Clients increasingly want to know exactly what they’re getting in return for their dollars spent with agencies. This data can be tricky to compile, let alone interpret and visualize in a way the client actually understands. So this week, we’re diving deeper into the ongoing AI conversation to dial in on one thing — how AI tools can prove an agency’s ROI to clients.

In the episode, our guest, Jonathon Reilly, gives a great overview of how AI can revolutionize this task. The big idea is that AI tools can crunch huge amounts of data and surface valuable insights way faster than a human data analyst could. It allows you to be more responsive to clients, show the impact you’re delivering, and ultimately retain clients longer by demonstrating your value more clearly.

But it’s not just about reporting — Jonathon thinks AI tools will help agencies be more efficient across the board, from creative ideation to repetitive tasks. The goal isn’t to replace human effort, but to use AI as an assistant that makes us faster and better at our jobs (more ROI for clients).

Tune in to learn more about how AI tools will level the playing field for small- to mid-sized agencies to bring more value to our clients in a tangible, understandable way.

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.

• How AI intersects with data to help agencies prove their worth to clients
• Helping clients understand the data and numbers
• Will AI tools remove the need to hire data analysts in the future?
• Being data savvy to prove ROI
• Leveraging AI tools to maximize agency efficiency
• How AI will change the billable hour
• Starting the conversation with your employees about encouraging the use of AI tools
• Embrace AI, but with boundaries and structure
• Getting more educated in the AI landscape
• How AI tools are leveling the playing field for small- to mid-sized agencies
• How Akkio works to maximize agency efficiency

As agency owners, we all want to be different. We don’t want to be the boss who is a stickler for punctuality or to feel like we’re micromanaging our employees. But HR issues will inevitably arise, and that’s when the reality check sets in.

HR issues aren’t always as intense as the term may imply. They could be as small as someone being late to a couple of meetings or an employee missing a deadline one too many times. They’re often small things that build up over time and can balloon into bigger issues — like souring client-agency relationships or diluting the agency’s core values.

In this week’s episode, Allyns Melendez shares lots of great tips and tricks to help prevent minor HR issues from getting out of control. From leading by example to being a chameleon leader who can shift based on who you’re talking to and what tone is needed, she knows exactly how to help agency owners and leaders resolve nearly any conflict an agency might face.

Tune in to learn tons of valuable tactics that will make you feel like no employee problem is too big for you to handle.

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.

• How HR has stayed surprisingly the same over 100 years
• How to show up as an agency leader to everybody vs. with individual employees
• Handling first-time HR issues with an employee
• What happens when we don’t address bad habits immediately
• Preparing for difficult one-on-one conversations with agency employees
• Conflict resolution with agency employees and how to follow up with your plan
• Why chameleon leadership will help you communicate better
• Get to know your communication style and how you show up in a room
• How to ask for candid feedback and make your employees feel safe to do so

Online communities are quickly becoming one of the most powerful biz dev tools out there, but there’s etiquette to starting and maintaining one. It’s not for everyone, but for those who are ready, an online community could be your ticket to selling without ever having to actually sell.

This week, we’re continuing the conversation about online communities vs. online audiences, and the vast benefits they can offer to agency owners. Now that we’ve established the differences between an audience and a community, it’s time to ask ourselves deeper questions about why and how we should start one.

The main purpose of starting an online community shouldn’t be selling or profiting from its members. But if you’re in it to genuinely help others and create an avenue for collective thought leadership and connection, increased sales are just part of the benefits.

If you think starting an online community could be the right move for your agency, tune in to this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency.

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.

• How to start an online community (who, what, where, why)
• Are you starting a community for the right reasons?
• Why you should expect nothing in return from online communities
• Identifying your target audience
• What a community leader should provide to community members, and vice versa
• The main difference between a community and an audience
• 3 questions to ask yourself before creating a community
• Consistency wins over complexity in online community building
• How to benefit from a community without starting one yourself
• Using online communities as a powerful biz dev tool
• Qualifying your community members

Everybody has a story they’re trying to tell, and brands play a massive role in people’s stories, whether they realize it or not. Most of the time, the stories consumers associate with a brand aren’t what we think they are. This is where behavioral economics becomes vital to creating an effective marketing strategy.

Behavioral economics is a study that attempts to make sense of people’s behavior around spending. We don’t always make spending decisions in our best interest and often base purchasing decisions on our emotions. In fact, people usually connect and interact with brands the same way they connect with people.

This leaves brands with a lot of pressure on their backs. If you ignore your loyal customers’ needs and wants, they will feel deeply betrayed. But if you listen to their stories and get to the core of what they’re looking for, you’ll build a trust that feels like a close friendship.

The psychology behind consumer behavior is complicated but fascinating. Join us this week to discover how brands can use behavioral economics to build an effective marketing strategy that fosters deep trust from your customers.

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 is behavioral economics?
• Why people build human-like relationships with brands
• How narrative psychology can improve our relationships with our customers
• Clues that a brand uses narrative psychology well
• Convincing clients that a strategy based on behavioral psychology is worth investing in
• How strategic changes ripple throughout a whole organization
• Getting to the bottom of your customer story
• What brands get wrong about customer stories
• Why feelings of betrayal run deep when brands miss the mark

In-person networking is still a big deal. After a brief Covid hiatus, trade shows, conferences, and workshops are back and bigger than ever. So, if you or your team plan on attending any of these events soon, it’s important to get up to date on the do’s and don’ts of networking at these events.

