You got everything cooking in your business but you need one component or more.
- Maybe you need an agency to take on your media buying.
- Maybe you need an agency to take on your SEO.
- Maybe you need an agency to handle your PR.
You are busy doing what you do best and bringing in one of these is a magic bullet... or is it.. Let me walk you through my experience in dealing with agencies for my own companies and others.
First you start off with a couple of conference calls which establish your goals.
Then comes the monthly base retainer. Usually 3-10k.
Now the work begins.
As fucked up as it sounds a lot of agencies have this model. They will ask you for things... a LOT of things and when you find time to deliver them they will want changes to them.... and more changes.
They will assure you they will never stop trying and promise to make it work.
I would say you of the last 10 agencies I have worked with they have never worked out. And it was "my fault" because I did not supply them with what they needed to be "successful".
Yup I just did not have the time to constantly give them what they wanted. Often I said to myself or the people using them felt like "Jesus Christ". What do I need them for.
Most of them lock you into an auto-renewing 1-2 year contract for their monthly base.
Fortunately in my situation they have always let me out of that when it was clear to me I just did not have the time to supply them with what they wanted.
But that cost me 25-50k in a couple situations.
So thats the bad, now let me talk about the good.
In the case of a PR firm the had me gather all the places I had been mentioned and write several bio's of myself. I also had great content to propose to big magazines and reporters. I already had all the contacts. They simply made me prepare the documents. They got me 70% there. So from their I had success just having my assistant reach out to my press contacts.
In the case of the Facebook agency they had me make a TON of creatives. Graphics ads of various sizes. Video's for video ads. Get a bunch of landing pages made. Again got me about 75% there. The fact is I have been doing Facebook advertising for a decade. Way before the IPO. In fact I was at one time spending over a hundred thousand dollars a day on Facebook advertising. Now I was fully prepared. They offered no value anymore. I could run the ads myself.
While there was never a magic bullet it was almost like a coach that made you do what you needed to do.
So in the end it worked out. Yes it cost me a lot of money to get that done... but with the Facebook ads alone I made that back the first month. And I don't have to pay a monthly base fee or a percentage of advertising spend.
But it never would have happen without hiring them.
