested in your growth.

[00:16:14] John Becker: We don't want just... Yeah, I, I think of, um, there's the Patrick Lencioni book, uh, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and he talks about mining for disagreement, that in a, in a, in a, any kind of meeting, if everyone's just saying, "Thumbs up, sounds great," you're not doing your job as a facilitator. You have to really get to what's underneath the surface, because sometimes everyone says, "Great, sounds great."

[00:16:37] John Becker: They go off into the next meeting and say, "Can you believe that guy? You c- you know, what a, what a bad idea." Um, you want your agency to work in that same way, that if you have an idea, you're launching something, you wanna go in a different direction, they wanna h- you want them to hear you, but you want them to push back

[00:16:52] Bob Ruffolo: Amazing. Um, and that's so true because there will-- I mean, you will have some [00:17:00] vendors and, and you might think of it like almost like a virtual assistant, "I just need you to do this for me." Right. And, um, but when we're thinking about strategic marketing and growth of the business, and we are spending good money, and I don't know if I'm getting what I should be getting out of that, you, to your point, someone who's invested, has their head around everything, has the experience and the expertise and the judgment to say, "I know you wanna go here, but we should go here first, and we'll get you here after."

[00:17:30] John Becker: And that's the give and take.

[00:17:31] John Becker: And I, I think ultimately the best agencies feel like an extension of your team. They feel like true partnerships, uh, partners in your growth. And, and, you know, like you said, you might say, "Well, this is the design I was thinking about. These are the colors. This is the rebrand." And they would say, "See what you're looking at here.

[00:17:47] John Becker: Here's what we think might work a little bit better." And so it feels collaborative rather than them saying, "Cool, sounds great," or them saying, "That's a terrible idea. We're gonna go with ours." Um, neither really works. You have to [00:18:00] find that balance.

[00:18:01] Bob Ruffolo: Excellent. So that was three, right? Now we're on

[00:18:04] John Becker: That was three.

[00:18:04] John Becker: So connected to that, you need your agency to care about your whole business,

[00:18:08] Bob Ruffolo: Yes

[00:18:09] John Becker: and especially we talk about agencies that are kind of micro agencies. They're just working on AEO, or they're just working on, um, social media presence. We want them to stay in their lane, of course. You know, that's, that's their expertise.

[00:18:24] John Becker: But they should be worried about things like customers and how you sell and how you do customer service and other things that impact you because they're trying to grow your whole business, and we all know that you can't grow just marketing because that has all sorts of downstream effects. You need to grow sales.

[00:18:43] John Becker: You need to grow all the things that help a business grow. That doesn't mean that they need to focus there, but they should at least be curious and interested in those other

[00:18:52] Bob Ruffolo: AEO or they're just working on, um, social media presence, we want them to stay in their lane, of course. Yeah. You know, that's, that's their expertise. But they should be worried about things like customers and how you sell and how you do customer service and other things that impact you because they're trying to grow your whole business.

[00:18:53] Bob Ruffolo: And we all know you can't grow just marketing because that has all sorts of downstream effects. You need to grow sales, you need to grow all the things that help a business grow. It doesn't mean that they need to focus there, but they should at least be curious and interested in those other things. A- and care, and care about your business.

[00:18:54] Bob Ruffolo: So, you know, the, that-- I would also build on this is not only even just care, but [00:19:00] understand your business- Yeah ... your industry. Um, hopefully, I'm, I don't know these seven, so hopefully I'm not spoiling a, a

[00:19:06] John Becker: you're good. You're good. But,

[00:19:07] Bob Ruffolo: you know, I also know from my early days of running an agency and trying to make money, um, and trying to get sales, right?

[00:19:17] Bob Ruffolo: That's what-- It's my livelihood, right? If I don't have sales, I'm not eating, right? So I was doing everything I can to get sales, but there were some businesses that I was selling to that I had no idea what they did. And because I didn't know what they did, um, it was either I was gonna waste their time and they would have to explain how their business works and their industry and terms and all that type of stuff, and many of them did, God bless their hearts.

