Kelly Waltrich, Author at Intention.ly - Page 2 of 4

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Author: Kelly Waltrich

The Compounding Advantage That Defines Brands During a Downturn

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

In every economic downturn, a familiar story unfolds: companies pull back on spending, freeze growth initiatives, and slip into survival mode. And while this instinct is understandable—minimizing risk and protecting cash flow—it can create an unprecedented opportunity for bold brands to surge ahead.

If your competitor is pulling back while you’re leaning in, you’re not just gaining short-term market share. You’re setting off a chain reaction with long-term implications. This is the compounding effect of strategic investment during a recession. And for those brave enough to seize the moment, the returns can be exponential.

1. The Visibility Gap Widens

Marketing is often one of the first line items slashed during a downturn. That means the airwaves, inboxes, and feeds get quieter. Less noise. Fewer ads. Less competition for attention.

If your competitor scales back their marketing spend while you maintain or increase yours, your share of voice skyrockets. Not incrementally, but dramatically. With fewer brands vying for attention, your message goes further, costs less, and becomes more memorable.

Think of it this way: the same marketing budget now buys more impressions, more clicks, and more attention than it would in a crowded, bullish economy. That’s more than media, it’s valuable mindshare.

2. Customer Trust Compounds in Uncertain Times

In recessions, customers crave stability. They look for brands that show up consistently, even (and especially) when times are tough. If your competitor disappears from view, their reliability is questioned. But if you show up with confidence and consistency, you become the brand that stuck around when others didn’t.

Trust built in hard times becomes loyalty in the good times. And loyalty isn’t won with clever ads—it’s earned through presence, consistency, and value when people need it most.

3. Talent Becomes a Strategic Advantage

Recessions disrupt the job market. Companies that freeze hiring or lay off talent create a pool of highly skilled professionals looking for stability and vision. If you’re investing when others are cutting back, you become a magnet for top-tier talent.

Over time, this compounds into innovation, execution, and long-term growth that your scaled-down competitors will struggle to match once the economy rebounds.

4. The Innovation Window Opens

Necessity breeds innovation, and with markets in flux, customers’ needs shift rapidly. While competitors are busy protecting the status quo, a company playing offense can experiment, iterate, and move fast.

Products and services launched during downturns are often leaner, better aligned with market needs, and built with resilience. This gives you a first-mover advantage and in many cases, creates entire new revenue streams before your competitors even come up for air.

5. Market Share Is Easier to Win and Harder to Lose

When competitors retreat, their customers and prospects don’t vanish. They look for alternatives. By increasing your investment while others contract, you position yourself to acquire don’t just maintain your base—you acquire theirs.

What’s more, market share gained during a downturn is often “stickier.” Why? Because customers build habits around availability, reliability, and service. Once they’ve switched, they’re unlikely to return to a brand that abandoned them.

Recession Is the Ultimate Brand Differentiator

Everyone can look smart during a boom. But the brands that thrive long-term are those that use recessions to pull ahead while others pause.

When your competitors retreat, they’re saving monkey in the short-term, yes – while sacrificing visibility, trust, talent, and market position. When you double down, you’re not needlessly spending. You’re investing in a compound advantage that pays dividends long after the economy recovers.

Recessions don’t just test strategy. They define legacy.

How to Determine Your Marketing-to-Sales Ratio

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

One of the most important metrics for firms looking to grow effectively is the marketing-to-sales ratio (M:S ratio). This metric helps align your marketing and sales efforts by quantifying how much you’re investing in generating revenue. Whether you’re scaling a startup, optimizing a mature business, or navigating a new market, understanding and calculating this ratio can significantly impact your bottom line.

What Is the Marketing-to-Sales Ratio?

The marketing-to-sales ratio is the percentage of your total revenue that you invest in marketing. It measures how much money your business spends on marketing for every dollar of sales generated.

Formula:

M:S Ratio=(Revenue/Marketing Spend​)×100

For example:

  • If your annual revenue is $1 million and you spend $100,000 on marketing, your M:S ratio is 10%.

Why Does the Marketing-to-Sales Ratio Matter?

