Why You Need To Advertise Even If The Economy Is Down

Ralph: 00:00:11

As an agency today, and we talked to lots of them You're absolutely right.

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Agencies are hurting.

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Just cause in many cases they knew

how to do one thing and that one

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thing doesn't work anymore, right?

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Really it's as simple as that.

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Also there's, less budget.

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I love the quote.

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When times are good, you should advertise.

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When times are bad, you must advertise.

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That's reality.

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We know that there's data to back

up that the companies that advertise

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especially during times of retraction,

they do better than the ones that

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stopped by many orders of magnitude.

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And yet, what does everybody do?

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The first thing they cut?

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It's marketing.

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It's a marketing budget.

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It's the ad spend.

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the exact wrong decision,

yet everybody does it.

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So even though it's

wrong, does impact agency.

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So now I've been saying for a

couple of years now, as an agency,

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I think you have two choices.

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Either you need to build an agency

or consultancy that takes ownership

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of the entirety of the customer

journey your client, right?

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So you need to own all aspects of it.

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You need to own the awareness stage.

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So that traffic component, you need to

own the funnel design component of that.

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So what happens after the lead comes in,

you need to take some ownership, over that

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and you need to own the overall messaging.

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At each and every point along the way,

because if you don't, if you only own a

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single component of it, there's too many

other places where it can and will almost

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certainly fail, you'll get blamed for it.

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Or just it'll stop working.

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And so you'll lose that client anyway.

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So I think either you need to build

an agency that takes ownership of

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the entirety of the customer journey,

which doesn't mean you have to do

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everything, but you need to take

ownership of it from a client perspective,

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exactly what you described Ralph.

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We're not just going to do traffic,

although we'll do that, but we're also

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going to understand your funnel and

we're going to send the messaging.

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You either need to make that decision.

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Or you need to hyper specialize

in one piece of the customer

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journey and align yourself with the

agencies that want to own all of it.

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Because again, they're going to own

all of it from a client perspective,

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but they can't do all of it.

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So they're going to need people like you.

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And so to me, this is the Hollywood model.

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If you understand how movies get

made in Hollywood, is different

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people coming together who are

experts in their own little areas.

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there's a producer and director

that ultimately brings all of

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these constituencies together,

actors and their agents.

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going to have lighting people and

special effects and, all those things.

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They're going to bring all these

people together to produce this movie.

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I think you've got to decide, are you

the producer or are you a key grip?

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And look, key grip is important.

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We got to make sure the light's right

and cords aren't in the way, but know

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your role and be really clear on that.

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And don't get caught in the middle.

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Cause if you're caught in the middle

claiming to be able to do it all,

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but you're not, you're screwed.

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If you're a specialist who has not

aligned yourself with people who do

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own it and you're essentially don't

want to say contracting some of your

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services out to them, but that kind

of is a lot of times what it winds up

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looking maybe it's strategic partnership.

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If you're not doing that, again, you're

going to lose clients really quickly.

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So now's the time for agencies to

figure out which are you of those two.

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And agencies need to be talking

and networking and hanging

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out a lot more than they do.

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Everybody's so scared and panicky

because they're like, they're holding

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on to their clients so tight that

they don't want to connect with other,

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because they might take my clients.

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you should be doing the exact

opposite of your initial impulse.

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You should be networking with more.

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And you should be deciding,

am I going to go broad?

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And be more consultative, or am

I going to go more narrow and be

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more specialized one of the other?

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There's no room in the middle

and I think you've got a

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platform for that pretty well.

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Not only Here you are on the show.

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Obviously, we're going to

be talking about your stuff.

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But I think the agency focus of digital

marketer is a smart one When agencies get

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together that now there's a much different

vibe than it was four or five years ago,

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it's like, Oh we're all competitors.

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Now it's much more.

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I just had, three people from MetaFly up

to Boston a couple of weeks ago and talk

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about like 10 other agencies that are

looking For strategic partnerships that

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never would have happened six months ago.

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We've got private equity groups

that contact us every single week.

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Say, Hey, plug into, this

larger platform organization.

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There's a tremendous amount of

consolidation, especially in smaller

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agencies that might be able to be.

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Purchased for cash, not necessarily

for a debt because of the way the

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debt is right now with interest rates.

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I think there's going to be

a lot of consolidation here.

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Not only are agencies looking

for just partnerships and ways

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to work with other organizations.

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We get hit up probably.

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Five times a week for

white label arrangements.

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So Hey, can we just plug your

stuff into what we're doing?

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That has completely changed

from just a year ago.

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And I think the market started

to feel this and act this way.

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And they realize in order

to survive, either I figure

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this out or I don't make it.

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And I think some are probably not going

to make it if you still say, all right,

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I'm going to be just this one stop shop.

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And this one really good thing

you can continue to survive.

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think solution say, it's actually

a really good example of this.

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Like Google, that's the

only thing that they do.

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And that's.

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Scalable, but also, customs made a

very strategic decision to say, okay,

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maybe it might not work in the long

haul because the models have changed.

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So if you're an agency owner,

that's still stuck in that mindset

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of I've got to go at a loan.

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It's join a community like what you guys

have reach out to other agency owners.

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It's plenty of business.

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It's out there right now, but I

think together I think agencies are

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stronger and with 42, 000 of them.

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It's probably too fragmented to

stay that way too much longer.

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Anyway, it's ripe for consolidation.