[00:19:40] Bob Ruffolo: Um, but at the same time, like I probably wasn't the most valuable to them. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you have to go in that and be understanding that I'm gonna develop this person. Maybe they have a great price point. I know they know their thing really, really well, and I'm gonna have to nurture them, but you have to be [00:20:00] willing to put that time into them to help them understand your business if they're actually gonna be able to do a good job for you.

[00:20:05] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Um, but I would say that that's kind of connected to what you're saying as well. And-

[00:20:10] John Becker: as well. Yeah, and I, I, you know, the flip side of that though, I think, is also that there are businesses who are so in the weeds of what they do that they can't explain it to, and it's, it's a, it's kind of a, a fun role to play in the marketing side. Yeah. "Explain it to me. I still don't get it." It's so easy- Yeah

[00:20:26] John Becker: in any conversation to think, "I must be too dumb to get this, so I'm just gonna nod and pretend that I understand." And you gotta kind of get past that and be like, "Wait, wait, so why do you sell this way? Why do you sell through distributors? Why do you sell... You know, why are you structured the way you are?

[00:20:41] John Becker: Why do you do..." And sometimes that's where the real magic is, because you're asking questions that no one else is asking 'cause they're so close to

[00:20:48] Bob Ruffolo: a really good point ... they

[00:20:48] John Becker: Absolutely ... they've never actually

[00:20:49] Bob Ruffolo: That's a really good point. Yeah, 'cause that, yeah, that is the, the enemy of this is that you're so close to it that you're talking in terms that only your industry understands and, and your buyers might not.

[00:20:59] Bob Ruffolo: Right.

[00:20:59] John Becker: [00:21:00] Right. Yeah.

[00:21:00] Bob Ruffolo: Right. Great. All right, number five.

[00:21:02] John Becker: Number five, they are focused on the wrong metrics.

[00:21:06] Bob Ruffolo: metrics. Okay

[00:21:07] John Becker: And we know plenty of agencies out there, they're gonna sell you on, uh, uh, you know, ev- obviously, traffic, things like that feel more like vanity metrics, but they could be followers, they could be all the way down to leads.

[00:21:18] John Becker: Because we know that not all leads are created equal, and you could drum up leads that aren't of great value to the, to the, uh, to the customer, to the client, uh, that ultimately taxes them because it wastes time with their sales team. And I'll say, again, not to disparage marketers, uh, at all, but marketers can also skew any statistics to their own benefit, you know?

[00:21:42] John Becker: And, and I think, uh, I've seen some reports that feel to me like this is an agency trying to justify why you're spending your money with them. And if you, as the business owner, don't fully understand what that means or why that cost of lead or, or [00:22:00] anything, what going up, going down, what an open rate, any of that kind of stuff, don't be afraid, just as we said before, to ask that question, "Wait, why?

[00:22:07] John Becker: Is that good? Is that down? Is that up? Tell me about the industry." Tell, a- and if you don't want to ask your marketer, work with Claude, work with ChatGPT, ask those questions so you have a, a baseline knowledge of what to expect. And ask those marketers, "Okay, how does this actually help me close business?"

[00:22:24] John Becker: Yeah. "I hear that we have more followers on LinkedIn. Cool, but our sales are flat. What are we doing for actual revenue growth for, for my business?"

[00:22:34] Bob Ruffolo: revenue growth for, for my business?" Great. Great point. Yeah, you're reminding me of a time when we had a marketing leader here at Impact for a short period of time, and we were looking at the analytics, and they were honing in on the only number that went up, and everything else was down.

[00:22:50] Bob Ruffolo: And I was like, I was frustrated, and they were like, "Yeah, but this is what, what went up, and we were putting our focus into it." I was like, "Well, that's news to me that you're putting focus into that because I [00:23:00] didn't know." And, and it looked like it was accidentally up. Didn't look like it was a, a-- It wasn't changing the business.

[00:23:05] Bob Ruffolo: It's like, how are we going, to your point, how is it actually helping us grow the business? And they couldn't answer that, and that was very, very frustrating.

