I’m not saying that an agency needs to be on straight commission but if someone is actually good at what they do then they’ll often want a piece of the pie. Wouldn’t you?

I’ve seen legit agencies only take on clients in exchange for equity in a company, or a percent of sales they get, etc. I’ve even seen some agencies only take payment once they’ve actually achieved the results you agreed to.

Once I even heard of an agency that said if they didn’t get you the agreed on result in the agreed on timeframe then they would pay all of your advertising costs until they hit it.

Do you think those agencies are any good? You bet.

If they don’t bring up the concept of incentive structure then I suggest you do and you can gauge their reaction. If they get excited what does that tell you? If they get mad then what does that tell you?

Do whatever you can to avoid working with agencies that charge a “percent of spend” which means the more of your money they spend the more they get paid.

Think about it like this - if you’re incentivizing them to spend as much of your money as possible what do you expect to happen? They’ll spend as much of your money as they can until you freak out.

Let’s be honest, how many ideas do we have that are actually any good? Maybe 1 in 4? Maybe.

If you go to an agency with some “brilliant idea” you’ve had and they go wild with excitement then you should run the other way.

The odds are against you that your idea is going to work. If they don’t have the guts to try and protect you from yourself then they are more interested in getting your signature on the next renewal agreement instead of wanting what is actually best for you.

The best example of this came from when I hired a software agency to build me a piece of dream software that I just knew was going to change the billboard market forever.

I’d previously tried to have this made by a developer and 1 month turned into 1-year and a few thousand dollars turned into $25K. It eventually stalled out and I was super frustrated.

I later found a company called DevSquad and I decided to give it another shot.

I had my amazing product all wire-framed and ready to build. But then the guy that was going to build it started asking me “Why?” Why did I want this feature and why did I want such and such.

I quickly realized that most of the stuff I wanted didn’t really matter at all but just made me feel cool.

We proceeded to build the entire product in about a month and for $5K instead of $25K.

He was willing to challenge me and it saved me tons of time and tons of money.

That was a good agency.

Remember that an agency’s #1 priority isn’t your success…it’s theirs.

They want you to keep paying your bill and keep renewing your contract with them.

Despite any good intentions or whatnot that fact is always lurking around the corner.

And because most business owners don’t really understand internet marketing it is SOOOOO much easier for an agency to make you happy by making you look and feel good - especially in front of others.

The bigger the contract is the bigger the parade.

They’ve always got to act like everything you say is genius, obviously, but they’ve also got to put your face on everything and get you out doing the dog and pony show in front of people that will tell you that they saw you.

For example, when I worked at the law firm, despite our clientele being the “beers and bowling” types, our firm sponsored one of the largest golf tournaments in the country every single year - for YEARS!!! It cost tens of thousands of dollars to be the title sponsor of that event.

But, the owners golfed and all of their friends golfed, so it seems like an obvious match…right? Wrong. Our clients didn’t golf.

Unfortunately, ego is a HUGE factor in most advertising situations and leaves almost everyone unable to resist the urge to feel awesome - even at the expensive of their company.

Be cautious when interacting with an agency. If you, even unknowingly, find yourself feeling unusually confident and awesome when you’re around them then look for signs that they are stroking your ego to get you to keep paying them.

An agency lives or dies by how you THINK they are doing. Not by how they’re actually doing.

When I worked at an agency we were told to find positive metrics (aka cherry pick data) for our monthly reporting. On a month we’re sales were up we took credit for that. On a month where sales were down we showed whatever metrics were up that month (like page views) and demonstrated how things would have been worse if we hadn’t been there to keep things from going off the rails.

It was my first job out of college and I didn’t really understand that what I was doing was wrong. But once I switched to the client side it drove me nuts because it was 100% clear to me that these agencies were trying to get away with murder by assuming I didn’t know what anything meant.

The simplest way I can say this that any data agencies give you (especially if it has any reflection on their performance) MUST be followed up by your gut check about if what they’re saying actually matches what is going on in your business.

The only metrics that actually matter differ by business but are along the lines of things like new customers, new calls (usually over 2-3 minutes to weed out calls that likely aren’t new customers,) new chats, new form submissions, and whatever else is the last action people take before becoming a customer.

Using these types of metrics makes it very difficult for them to obscure their performance. This is a good thing.

This one used to drive me absolutely insane.

Most agencies have one guy (usually the owner) that comes in and dazzles you with their impressive knowledge about whatever it is you’re hiring them to do.

This person is usually very impressive and you sign up because you want this genius running your marketing.

Then they disappear…

You get pawned off on an “account manager” sometimes with little to no experience who is being trained by someone that was trained by the genius you fell in love with in the first place.

