Episode 781: Is Your Agency Performing Or Just Reporting Well?

March 6, 2026

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Are you getting the results you expect from your agency? Or is your marketing just vanity metrics? Too often, businesses spend thousands of dollars without understanding whether their marketing is truly driving revenue. In today’s episode, we get into why performance marketing should focus on what matters most: the impact on your bottom line.

We break down the issues we’re seeing in the agency space, including a shocking example of a business spending $30-40K a month without any measurable results, all because their agency failed to focus on tracking what actually moves the needle. But it’s not just about hiring agencies but also about how to hold your team accountable.

We’ll share some tips to help you recognize if your agency is really performing or just reporting numbers that look good on paper. You’ll gain a better understanding of what to look for in your agency relationships, what metrics to monitor, and how to make smarter marketing decisions.

In this episode you’ll learn:

How to evaluate marketing performance and the metrics that matter most
When to hire a digital marketing agency versus in-house contractors
Building trust in agency relationships and how to spot red flags
Recognizing when an agency is underperforming and how to address it
What to look for in an agency’s reporting dashboard
Estimating the financial cost of in-house and agency marketing

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?

Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

Is Your Agency Performing Or Just Reporting Well?

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:07:16
Lauren
I don’t understand. How can you spend 30 40,000 and not have phones ringing and even like at minimum subscribers of inquiries?

00:00:07:16 – 00:00:10:04
Ralph
None. No tracking whatsoever.

00:00:10:04 – 00:00:12:00
Lauren
I mean, they were getting calls. They just couldn’t have any.

00:00:12:00 – 00:00:23:05
Ralph
Oh, they were getting bot traffic. We talk about this problem right here because performance really should be measured on the thing that matters most, which is.

00:00:23:07 – 00:00:35:07
Ralph
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11. Alongside my amazing, soon to be live in person co-host.

00:00:35:13 – 00:00:38:09
Lauren
Lauren E Petrillo, founder of Mongoose Media.

00:00:38:11 – 00:00:58:22
Ralph
So glad you joined us here today. If you are a VP of marketing, Director of Marketing or a CTO just acting as the marketing person, or maybe you want to fire yourself. Today’s show is for you. And if you have an agency, especially that you’re maybe frustrated with, this is not going to be a pitch for tier 11 and Mongoose Media, just so you know.

00:00:58:22 – 00:01:26:16
Ralph
Yeah, but you clicked on the episode here and you wanted to watch it and you wanted to listen to it because it’s probably struck a nerve with you. And this strikes a nerve with both of us as well. Is your agency performing or is it just reporting? Well, this is one of the bigger, I would say, problems that we see for new prospects who we talked to every single week here at tier 11.

00:01:26:16 – 00:01:48:23
Ralph
And sometimes I’m just flabbergasted at the the bullshit that is slung in the agency space. And it’s just it’s sort of sad. Like, we actually looked at a new account today, me and my Google guy. This is in the PR law space. We do a whole series on this and we were just shaking our heads like, what is this agency doing?

00:01:48:23 – 00:02:01:10
Ralph
It was just it was so terrible. They were spending 30, $40,000 a month, ten, 30,000 plus a month in fees, and they were creating no results whatsoever. And I’m just.

00:02:01:12 – 00:02:03:01
Lauren
None. None none none.

00:02:03:01 – 00:02:07:04
Ralph
None. No tracking, no tracking whatsoever.

00:02:07:06 – 00:02:09:18
Lauren
But there were I mean, they were getting calls. They just couldn’t have any.

00:02:09:18 – 00:02:15:09
Ralph
Oh no, they were getting bot traffic. It was all vanity metrics, all frickin vanity.

00:02:15:12 – 00:02:24:01
Lauren
I don’t understand how can you spend 30, 40,000 and not have, like, phones ringing and even like at minimum subscribers of inquiries?

00:02:24:03 – 00:02:25:08
Ralph
I don’t even get.

00:02:25:08 – 00:02:26:21
Lauren
Hit by busses all the time.

00:02:26:23 – 00:02:37:12
Ralph
I think hopefully this this show will clear up some of these misperceptions that you might have about just reporting and performance overall, because this is.

00:02:37:14 – 00:02:40:03
Lauren
Also not that vulnerabilities. Ralph. Yeah.

00:02:40:05 – 00:02:41:05
Ralph
Because true.

