Been using this one-pager recently to have convos with our Barrel Holdings leaders about solidifying our marketing plans for 2025... Many of the items on this page our agencies are already doing, but it's helpful to start first with the foundational marketing assets to make sure we're set up for success. It's often challenging for agencies to make the time to have marketing assets like their website, case studies, and creative assets in order. And often even more challenging to take the time refine their positioning, messaging, and ICP. But without these in place, the other marketing activities are less likely to be effective. Imagine spending thousands of dollars on an outbound email campaign without a clear value prop, offer, and only a murky idea of your ICP -- the results will fall short. The other thing to note is that this is very high-level – you can go VERY deep into each of these line items. Instead of trying to do all of these, our recommendation to our agencies is to pick a couple and go deep for at least a quarter, preferably even longer. For example, even something like client referrals, which we assume is organic and comes at unpredictable times, could be turned into a marketing campaign. An agency can enact a systematic way to engage past and current clients to drive more referrals and explore ways to be top of mind to clients without feeling pushy. Most agencies, especially the smaller ones where the founder is wearing many hats, have limited bandwidth when it comes to marketing. From our experience, it's best to a) focus on getting the foundational assets in place and b) being deliberate and patient with a couple of initiatives. An example that comes to mind was when a few years ago, we wanted to strengthen Barrel's partnerships with tech partners in the Shopify ecosystem. We had very surface-level relationships with dozens of partners which was very transactional and often unproductive. We decided to curate a handful of partners and invested time into building relationships with their teams at conferences, over video calls, and via co-selling and co-marketing opportunities. Lucas Ballasy led the effort and stuck with it even when, 6 months in, the lead volume and opportunities were sparse. But over time, the relationships deepened, successful collaborations added up, and we started getting more quality opportunities through this channel. Take a close look -- anything we're missing? How are you approaching marketing/growth at your agency? == 🟢 Find this content useful? Check out AgencyHabits and sign up for our email to get weekly agency insights we've gained from our agency businesses.
Appreciate this framework I’m going borrow it. Re; the question of what’s missing…you covered it in your comments, but I think adding a column to weigh the value of each effort (ex: perceived yield and anticipated effort level) and tracking that Q over Q would be extremely clarifying over time.
Abdul Saboor
2w
Great post! Peter
Strategia. Creatività. Performance | Co-founder Regina Rossa
2wcurious about your strategy to gain referral from existing clients