I remember once hiring this super premium Amazon PPC agency for top dollar. The guy I talked with was incredible. He was an Amazon seller himself and had spent millions of dollars running Amazon ads for his other clients.

I was so excited to get started. Unfortunately during our kickoff call he wasn’t there. I was greeted by “the person I’d be working with going forward.”

By this point I knew the drill so I pushed him really hard about his qualifications. Turned out he had been there for 3-months and was still in training. I was his biggest account (maybe his first account) and I wasn’t spending a lot of money at the time - maybe $5K/mo. or something like that.

I complained and got switched to their best account manager who lived somewhere like Barbados who had a name I couldn’t pronounce and could only meet at weird hours.

After the 3-month contract I fired them and started my search yet again for another agency.

I eventually found one called Black Compass Digital and these guys were amazing.

It was a two person team out of Canada. They were Amazon sellers themselves doing a little more than I was in gross sales so I knew they weren’t slouches. They started the agency to form business relationships. And they were incredible.

That was a good agency. Maybe the best I’ve ever hired. But they were hard to find.

As a local business a majority of your clients are going to come from Google Places…for the most part. I’m sure there are some edge-cases but for the most part this is true.

I used to spend about $50K/mo. on online advertising at the law firm on things like SEO, PPC & “link building.” 60% of our contacts came from this $50K.

However, 40% came from Google Places…which is free.

Now, I’m not saying that the 60% wasn’t important, because it was…obviously. But what I am saying is that if you don’t have a ton of money to spend on online marketing then making sure your Google Places page is 100% tricked out and managed well should be your #1 priority.

Not a new website. Again, I’m not saying that a website isn’t important. What I am saying is that it should not be your first priority.

However, an agency can charge $5K - $15K for a new website whereas the most they are likely going to get from Google Places is $1,500.

Also, most agencies aren’t really created to exclusively serve local businesses so for most of their clientele Google Places isn’t really relevant.

Plus, I’m guessing that, of their clients that are local, most of them are probably not spending $50K/mo. on online advertising nor was their tracking as hard core as mine was - really solid tracking is much harder to do than people realize. So they probably don’t have any idea just how powerful Google Places is. It’s just a “check the box” type of thing and then they move on.

If your agency is pitching you on an expensive website before they make you a Google Places page that is better than your competitors then you know they either want the higher paycheck or they don’t know what they’re doing.

One possible exception is if you have requested for your agency to exclusively do paid advertising to get immediate results. However, most local businesses aren’t exactly spending enough money on online marketing to justify relying only on paid ads at the exclusion of doing the other stuff first.

No one is good at everything. In fact, very few people are good at more than just one thing.

Agencies are no different - in reality, most agencies aren’t really good at anything more than web design which is probably the least important skill to have.

Sure they can say that they have hired “the best” people to fill out their service offering, however, I have seldom come across an agency that is good at more than one thing. They’re probably out there but I don’t know many.

The most important skillset an agency can have is probably: marketing strategy, creating offers, sales funnels & copywriting. These are essentially all part of the same skillset so I do think you can find an agency is good at all 3 of these but if you do they will be expensive.

And that’s okay because they will likely be willing to have part of (if not all) of their pay based on performance - because they actually know what they’re doing and can make way more charging for performance than flat fees.

They are basically leveraging your ad money and fulfillment systems to make themselves money. They get to sell a product that they didn’t create and don’t have to fulfill and use money on ads that isn’t theirs. Making you money in the process. It’s amazing for both of you.

The type of agency you need to watch out for is one that says “We’re good at websites, SEO, PPC, social media & content creation (they might call it copywriting but it’s likely just blogging that they want to charge more for.)”

Buyer beware…

Think about your own business. How good would you have to be such that all of your customers came by word of mouth. Pretty good, right?

Good agencies can be very in demand and expensive…but any good agency will understand their worth because they produce actual results.

You also might have followed the founders content online until you know they are legit or heard about them at a conference, etc. The key is that you contacted them and not the other way around. I only ever had one agency contact me that was any good - ironically they were the best agency I’ve ever hired…go figure.

If you hear about an agency from someone you trust and respect, you should probably pay attention.

However, if there is a super slick sales rep that has been calling your office everyday for a month then you should probably keep ignoring them until they go away…it might take a while. These people are super convincing and it’s cheaper to avoid the meeting in the first place than it is to resist their silver tongue.

The perfect example is a company I used for link building (back when I recommended that style of link acquisition) that I’d heard about from a guy named Rand Fishkin on one of his segments called Whiteboard Friday. If you’re in the industry then you know about Rand. He’s like the Godfather of SEO. More respected than just about anyone.

During a Whiteboard Friday about link building he mentioned this company’s name and I contacted them and hired them. They were amazing. I was with them for several years and had no complaints…they were great.