Ep 60 – Shopping For A Marketing Agency In 2026

Decisions. Decisions. We’re  looking ahead to one of the most important decisions contractors will face in the coming year: shopping for a marketing agency.

Choosing between productized services, full-service partnerships, or even AI-driven tools isn’t easy, and the wrong move can waste both time and money.

We break down how to evaluate whether you need lead generation, branding or both, and what to expect when you step into the agency world.

If you already have an agency, we will go over how to know if you’ve partnered with the right one and what you need to do to make the most out of your investment in them.

In this episode of Trades Secrets, we’re here to offer up insight to help you make informed decisions when selecting a marketing agency for 2026. 

What’s In This Episode?

1. Why “Easy Button” agencies rarely deliver.
2. Why should you ask yourself if Branding or Lead Gen is your priority before hiring an agency?
3. Why AI & automation tools can help strategy and where it falls short. 
4. Transparency & Reporting and what you should demand from an agency outside of vanity metrics…and much more. 

Amanda Joyce:
What’s happening?
Devon Hayes:
Okay.
Amanda Joyce:
I love the shirt.
Devon Hayes:
Some new gear. Some new gear. It’s literally a bigger boulder elevation. Our last swag person was like your size. That’s as big as it comes. That’s as big as it gets. I’m like, all right, fine. And then found a new guy who was like, oh yeah, I got ya.
Amanda Joyce:
I got ya. We have big logo energy.
Devon Hayes:
I like that. I like that. Okay, so this was your brilliant idea and I love it. It’s going to be epic timing for contractors who are starting to think about either shopping for an agency or maybe that’s not on the radar, but 2026 planning is on the radar, and then naturally in that conversation you start to think about, crap, what am I going to do for marketing?
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
So brilliant idea. Let’s talk through it.
Amanda Joyce:
Okay, let’s do this. Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Devon Hayes:
This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Amanda Joyce:
Learn from home services, industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Devon Hayes:
Let’s dive into today’s trade secret.
Amanda Joyce:
Okay, let’s dive into this. So this came up because we were talking internally. We know this is that time of year where it’s time for us to chat with some of our clients about where are we, are we going to continue this? Or what’s going on in their businesses? And we know this is the time of year that a lot of folks are, especially exterior contractors that are maybe nearing the end of their busy season. We’re not there yet, but probably by the time this airs, we will be. It’s time to kind of get their ducks in a row for next year and decide is our current marketing strategy working? Is our agency working? Or is it time to, should I stay or should I go, basically?
Devon Hayes:
Great song. And so we put together kind of a loose outline that we wanted to talk through, less structured than other podcasts, but we figured we can just talk through it and just be raw dog in the pod over here.
Amanda Joyce:
So I was going to say, our goal with this is really just to give listeners some fodder. We’re going to talk about reasons you would leave, reasons you wouldn’t, and maybe some questions you haven’t even been asking yourself that’ll hopefully help you. I don’t know, this doesn’t need to be intimidating, but we’re going to give you some things to consider so that you can just feel really confident about whichever direction you decide to go.
Devon Hayes:
Definitely. I love it. So the first thing that comes to mind when you think about marketing is the whole purpose of it is maybe lead gen. And maybe you’re a bigger company and you realize actually I need some help with branding. So in either case, those are two different focuses, but you need an agency for both in our view, our very, very biased view.
So we’re going to talk through that a bit. Maybe that’s even a great question to start with. What do you think you need marketing for? In a lot of spaces, they talk about tactics like SEO or Google Ads or Yelp Ads or various tactics, but there’s really not a lot of thought behind the intention of the marketing activity. And there maybe sometimes isn’t strategy behind it. You just think, oh, I heard I can get leads here, but how does that fit into the bigger picture?
So I think those are some initial questions. Do I think I need marketing for lead gen? Do I think I need marketing for branding? Or am I pretty sure I need it for both? Right. That’s a good probably starting point for anyone.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. Exactly. It’s a great place to consider whether you’ve already been working with an agency for a while and you haven’t really stopped to think about that. We hear from a lot of people that just reach out to us and want to talk about SEO, because they keep hearing about it everywhere and I just have to do it. And you’re so good at talking to them and saying, okay, well where are you with your business? Are you sure that makes sense for you? In most cases it does, but there are times where it doesn’t.