  • Budget Allocation: Helps to ensure you’re investing enough in marketing to drive sales growth without overspending.
  • Benchmarking: Provides a way to compare your spending against industry standards and competitors.
  • Performance Insight: Highlights how efficient your marketing efforts are in generating revenue.
  • Scalability: Guides you in scaling your marketing spend proportionally to revenue growth.

How to Calculate Your Marketing-to-Sales Ratio

Determining your M:S ratio involves a few simple steps:

Step 1: Define Your Marketing Spend

Include all costs related to marketing, such as:

  • Paid media (Google Ads, social ads, etc.)
  • Marketing technology (CRM, email platforms)
  • Content creation (blogs, videos, design)
  • Agency fees or outsourced services
  • Event sponsorships and trade shows
  • Internal marketing team salaries

Pro Tip: Be consistent with what you include as “marketing spend” to ensure accurate comparisons over time.

Step 2: Calculate Total Revenue

Use your gross revenue figure for the time period you’re analyzing (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually).

Step 3: Apply the Formula

Divide your marketing spend by total revenue and multiply by 100 to get your percentage.

Example:

  • Marketing Spend: $150,000
  • Annual Revenue: $2,000,000

M:S Ratio=(2,000,000/150,000​)×100=7.5%

Your M:S ratio is 7.5%.

What Is a Healthy Marketing-to-Sales Ratio?

The ideal ratio varies depending on your industry, business model, and growth stage. Here are some general benchmarks:

  • Early-Stage Startups: 10–20% (high investment to fuel growth and brand awareness)
  • Mature Businesses: 5–10% (steady-state growth with optimized spend)

Note: These benchmarks are not one-size-fits-all. Consider your specific goals and market conditions.

How to Adjust Your Ratio

Your M:S ratio should align with your business goals. Here’s how to interpret and adjust your ratio:

  1. High M:S Ratio (>15%):
    • Likely indicates heavy investment in marketing.
    • Works well for startups or businesses launching new products.
    • Consider whether your spending is driving proportional growth.
  2. Low M:S Ratio (<5%):
    • May indicate underinvestment in marketing, potentially stalling growth.
    • Focus on increasing marketing spend strategically, particularly in high-ROI areas like digital advertising or SEO.
  3. Balanced Ratio (5–15%):
    • A good starting point for most businesses.
    • Continuously monitor and refine based on ROI.

How to Evaluate Marketing ROI Against Your Ratio

Having a healthy ratio is only part of the equation. You also need to measure the effectiveness of your marketing spend:

  • Cost Per Lead (CPL): How much does it cost to acquire a new lead?
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much does it cost to acquire a new customer?
  • Lifetime Value (LTV): Does your customer value exceed your acquisition costs?

By tracking these metrics, you can determine if your marketing spend is generating a healthy return on investment (ROI).

Tips for Optimizing Your Marketing-to-Sales Ratio

  1. Start with Clear Goals: Define your revenue and customer acquisition goals before setting your marketing budget.
  2. Invest in High-ROI Channels: Prioritize tactics like SEO, email marketing, and paid ads that consistently deliver results.
  3. Scale Proportionally: As your revenue grows, ensure your marketing spend scales with it.
  4. Leverage Automation: Use tools like marketing automation platforms to reduce inefficiencies.
  5. Test and Refine: Continuously test campaigns to find the optimal spend for your target audience.

M:S Ratio: A Balancing Act

Use your marketing-to-sales ratio as a strategic tool to balance marketing investment and firm growth. By calculating and optimizing this ratio, you’ll gain better visibility into how your marketing efforts contribute to revenue and ensure you’re spending wisely to meet your objectives.

Are you tracking your M:S ratio? Let us know your biggest challenges or wins in aligning marketing spend with revenue goals!

Mapping Content to the Buyer Journey

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

When it comes to content marketing, we see many firms make the mistake of over-indexing on a single type of content—often at the Awareness stage—and neglecting the other stages of the buyer journey. This imbalance leaves prospects underserved, resulting in drop-offs during the Consideration and Decision stages.