[00:23:10] John Becker: And, you know, for, for any marketer out there too, I think it's okay. We can't just pretend that every quarter, e- every month, every week is gonna be up and to the right.

[00:23:20] John Becker: You're gonna have things go

[00:23:21] Bob Ruffolo: charts look like that.

[00:23:23] John Becker: Exactly, and I think there's a tendency, um, even among people I work with, to, you know, when things are going up, you feel like a genius. You feel great. When things are going down, you feel worthless, you question your life choices. And I always tell them, "Look at each one, ups and downs, and say, 'Isn't that interesting?'

[00:23:39] John Becker: You know, 'What can I learn from this?' You know, 'What are, what are the, what are the, um, the takeaways that I have?'" And even if you're a marketing agency presenting to your client, we know that top of the funnel clicks are down across the internet

[00:23:53] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah

[00:23:54] John Becker: by 40%, 50%, some huge percentage. You can't pretend that you are [00:24:00] going to somehow completely, uh, go against a massive trend that's happening across billions of users.

[00:24:08] John Becker: But you should be that partner of the business, and you should be able to explain and contextualize and plan those next steps. It's not always gonna be sunshine and roses, but you have to be willing to be there to hold their hand and help them get through those, those challenges because that's the partnership that they need.

[00:24:24] Bob Ruffolo: that they need. Awesome. All right, number six.

[00:24:26] John Becker: so number six is that you or you and Claude could have done that yourself even better. And we all know what that's like. If you're seeing something that feels kind of generic, kind of derivative, it doesn't really sound like you.

[00:24:40] John Becker: It feels like if you put in the same prompt, you could get the same output, or the design looks like it's right out of Canva. It just doesn't feel like it's up to a certain level. Feels like a red flag because right now every single person has more capability in terms of writing, creation, strategy, design than ever in the past.

[00:24:59] John Becker: Now, [00:25:00] what that means is that good is table stakes. Yeah. Good is anyone can do good, but the difference between good and great is getting wider and wider and wider. And the agency, you're paying for them to get you to great. So if what you're seeing is just good, then it's not good enough, right? Um, and a great, you know, you can ask them about their, uh, their workflow or, or how they plan, how they strategize, but ultimately, the proof is in the pudding, and is the quality up to the threshold that you expect?

[00:25:32] John Becker: And if not, that's a red flag. 

[00:25:34] John Becker: I would put it on you as the business owner to articulate what about whatever you're seeing doesn't meet your quality thresholds, and then give the agency a chance to explain how they do their work or what they were thinking, how they made the choices.

[00:25:47] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. I had the, uh, the pleasure of sitting on a plane once. I was connecting in, uh, Philadelphia going to Kansas City for the EOS conference, and the visionary for EOS, Mark O'Donnell, was sitting [00:26:00] behind me, so that was, that was pretty cool. And-

[00:26:03] John Becker: you recline right into his lap? Oh, totally. Oh, my God.

[00:26:05] Bob Ruffolo: Did you reply right into his line? Oh, totally. Oh, yeah, I, I every opportunity I could.

[00:26:08] Bob Ruffolo: And, uh, he said something really interesting to me about AI. He goes, um, "I think e- everyone's gotta be on notice when with the AI, agencies, employees." He was like, "If I can do your job better than you over a weekend with, with AI for a few hours, then I'm not gonna need you." And that speaks exactly to your point, and I love what you just said about like good is democratized.

[00:26:35] Bob Ruffolo: The difference between good and great is getting even wider, and you're paying your agency to be great. You're paying your employees to get you to great. Paying everybody that is in your ecosystem. If you're paying somebody to do something instead of you just doing it yourself, it's gotta be better than you can do it.