So just really taking the time to look. If you have an existing program in place, what is working for you? What is it? And is it really helping float your ultimate goal? Like you said, whether it’s branding or leads or both. And in most cases, people need the leads, but they also need the brand recognition.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Well, and then in today’s digital landscape, you need branding to be successful at SEO. It’s kind of funny how it’s all come together. We’ll save that for another podcast, but we definitely understood the relationship before, but now we actually have some data and some observable facts to back what we’ve suspected and kind of enforced all along. So that’s kind of cool.
So yeah, I would say question one, do you need lead gen? Do you need branding? Do you need both? Have you thought about that? Asking yourself and your business and having that kind of round table with the leadership team and figuring out the answer to that is going to lead you down the path of the type of partnership you want with an agency. And we call it a partnership because that’s where we’re most successful with our clients. And this is where I kind of want to segment a little bit and talk about marketing as a service versus marketing as a product.
Amanda Joyce:
I think that’s going to be the backbone of this entire conversation. So yeah, I think that’s a great place to dive.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So what I mean is marketing as a service is, hey, I want SEO. I say, hey, great, I can be successful with that. I’m going to need project profiles from you. I’m going to need on the ground images from you, I need them for X, Y, and Z. I want video from you. I need you to invest in doing A, B and C. If you want your investment with us to be good, because we’re not cheap because we’re good. Whole different Oprah. And you can get it for cheap if you’re piecemealing little bits and pieces of your strategy.
But the point is this, we need to work together. I need things from you. I need you to get me some great assets. We want you to take photos from the same vantage point, before and after. We want you to tell us the story. What was the pain point of this customer? Do you have some interesting projects? You can’t just… With our agency, you can’t just say, okay, I wrote you a check, do my SEO. Or we don’t do AI content, we don’t phone it in, because the best performing content are those original stories and that’s what helps make us successful.
So that’s one route. And then there’s the route of marketing as a product. You buy SEO as a product, you sign up, they say, cool, sign up for autopay, we’ve got you. And they just do whatever their work is on the side, and you don’t hear from them and you get automated reports. And that’s kind of the easy button. I don’t know. I haven’t heard from anyone that’s come to us and told us that the easy button works with SEO, but maybe someone has some golden goose out there now.
Amanda Joyce:
Someone’s keeping those agencies afloat. But even back to what you were saying before too about branding and how critical that is for SEO now, it’s just going to be really interesting to see what happens to agencies that do that out of the box service offering as we continue to move down this path. Because I would argue, you can’t build a brand and an identity if that partnership isn’t there. How are you going to stand out if they’re just writing the same blog for you that they wrote in five other markets and changed it just enough to pass Google’s sniff test?
It makes me think of that roofer we met at a conference one time that pulled up his blog and then was really mad, because he’s like… I think he was based in Minnesota or something, and they had a bunch of tile roofing blogs on his blog, because no one ever asked him what to write about and they were just publishing it. He’s like, "we don’t even…" And it was like the photos were of a Spanish tile roof, it wasn’t… He was like, "this is irrelevant to my business." And it was the first he’d looked at it. So that’s marketing as a product. And the way Google’s trying to make us all prove to them that we’re real, they’re going to sniff that out. It’s not going to work, if you ask me.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, and I guess, there’s I think, as is true with anything, you could make it work. If you have, maybe if you have someone, a really smart marketing person in-house, who’s like, "I can handle A through X. I just need someone to do Y and Z." That’s great. That could work.
Amanda Joyce:
Good on you. Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, good on you for what you’ve built internally and in hiring that person. But in most cases you really… And here’s the other part too, and I kind of get derailed a little bit. But when someone hires us, we have that new roofer in Los Angeles that just hired us and they are fantastic and they hired us for SEO and paid media and some paid social ads. But we’re sitting here with them as a partner helping them optimize their Roofle. We’re helping them figure out their GoHighLevel. We’re telling them some different sponsorships and some different videos they need to have made and helping them with scripts for video marketing and telling…
We are giving them a roadmap for what they need to do to be successful, which will help make us successful. But we’re not just focused… Well, we’re not getting paid to do those other things. We know that in the long run it’s better for us if we can help grow the company and then they add to our contract. Sure, that’s great. But we are giving them kind of a guideline and all of those things play into making us successful. So it really is, we’ve said this before, it’s like there’s the big whale and then there’s little fish that’s helping the whale and it’s eating all the little amoeba off its body. Or maybe it’s not amoeba, maybe, I don’t know, is that the right term? I wish I were more sciency. You guys can scream at me from your phones the right word. But whatever it is, it’s that partnership.