00:02:41:07 – 00:02:57:13
Lauren
We have both evolved as agency owners ourselves. And there’s things that like we’re constantly improving and it’s like it’s not like oh yeah, you’re perfect. And everything is like we’re not marriage happens. But like when we were chatting this episode, I’m like, oh my gosh, I know stuff that we were doing two years ago. And I look back and I’m like, oh.

00:02:57:15 – 00:02:57:23
Ralph
Yeah.

00:02:58:03 – 00:03:12:07
Lauren
How could we do that? But then I’m like thinking we’ve evolved so much. Like there’s a lot of this, like reporting, like I tell you, like the before the click click click click click click click click. Like I’m really excited about what we’re doing. And then I’m like, oh my gosh, in two years from now am I going to be like, so cringe and say, how were you not even better.

00:03:12:07 – 00:03:29:10
Lauren
Or like how like two years ago? And the things that we’re doing I’m really proud of and like, it made sense in like what we were doing. But where I’ve evolved from two years now, I’m just like, oh, well, I could have been better. And now I’m like, yep, in two years now, if I was in, like, you could have been better.

00:03:29:12 – 00:03:56:05
Ralph
And it’s not just about the tools too. I mean, you know, we launched tier 11 data suite about two years ago, which was transformative for us. And even if you can’t, if didn’t, if that’s not your source of truth, there is other ways in which to get the source of truth. When we talk about this problem right here, because performance really should be measured on the thing that matters most, which is money in the bank account.

00:03:56:07 – 00:04:06:14
Ralph
At the end of the day, like I’m agency is not hired to just simply make a business look good with clicks and likes online. I guess unless you’re a social media marketing. I mean.

00:04:06:14 – 00:04:09:19
Lauren
It depends like when you say revenue in the bank. Yes.

00:04:09:21 – 00:04:34:06
Ralph
Performance, yes. But performance should be backed by revenue, should be backed by hard data, should be backed by marketing performance indicators, which we talked about here. Many, many, many times which you can get over to your 11.com, for example. Of course, the point is this is that vanity metrics are not the things that your team should be reporting on on a regular basis.

00:04:34:06 – 00:04:41:13
Ralph
However, there’s caveats to all of this. All I’m saying is that what I saw this week just was disgusting. And I think it’s.

00:04:41:13 – 00:04:42:15
Lauren
Like they missed the plot.

00:04:42:20 – 00:05:06:08
Ralph
Just missed the whole thing. But that happens more often than not. Having said that, same client, same industry a few weeks back, we looked in there and we’re like, wow, they’re doing really, really well. It was like they had 70% of the stuff that we would do, and all we’re doing is just adding the additional 20, 30% sort of over time, so you can get both sides of the equation.

00:05:06:08 – 00:05:26:07
Ralph
That’s also in Pie law as well. So the point is this is that different agencies have different skills. They’re not all bad. Okay I will say that. But I think you as the client need to be very discerning in looking for the right things. And, and cross-check and cross-referencing as much as you possibly can. Yeah, it’s your business and it’s yours on the line.

00:05:26:07 – 00:05:27:03
Ralph
If you’re the VP.

00:05:27:03 – 00:05:43:14
Lauren
Of what’s your responsibility? Let’s be clear. Like someone asked me the other day, like, hey, like, what’s a client that you know, I work with or a PAC member, you no longer work with that you would have changed. And I was like, well, first and foremost, that the ownership is on me for either engaging in a relationship that wasn’t a good fit or bringing on someone that I didn’t that well enough.

00:05:43:14 – 00:06:06:21
Lauren
So I think like if if you’re in charge and you’re managing the agency or you’re bringing on a new agency partner, there’s a level of responsibility you have to know. So if you don’t know your own numbers, you don’t have any numbers to know kind of situation. So I think a lot of the things that we’ll be talking about is how to equip yourself to be dangerous enough to hold someone accountable without being sucked into this becoming your only job.

00:06:07:17 – 00:06:26:02
Ralph
Yeah. Your job should be checking in with the agency not doing their job for them. Yes I think there’s a lot of factors into this. But you should be able to trust what they’re telling you first and foremost. And if you have any skepticism that is one of the warning signs right then and there even it’s like it’s just a feeling on the back of your neck.

00:06:26:02 – 00:06:43:17
Ralph
Because you’ve listened to multiple shows here on perpetual traffic. The point is this is that I think the trust factor is a huge factor here, but we’re getting into more of the content of the show. So let’s just take a step back here. So I think this is one of the more uncomfortable truths that, VP of marketing, director of marketing are facing right now.

