A few weeks ago, my wife and I noticed that we had a bit of a water leak on our covered deck which is never a good sign. We immediately did a bit of research and had a respected plumbing company come out to take a look, assess the situation, and provide us a plan of action on what they would need to do to tackle the job. The cost for them to provide us the plan? Zero dollars.
This fancy new website you’re reading this on was developed by one of our most trusted partners Agency.media. A few months ago we shared with them our needs, and they took the necessary time to put together a plan of action on how to deliver us the website we needed. The cost for them to provide us the plan? Zero dollars.
Get the picture?
Many of my agency colleagues will probably hate me for this, but consider this another one of our ways of disrupting the agency game. While many very successful marketing agencies will charge thousands of dollars for “strategic plans” or “blueprints”, we’ve just never believed in charging prospective clients to tell them what we propose we can do for them. We just think there is a better way.
Look, don’t take this the wrong way. Looking before you leap is important, and developing a solid strategic plan is an important step in making sure you set yourselves up for success. We just conceptionally feel different about how to deliver that value, and we certainly don’t agree with the need to spend an exorbitant amount of money developing bloated documents to get there.
Similar to what I discussed in an earlier post about what are the right questions to ask an agency if you really are looking to make a good decision about whether an agency has the strategic horsepower to deliver results for your business, reference their earlier work. Talk to or get access to their previous clients. There are many more ways to vet an agency without having to pay them to tell you what they can do for you. Work with an agency that builds the strategic process into their existing monthly retainer relationship, and expect that at least the first month being all about building that out for you and ramping up for a launch. Yes, in essence, you’re paying for that, but you’ll be doing so after already having built the trust and confidence with that agency, as opposed to paying for it prior to.