And so we’re not just staying inside of our SEO and paid media boxes, because what they’re going to do out there and their boots on the ground impacts the success of everything we’re doing digitally. So long-winded way of talking through the differences between marketing as a product and marketing as a service. Once you start thinking about what you’re shopping for in an agency. And you know your business, what do you need? What do you think you need?
And then if you’re paying a premium for SEO, like I said, I think we’re… The package we recommend is the $3,400 a month. If you’re paying that and you’re investing in that, you want to make sure it’s working and you’re doing everything you can to make that successful. You don’t want to… I guess I wouldn’t. I guess if I’m paying that out, I want to know what’s working. And I want to do everything I can to make sure that I’m giving you what you need to make my money go the furthest.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And I think we do a pretty good job of this as an agency, but if you can figure out how to just make it a part of your process on a weekly or biweekly basis to get that content over to your agency, and you’re doing it consistently, it shouldn’t take a ton of your time.
And there could be a couple team members whose job it is to get the photos for GBP and someone whose job it is to help a project profiles. But it might sound like a lot to you as a business owner like, oh my God, just give me the easy button. But a little bit of effort on your part, hand it over to an agency who knows what they’re doing and knows how to take it and run with it will pay off in spades, to your point. But then that $3,400 is going to make sense.
And I think another thing to think about too is, if you’re like, oh, too rich for my blood, I’m just going to have my admin who answers my phone and does other stuff, do the vast majority of this, that’s all well and good. But are you going to manage them and make sure it’s done? And how is that going to look? Because we’ve dealt with this a lot in the past, early on in our agency, some people were like, "I’m going to do my own blogging." And we’re like, "okay, I guess just provide that and we’ll do everything else." We just had to stop accepting that as an answer, because no one has time to get around to it. You need to run your business. If you can fill out a brief questionnaire that tells the story and give it to us, then you get to get back on with your business and then the content we’re producing makes sense.
Anyway, this is getting off track, but this is kind of talking about the whole idea about partnerships and everything that should be going into what you’re considering as you plan for next year.
Devon Hayes:
I think you nailed it. Talking through some of those nuanced things, it is, I think it’s a good conversation. And I would say I think with any tool, like say an AI answering service, or I think price guide is really popular in-home services right now. The time that you take initially and upfront, that initial setup, it’s the same thing with an agency. Take the time to, on that discovery call talk through your CRM, talk through your work. What happens with a lead? Do they all go in the CRM? Or do they get qualified before they go in the CRM? Do you have company camera images being uploaded or is there a central place where our admin can access that so your admin doesn’t have to?
So it sounds overwhelming, but if you just invest like that during the discovery call and the initial call, where we’re asking you a ton of questions, that’s why, to make it easier. So it’s just taking the time upfront, so don’t feel like it’s this big time suck every month. It’s just that first month, learning it all, getting all the access, having everything get kind of set… Well I guess set up through maybe the second month. But that initial Q&A with you, and just getting us what we need and then it just becomes a lot easier.
That’s where we figure out what’s your workflow? Does a questionnaire sound daunting? Or do you want to do it at 3:00 AM when you can’t sleep, that works? Or do you want to send us a voice memo answering the questions? Our writers can work with anything, so it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. I think a lot of our guys, they answer questions when they’re driving over to a job site. So it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You just kind of set that up in the beginning and then it’s not that bad.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. And it’s just having a really effective team member. Once they’re trained up and they know, they’re kind of running it, they’re swimming in their lane and you’re just having to throw them some details every once in a while and they keep going. It’s ideally the same thing with an agency partnership. The whole goal is eventually you can just breathe easy that we’re handling it and it’s off your plate, it’s on our plate.
But just even making a new hire, you’re never going to be able to completely check out and just say, don’t ever bother me again. We really are a part of your team. And whatever agency you’re with right now, hopefully you feel the same way about them. If you are at a price point around what we’re talking about right now and you’re scratching your head wondering why you haven’t been asked to provide this type of stuff, might be time to start considering what your next move is.
Or if you’re at one of those lower tiered plans, and maybe it’s working for you, great, but if you’re not spending a lot, but now you’re realizing why, as we talk through this, this could be another reason to maybe start considering what you’re going to want to do about your agency in 2026.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because that’s been a big thing. Product ties services from agencies. It sounds really good. It sounds good in theory, in practice it’s… I’ve yet to see it yield the same kind of results as those hands-on, those niche down boutique agencies that are truly in it with you. It’s a lot different. Yeah. I think we’ll put a period at the end of that sentence. I think we’re good there.