To ensure your prospects have the information they need at every stage, you need a well-rounded content strategy that maps to their questions and concerns during the Awareness, Consideration, and Decision phases. Let’s explore how to deliver a seamless experience that keeps your prospects moving forward.

What is the Buyer Journey?

The buyer journey is the process your audience goes through when making a purchase decision. In general, it includes three key stages:

  1. Awareness: The buyer realizes they have a problem or need.
  2. Consideration: The buyer explores potential solutions.
  3. Decision: The buyer selects the product or service they believe is the best fit.

Creating content that serves each stage ensures you meet your audience where they are, providing the right information at the right time.

Awareness Stage: Helping Buyers Identify Their Problem

At the Awareness stage, your prospects are just starting to identify their challenges or needs. They’re looking for educational content, not a sales pitch.

Common Pitfall:

Many companies focus heavily on blog posts and social media content at this stage, failing to create deeper, more engaging content that keeps the audience interested.

Content Goal: Build trust and educate your audience.

Content Types That Work:

  • Blog Posts: Educational articles that answer common questions. For example, “5 Ways to Improve Your Investment Strategy.”
  • Infographics: Visual summaries of data or concepts that make complex ideas easier to digest.
  • Videos: Quick, engaging content that highlights key pain points.
  • eBooks and Guides: Comprehensive resources that your audience can download in exchange for an email address.

Consideration Stage: Showing Buyers Why Your Solution Stands Out

In the Consideration stage, your audience has identified their problem and is researching potential solutions.

Common Pitfall:

Many companies neglect to create detailed content for this stage, causing prospects to stall or turn to competitors.

Content Goal: Demonstrate expertise and build credibility.

Content Types That Work:

  • Case Studies: Real-world examples that showcase how you’ve solved similar problems.
  • Webinars: Live or recorded sessions where you share valuable insights and interact with prospects.
  • Comparison Guides: Side-by-side breakdowns of how your solution stacks up against competitors.
  • Whitepapers: In-depth analysis or research that validates your authority in the industry.

Decision Stage: Giving Buyers the Confidence to Act

By the Decision stage, your audience is evaluating whether to commit. They want assurance that your product or service will deliver on its promises.

Common Pitfall:

Overlooking trust-building content like testimonials, product demos, or risk-free trials can leave buyers feeling uncertain.

Content Goal: Reduce friction and inspire confidence.

Content Types That Work:

  • Testimonials and Reviews: Real client stories that highlight your success.
  • Product Demos: Interactive or video walkthroughs that show your solution in action.
  • Free Trials or Samples: Let prospects experience your offering risk-free.
  • FAQs: Address common objections or concerns in a clear, concise way.

Why Many Firms Fail to Serve Every Stage

A common reason for drop-offs in the buyer journey is a lack of balanced content across all stages. For example:

  • Focusing solely on Awareness content (e.g., blog posts) without supporting the information with deeper Consideration content (e.g., case studies) means prospects won’t see the value in progressing.
  • Providing Decision-stage content too early can overwhelm prospects who aren’t ready to commit.

How to Fix This:

  • Conduct a content audit to identify gaps in your buyer journey coverage.
  • Map each piece of content to a specific stage of the buyer journey.
  • Continuously optimize your content to ensure it aligns with audience needs.

Bonus: Don’t Forget Post-Purchase Content

The buyer journey doesn’t end with a purchase or signed contract. Retention and advocacy are key to long-term growth. Content that supports your clients post-conversion includes:

  • Onboarding guides
  • Exclusive content for existing clients
  • Referral program details

The key to a successful content strategy is balance. By serving the needs of your buyers at every stage of their journey, including after they become clients, you’ll reduce drop-offs, build trust, and ultimately drive conversions.

Are you ready to create a content strategy that delivers results? Let us know where your biggest content gaps are—we’d love to help!

Beyond Direct Leads: The Compounding Power of Paid Advertising

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

If you’re running paid ads but aren’t seeing your leads convert immediately, it’s easy to get frustrated and wonder if you’re wasting your budget.

But before you give up, read this first.