00:06:43:17 – 00:07:02:01
Ralph
They might be spending, let’s say you’re spending a couple hundred thousand dollars a month, or maybe 100,000, maybe $30,000 a month. We both agree that we could do a whole episode on this. If you’re not spending at least 10 to $30,000 a month and you’re, you know, you might want to consider maybe not hiring an agency like either.

00:07:02:03 – 00:07:33:06
Lauren
Under ten a month. There’s no under it. Have no reason. Like if you have different lines of businesses, if you have multiple brands, like there’s things of that, but it’s like in combination or without complication, it doesn’t make sense because like when you’re a again, when you have like parent brand with multiple sub brands or you have different regional accounts, like one of the clients that we consult with, they have Middle Eastern account and Australian account, North America account than they have e-commerce.

00:07:33:06 – 00:08:02:00
Lauren
And everyone’s like there’s different lines of revenue and reporting. So even though some of the accounts are spending minimally, it’s in combination. Where it fits into the enterprise is different. But if you’re a small business owner and you’re spending less than $10,000 a month, let’s say you’re doing between 1 to $3 million a year. In business, it’s easy to want to be like, I can hire an agency because where I’m at, but you’re only running one source of ads.

00:08:02:01 – 00:08:28:15
Lauren
You’re spending, let’s say, 6 to $7000 a month when you bring on an agency, unless you’ve caught an agency early on and you’re getting consulting in addition to execution. The reality is, is like most agencies are going to start at minimum of $5,000 a month. If you’re spending $5,000 a month and then paying an agency to manage something for at least $5,000 a month, it’s better for you to pay a dummy tax and get more impressions and get more out of it.

00:08:28:19 – 00:08:47:17
Lauren
And learn for yourself to the point where when you get to that 10,000 to $30,000 amount, where you can pass it over so that now you’re going for efficiency, I just, I think like it’s hard when someone’s like, I’m going to take five to 8 or 12 grand a month of your business and your invoice exceeds the ad spend investment.

00:08:47:19 – 00:09:10:10
Lauren
It’s better to be less efficient, suck it up, or hire someone to consult you and to do it quickly versus everything that comes with an agency like, for us at least, like it’s the copywriting. It’s a crow. It’s the creative, it’s a strategy, it’s the execution, it’s the reporting, it’s the communications. It’s like there’s a lot of and end, and you’re not necessarily meeting all that yet.

00:09:10:10 – 00:09:36:05
Ralph
Anything less than that. And I think there’s the spend amount which you know, we do a lot on the paid traffic side. But I mean, just keeping this also in mind is that if you’re looking for somebody to run all your marketing or be your marketing team because you’re the CEO and you’re doing it yourself right now, which is a lot of folks that listen to the show and a lot of folks that are way larger than that, and they’re still the CEO and they’re still running their marketing, and maybe they’re managing their agency.

00:09:36:05 – 00:10:07:08
Ralph
You know, as the CEO is that we also look at a revenue threshold as well, another case where, you know, we typically don’t work with clients just because we don’t want to be the last check that they write every single month that are at least like 3 to 5 million of like three and a very low and 5 million, I’d sort of the moderately, you know, low end because we talk to a, you know, a business this week, which is part of a multitude of different businesses.

00:10:07:08 – 00:10:13:04
Ralph
But anyway, the business that they wanted to hire us for was $1 million a year business. I’m like, it’s too small, you know, it’s.

00:10:13:04 – 00:10:43:01
Lauren
For an agency, for an agency to leave your size. Like there are boutique agencies and like I own it. The first two ish years of Mongoose Media, I was a freelancer posing as an agency owner. And then for me, like, I hit the second era where I was a team of contractors posing as an agency. And then now, like, we’re the place where I’ve got full time hires and it’s like, it’s like we go into these elevations.

00:10:43:04 – 00:10:52:04
Lauren
So I want to be mindful of, like, what are their 40 plus thousand agencies in the United States? There are still boutique ones, but there might be 60. Oh my goodness.

00:10:52:06 – 00:10:56:06
Ralph
The 400,400 and some odd thousand in the world.

00:10:56:07 – 00:11:18:08
Lauren
But that’s usually like there are solopreneurs or smaller boutiques. And I think like everyone here is like when an agency does everything, then they need to have an executive level team. If there’s an agency that’s doing like one thing like, hey, we do images and we do development, or we do Facebook ads or do email, like when you’re more the smaller team, the smaller the focus should be.