Another thing we have here in our outline is talking about the rise of AI-powered tools and automation, and how a lot of people are considering, oh, well AI can just do that for me. And I guess we would caution to say, yeah, we use AI tools, you should, we should, everyone should, they should, should, should. That’s it. I’m should-ing all over the place. They could replace an agency, but I don’t think tools are ever going to trump strategy, truly.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. They’re not going to trump strategy and you need the strategy to know what to feed the tool to get the output that’s going to be impactful.
Devon Hayes:
Mm-hmm.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. That’s like…
Devon Hayes:
For sure.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. But I just think about too, you mentioned some of those AI tools earlier too, structurally that’ll answer your phones. We had a client who had a big mess-up with that. They launched it really quickly. They didn’t really… They were in a hurry, they finally just wanted to get it done. They didn’t really do the onboarding process. We were not part of managing it at all. They just told us they’d put it in place. And it was delivering a really bad experience. It was interrupting people, it didn’t know how to answer the right questions. It was really bad.
Devon Hayes:
It said moo, moo.
Amanda Joyce:
And we were listening to their calls. That’s part of what we do as an agency. And so we were reaching out to them and being like, this is bad. We’ve got to fix this. We got on a phone call with them to talk to them about how bad it was, and while we were on the call, they got a one-star Google review, because someone called and talked to the bot, while we were on the call. And they just turned it off right there.
So again, these tools are out there, but they’re dangerous if you’re just flipping them on and just trusting. And even we as agency owners have uploaded spreadsheets before and been like, analyze this, tell me this. And we’re like, oh, this is great. And then later we look at it, we’re like, thank God we double-checked that. So these tools are great, but they’re not perfect.
Devon Hayes:
No. No, they’re not. So yeah, double-checking your work is huge. And then I think, and this is a really good point here too for looking at the 2026 landscape, is kind of the increased demand for transparency and reporting and ROI. So I know there’s a lot of GoHighLevel users out there, and that does help quite a bit. It’s kind of nice to have a centralized platform for a lot of things. I think the one piece that I haven’t seen eliminated is the junk that gets pushed through, can throw off the reporting metrics for each marketing channel a bit. So that’s a good solution.
As an agency, we’ve toyed with a lot of this stuff here too, but we still manually listen to every call and look at every single intake form, and only report the true leads there. And then we have a quarterly analysis and reporting that we do with our clients. So we have the automated reporting, but we’re so torn, because there’s all these tools out there, but someone still needs to double-check them for accuracy.
And then even from there, you guys have to take it a step further and make sure that you are actually… And maybe GoHighLevel does do this actually, but the ROI on the projects that come through from different marketing channels so you can see which acquisition channel is the best one for you. But I think overall, when you’re talking about what we do as an agency and the transparency of reporting, we still get pushback from automated reporting. They’re like, well, that’s great. I see the numbers, I see the charts, I see the graphs. What does it mean? And what are you doing about it?
So that’s why for us, we’re still kind of old-fashioned that way, where we want to meet with you, we want to talk about what we found. And then whether what’s working, what’s not working, what needs to change, how we’re pivoting, how the algorithms changed, what’s happening in user behavior, what’s happening in the paid media landscape, what’s happening with GLSA, what’s happening inside of your business and what’s important to you. And I just don’t… If you’re on this all automated dashboard tools, you just… I don’t know. I’m old-fashioned, I like the conversation. Yeah, it’s just different.
Amanda Joyce:
I agree. Well, and I think it’s important too to think about this if you’re shopping out agencies or looking at yours. With those tools, I think a lot of people get sold on those. We’ve had people come over to us before they’re like, "oh, my last agency gave me this or that." And it’s great and all, but we’ll say like, "okay, show us an example." And then in a lot of cases, GoHighLevel is not, this is not the case with GoHighLevel or HubSpot. But in a lot of cases there’s always pretty graphs, number of conversions, lots of numbers, but what names are associated with that conversion number is the biggest question.
Because part of reporting would look way better if we didn’t go and delete the spam. And the people that are trying to sell you an estimator software, and the people that are telling you that your SEO sucks and you should hire them, that’s probably 30% of the leads. So if you don’t go in and delete those out and then they roll into their automated dashboard and they’re like, look at this.
