Build a Better Agency Podcast

AI expert Paul Roetzer discusses the peaks and pitfalls of AI innovation in agencies, focusing on adapting to AI tools, copyright concerns, client-agency co-creation, and the future of agencies in the age of AI. He highlights the importance of testing, piloting AI tools, and navigating the evolving AI landscape. The podcast sheds light on challenges faced by agencies in integrating AI, balancing AI tools with human insight, and investing in multiple promising AI companies.

The idea of agency culture has been on my mind a lot lately, especially now that we’re all settling into new post-covid workplace structures. Without as much face time in an office, many of you are starting to wonder how to continue cultivating a healthy workplace environment for your employees over video calls and Slack channels. For this week’s solocast, I’m sharing what research shows are the four core pillars of a healthy agency culture that will ensure your employees feel seen, heard, safe, and valued. It’s not just about proximity and having office parties or team outings anymore. And as agency leaders, it’s essential that we lead by example in creating the right environment for our teams to thrive. If you can weave these four concepts into how you run your agency and build up your teams, your agency will be set up for success, no matter if you’re in the office, fully remote, or somewhere in between. For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: Thinking about agency culture differently Why agency owners must lead the charge in creating a healthy agency culture Creating an environment of inclusivity for all team members Leading with love and being curious about your people Creating learning opportunities for yourself and the team Encouraging quarterly growth goals for employees Celebrating contributions and identifying employee strengths Leaving space for employees to challenge the status quo Making it ok for people to disagree respectfully

Agency culture has encountered a massive shift post-pandemic. With hybrid and remote work more common than ever, weaving our missions, goals, values, and purpose into our teams requires a different approach than before. This week, we’re talking to Chad Kearns, an agency culture expert, to discuss how agency leaders are at the forefront of agency culture and should run their agency according to their core values. If you don’t align yourself with your own mission and values, your team won’t be operating at its peak, which can throw the whole agency off balance. If it sounds high-stakes, it’s because it is. Everything starts with agency culture — from screening a potential new hire to your employee retention rate. Tune in to learn how to align your agency to your core values and discover what people value the most when choosing to work for an agency. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: People are at the core of the agency world How cultural concerns have changed post-pandemic Challenges that clients face today with agency culture Finding right-fit employees who will embody your agency culture Aligning yourself and exemplifying your mission, values, and goals to your team Where agencies often fail to uphold their core values and missions Culture goes beyond social interaction How to attract better talent aligned with your agency values Why good onboarding is imperative for healthy agency culture

With the elongated sales cycles we have all seen throughout 2023, knowing your lifetime customer value is more important than ever. It’s essential not only for you as an agency but also to calculate that data for your clients. Clients are looking for the most value for their money, and everyone is tightening their belts. Gone are the days of patient clients willing to wait around for results. Now, it’s all about data-driven, proven results that your agency can provide ASAP. If you can’t provide everything they need, they expect you to find the people who can partner with you to get it done. In this episode, we’re discussing how you can adapt to the new era of agency ownership with data-driven metrics and proven results for your clients and their customers. We know it’s hard to adapt to a fast-changing and ever-adapting world of work, but we’re here to help you work through it and find innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: Defining lifetime customer value How an agency can help a client calculate their lifetime customer value The trends and metrics that non-commerce agencies can analyze for their LCV How LCV calculations can help you and your clients get smarter about budgeting Why agencies are struggling to acquire new customers and how to adapt The growing importance of agency syndication The swinging pendulum of agency hiring The 3 pillars of customer value optimization How agencies can troubleshoot for their clients and course-correct their offerings

Marketing strategist and researcher Susan Baier discusses the 2023 Agency Edge Research study, highlighting the importance of making existing clients happier. They explore the different client archetypes and how they spend their money, as well as what motivates clients to spend more with agencies. The podcast also covers the qualities of the best agency and the transformative power of envisioning the future self. Overall, the episode provides valuable insights for agency owners on building alliances and nurturing long-term partnerships with clients.

Part of being an agency means that you solve problems for a living. Clients come to you with a problem, and it’s up to you and your team to figure out the solution and present it to them in a neat package. Simply put, creative innovation is woven into the DNA of an agency. Under pressure and deadlines, creative innovation can quickly be squashed, rushed, or underprioritized. But Carla Johnson, an ideation and innovation expert, has studied and produced an effective formula for how agencies can reinvigorate their creative strategies. Her methodology can be incorporated with client projects and daily agency strategy to improve systems and processes. Innovation doesn’t always have to be creative, but getting creative about innovation can change how your team solves problems and could even save you time and money when putting it to the test. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: What our clients are really hiring us to do Figuring out how to connect the dots more efficiently Innovative ways to approach creative ideation on your team Bringing clients into the creative innovation process Getting creative about systems and processes during growth moments in the agency The 5-step Wheel of Innovation Weaving creative thinking into everyday life The intersection of business strategy and creative innovation  

