Article summary

If you’ve seen Mad Men, you may remember the scene where Don Draper pitches Kodak an idea for its new slide projector. It’s the writers’ way of showing us just how good Draper is.

It also captures everything problematic about hiring a marketing agency or consultant.

Most marketing campaigns fail to justify their costs, even when they’re run by experienced, award-winning teams.

So you shouldn’t hire an agency because you like its first idea.

Hire it for the process behind that idea: how it researches the problem, tests its assumptions, measures results and decides what to change when a campaign underperforms.

Marketing works through disciplined iteration, not guaranteed wins.

Inside the sausage factory

Check out any marketing agency or solo operator's site and you'll see proof they can get their clients results.

That includes me.

But you won't see our failures. And there are a lot of those.

Because marketing, mostly, doesn't work.

About a year ago, I ran a direct mail campaign for my own business. It was well-planned and I was happy my offer delivered immediate and relevant value to my prospective clients. It failed. Not one single reply.

Previously, I had run a Google ad campaign for my business. Failed.

Before that, I wrote an in-depth report on a sector I was targeting, revealing a genuine opportunity for anyone who read it. I used that report in a targeted, personalised outreach campaign. Failed.

Each of those stung and cost me money, but that’s how we make sausages: failure is an anticipated cost.

Everyone loses

It doesn’t matter how good the agency or consultant you hire is. Everyone in marketing runs campaigns that lose.

Coca-Cola did it with New Coke. Tropicana did it when they ditched their classic carton design. There is no agency, no expert, who can guarantee you a win.

Yes, you can hit upon a winning campaign first time.

The Cadbury's drumming gorilla is a great example of a lightning-in-a-bottle ad. But you should not count on it, and that means you should not budget for it. (Cadbury hired the same ad agency to make two more ads that fell well short of their original success.)

Instead, you need to budget for what does work.

Don't buy a pitch

Most agencies and independents get business based on pitching an idea.

That might be for an ad, an identity to build a brand around or a theme for a series of anchor articles.

But that's not a great way to make a hiring decision.

If you could open the books inside a top agency or solo-marketer, and randomly pick a single campaign they ran, you'd have a reasonable chance of picking a dud (1) (2) (3).

But that does not mean these agencies don't know what they're doing. On the contrary, those duds are an inevitable result of what really matters: the thing that actually works in marketing.

And that's iteration.

Buy a process

Here's how good marketers get their clients results.

They start with a needs analysis, understand the problem they are being asked to solve, and carry out any extra research to fill in gaps.

Then they come up with a hypothesis:

If we do X, Y will happen.

Then they run that campaign and collect data.

If it works, they optimise. If it fails, they look at it to figure out why and come up with a reformulated hypothesis or a brand new one.

That's how marketing works, and that's how you need to budget.

How to hire the right process

It's easier to see a concept for your website or ad campaign and make a hiring decision based on that. You like it, or you don't. But that’s a bad idea because you’re betting on one untested hypothesis.

So, sure, ask for ideas. It's a way to vet an agency to see if they get your brand. But don't hire based on concepts. Hire based on a process.

Hire based on what they'll do if their idea fails. Hire based on how they measure success. It should be a metric such as ROI, CAC or LTV, and they should take time to understand your business model.

And look very carefully at how well they carry out their preliminary research.

If you are talking to an agency or solo-operator, expect them to ask about what you've tried before and expect them to ask to see the metrics around previous campaigns. If not, think twice about hiring them. Good marketers are obsessed with collecting reliable data and understanding as much about your business, offer and market as possible.

Until it works

After my direct mail campaign failed, after my Google ads campaign, after my in-depth report campaign, I built a piece of software to audit websites for AI visibility (Generative Engine Optimisation).

The first two businesses I showed it to hired me right away. No 'we'll think about', just a clean 'yes'.

I got there through iteration. Each failed attempt forced me to reconsider the market, the offer and what prospective clients needed to see before saying yes.

Marketing doesn't work until it works.

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