00:11:18:10 – 00:11:40:14
Lauren
And we’ve had clients that were amazing, like again like early on and we charged dramatically different pricing than what we charge now. Right? And we’re like, I want to do everything for you. And it was like bringing in more contractors to make sure that we could maintain a $3,000 a month invoice with six different people on the account, and like managing those type of things.

00:11:40:20 – 00:12:00:08
Lauren
It’s just like in that space of agency, I want to be mindful that when you are a like bringing on an agency to fulfill, yes, there’s a revenue solution, but then there’s also the like investment solution. And just be mindful that for a performance marketing agency you really need to understand who’s compiled of that team.

00:12:01:08 – 00:12:14:09
Lauren
Because it’s easy to fake being an agency and I own I like I don’t want to say like I was faking, I was just, I was thinking I was an agency and I look back now I’m like oh my gosh. Oh Lauren you silly little rabbit. You, you.

00:12:14:11 – 00:12:38:12
Ralph
Are. I mean you’re basically like a freelancer with some team. So I mean, I think, yeah. Or maybe you were a freelancer and then you had a freelancer plus team and then now freelancer, plus full time team, and then moving on from there like, every step of the way. So I do think that a business that’s, you know, a million like that’s like 1.2 million, let’s say that’s $100,000 a month.

00:12:38:14 – 00:13:04:06
Ralph
Sure. If you’re going to be hiring an agency, you’re also going to be spending a fair amount, especially if you’re going to have traffic spend. So let’s say you’re spending between 10 and $30,000 a month in traffic costs. Okay. At bare minimum, you’re now looking at 30% of your marketing budget just towards ad costs. How are you going to be able to afford an additional 5% or 10%?

00:13:04:06 – 00:13:20:12
Ralph
You tack on a 5000 $10,000 retainer on top of that, for an agency. Now you’re looking at $40,000 a month, and let’s say your gross profit is 50%. The numbers don’t. So add up. Yeah. You’re scaling yourself to potential financial do.

00:13:20:13 – 00:13:56:00
Lauren
It’s like there’s two keys to ruin a company financially. Overspend in labor. You overspend in marketing. And when you end up overspending in your marketing labor in addition to the marketing, I think that, like it’s true, overspend in marketing or spend in labor. And then I think so much is like when you I don’t know, it’s like the Amazon spring, like, oh, an agency is going to just automatically fix it when like you were saying, like looking at some of the stuff you have to understand, are you bringing in agency to amplify what’s working and become more efficient, or are you bringing in an agency under the guise of amplification?

00:13:56:00 – 00:14:16:22
Lauren
But the reality is product market fit, adjustment and offering solutions and getting to a place where like again, that revenue things because, you know, it’s like to get to $1 million a year of a business. Most of the time it’s proving a product to get to $3 million is proving is like proving a scalable solution. So again, that factor will come intuitive.

00:14:17:03 – 00:14:36:10
Lauren
When do you bring on an agency versus doing this in-house or like freelancing or those type of resources? We had to tell someone today, like, I love them, I love their business model, but they don’t have a team equipped to manage and work with an agency. Otherwise it’s going to fall back on the owner. So they shouldn’t hire an agency.

00:14:36:10 – 00:14:37:22
Lauren
They should bring an in-house solution.

00:14:37:22 – 00:15:03:01
Ralph
I empathize with business owners if they’re struggling with that, and it’s not necessarily the subject of today’s show. We’ve kind of gone down that path here because I think it is a good I think it is an important distinction to make. And when I talk to business owners on discovery calls, is what we call them. If they’re in between, I don’t know if I should hire an agency, or maybe I should hire in-house, or maybe I should just go find a consultant somewhere.

00:15:03:03 – 00:15:27:16
Ralph
It’s it really depends on the sort of the risk tolerance of the individual who’s running the show. In most cases, it’s probably the CEO most of the time, especially at that level, because they don’t have a team that’s doing all the other sorts of things. The CEO is typically is the one who’s doing the marketing or overseeing the marketing, whether it’s one individual doing their social posts or somebody who’s doing their email or a bunch of different people together.

00:15:27:18 – 00:16:00:15
Ralph
Like if you’re on a million or so I don’t know, is if an agency for us, you’ve got like seven people on a team in a pod that are like, all those people are expensive, like our payroll is not cheap and yours is neither. So you know that that price is just going to be it’s not going to make sense if you put in 10 to $30,000 a month and ad spend and you’re throwing in at least ten K a month in agency thing, you’re talking about 40% of your monthly revenue is going towards marketing.

00:16:00:17 – 00:16:06:01
Ralph
It doesn’t make sense for you to hire that type of of agency.

