now this video only applies to the business owners out there because I'm
gonna be walking you through my method to hiring marketing agencies without
wasting any unnecessary money I'm gonna won't be walking you through kind of my
four steps from research to knowing my numbers to the questions to the
conversations I have with the marketing agencies I work with to help me take my
business to the next level revenue and profit wise stay tuned
Now I don't play around in my business I don't like losing money but and I don't like doing
a lot of work I don't have any employees that work for me I have zero employees
that work for me and we do three point four million dollars per year now to be
able to do that sort of numbers you have to have a lot of people that I mean even
though they're not my employees I need a lot of help and that's why I work with a
lot of different marketing agencies to help advertise my company manage other
aspects of all the stuff related to running a business here now the way I
start is I start everything with competitor research
I don't hire a company unless I know they're working with my competitor who's
more successful than me everything in my business is around knowing who my
competitors are that have bigger businesses than me and just ruthlessly
ruthlessly copying everything they do until I'm at the same level or better
than them part of that ruthless copying means I am figuring out what ad agencies
or what marketing agencies or what development agencies or what support
agencies my competitors are working with and the way I do that is pretty
old-school frankly I go I go to conferences and I go to meetups and I go
to industry events and I'm talking or just I'm talking on skype but I talk
with different people in the industry to figure out who's working with who I ask
people for recommendations who are you working with if I see somebody who has
some ads I like I say who working with to put those ads up now
running a business is the same as like affiliate marketing and affiliate
marketing you are you're basically copying you know the best way to do a
Philly 't marketing is to copy ads that are already working for somebody else
it's no different in business you can just simply find a business that you
like and copy as many aspects of it as you can or that you can afford it's not
difficult you can hire people's employees from them you can hire their
agencies from them you can do anything you can to to to get what whatever your
competitor is doing whatever relationships your competitor has
whatever media outlets or key figures that are in that company you can always
find a way to get some of that for yourself either by hiring the same
hiring the same agencies I found is the lowest hanging fruit to literally
stealing your competitors business so as I said I talk with a lot of my
competitors I do research one other way that I found with mediocre results is
actually looking up different ad agencies and seeing what you know seeing
who they post as client testimonials sometimes you'll see somebody post a
client you know a post a client testimonial and there'll be a they'll be
one of my competitors and then I'll try to work with that agency at least test
them out the next important thing in terms of hiring a marketing agency or a
freelance or whoever you're hiring to help your business is knowing your
numbers okay know what you're willing to spend with that freelancer or that
agency or that consultant know what numbers you need to back yourself into
now for my business I'm willing to spend up to twenty thousand dollars per market
engaging see I work with but again I'm only looking to work with a very
specific type of marketing agency and they need to have been working with one
of my competitors and produce results for them so that narrows the field a lot
but if I know my numbers I know I'll never lose money my risk tolerance in my
business is twenty thousand dollars it may be different in your business but I
stick very firmly to my risk tolerance in my business I'm willing to spend
twenty thousand dollars to test out a new
agency and then I will measure if I got results or if I didn't usually I either
lose a lot of money or I'll make a ton of money there's generally no in between
there's generally no judgment calls it's either A or B now before I work with an
agency I come prepared with a lot of questions okay you want to ask whoever
you're thinking of working with a lot of questions to see if they're a good fit
now the questions I ask people are these are some of the following questions I
asked them if they are doing the work themselves or if they were working with
contractors if they if the people they're working with our in-house
meaning in an office I asked the people if their employees first of all an
employee means they're working only for this person or if they're contractors
and if some if ad agency I'm hiring is working with contractors it means the
people they're working with can work for anyone
I give preference to people who are working with employees meaning that they
it means the agency has a stable business and they are working
exclusively with certain people that you know I wouldn't be able to work with
otherwise the other question I ask people is how much is their largest
clients spending with them per month or a variation of that is for non marketing
agencies is how what are the results that their largest client is getting
with them as a direct result of their work I want to know what the top level
of this agency is what the potential I have to gain from working with a
particular marketing agency now in my business the way I manage my business is
I only look at opportunities that can potentially double my business again I'm
not interested in working with a marketing agency who can make me an
extra hundred thousand dollars a month I'm only interested in working with
marketing agencies that can make me an extra half a million dollars per month
in gross revenue that's very important to me so that mean that narrows the
field and that means I'm only working with agencies in certain fields of
marketing now I also asked the agencies I'm working with what who are their
other clients that are similar to me again this is sort of a loaded
question because oftentimes I've already done my research
and I already know or have heard of that they are working with a similar client
to mine or one of my competitors I look to verify that information and see if
they actually named that they're working with a competitor of mine because that's
important to me again I want to work with people who are doing effective
advertising in the same field as me I don't like taking risks and I don't like
taking unnecessary risks other questions I ask are what is the role of the person
I'm talking to or what is the role of the owner of the agency are they doing
any hands-on work themselves or are they sort of just an account manager or am I
going to be handed off to an Account Manager and be working with other
employees I just like to have an idea of it doesn't matter to me whether or not
the person is you know that I'm talking to you know the salesperson or the owner
of the agency necessarily does the work but I like to have a clear idea of the
roles of everyone in the agency so I know who's doing the work and who's not
doing the work other questions to ask or the fee structure I usually leave that
to the end because people are kind of like iffy about the fee structure now
usually that you know the cost of working with somebody is like the
biggest factor that people are scared about for me cost is it's a very simple
decision for me it's either you know I'm I I come prepared
remember I'm coming to the table with a number in mind I know I'm willing to
tolerate up to spending up to $20,000 so as long as it's under that I say yes we
can do this if it's over that I say no I can't do this unless the cost is this
and I leave it at that it's very simple I like keeping my decision-making to
binary decisions I don't like having you know you know I didn't get a good enough
feeling or I did get a good enough feeling the way I do decision making is
just binary either it falls within my parameters or it doesn't and it makes
it makes life a lot easier for me that way the last but not least you know once
you've prepared your questions I gave you a couple have a conversation with
the agency that you're interested in hiring or the freelancer I guess you
could say if you're working with freelancers generally how I do
conversations as I say okay I like setting a structure or an agenda
to a conversation because otherwise when you're hiring somebody new the
conversations can ramble on I do I used to do this the same when I hired
employees I would say okay we you know let's let structure the conversation
this way I'll tell you a little bit about myself in my company and what our
goals are you tell me a little bit about your yourself your company and what you
know what what a good client looks like to you and then we will go then I'd like
to discuss you know some questions I have for you and how we can potentially
work together that's how I structure my conversations me you working together
and that tends to keep conversations from going on wild tangents that'll end
up wasting both people's time and wasting your time or another person's
time is just generally disrespectful so I hope this helps you out whether you're
looking to hire a marketing agency for your business or a freelance or a
consultant I hope my knowledge here helps you get a little better
understanding of how you might be able to approach hiring companies or
freelancers without wasting money now if so give this video a like or if you have
any questions for me or for ideas for future teaching topics post it in the
comments below if you'd like to learn a little bit more about what I do for a
living to make my income online I do what's called affiliate marketing and if
you subscribe to my channel you'll get a free course on how to do affiliate
marketing speak soon thanks for tuning in see you in my next video and make
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