Don’t Abandon What’s Working Behind the Scenes

Let’s take a closer look at the bigger picture and the momentum these ads are actually driving for your business. Because the truth is, ads do much more than generate direct leads; they fuel growth across multiple touchpoints:

  • Web Traffic: Your ads are bringing new visitors to your site, giving them the chance to explore your services and learn more about your brand.
  • Engagement: Impressions and clicks deepen your reach, keeping your business top-of-mind for future opportunities.
  • Newsletter Sign-ups: Even if prospects aren’t ready to buy yet, your ads draw interest and create opportunities for building connections via consistent outreach.
  • Contact Us Form Fills: People are asking questions and engaging with your team—a key step in their buyer journey.
  • Content Downloads: Your ads are helping you educate your audience and build trust through your valuable content. 
  • Competitor Disruption: Your ads are capturing the attention of prospects who might otherwise land on a competitor’s site, redirecting their focus to you instead.
  • Social Follows and Engagement: Ads are increasing your visibility on social media, growing your audience, and encouraging meaningful interactions that build brand loyalty over time.

All of these actions create the lift necessary to drive sustainable, long-term growth. While ads might not produce instant conversions, they’re paving the way for future clients to find you, engage with you, and trust you when they’re ready to take the next step.

Instead of pausing ads or abandoning a paid strategy entirely, consider what you can do to optimize their performance. Maybe it’s a tweak to your targeting, a shift in messaging, or fresh creative that better aligns with your audience’s needs. We’ve seen major momentum swings from swapping out content offers and adjusting targeting parameters.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the data from your paid campaigns or brainstorm ways to improve your results, let’s set up a time to chat! We’d love to make recommendations to enhance your strategy and help you get more out of your marketing investment. 

Don’t Do That: Don’t Ask Your Marketing Team to Set Your Goals

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

Your marketing agency can’t tell you what your goals are.

It sounds obvious, but I talk to prospective clients every day who can’t articulate their growth or overall business goals. Worse, they ask us to come up with them. I’ve heard questions like “What’s a good growth target for an RIA?” or “How many leads should we be getting?” without any context about their current AUM, capacity, or market position.

In these situations I’m always reminded of the contestants on Shark Tank who can’t answer the most basic questions about customer acquisition costs or sales projections, in spite of the show being on the air and following the same formula for the past 15 years. 

Maybe we’re in the agency minority, but we hold ourselves accountable to metrics and results, not deliverables for the sake of deliverables. And to do that, we need to know what we’re working toward. My team is the best in the business at taking a number (revenue, qualified leads, event attendees, cost per lead, you name it) and mobilizing around pulling all the right levers to reach it. 

When clients give us a challenge, we’ll figure out how to solve it. Even a thoughtful qualitative objective, like being the most visible firm in a certain category, allows us to establish goalposts to work toward. We can track metrics like share of voice, media mentions, engagement rates, and website traffic against competitors to measure progress.

But the work we do for our clients should always be tied to a broader strategy that levels up to established business goals. Otherwise, we’re running a playbook with no idea where we are on the field – and that’s a waste of time, energy, and money.

As a growth consulting agency, we can:

  • Tell you if your goals are wildly unrealistic (or not aggressive enough) 
  • Develop the roadmap and mile markers for achieving your goals
  • Set the metrics necessary to keep our team and yours on track 

We cannot:

  • Tell you what your goals should be
  • Determine your ideal client profile without your input
  • Set your growth targets without understanding your capacity and resources

As we head into the new year, now is the optimal time to strategize with your team about your growth objectives for 2025. Establish where you are now in terms of pipeline, revenue, and customer retention, and analyze your resources and budget to determine a percentage increase to shoot for next year. Ask yourself:

  • What’s your average client size and how many new clients can you realistically service?
  • What’s your client acquisition cost and lifetime value?
  • What’s your current conversion rate from prospect to client?
  • How much are you willing to invest in marketing to achieve your goals?

Then come talk to us. 

We’ll help you get there by building a strategic marketing plan aligned with your specific growth targets and business objectives.