00:16:06:03 – 00:16:45:23
Lauren
So I like you said, that type of agency because it’s going to be the boutique ones, because we’re talking about performance marketing right now. I’m like, you have like creative and the media buying, you know, I don’t believe in that word, but it doesn’t exist anymore to either episode. But when you have like the data, the reporting, all of the things that like you want when you hire an agency, but sometimes like it’s the type of agency you want that’s going to deliver all that information and the type of agency you might need where it’s like, I want someone to be the strategic oversight, and I want them to have maybe some offshore talent that’s

00:16:45:23 – 00:17:27:02
Lauren
going to do the moving of the numbers. So I like that you said type of agency. And I think where XRP’s like people that have a different level of need because they have a team of employees that are going to interface with it is a different. So that’s why I like I want to be mindful like 60,000. There’s stages, if you’re at a million ish a year, and if you’re looking at the hard cost, like the math has math, and I invite you to consider that the management fee plus your investment into marketing costs, if it’s going to be that high than the contribution and that that agency is going to provide to

00:17:27:02 – 00:17:29:00
Lauren
your top line, better be significant.

00:17:29:02 – 00:17:50:09
Ralph
Yeah, that’d be really significant. I mean, that’s that’s why it’s a slippery slope at that level of revenue from, from my standpoint to whether or not you actually go in-house, whether you hire a consultant or whether you hire a full blown agency like our businesses, it typically is revenue related. It’s not necessarily just ad spend, but the numbers and the math just don’t really add up.

00:17:50:10 – 00:18:04:07
Ralph
I mean, I think just as a good threshold, I mean, you should be if you’re in the startup phase, you should be probably spending anywhere between 10 and 20% of your monthly revenue on marketing efforts, not necessarily.

00:18:04:09 – 00:18:08:11
Lauren
Arguing that I’m gonna, like you say, like a spend. I’m going to push you.

00:18:08:13 – 00:18:13:00
Ralph
Marketing, not marketing spend. I’m saying marketing. That’s everything.

00:18:13:01 – 00:18:28:15
Lauren
You always bring in the labor to it. Like, I like thinking, like a small piece of when you should bring in an agency. Like, I think it’s, it’s like a how are you going to be more efficient depending on where you are in your business and where you are in the marketplace, like what people know and understand about your brand.

00:18:28:17 – 00:18:51:16
Lauren
It’s an agency comes in when you’re looking at, diversifying your lead source. Most of businesses, like they start into like 50 to 90% of their businesses. Business comes from referrals and then you start doing usually people do paid ad investment, which should be last, but whatever. And then you’re like 90, 80 to 90% of my business is coming from paid ads.

00:18:51:18 – 00:19:10:16
Lauren
When you’re at a place where like outside of referrals and then paid ads are taking up too much of your business and you’re looking to scale and more diversify, I think that’s when you look at bringing in an agency, and that agency type might be an SEO agency, because you need to diversify your dependency on an 80% of your business is coming from paid ads, 20% from referrals.

00:19:10:18 – 00:19:28:08
Lauren
It should be like 30 to 40% should be paid ads. But it’s like, where are you in the growth of your business so that you have a marketing media mix that allows you to scale. And I think a lot of times that people will bring on an agency and looking for more solutions and just scaling what’s been a proven offer.

00:19:28:08 – 00:19:56:07
Lauren
But like you’re talking about like the marketing investment, I just ask people to consider also the, contribution of or even like the dependency allocation, like what percentage of that lead source makes up your overall revenue. And then that’s when you start looking at, I need to bring in an agency because I’m over dependance or, I need to bring in an agency to make it more efficient.

00:19:56:09 – 00:20:00:00
Ralph
So you’re saying like this is a diversification strategy and a lot of ways.

00:20:00:00 – 00:20:08:05
Lauren
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a lot. Yeah, yeah. This is how you make it. You’re like, Lauren, you can just talk and talk and talk. I can say it in three words.

00:20:08:07 – 00:20:29:06
Ralph
This is my first vacation strategy. All right. Well let’s get into that. Now that we have talked about like whether or not you should hire an agency, apparently this is an entire show unto itself, which we should probably do. But and at what point in time do you hire an agency versus a contractor or an independent freelancer or an internal team?

00:20:29:08 – 00:20:52:22
Ralph
This is sort of all independent questions. I do think the, the, the advice that we’re giving here is extremely relevant to those levels of business. But also you got to keep in mind your risk tolerance. What’s your runway? Are you private equity backed? Are you bootstrapped? There’s all these other factors which I went into in another show. But let’s get back to the agency itself.