[00:26:52] Bob Ruffolo: Right. And you have to expect, especially-- And the more you spend, the more you should expect. I think you're exactly right on that. And as, as we-

[00:26:58] John Becker: as, as we always say, the, the [00:27:00] goal of marketing, first of all, it's, it's sales at scale. You know, it's the same conversation you would have in a sales conversation. Sorry, let me say that again. And we always tell our clients that marketing is really sales at scale. It's the same conversation that you would have in a sales meeting, just said to a broader audience. But ultimately, what AI can do is going to be based on everything that's already been done, and what really is gonna differentiate great marketing from good marketing is all those things that we talk about, Bob.

[00:27:31] John Becker: It's, um, it's personal opinions, it's hot takes, it's perspectives. It's the experience that differentiates you from the general opinions of the masses, and that's a hard thing for agencies to do because they don't have your expertise, they don't have your opinions, your experience. And if they're not willing to get that and put that into whatever they're writing or shooting or designing or producing, I think they're inherently gonna miss the mark.

[00:27:58] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. [00:28:00] Incredible. All right. Last one, number seven.

[00:28:02] John Becker: number seven is one that hits personally for me, and I'm sure it does for you too, Bob.

[00:28:06] John Becker: You want an agency that will train you, that will train your team. We don't want an agency to gatekeep information. Uh, and I've seen plenty of agencies that say, "Oh, yeah, yeah. We'll get that report for you. Uh, we'll, we'll, we'll pull those numbers for you," rather than saying, "Hey, I'm gonna pull those numbers for you, but I'll show you how to do it."

[00:28:26] John Becker: And we work with a company that, um, is getting... You know, when we started with them, they were getting their, their numbers, their analytic numbers about their website once per quarter, and didn't know how to get the numbers themselves, and that's a, that's a dependent place to be in, where you, everything you need, you have to go to the agency for.

[00:28:46] John Becker: And we all know those contracts. If you go over a certain threshold, you're charged for it, and that creates that cycle of dependency. And, and I understand why agencies run it that way. Sometimes it can get messy. You get a bunch of people into your HubSpot portal, say. It can, it [00:29:00] can get messy. But ultimately, we want, uh, we should want our clients to learn and grow on their own, and, and be able to do some of the stuff.

[00:29:08] John Becker: They're still gonna see you, the agency, as the guide, as the experts who help them contextualize numbers, help them understand why this matters. But I, I hate that mentality of, "You can't do this. We have to do everything for you," because it, again, creates a cycle of dependency and makes the, the business feel stuck.

[00:29:28] Bob Ruffolo: And if you don't have access to your own information, the, in your properties like your website, your emails,

[00:29:34] John Becker: ' cause-

[00:29:35] Bob Ruffolo: uh, I mean, that is the biggest of all red flags 'cause they are purposely trying to hold you hostage and it's, it's, uh, slowing down your growth, hurting your growth.

[00:29:44] Bob Ruffolo: That's, that's no good. And

[00:29:46] John Becker: That's, that's no good And there's a story from one of our colleagues here at IMPACT who, before she came here, worked for a company, uh, that hired an agency to help them do HubSpot, help them do HubSpot.

[00:29:56] John Becker: And that agency, uh, I think they worked with, [00:30:00] with the agency for about 18 months. Agency owned everything, all the login credentials, all of the expertise for HubSpot, would never show anyone on the team how to do anything. So this agents-- Th- this company had bought HubSpot. The agency had put it into place.

[00:30:15] John Becker: They weren't seeing any kind of results. Ultimately, they fired the agency after about 18 months, and they were at square zero. No one on their, on their team even knew how to log into HubSpot, and they had to build that expertise, and they felt like they had 18 months that were just lost. And that kind of gatekeeping, uh, I won't let you see what I'm doing, it just feels like such an outdated model and, and such a, a almost predatory model where the, the business is kept in the dark.

[00:30:41] John Becker: And again, if you are the agency, you can again pick the numbers that show that what you're doing is working, and if you have access to all the numbers, you have all the control, and that's a tough place for a business to be in, and it just feels almost exploitive

[00:30:56] Bob Ruffolo: You know, and John, you know this 'cause we've talked about this before. The [00:31:00] most money I've ever wasted in my professional career running this company, IMPACT, is hiring people because I didn't know what I was doing in this area.