A Simple Formula to Set Lead Generation Goals Tied to Revenue

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

Marketing leaders, tell me if you’ve been here before:

Your CEO sets an MQL lead goal of {insert absurd number here}, without giving you any context for how that number is expected to impact the business.

In reality, it’s an exercise to keep your team and the sales team busy. This becomes even more apparent when the goalposts keep moving quarter after quarter until unreasonable becomes unrealistic and unrealistic becomes impossible.

We’re not accepting this in 2025.

Instead, I’m going to give you a simple but highly valuable formula for setting proper, attainable lead generation goals that also drive results for your business.

First, identify your firm’s revenue targets for the year, as well as your average deal size. For example:

» Revenue goal: $2,000,000

» Average deal size: $50,000

Next, divide revenue by average deal size to calculate the number of deals you need to close: 

» $2,000,000/$50,000 = 40 deals

Take that number and divide it by your close rate to determine number of leads:

» 40/20% = 200 leads 

Now you have the number of leads you need to meet your revenue target. Personally, I like to add 5-10% to this number to make sure I’m giving my team a bit of cushion and setting them up for success.

Obviously, for more complex businesses this exercise gets more intensive. You may need to account for multiple business lines, include upsell and cross-sell opportunities, or deduct churn numbers from your revenue.

It should go without saying, but it often doesn’t, that reaching your new, appropriate lead goal number is contingent on establishing the right budget based on customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Here’s a quick rundown of how to calculate that:

→ First, CAC doesn’t just mean the actual dollar amount spent on digital advertising. It needs to include the cost of your marketing and sales teams, plus any technology and tools used to support your lead generation efforts.

→ For the sake of round numbers, let’s say your total CAC is $1,000. Continuing with our example from above: $1,000 x 200 leads = $200,000.

That’s the absolute minimum budget from which you can be expected to drive the leads your business needs to reach its revenue goals. I always advocate for additional spend to account for unexpected initiatives, priority changes, and major surprises in the market. 

Call me a nerd, but I love working with businesses to get these numbers right – even (especially!) the super complicated ones. If you want some help nailing down the right lead generation goals and accompanying budget for your 2025 objectives, shoot me a message and let’s have a conversation!

 

CEOs: Set Your Marketing Leaders Up for Success in 2025

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

As we approach the end of the year (!), I’ve spent a lot of time talking with my team and our clients about what they can do now to hit the ground running in 2025. 

One of the most overlooked but wildly important elements of a firm’s success is determining how leadership is going to be measured – marketing leaders in particular. Often, CMOs are held to hazy objectives or subjected to constantly moving goalposts, making it nearly impossible to point to the impact of marketing on the organization’s broader goals.  

Having worn the CMO hat myself, I know how difficult it is to do the job without knowing exactly what I’m working towards – and how motivating it is when I do. 

If you’re unsure about how to measure your marketing leader’s success, I’ve broken down five ways to do so:

1. Contribution to revenue: The first is probably the most important – and to be very clear, your marketing leader should want to be measured against the impact he or she has on revenue. That’s the sign of someone who understands the role marketing is supposed to be playing, and who has skin in the game when it comes to driving real business results.

Scoring against this goal requires setting up meticulous reporting and analysis (for both the marketing AND the sales team) of critical metrics like pipeline generation, lead response time, customer acquisition cost, and sales cycle length.

2. Lead generation: I don’t recommend this as a measure of success unless you’re selling into a large number of firms and executing pure volume plays to drive growth. If that applies to you, use your revenue goals and average sales close rate to determine how many leads per month you’ll need marketing to bring in.

Be sure the number you give them is realistic – otherwise, you’re setting the team up to fail OR to generate junk leads in pursuit of their goal, which only breeds animosity and mistrust between sales and marketing functions.

3. Opportunities and connections: Volume goes out the window when your firm is focused on selling into a few large enterprises rather than boiling the proverbial ocean. In this case, your marketing leader should be goaled on their team’s ability to create demand within these organizations, gain visibility with top executives, and tee up opportunities for the sales team to take across the finish line.

Sales and marketing alignment is always important, but it becomes especially so when organizations are hunting big enterprise deals. These teams need to work in lockstep to develop pitches, sales enablement resources, and messaging that reflects the conversations sales is having within these key accounts.