00:20:52:22 – 00:20:54:19
Ralph
Like the agency performing.

00:20:54:21 – 00:20:55:15
Lauren
Yeah.

00:20:55:17 – 00:21:18:08
Ralph
This is the central question. Oftentimes it’s like the truth in numbers oftentimes is very cloudy. And this is what we hear all the time. And usually when we go through sort of like what are your biggest problems. This is one of them is I don’t feel like my reporting or what my agency is actually describing to me, as far as performance is concerned, is accurate.

00:21:18:10 – 00:21:22:20
Ralph
Agree, disagree. What’s oh, I guess prove.

00:21:22:22 – 00:21:44:12
Lauren
It’s not accurate. But I think that’s I think that’s a really bad start to a step. It’s like you have to understand what’s your source of truth and like you said are like are you growing in revenue. Sometimes people are trying to grow in new customer acquisition. Sometimes people are trying to grow and, they’re decreasing the latency between reorders so that you can increase your lifetime value.

00:21:44:16 – 00:22:00:07
Lauren
I think you have to like, start. What do you want more of? More customers, more revenue, more efficiency or, more subscriptions like that. That’s just like a side caveat kind of thing. And so when you’re like, hey, I don’t trust the numbers. I’m like, well, what was your KPIs?

00:22:00:12 – 00:22:19:12
Ralph
To your point, though, that rolls up to what are your goals? And I think, you know, one of the things we’re going to talk about here is some of the big questions that your agency should be asking you or agency. And we can probably forward slash this to internal team to a certain degree. If you do have an internal team.

00:22:19:14 – 00:22:44:16
Ralph
The point is this is that what you’re talking about is a lot of different scenarios based upon a goal. And I don’t necessarily think that, you know, customer retention and or increasing lifetime value and or getting new customers is the goal. It is an outgrowth. It is the way in which you achieve the goal. So what is your goal for the business?

00:22:44:18 – 00:23:02:08
Ralph
So for some folks it is to make the world a better place. We actually had a client. We’re like, we don’t want to have any profit. We want to send everything back to everything that’s left over after all of our costs. We want to contribute to charity. So and they didn’t have a number in mind. So it was.

00:23:02:11 – 00:23:06:11
Lauren
Yeah, they did. The number would have been the year they wanted to run for president.

00:23:06:12 – 00:23:39:01
Ralph
Yeah, exactly. But for some clients it’s a revenue goal. For some, it’s a new customer goal. For some it’s a vision goal. And to your point, there’s all of those things. All of those goals have different, sort of milestones in which to reach. I mean, usually it’s it’s attached to some kind of marketing performance indicator, whether it’s, lifetime value or it’s, Alvey or any of or it’s an Ncac number.

00:23:39:03 – 00:23:57:07
Ralph
So what you’re saying is, yeah, we’re going to shoot towards this, but what’s the bigger goal? What’s the thing that you’re really trying to achieve as the VP of marketing this quarter, next quarter for the entire year into the next year? And I think if your agency doesn’t ask that you and them are not on the same page, because.

00:23:57:10 – 00:24:01:11
Lauren
I give a separate example, just because, I mean, like take it to like the software space.

00:24:02:01 – 00:24:31:18
Lauren
There’s the business owners or if like you’re a publicly traded company, it’s what the investors like. What is the true outcome. But then like, say you’re a VP of like one line of business or like you’re a head of marketing over one item? I think like Alex shows this really well in, he’s a CMO for meta. He had talked about how with WhatsApp, when they were doing this, like product launch, they ended up finding that their marketing teams were both chasing differ, like they were all chasing different numbers.

00:24:31:18 – 00:24:52:23
Lauren
So some were looking at daily active users and increasing the daily active day days. The daily active users, while others were hyper focused on downloads. But if you have a million people download and no one actively using it, and you don’t have that retention while you need both, right, you have a team that’s like, you know, direct to consumer and then you want to have the product.

00:24:53:00 – 00:25:26:21
Lauren
An example was if you don’t know what your North Star is or if you don’t define what those KPIs are, what he had for that quarterly sprint was two teams going in completely opposite directions, and then they spent more time fighting with each other because they’re North stars. Like you’ll have teams that have different North Stars and stuff, but they were disconnected with what the VP actually wanted and what was going to drive performance, because at some points, like they were trying to renew investment and and those different like sub secondary KPIs come into play.