To your point, there is a lot more demand for that transparency. Now I think a lot of business owners are starting to realize that, but just don’t get sold a bill of goods on a pretty dashboard with a number in it that you can’t click through and say, show me all 200 leads you’re taking credit for.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s true. It’s those vanity metrics, right? We drove, GBP, say we’re not doing call listening on your GBP, and we can report and say, well, year over year we’ve increased calls by 210%. How many of those calls were a crew looking for work? How many of those calls were-
Amanda Joyce:
The local newspaper trying to get you to buy an ad, yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Those are those vanity metrics, and we clean them out, we clean them out for you. But that’s something to ask. And if when you’re shopping agency’s out, that’s just a question to ask, do you guys listen to it? Do you clean those out? Or do we just kind of assume 30% of the leads are junk, for form submissions, right?
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly.
Devon Hayes:
If you’re not on a platform like GoHighLevel. Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And if they’re showing you some beautiful dashboard, it’s just a fair question to ask. Okay, that’s great. Where can I see the…? How do I dig deeper? And if they can’t tell you that, that’s okay, maybe you’ll push them to do better and they’ll get you something. But again, that pretty dashboard is all… It’s fun to be able to pull it up in your mastermind group and say, look at this. But again, we could make ourselves look like… We are heroes, but we could make ourselves look like superheroes with just a couple of charts and graphs.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And we’ve gotten real granular with some clients, where we don’t even take credit for true… We don’t get credit for true leads. We only get credit for booked leads. So that’s an even tougher metric.
Amanda Joyce:
It sure is.
Devon Hayes:
We really rely heavily on the person that answers the phone being real nice and friendly and the sales guy is converting them, which that’s a whole other episode that we’ve talked about, your team being ready for call volume and stuff like that. Speed to lead, because if you’re taking 12 hours to call the contact back, then you don’t get a… It’s not going to convert and we don’t get to take credit for it. So we like to talk about that.
Amanda Joyce:
We all lose at that point.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, we all lose. That’s not fun. So, yeah, and that’s…
Amanda Joyce:
I think we’ve pretty much hit that, hammered that on the head, but one thing I would like to just point out, because we talk so much SEO, from the paid media perspective as well, talk about something that’s not sit it and forget it, and it is always changing. And the way Google’s search results are always changing, the ad placements are changing, the settings within them are always changing.
So talk about a partnership, it’s what keeps me awake at night, is all these changes. And you’re rarely going to find an agency that’s going to have an easy button to just get you just a stream of truly quality leads that your sales guys aren’t going to be complaining about, that are actually going to become booked just right out the gate. It takes learning, it takes time, and then it takes communication with you, because maybe you start out really wanting to be focused on siting and then you figure out that your market is way less expensive for decks, so you need to shift your budget over there. It can’t… It’s an ongoing conversation.
Or maybe you find out that the siting leads are still the strongest even, and they close better. But that’s why you have to have that ongoing conversation. And it’s not just an easy bullet. And if you’re talking to an agency that says it is, that’s not the case. Or if you have an agency that you’re frustrated and you feel like maybe there’s something being left on the table, but they’re constantly talking to you and changing, you might find that the grass isn’t as actually always greener. If they really are doing well by you… Anyway, I’m just letting you know it’s not black and white, like I want more leads, someone else is going to find them for me. Not always the case.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, not always the case. Well, and especially budget comes into play. It’s like what can you do for them with that budget and what is the landscape? If you’re in a smaller town, we’ve got one client that has multiple locations and they have this brilliant strategy of they just go into a small town, they dominate that town and then expand their service area out.
Well, it’s really easy. The ads in those small towns are exponentially cheaper in a tiny town versus going into a bigger town. And so their ad dollars go further and then they’re able to expand and keep adding locations and their cost per click is a lot lower. And then also, if they have a healthy budget, then you’re able to learn more about the ads and the language that are converting. But if you go into paid media with a really tight budget and a high expectation that everything’s going to convert in the first month right away, even though we know nothing about your market specifically, you have to warm the market, have they ever heard of you? How long have you been in business, have you been around?
And then you need to have a strong campaign managed tightly. You have to have all the keywords. You don’t want to rank for the negative keywords. A lot of, I don’t know, we’ve seen some really poorly managed campaigns where that wasn’t even looked at. And just top level, it’s like if I type in the word pizza, I don’t want a tutorial on how to make pizza. I’m probably looking for pizza delivery. Or maybe I do, I don’t know, vice versa. But you got to have the negative keyword so that your ad doesn’t appear for everyone that just types the word pizza, for example.