It’s that time of year again — we’re going over the top agency trends we’re noticing so far in 2023 and going into 2024. A lot has changed since the last time we went over the data, which means we have a ton of information that you’ll hopefully find valuable and can use as a compass for where to lead your agency through the rest of the year heading into 2024. As we exit the pandemic era and move into the AI era, there’s a lot to consider in how agencies function regarding what our clients want, how fast our sales cycle moves, how we hire, where we should focus our biz dev, and more. One thing is certain — many agency owners like you feel re-energized and reinvigorated coming out of 2022. Let this episode be a ray of light that gives you an extra boost of encouragement for the rest of 2023, and keep that momentum going for as long as possible. For 30+ years, Drew McLellan has been in the advertising industry. He started his career at Y&R, worked in boutique-sized agencies, and then started his own (which he still owns and runs) agency in 1995. Additionally, Drew owns and leads the Agency Management Institute, which advises hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies on how to grow their agency and its profitability through agency owner peer groups, consulting, coaching, workshops and more. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: The impacts of recession fears on AGI and revenue ROI — the new agency buzzword A growing agency trend in having amazing teams Rebalancing overservicing and overstaffing issues The fading trend of over-specialization of agencies The PPC, SEO, and data analyst job boom A positive trend in agency owner happiness The continued importance of thought leadership and community spaces The agency employee trends of 2023 Embracing AI and using it as a tool for your work

Keeping up with data protection and privacy laws is exhausting. Nearly every month, new legislation is being introduced state by state to help keep users’ data protected online. And while this is overall a good thing, it can get really messy if agency owners aren’t educated and informing their clients about what this means when they build out their websites. Luckily, our guest today, Hans Skillrud, has collaborated with his wife to create an easy, self-updating tool that agency owners can implement on their own websites and the sites they build for their clients. He has committed himself to ensuring that data protection tools and documentation are easily accessible for anyone without needing a legal degree to make sense of it all.   In this episode, you’ll learn why you must educate yourself and your clients on the most current privacy policy and data protection laws, why not to cut corners in this department, and why you should never collect more data than you actually need. Even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal right now, with the constantly changing environment of privacy laws, you never know when you could end up in a mess, even five years later. Don’t delay on this, and get your documentation in check today. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: What is Termageddon? What agencies are required to provide to their clients in terms of documentation The risks for smaller businesses and agencies for not practicing good data protection Why agencies should embrace data protection policies, even if it seems complicated Can chatGPT write our policies for us? Why copying and pasting someone else’s policies is a bad idea How data protection lawsuits happen How the Termageddon team keeps up with constantly changing data protection laws The confusing future of privacy law Three best data protection practices for agencies and website builders

Marketing today is not absolute. It’s experimental, iterative, and ever-changing. And with that comes many challenges that we have to overcome and adapt to as agency leaders. One of those challenges is offering data analytics services to our clients. Many of us got into the industry, hoping to avoid doing math. And yet, here we are again, going over another way tech and mathematics are imperative in our industry. While it might be exhausting or frustrating, a subject matter expert is joining us to help make it a little less confusing for everyone.   This week, I’m interviewing Jim Sterne, a data analytics expert who knows so much about the industry. Jim started the Data Analytics Association and wrote 12 books on the topic. In this episode, he’ll share the importance of offering data analytics expertise to better serve clients, how to hire either in-house or third-party data analysts, and tons of resources on where to look for advice and find other experts to help get you started. Those who adapt survive. Don’t wait on this one, and don’t try to be a hero. The more we can help our clients reach their goals, the better off we are as an industry. Get help, look to the experts, and start offering your clients data analytics services as soon as possible. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: Why data analytics is more about the questions you ask rather than the answers you get The biggest hurdles agencies face when presenting data to clients Should you go third-party or stay in-house? What to look for when hiring a third-party data analytics expert How to make data useful to the client Data reports vs. data alerts, which is better? How to become a data storyteller Helping clients embrace experimental results over having absolute certainty The best resources for wannabe data analysts or those just starting out

AI-generated content is rapidly finding its way into professional spaces and changing the way we work forever. This fact is especially important for creative agencies that are quickly realizing there could be legal implications for using AI to create work proposals, creative IPs, legal documents, and more. And like most legal questions, the answer to “Can I use AI to generate work for clients?” is, “It depends.” We’re in such a gray area with AI right now that the legal system hasn’t had a chance to catch up to technological advances. So how do agencies protect themselves, their workers, clients, and their IP when everything is so up in the air right now?   Sharon Toerek has some common sense advice for approaching AI in the workplace to avoid a potential legal nightmare. In this episode, we’ll cover human-generated vs. AI-generated content, the gray areas we need to look out for when using AI, how to protect client and agency copyrights, how to avoid infringing other copyrighted content, and so much more. AI-generated content is an incredibly important and ever-changing topic. And if you’re an agency owner, this needs to be addressed in your agency today. A big thank you to our podcast’s presenting sponsor, White Label IQ. They’re an amazing resource for agencies who want to outsource their design, dev, or PPC work at wholesale prices. Check out their special offer (10 free hours!) for podcast listeners here. What You Will Learn in This Episode: The top 3 questions lawyers are receiving about AI Having conversations with clients about the use of AI-generated content The gray area between AI-generated and human-generated content The ownability of AI-generated output Creating documentation about implementing AI tools in a typical workflow Including AI prompt strategies in trade secrets documentation Can we protect the data we’re inputting into the collective that is AI? Addressing the use of AI in SOWs Should we use AI tools to create legal documents?