00:25:26:21 – 00:25:42:06
Lauren
But like I liked his example of daily active users versus downloads, because you need to have so many downloads to show that you have growth. And like when we think about meta, we’ve talked before that there are more people with meta than there were individuals under the Roman Empire.

00:25:42:07 – 00:25:44:19
Ralph
Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah it’s crazy.

00:25:44:21 – 00:25:45:11
Lauren
And so.

00:25:45:11 – 00:25:46:12
Ralph
Like that one I.

00:25:46:14 – 00:25:54:10
Lauren
Love that one. But that counts as downloads. Right. And then it’s just like how many active users do we have. And like I recently we felt.

00:25:54:11 – 00:26:26:20
Ralph
Like we were different numbers. We had users and daily active users. There was also monthly active users. But yes, absolutely. Two separate numbers. Downloads is, I would submit, is a precursor and or a predictive metric for the ultimate, which is daily active users, which if you are a software that’s obviously essential if you are a e-commerce brand or a retailer online or an online retailer, then it is.

00:26:26:20 – 00:26:31:20
Ralph
Those are people that are coming back to your site. Repeat purchases, repeat purchases.

00:26:31:20 – 00:26:49:13
Lauren
The number of new customers can be stupid. Like you can say, like, I get a lot of new costs and like, forgive me on this. Like, but someone that we’ve worked with, we were growing new customers, but no one was coming back. That same product issue, it’s like, I want to grow, I want to grow, I want to grow.

00:26:49:15 – 00:27:19:16
Lauren
And then I’m like, okay, well, look at this. We’ve got 15,000 new customers in the last four months, of which we have less than half a percent of people that have re purchased. There is something I mean, is this a product quality issue? Is it a delivery issue? Is it a mistaken identity of the product like you know, for example, the picture shows me what looks like a giant wine glass, but then reality comes out as like an East Pre toaster for a Barbie like that.

00:27:19:16 – 00:27:37:06
Lauren
Like I need to understand what is happening. Why are we giving away all this product and buying new customers that aren’t staying with us? So it’s like the e-commerce side, like your daily or monthly active users. The equivalent is like how many of your new customers are becoming repeat customers? And then I’ll push you a bit further again.

00:27:37:06 – 00:27:47:09
Lauren
Like for the subscription side, if you offer a subscription for your product, how many of those repeat customers or new customers are becoming subscriber customers?

00:27:47:11 – 00:28:15:02
Ralph
Right. And so that does go back to one of the points that we want to discuss here today is that the agency for your agency should be giving you some level of dashboard and it’s on the metrics for you that really do matter. And whatever that thing is, you should be able to very easily and accurately describe what the problem is based upon those metrics.

00:28:15:02 – 00:28:41:00
Ralph
So great example for you is and we had a client that was an unfortunately, talking about this about two years ago. They hired us and they went out of business within three months because everyone would come in based upon their social posts by once and then never by again. They had their ROV and their LTV was the same.

00:28:41:00 – 00:28:45:21
Ralph
Damn number. We kept saying like, there’s something wrong with everything after that.

00:28:45:23 – 00:28:49:02
Lauren
And it wasn’t like a product, like a mattress or a car. They know.

00:28:49:04 – 00:28:52:04
Ralph
It was. It was in the supplement space. So.

00:28:52:04 – 00:28:54:13
Lauren
So they didn’t want to retake the supplement. It wasn’t good at.

00:28:54:13 – 00:28:54:23
Ralph
That, was it?

00:28:54:23 – 00:28:55:15
Lauren
It promised.

00:28:55:15 – 00:29:01:06
Ralph
That was it. And like they had a plan. They had a product problem. Yeah. And so.

00:29:01:10 – 00:29:03:10
Lauren
Or customer service you can have a.

00:29:03:12 – 00:29:10:15
Ralph
Product. It could. We never got to the bottom of it because they sort of just Fremont. They disappeared. Yeah. They went out of business.

00:29:10:17 – 00:29:36:18
Lauren
So they I want to know their consumption rate. Like how long does it take for someone? I mean, like if they’re not reordering and like, so say you’re like, no, I know this product really works. Then you have where it’s maybe not a product in the like the formula, but the way that the bottle is being delivered, they’re not taking it or they’re not being told the frequency of taking like a lot of supplements is like, you have to take it like lion’s mane is like it takes like three months before you have any noticeable difference.