Instead of being stuck with a stack of business cards and struggling to recall conversations with specific individuals from an event, seasoned keynote speaker Dave Delaney shares how to manage and nurture your client and prospect interactions effectively.

Not sure how to strike up a conversation with a prospect or keynote speaker? Or what about when you get home from the event and still want to close a potential sale without sounding too spammy? Dave shares insights on approaching these topics and more during this episode.

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.

• Why in-person networking is still essential
• How we get networking and connecting with others wrong
• Networking best practices for competitors, prospects, and keynote speakers
• The etiquette behind not being creepy or pushy to your peers
• How to get people’s information while you’re at the show
• Don’t count on the other person to reach out to you after the show
• How to create meaningful relationships with people after trade shows and conferences
• Focus on relationship-building over getting someone in your sales funnel

After a tough sales year in 2023, many of you have been looking for the next thing to consistently fill your sales pipeline with new prospects. With sales cycles taking longer than before, it’s essential always to have warm prospects teed up and ready to go. But how?

The answer is in thought leadership combined with lead gen and lead magnets. Positioning yourself and your agency as an authority in your niche (and giving some of it away for free) generates trust in your agency’s expertise before they’ve officially met you.

When done right, lead gen can be mostly automated. And having great lead magnets like a podcast or YouTube channel, or offering a free mini-service to prospects to get them interested in your services will build trust and establish your agency as a thought leader in your niche.

This week, Jay Feldman shares his tips and tricks for how his agencies used automated lead gen and lead magnets to still be profitable in a challenging sales year. This episode is packed with actionable insights that you’ll want to take notes on, so make sure you have a pen and paper ready to go, and check out the links in the show notes for all of the programs and tools he mentions during the interview.

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.

• How lead gen and lead magnets turned a bad sales year into a good one
• Commit to being relentlessly helpful to others
• What Jay’s agencies used as lead magnets to attract attention from prospects
• How to retain the clients you close from lead gen
• Giving big wins early on when working with new clients
• Establishing trust authority in the first 90-120 days with lead gen clients
• Cold email tactics that work
• What defines success for lead gen and lead magnets
• Scalable lead magnets that bring results
• Avoiding shiny object syndrome and doing what works for your agency

We’ve all been here before — your agency grows, and your day-to-day is getting a little too chaotic for comfort. Each team member has their own way of doing things, and no one is on the same page about the best approach to doing recurring tasks. As the agency owner, you’re getting pulled into things that you shouldn’t, becoming the organization’s bottleneck.

If that’s you, it’s time to break that cycle with some project management software.

With a million choices and a few that have become the industry standard, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly which is right for your agency. Often, agencies will pick one based on how popular or how pretty it is, and forget about its functionality specific to your agency’s day-to-day needs.

This week, Alane Boyd is clearing the fog around project management software to help us decide if we need one — and if so, what tools and functionality we should be looking out for that will get our productivity back on track.

Don’t be afraid to take the time to really learn what tools are right for your team, and be generous with how long it takes for the new systems and processes to become sticky. Once you find one that works, your agency productivity will be back and better than ever.

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.

• The benefits of project management software
• Taking your time learning new systems and software
• The signs an agency is ready for a PM software
• Questions to ask yourself before choosing which product is best for you
• Why capacity planning is the most important factor for choosing a project management software
• How to recognize if you’re using the wrong tool
• Training your project managers to use a new tool
• Setting up a project management tool to automate recurring tasks
• Considering the internal and external integrations of a PM tool that are necessary for your agency
• Finding a tool that your team is willing to adopt
• The most common mishaps with picking a project management software

Humans are hardwired to belong, and the desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves is in our blood. Whether we connect over shared values, a favorite sports team, a hobby, or even just from living near one another, we can find community and belonging all around us.

These days, many of us are finding community online through social media and spreading our social nets wider than ever. This leaves a huge opportunity for agency leaders to build their own online communities to help others learn and share their experiences about business leadership, entrepreneurship, or any form of thought leadership in which they excel.

Online communities should, first and foremost, be a way to bring people together with shared goals and interests, but the benefits reach far beyond that. With enough time and care, they can become robust sales and networking tools that do the prospecting work for you.

But it’s not for everyone, and that’s ok.

In this week’s solocast, I’m doing a deep dive into the ins and outs of creating online communities, building an audience online, and how to make sure you’re doing it all for the right reasons. With enough patience, online community building could become your agency’s secret sales weapon that provides perks and benefits for the people in it.

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 is a community, and how does it relate to work?
• The difference between an audience and a community
• Online communities do the selling for you
• B2B brands have less competition in creating online communities
• Asking yourself the who, what, where, and why before starting a community
• How communities make biz dev easier for agencies
• Being a safe harbor for people as a community leader
• Community building isn’t for everyone
• 3 questions to ask yourself to determine if you should build a community or an audience
• How to build an online community and spread the word about it
• Having a community is a long game — have a growth plan