Yeah, your job is really, really hard, Amanda, because it’s cold, hard cash that they’re spending and they’re like, how many leads did I get for that spend without having any understanding that, yeah, homie, we’ve got to see, do people like this landing page? What’s the behavior on the landing page that we’ve even built out? So you click on an ad and it takes them to a page on your website. How’s that performing? Is it speaking to them? Is it a good call to action? Are they taking the action we want them to take? How much time are they spending on the page? Are they reading anything? What are they doing? And then having to learn from that behavior, if they’re not taking the ultimate action we want them to take, there’s so much more that goes into it, besides slap some copy on an ad and run it and spend my money.
Amanda Joyce:
Let her go. And it used to be easier. My job was easier a million years ago. And then it’s crazy, even the client you’re talking about, when we started with them, we were spending the vast majority of their budget on Google Ads and then some LSA. It’s totally flopped. Because even in the smaller markets, Google is now showing the LSA more often than they are the Google Ads. So it’s just constantly changing.
If you’re working with an agency right now that you feel like your strategy hasn’t changed in a really long time, you don’t know when the last time was they talked to you about a landing page, maybe they’re not even using a landing page and they’re driving to your homepage, then it might be time to start shopping out an agency for 2026. But if they’re having these ongoing conversations with you and always getting better, they’re probably providing a pretty good service for you.
Devon Hayes:
And they can drive to your homepage if it’s a brand campaign. If it’s a lead gen campaign and they’re not using a landing page, that’s a big red flag. Yeah, okay. Yeah, love that. Some great nuggets in there about Google Ads and LSA and how user behavior has shifted, us as users, but also Google. And how it’s shifted what it’s showing in the real estate and where there’s more bang for your buck even in small markets.
Amanda Joyce:
I know. It does suck, because I used to just get to say, this is the best, most highly converting keyword. I’m willing to pay whatever I have to and be in first position for and I could just be there. And LSA, you pick a category and you have no control over what keywords show up, but now suddenly that keyword in my Google Ad account just doesn’t even get impressions. They just give it all to LSA.
Devon Hayes:
Let’s see here. I’m going to keep us rolling down our outline here, but that is, expertise is huge.
Amanda Joyce:
Tangent.
Devon Hayes:
I think we accidentally were like, we went on a tangent a bit about partnerships over… Products over services, but truly an expert and in a niche is huge. We’ve talked about that before.
All right, so moving along here, shopping for an agency, what else we want you to think about? I don’t know. They’re going to ask you tough questions up front, and they should be willing to say no to you if something doesn’t fit. They should be willing to say no. You know what I think we need to do when we do our whole discovery process, I really… Pricing. Pricing out an agency and what feels comfortable.
We have it published on our website, but this is I think a conversation, I don’t know if it goes here, but it is now. I think I saw some selling thing where it’s like you’re supposed to be on these discovery calls and you’re supposed to be talking people out of why they should hire you. Well, I’m expensive. Why would you go with me? Kind of mindset. I’m like, I can’t do mind tricks and mind magic like that. But it is, I guess it’s something to think about before you get on these calls. Because if you’re truly looking for a partner, they’re going to have these discovery calls with you. And if you do, if you’re shopping and you have to do an hour long call with five agencies, you’re going to get burnt out. I would even look for a range before you commit to that kind of conversation. Or just at least get yourself in the mindset that it’s going to be expensive if I’m looking for a partnership over a product in terms of marketing. Right?
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. But I do think you make a fair point, that you could reach out and at least just tell them the services you think you’re interested in, that you’re open to a bigger conversation. But where do they fall? Because to what you consider expensive, and what we consider expensive might be completely different. You might think I’ve got a huge budget, I’m ready to go and you’ve got $1,500 for SEO. You could cut out a number of agencies and not spend that hour with them.
But I also like your point too, Devon, about how if it feels like when you’re talking to an agency, they’re A, telling you everything you want to hear, and B, they will take you on as a client no matter what, tomorrow. You should be a little… They should also be interviewing you. And if there doesn’t feel like there’s a filter there at all, they’re not as worried about a true partnership and the long-term goal, they’re just trying to get you in the door and get you sold.