00:29:36:18 – 00:29:51:16
Lauren
You’re not communicating how long you need to take it before you see noticeable difference. So I blame that not on the product formula, but the product packaging, because you haven’t informed someone how to properly consume the product and find the results that you promised on your marketing.

00:29:51:18 – 00:30:09:02
Ralph
Yeah, I mean, a great example is there’s a supplement that’s sitting on, the island in my kitchen right now is a friend of ours who’s trying, I guess, pitching my wife on taking it. It’s for, you know, it’s it’s actually a former client of ours that was with us for three plus years, and they took everything in-house.

00:30:09:04 – 00:30:29:05
Ralph
Great, great product. And it was the new package. It was the new client or new customer package that had just come in. And there was a booklet on this particular medical condition that this supplement affects in a positive way. I will say that because this is a supplement, because it doesn’t cure, it doesn’t cause it doesn’t do anything like that.

00:30:29:11 – 00:30:54:16
Ralph
The point is this is that that was like the customer experience of here’s the best way to use this product. It was a full booklet, and it’s it’s clearly meant for 50 plus individuals because I had really hired it had really large font. I’m like, oh my God, this is like for old people. I was thinking to myself, because it’s in that sort of generalized niche of the 55 plus, really 65 plus.

00:30:54:18 – 00:30:55:04
Ralph
I don’t know.

00:30:55:04 – 00:31:10:15
Lauren
Okay. Hold on. I have friends that are 45 plus. Like, I just went to like, a book club at the Barnes novels by me. And like, I had some amazing friends that were 45 plus, and they literally were like, okay, a Vow of Vengeance is our next book. And they open it up and they’re like, I can’t read this out, right?

00:31:10:15 – 00:31:11:12
Lauren
It glasses.

00:31:11:12 – 00:31:30:00
Ralph
Anyway, the point is, it’s like in that booklet they tell you exactly how to use the product, when to use it, when you can expect, like, does everybody read it? I have no idea. But the fact that there was a booklet that went along with it exactly to your point. So catechins, they don’t use it and consume it.

00:31:30:02 – 00:31:32:13
Ralph
That might be part of your problem right out of the gate. Not going.

00:31:32:13 – 00:31:33:05
Lauren
To reorder.

00:31:33:09 – 00:31:36:01
Ralph
Yeah. So we’re talking about a lot of different things here.

00:31:36:01 – 00:31:37:18
Lauren
But let’s go back to the reporting.

00:31:37:18 – 00:31:41:22
Ralph
The reporting should be able to reflect this and should be able to

00:31:41:22 – 00:31:58:00
Ralph
suss out like what your problem is. If your problem is declining revenue or your problem is flat revenue and you’re getting lots of customers but no repeat orders, your agency dashboard should show this for new average order value. Lifetime value,

00:31:58:00 – 00:32:07:09
Ralph
like whatever the specific product is like one of the examples that we’re doing a case study on right now in this particular client’s case, we just did a case study on this.

00:32:07:11 – 00:32:17:17
Ralph
There any of it was $1,200 and their LTV was $1,220. Thereabouts was just slightly higher.

00:32:17:17 – 00:32:19:20
Lauren
Not 1000 people bought again.

00:32:19:22 – 00:32:40:04
Ralph
Right, exactly. But it’s not one of those like you literally you buy it and then that’s it. Like there’s nothing else with it. But if you can acquire a customer’s an excellent product. The point is, is like if you can acquire customers for 200, $250, which is what we’re doing right now, that math works out every day of the week.

00:32:40:04 – 00:33:10:09
Ralph
It’s like, how many more customers one time can you buy? Yeah. What is this is what I’m trying to explain here is that every business has the differences. We need to understand those differences in your agency needs to understand those differences and then report in a dashboard back to you what those KPIs are. Or as we talk about it is marketing performance indicators, NPIs, what those are and how those are moving forward, how those are maybe being stagnated and then diagnosed a problem like a metric on fire.

00:33:10:10 – 00:33:14:09
Ralph
That’s what you should be looking at every single week when you talk to your agency.

00:33:14:12 – 00:33:26:23
Lauren
So that you know the truth behind their impact is the investment into them and the management. And that traffic source or whatever, that solution is driving real impact.

00:33:26:23 – 00:33:27:20
Lauren
Because

00:33:28:03 – 00:33:36:17
Ralph
Hey, stay tuned for part two of this episode by subscribing to the channel so you don’t miss the gold nuggets for the metrics that matter and grow your business.

Episode 781: Is Your Agency Performing Or Just Reporting Well?

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Is Your Agency Performing Or Just Reporting Well?

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