4. Audience growth: Your marketing team should be able to not only generate awareness for your firm, but also turn that attention into audience expansion and community-building through a consistent flywheel of educational content, compelling events, thought leadership and a highly active social media presence.

Social media followers and newsletter subscribers are basic barometers of audience growth, but you should also be looking for increases in unique website visits, branded traffic, engagement with emails,  and webinar and event attendance. As your audience grows, you should also see related indicators like shorter sales cycles and lower customer acquisition cost.

5. Growth of wallet share within existing clients: Client success, retention and expansion can’t just fall to your customer support function. Good marketing leaders understand the wealth of opportunities represented by your existing client base, from the ability to tap into case studies and testimonials to upsell and cross-sell promotions that not only add to the bottom line, but also create additional stickiness for the business.

Ideally, your marketing leader will be goaled on all or most of these objectives – and if they are, their compensation should be set accordingly. Define your marketing leader’s goals, communicate them clearly, and work together to set the team up for success.

Need more help? I absolutely love talking about how to maximize the potential of marketing, and I’ll always be an advocate for CMOs in this industry. Grab some time on my calendar here!

A Founders Formula for Building a Powerhouse Marketing Team: Who to Hire and When

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

 

In my role at localhost:10008/, I’ve had the opportunity to help a number of firms build or optimize their in-house marketing teams, many of whom were also orchestrating outsourced work across multiple agencies. And I’ve learned there’s a distinct formula for success when it comes to the timing of who to hire in house and what to outsource. 

The order of hiring, while contingent on budget and resources, has to be prescriptive and directly correlated to the level of sophistication your firm is ready to handle in-house versus leaning on the expertise of an outsourced agency to guide your marketing efforts.

See below for a rough sketch to work from.

 

Phase One

In-House Roles

Agency Roles
  • Marketing generalist focused
    on execution: social media, email,
    potentially light blog posts
    and landing pages 
  • Marketing strategy
  • Content
  • Design
  • Digital marketing/paid media

 

Ideally, you’ll work with an agency that can expertly handle all of the above. In this stage, marketing strategy could also be managed in house by a marketing-minded business leader, likely the founder.

Perhaps the most important thing you’ll do in this phase is establish the metrics that will guide your ongoing efforts. These KPIs need to be communicated effectively across your in-house and agency teams so everyone can work in sync toward the same goals.

 

Phase Two

In-House Roles

Agency Roles
  • Marketing generalist
  • + Content 
  • + Design
  • Marketing strategy
  • Digital marketing/paid media
  • Marketing operations
  • Extra support

 

By this stage, you can begin putting together and publishing assets in house, starting with a content specialist and adding a designer when you’re ready. Your agency can guide your strategy, optimize your digital efforts, and, in this phase, establish a solid foundation for your marketing operations to keep your lists and processes organized.

 

Phase Three

In-House Roles Agency Roles
  • Marketing generalist
  • Content
  • Design
  • + VP of Marketing
  • + Marketing operations
  • Marketing strategy
  • Digital marketing/paid media
  • Extra support 

 

Your VP of marketing should be a master manager of people and agencies, coordinating collaboration and campaign execution. He or she should be able to provide light strategy guidance, but at this stage, you’ll still need an agency for overall strategy, digital marketing, and extra support where necessary. 

In this phase, I also recommend bringing marketing operations in house. As your marketing efforts ramp up and lead generation accelerates, keeping your workflows streamlined, your lists clean and organized, and your marketing-to-sales handoff process seamless becomes even more critical. If I could do just one thing differently as I was building an internal team, it would be to hire marketing ops sooner!

 

Phase Four

In-House Roles Agency Roles
  • Marketing generalist
  • Content 
  • Design
  • VP of Marketing
  • Marketing operations
  • + Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
  • + Demand generation
  • Digital marketing/paid media
  • Extra support

 

It’s time to bring strategy in house under the leadership of a CMO — and strategy is the key here, as a lot of organizations will hire CMOs who are more adept people managers than true strategic visionaries. You’re looking for a complementary partnership between a CMO who can manage up, earning a seat at the leadership table, and a VP of Marketing who can manage down, keeping the day-to-day tactics in motion and optimized.