Maybe that’s not a totally fair statement, but I feel like in a lot of cases it is. Because we as an agency have learned over the years there’s certain things that someone needs to have in place before we would even make sense for them. And we don’t want to take their money and then have them be disappointed in the quarter.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. And that’s a cold hard truth. And it is kind of like dating a little bit on that first call. Because we spend a lot of time with you, you meet with our team, and I don’t know, maybe just don’t like me and maybe-
Amanda Joyce:
Not possible.
Devon Hayes:
Not possible. Maybe my cussing is offensive, because… Not that I’m on here being my true sailor every meeting, but occasionally there might be an F-bomb or an S-bomb or an A-bomb or just say something crass, can’t help it. I could, but I wouldn’t want to I suppose. So if that doesn’t fit, if that vibe with you, then…
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Maybe. Okay. And again, I think, I don’t know if we touched on this enough really, but sometimes there are solutions. If you’ve got someone in-house who knows a bit, is a marketing manager, and they don’t pretend to be an expert, but they know enough, that could be a great resource to get some sort of productized service. Like they’re going to make sure you get citations every quarter. Or they know how to push a press release through, I don’t know. Or they know enough. Then some of those more productized like services, that could work, if you’ve got someone truly managing them. So that it’s worth it, and it falls into your marketing strategy, and it falls into a plan. It’s not just like, ooh, I saw this in a marketing newsletter, that I need to do this thing. So it could work.
Amanda Joyce:
And the thing I would warn with that though is, if they’re able to do it, that’s great. But hopefully the agency you pick that’s maybe productizing their services will still be a good enough partner to reach out and say, it’s time for the press release. It’s time for the citation campaign. Unless this person’s really going to hold themselves accountable. But just because able to do the task doesn’t mean that they’re going to know when to prioritize it and when it needs to happen.
And they need to be someone who’s going to really be able to manage themselves, is going to understand, going to see the larger marketing strategy, and be willing to be forward-thinking with it. Totally possible they could do it, but a lot of agencies, if you’re just another number, they’re going to do their part and they’re not going to stop to think like, oh, we need to email the admin over there and remind them we need X, Y or Z.
Devon Hayes:
Mm-hmm, that’s true. That’s true. The timing of it all. Speaking of timing, that’s another great point here. When you’re looking and shopping for an agency, you should be thinking about a 6 to 12 month commitment, because you are going to have the couple of months of setup and onboarding and getting things rolling in the first month or two, depending on how many services and how big your website is and all of that good stuff.
And then you’re going to need at least three months… After they’ve gotten their secret sauce in place, you’re going to need at least three months of data to measure and refine, if necessary, and report. And at that point you you’re already at five months right there, maybe six already. So it’s not… The expectation that they’re going to have results for you after month one is ludicrous. After month two, I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
We even had a… We just onboarded someone with a smaller, it was I think 10 pages were actually visible, and the nav, there was a whole bunch hidden beneath the surface. But even that, it’s been like a two-month process, set up with all the nooks and crannies.
Amanda Joyce:
And also, then you have to throw season Aldi in there as well. So by that point, maybe you’re just hitting your busy season, it’s pretty hard to grade them if you haven’t even hit the sweet spot of the year yet. And I also wouldn’t recommend cutting them loose right when busy season kicks off. But I like the idea of really giving a true 12 months too, because maybe at month 5 or 6 you’re really picking up steam. There’s a lot of metrics, even if the leads aren’t pouring in yet, that you can see all the backlinks and all the growth in the keywords, and you’re starting to see big improvements in your paid media campaign.
But then once you have that full 12 months, assuming you had analytics in place 12 months prior, you should be able to see a significant lift year-over-year and feel like you’re in a really good spot.
Devon Hayes:
Yep, year-over-year. Yeah, factoring seasonality into it. So we’re not saying just trust it and let it go. There’s some KPIs you can look at. You’re going to start to see improvements in your referring domains. That’s something that SEOs can control. You’re going to start to see more visibility, more brand awareness, more search queries, more impressions, hopefully starting to get more clicks through, starting to get in those AI summary.
There’s going to be little stepping stones along the way. And if you have something that you’re really laser-focused on monitoring, you tell them that during the discovery process. Say, these are my KPIs. My husband’s company, he’s like, "how many leads did I get? Where did they come from and how am I ranking? What’s going on?" Those are his three. There’s so many other KPIs and things that we can just get really granular with, and they’re really fun. We’re like, "they watched this video for this long. This page, once we added a video to it, now it’s increased its click-through rate by whatever." We like those. And a lot of business owners are like, "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me the bottom line."