[00:31:10] Bob Ruffolo: So I thought, "Oh, I'll just hire somebody smart that knows what they're doing." Well, I wasn't smart enough to know if this person was doing the right thing by me and actually knew what they were doing. They may have just talked a good game, and many of them did. By the time I'd hire them, I was like, "I don't know.

[00:31:24] Bob Ruffolo: It sounds right." And they keep going doing these things, and nothing was working. And all of a sudden, I'm six to 12 months down the road with them, and I wasted a whole bunch of money, and I'm not in a better spot. Um, and, and many agencies that are not willing to train you and educate you, and you're not doing your own education to make sure you're making smart decisions for yourself, that's the way to waste money.

[00:31:45] John Becker: Yeah. And yeah, I think the, the, the interesting th- uh, thing about marketing especially is everyone thinks they understand it. You know, everyone thinks they know marketing. So it's, it's different in some of those situations where you as a business owner might fully understand, "I [00:32:00] don't know anything about tax law.

[00:32:01] John Becker: I need someone to help me here." You might hire an agency and think, "Well, I, I watch Mad Men. I, I'd have a sense of how to, how to do all this. I watch the Super Bowl ads." Um, and that is often not true. So I don't think those things are in conflict with each other. I think the agency can still listen to you- Yeah

[00:32:19] John Becker: push back on you, all the things that we said, and explain what they're doing and why they're doing it. And ultimately, that creates that partnership,

[00:32:26] Bob Ruffolo: and why they're doing it. And ultimately, that creates that partnership. And there's also- It's not like there's one versus the other. It's, it's collaborative There's

[00:32:27] John Becker: feel like there's one versus the other. It's, it's collaborative. There's

[00:32:31] Bob Ruffolo: a lot of great marketing out there teaching you bad marketing. If you really think about LinkedIn posts, everyone's touting the next secret thing that's gonna just magically make it work for your business, and you're like, "All right, I guess I'll try that." Good marketing 'cause you found it and you believed it.

[00:32:49] Bob Ruffolo: Bad because it's not working. If it was gonna work, everyone would do it.

[00:32:53] John Becker: everyone would do it.

[00:32:53] John Becker: 100%, and I think there's always some, some fear around, do I know what I'm [00:33:00] doing? Yeah. You know, I, like, I, I'm trying to grow my business, and, and, you know, this isn't really the topic that we're covering today, but I think it's, it's really worthwhile that sometimes marketing tries to sell a business that's not a solid business.

[00:33:14] John Becker: Because that business needs to grow, and that's what marketing is supposed to do. But I, I... There is... If you have a certain amount of effort and budget to, to put in as a business leader, don't put it all into marketing. Make sure you put some of it, a lot of it, into making sure your product, your people, your processes are great.

[00:33:35] John Becker: Because those things tend to sell themselves. They're way easier to sell, sell by word of mouth, all of those things. So just make sure that before you dump a ton of money into search ads, but then ultimately, you, at the other end, you have customers who are unhappy because you don't have a great experience for them, that's a waste as in itself, too.

[00:33:55] Bob Ruffolo: ton of money into search ads- Yeah ... but then ultimately you, at the other end, you have customers who are unhappy because you don't have a great experience for them, that's a waste as in itself. John, you couldn't be more right. And as we've been talking more about the 10 factors, um, [00:34:00] factor number one is a great business with a strong promise.

[00:34:04] Bob Ruffolo: If you don't have that, why would someone choose you? Even if your marketing's great, why would someone choose you anyways? And what you're talking about is having a, a really good business that does great work so you have a great reputation, and then you can put some marketing dollars to exploit that great work that you do and that great reputation, but you can't put lipstick on a pig.

[00:34:24] John Becker: 100%, and, and the experience for your buyer has to be great from start to finish. From first hearing about you, if that's in marketing or that's word of mouth or that's however it is, all the way through, through customer service and beyond.