In this stage, the marketing generalist is either phased out or steps into a more specialized role on the team.

 

Phase Five

In-House Roles Agency Roles
  • Content 
  • Design
  • VP of Marketing
  • Marketing operations
  • Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
  • Demand generation
  • + Events
  • Digital marketing/paid media
  • Specialized strategic consulting
  • Extra support

 

At this stage, your marketing engine is humming; if events are part of your firm’s overall growth strategy, you’ll want to add an events specialist to optimize your presence and maximize that fairly expensive investment. 

You’ll notice we still recommend outsourcing digital marketing, even for the most sophisticated and mature marketing organizations. Here’s why: by this phase, a good digital marketing agency will know the nuances of your business, your target audience, and your competitors’ campaigns inside and out. That means they can effortlessly fine-tune campaigns and critical metrics like cost per lead and client acquisition cost to help you make the most of your budget. Most agencies also have greater visibility into the competitive landscape than your in-house team does, giving you an extra advantage.

At this point, you might also want to consider retaining an agency for specialized support conceptualizing and executing innovative strategies outside of your typical campaigns. Think of this as a consulting partnership to amplify your already high-performing marketing efforts.

Finally, I don’t think there’s a single phase in your growth journey wherein you wouldn’t benefit from extra support. As you hire, build your team, and continue evolving your business, you’re going to need extra hands to fill gaps and keep your engine running smoothly. This is where an agency that’s built to scale up and down with your firm becomes an invaluable extension of your team.

 

How to Know If You’re Paying Too Much for Leads

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

Are you happy with what you’re paying your marketing agency for leads? For leads that convert to clients?

If you answered ‘yes,’ – why?

I’ve spoken with a number of prospects recently who have no problem paying what we know are exorbitantly high cost-per-lead and client acquisition costs – simply because they don’t know any better.

On one particular call, we realized this prospect was paying a staggering 10 times more than their peers for the same quality of leads.

This tells me one of two things is happening:

  • Either the agency has no idea how to optimize CPL and client acquisition cost (CAC)
    -OR-
  • The agency is taking advantage of them.

This is why it’s so wildly important to understand the CPL and CAC benchmarks for the types of clients you’re trying to attract, especially if you’re outsourcing your digital marketing.

At the minimum, be able to answer these questions:

  • What should you be paying for a lead?
  • What percentage of those leads should you expect to convert if you, along with your agency, are running a well-optimized marketing engine?

In my in-house marketing leadership roles, I always held my team accountable to meeting or exceeding the benchmarks of metrics that actually matter. I think it’s even more important for us to do the same thing at localhost:10008/. Firms trust us with their growth goals and their budgets – it’s our obligation to do what’s best for them.

Kelly Waltrich is Co-Founder & CEO of localhost:10008/. Contact her with question. 

Don’t Develop a Marketing Strategy Without Data

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

I was talking to a firm recently that wanted feedback on their marketing strategy. But when I asked them to back into how they arrived at the strategy itself, they couldn’t tell me:

➡️ Exactly what happens to leads when they hit their CRM
➡️ How quickly prospects are moving through the pipeline
➡️ Whether acquisition costs are trending up or down
➡️ Which channels are driving the best opportunities
➡️ What objection reasons are being given when opportunities move to closed-lost
➡️ The questions prospects are asking in sales meetings
➡️ The competitors they’re losing to, and why

How can you develop or refine a marketing strategy without knowing anything about what’s driving business or causing deals to stall? Marketing strategy is predicated on a constant flow of timely customer and performance insights from across the business.

If you’re running marketing in house, it’s vital to eliminate the silos between departments, particularly sales and marketing, that prevent the transfer of this information.

And if you’re working with a marketing agency, you need to be collecting and sharing this type of data with them. Otherwise, they’ll be forced to develop your strategy in a vacuum – and good marketing is never built on assumptions.

Kelly Waltrich is Co-Founder & CEO of localhost:10008/. Contact her with question.