So establishing those KPIs that you can see along the way, but understanding this is a commitment. This is a commitment. We’ve got a landscaper we love, and oh my gosh, we have finally refined, and I love this company so much, our contact there. It’s just made us better as an agency, asking some questions, that we had a new project management software last year, guys, and talk about getting out of Google Drive and email and trying to do everything in a project management software. I’m a dinosaur, and had a rough time. But thankfully, anyway, this client worked with us and the questions that he would ask made us better, but he didn’t get frustrated and quit. He asked the questions and helped us. And to him, the idea of doing that all over again, he’s like, "oh God, I never want to do that again."
Because we’ve worked together and just made one another better. But I think you said it best, the grass isn’t always greener. And just make sure you’re signing up for at least six months. And I would say that’s not even really a fair trial run of an agency. Unless something was on fire every week all the time. And nobody’s perfect. There’s going to be stuff that goes wrong. You guys are in construction, you know that, but how do they handle it? And six months is just like, that’s-
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
That’s rough.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, exactly. And I would say too, if you are currently with an agency, you’re considering if you’re going to stick around or not, and you are like, I don’t really know that we’ve identified those KPIs. I don’t know if we’re really getting better year-over-year, reach out to them and tell them that. Maybe they don’t normally get on the phone with you and they just send you automated reports. Tell them you need some more, help me understand these reports. What’s working, what’s not?
Because that’s good for you to know anyway. If you are thinking about firing them, and maybe you’re like, I don’t hear from them much, I think they suck. And then you hop on the phone with them and find out like, oh my God, the grass isn’t greener. It’s definitely on them for doing a better job of communicating to you, if that’s the case. But it could be a really quick, easy way to be like, oh, wow, if they can’t prove to me that year-over-year things are looking better, it is time to start shopping.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So I love that. I love that. The candor is just, it’s so important, it’s so critical. I hope for that always. Give me a chance, talk to me, what’s happening. If something doesn’t feel right, let’s solve it. I think, yeah. Any agency wants the opportunity to make it right. Unless you’re in one of those huge agencies where you’re truly just a number and they’ve kind of got things productized and got it down and they’ve got you in their workflow and you get the automated emails and all of that stuff. And maybe that’s just not working for you anymore.
But I think most agency owners, we’re in an agency mastermind group, I think agency owners really care. They really would want to make it right. They really do want to talk to you about it and at least have one chance to listen to your hesitations and your fears and try to make it right. I think truly at the end of the day, everyone wants to do the best they can for their clients.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. And it’s made us better. The client you were referring to, the questions he asked have made us better as an agency. We’ve gotten so much better with our onboarding process now, because just like you guys, I’m sure plenty of you learned the lesson that you get started on a project and you just get head down and do it, and then suddenly you have a much more… You could take more time to get the project done if you’re consistently communicating with that homeowner and they feel like they know what’s going on, and they know you’re taking care of them, they’re going to give you the five star Google review, and feel so good about it.
And as an agency, we’ve realized that too. Just doing the work isn’t enough. We have to communicate with you guys what it is we’re up to. We know you don’t need the war and peace of what we’re up to, but just a reminder of where all that money’s going, goes a long way. And you deserve that if you’re spending that kind of money.
Devon Hayes:
Yep. Yep, I agree. So shopping for an agency. Key takeaways, number one, think of marketing as a service, not as a product. Number two, think about the goals of each marketing activity. Is it lead gen? Is it brand awareness? Maybe some other marketing goal? What are the goals?
So marketing as a product or as a service, what do you need? What is the goal of the marketing activity, lead gen or brand focus? Those are usually two we see. Number three, what are your expectations in reporting and key performance indicators of KPIs? Number four, what’s your expectation? How often, frequency? Reporting, what do you expect? Number five, duration of the partnership. Anticipate at least 6 months to really know if they’re doing a good job or not. 12 months is better. But you should have made significant progress in 6 months with an agency. There we go.
Amanda Joyce:
Yep.
Devon Hayes:
Boom.
Amanda Joyce:
There we go.
Devon Hayes:
Well, thank you for listening and we hope you found this helpful. Maybe on a long drive you’re checking this out as you’re thinking about your 2026 marketing. And yeah, we hope it was helpful. And share, like, follow, comment, questions. We’re here, you can visit us at elevmarketing.com.
Amanda Joyce:
That was today’s trade secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe and don’t miss our next reveal.
Devon Hayes:
Until next time.