[00:34:39] John Becker: And if you mess up any one of those steps, you can have great marketing, but what's coming out the other end is not gonna be profitable and, and what you want. So scrutinize your own process. Make sure that, uh, as I tell businesses all the time, go through your own sales process. Yeah. Start as a lead. Go through it.

[00:34:55] John Becker: If you need to create a fic- a fictitious email address or have a friend do it, [00:35:00] go through that process. See how quickly you're reached out to. See where the line goes dead. See how every step along the process plays out. You'll probably be shocked, and it has nothing to do with your marketing. But you wanna make sure that when you're putting people in the top side of that funnel, the rest of the process is a smooth one.

[00:35:16] John Becker: You've thought it through, and they come out the other side delighted, evangelistic of your brand, ready to tell other people.

[00:35:23] Bob Ruffolo: Now, John, um, as we get ready to wrap up this episode, um, a lot of people are now just, "Okay, now I'm aware of these seven red flags.

[00:35:34] Bob Ruffolo: I'm gonna be looking at my agency, my service providers." People are probably listening to this and saying, "Well, it's not an agency. I'm gonna be looking at my fractional CFO. I'm gonna be looking at my IT company, looking at everything right now," right? Uh, we've given a lot of reasons to look at everything.

[00:35:47] Bob Ruffolo: But going back to like how do you know if your agency is just phoning it in? If you're gonna summarize everything you just said, like how do we know if they're just phoning it in [00:36:00] and not actually making my business better? Um, how can you tell the difference?

[00:36:05] John Becker: I would back up even one step further, and the first thing I would say is the step to take is audit your spend.

[00:36:11] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah.

[00:36:12] John Becker: If you find that you are spending on this, this, this, a bunch of different agencies, get that number all together. Do the sum of all those things and realize how big that is, how big a part of your budget it is. Maybe it's smaller than you thought, maybe it's bigger than you thought, but it might not be exactly what you thought.

[00:36:29] John Becker: What, what goes in that bucket really quick? Are you talking about your

[00:36:31] Bob Ruffolo: your budget it is. Maybe it's smaller than you thought, maybe it's bigger than you thought- Yeah ... but it might not be exactly what you thought. And what, what goes in that bucket really quick? Are you talking about your employees, your software, your vendors, your ad spend-

[00:36:35] John Becker: Yeah, it could be all of those things. If you have, if you have under-- if you have employees, if you have in-house marketers, uh, but yeah, the people don't think about software. They don't think about an, an event that you're sending people to, a sponsorship that you're doing.

[00:36:46] John Becker: There are lots of things that could fall under that marketing budget. Yeah. Um, so that's a first important step.

[00:36:52] Bob Ruffolo: if you're comfortable doing this, that's a great activity to put your financials into a, a secure ChatGPT or, or Claude and have it [00:37:00] analyze

[00:37:00] John Becker: Yeah. A- and if you, if you work with a CPA or you work with someone who knows your finances well, it's a great place to, a great person to talk to as well.

[00:37:07] John Becker: Um, so that always feels like number one. Number one. Um, number two, I, I think you as a business owner know the numbers that matter the most to you. You know that it is number of appointments, or it's closed revenue, or it's profit margin, or it's, um, labor efficiency ratio. Whatever it is that means the most to you, that number has to mean the most to your agency as well.

[00:37:32] John Becker: And agencies will talk about brand building, and that is extremely important, right? You want to be a recognized, a trusted brand. You want people to come to your website and be impressed by what you have, to see your content, anything else, so that they feel like you are at a certain threshold of quality.

[00:37:50] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah.

[00:37:51] John Becker: And that's hard to measure.

[00:37:52] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah.

[00:37:53] John Becker: And that's a fine conversation. Remember, your agencies work for you, and it is a 100% [00:38:00] fine conversation to talk to them and say, "Look, the most important thing to me is this. And I know some of our marketing is brand-building, some of it is a little bit more abstract, but I need to know that what I'm paying you each month is going towards improving this number."

[00:38:19] John Becker: Be straight. Talk to them, and, and the right agency will have this conversation, like Pierce. You know, you don't want-- And you can imagine an agency that is, you know, they're scared to lose your business, so they're gonna say whatever they can to make you happy. That's not who you wanna be working with. You want someone who's gonna be straight with you and say, "Look, here's what's-- I'm seeing working, here's what I'm not seeing, uh, or I'm seeing isn't working."

[00:38:41] John Becker: And remember, your agency probably has insight because they're working with other companies, too. It's fine to ask, uh, you know, "We're six months out from a project launch-- or from a product launch. Um, have you worked with this-- other companies before that have been in this position? How can you advise us to do this as well as possible?"

[00:38:59] John Becker: That's the [00:39:00] experience that's really valuable for them to bring to you

[00:39:02] Bob Ruffolo: Awesome. John, so first off, uh, I, uh, having watched you firsthand, I know that you are not that guy that puts things on autopilot.

[00:39:12] Bob Ruffolo: Um, you challenge me all the time, uh, in how I need to be better running this company, which I really appreciate. Um, and, and you care so much about the people you work with. You care about this company, and, um, and you are that guy that I think you are. Um, I'll say this for you 'cause you'll never say it.

[00:39:29] Bob Ruffolo: You're too humble. You are that guy that you're saying if you need someone to evaluate your marketing, you're the guy that can do that. Um, so if someone heard this episode and they're saying, "Hey, listen, I need to get my head around all this spend, and maybe John should go through this with me and help me figure this out," how does somebody get in touch with you?

[00:39:47] John Becker: Oh, you can always reach out to me through the IMPACT website or, or contact me through, through LinkedIn. Um, you know, and I, I think the last thing that I'll say, Bob, is, uh, uh,

[00:39:56] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah

[00:39:57] John Becker: I am not advocating for the destruction or [00:40:00] the dissolution of, of agencies.

[00:40:01] John Becker: They can be extremely valuable. Um,

[00:40:04] Bob Ruffolo: I don't think anyone got that. I think people- We're

[00:40:06] John Becker: you need that ... for-- Definitely, but, but I-- but it's also, it's not black and white, and we often advocate for our clients to bring some of their marketing in-house, to hire a content manager, a videographer, some people who can create content, create marketing assets for them in-house.

[00:40:23] John Becker: I think that's incredibly valuable. And I, I don't have this statistic off the top of my head, but I would say most of the companies that we work with still have some outside vendor that they work with, whether it is someone who's doing web development for them, or it is someone who's doing their paid media or their social media, different things, and that can be a really healthy relationship.

[00:40:43] John Becker: And the number of times we've sat in meetings with other vendors to just make sure that we're all on the same page. We all want the same thing. We want the business to, to grow. Um, you know, the difference is when we work with clients at IMPACT, we inherently say, "We don't want to work with you forever. We want to bring this, [00:41:00] uh, this level of expertise up inside your business, and maybe we stay on in some sort of consulting role."

[00:41:05] John Becker: But ultimately, it's your business. You can handle a lot of marketing tasks in hou- in-house with just the right expertise. So hiring right, um, investing in technology, and investing in education can bring a lot of this in-house. Then you have more control, you have more insight, you have more output, it's less expensive, and ultimately, it's more on brand and more, um, more in line with what you're trying to go to market with.

[00:41:32] Bob Ruffolo: with. Yeah. What I, what I heard is two things.

[00:41:34] Bob Ruffolo: It's, it's one, um, helping businesses be smarter about where they're spending money for their own good. But the other subtle message that you had today was challenging service providers like agencies- Yeah ... to be better and, and to, to give what the business really needs. Otherwise, you shouldn't be getting the business.

[00:41:56] Bob Ruffolo: So this has been a great episode, John.

[00:41:57] John Becker: said.

[00:41:58] Bob Ruffolo: Amazing. Thank you so much for [00:42:00] coming on to the

[00:42:01] John Becker: Absolutely. Anytime.

[00:42:02] Bob Ruffolo: All right. Well, this has been another episode of the "Endless Customers" podcast. We will see you at the next episode. 

[00:42:08] Stephanie Baiocchi: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.