I was talking with a client the other day and he was feeling a little bit overwhelmed. In the midst of our work together he fell down a deep, dark rabbit hole of opinions around ICPs and signals and cold outreach and offers and everything. He started questioning the path that he is on. I told him that all the other advice that he reads is probably right in some respect for somebody, but none of that stuff is crafted around what he needs. That YouTube video promising skyrocketing revenue, incredible profits, and live-on-the-beach kind of freedom might be perfect for the person that made it. That doesn't mean it's going to work for you. 

He agreed and then started asking how to handle a client asking questions about their current approach and suggesting strategies that almost certainly came after hearing a popular marketing podcast. 

I asked if the suggestions were good. He said, "Generally speaking, yes, but they don't really apply to the situation that this client is in." 

I said, "Cool you've just learned a really important lesson. Information is completely free. Context is the expensive part." 

I don't know if you remember way back when ChatGPT just came out. The experience wasn’t always amazing because it kept on forgetting things. As AI context windows increased in size, it was able to think about things for a longer period of time and ingest more information to help it understand what's going on. That plus memory has made AI pretty damn useful. But to utilize all of that increased information took an extraordinary infrastructure build out. Billions and billions of dollars of chips and data warehouses just so AI could remember the last handful of conversations you had. 

But today, even the most advanced models sometimes forget what the hell is going on, who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. Context is really expensive because it requires connecting the past to the present and projecting into the future. And if you are Nvidia, you clearly are in a position to charge a premium for that. 

Actually it has a lot to do with your agency. 

I don't know if you have ever been client-side and hired an agency. It is enormously frustrating. The client spends a lot of time understanding the context in which the agency operates. The client provides the agency deep context about their business. A relationship based on mutual understanding begins to form with the sales team or the pitch team. The client feels understood in that context.

Then like ChatGPT back in the day, the agency onboarding call starts and the account manager says something fantastic like, "Hey, so tell me about your business. What do you sell? And who is your target client?" 

In an instant, all that informational and relational context fell by the wayside. As a client, having to tell your story all over again and try to contextualize things is maddening and it fans the flames of buyer’s remorse. The onboarding & delivery team is thinking about capacity constraints, reporting needs, and all of sorts of other stuff, so they, too, are frustrated that they have to do repeat work to rebuild context. Even if that onboarding experience turns out to be fantastic, the initial loss of context depletes any trust that was built with the client and any sense of confidence and momentum for the onboarding team. The agency didn’t commit to content continuity. 

Do you know what that tells me? 

This is why agencies spit out information reports, & slide decks that have no relevance for their clients. The client is disconnected and has a harder time understanding the value of what you deliver - regardless of your agency's specialty.

Now even if you and your clients are able to navigate this ongoing context continuity, your account manager needs to have the ability to understand what needs to stay in context and what should leave. What I see so often is that agencies underinvest in their account management function because we have over-valued the execution and deliverable part of the agency-client relationship. Your team is delivering the things in the SOW and controlling scope. If context falls away, the SOW and scope won't matter because your client will churn.

If you think about it the account manager is the NVIDIA of the agency-client relationship. They are the ones who are in charge of connecting the past to the present and projecting into the future. They are the context layer for the relationship. 

Last issue, in those graphs showing the difference between client opinion and agency opinion, less than 40% of brands felt like their agency was effectively delivering services. And only 42% & 44% of brands thought that agencies were transparent enough and communicative enough. Without saying it directly all of those rotten numbers tell me one thing: 

Another client I spoke with last week fumbled an opportunity. The prospect felt like the agency’s target outcomes were unrealistic. The outcomes were based on the agency’s previous experience with similar clients. But the prospect literally said “I give you a 2% chance to hit those goals.”

The conversation didn't get better from there. 

The agency owner delivered defensible, valuable information, but without delivering all the context that made their information defensible, it seemed made up. The prospect brought 10 years of operational context and didn’t share the same viewpoint. Lack of context has turned a mutual great fit into an opportunity that I don't think is gonna close. (I’ll keep you updated, tho…)

IMHO, the big mistake that our intrepid agency owner made was two-fold:

The agency didn't deliver enough of their context or invest enough to understand their prospect's context.

Prospects and clients have narrow perspectives that are very deep. They look at the world through the single lens of their business.

Agencies have very broad context. They are looking at a much wider series of changes and influences. Bringing the context that you have to bear PLUS learning how to extract the context that your client or prospect has is imperative. An offer without mutual context is DOA…every time.

Similar to your account management function which provides client-specific context continuity, your agency needs to have a similar commitment to maintaining continuity. Client goals, strategies, strategic initiatives, cultural touch points, are the pieces that you need to deeply understand so that you can bring relevance to all of your clients.

There hasn’t been a ton of tactical “do this”, “don’t do that” kind of advice today. This is about a strategic mindset shift for you as an agency owner.

Context continuity demands an agency-wide commitment to maintaining, nurturing and understanding context. Reporting, audits and dashboards are the sources of information. Compared to the cost of an account manager, setting up a Google Studio dashboard is really cheap. But that dashboard doesn't provide the context and relevancy of how your services connect to things vital to your client.

Agencies often over-index on performance data and volume of deliverables.  As we've talked about previously, clients really like those things. But without translation of that information into context, you are simply inviting “delayed onset buyer's remorse” (aka “churn”). 

You are the Jensen Huang of your agency. You lead the investment into the design and integration of NVIDIA chips that feed your agency context.

With that kind of commitment to context infrastructure, your agency can understand the past, contextualize the present & project a future for your clients (and your own business). 

The last few issues have focused a lot on communications - in the sales process, with team members & especially clients. Poor client communication isn’t just a recipe for churn, it sets margins on fire - especially when you are doing the back and forth around email & page design approvals.

That’s why I’ve started encouraging my clients to use BugHerd. It’s this deceptively simple visual feedback too that allows you & your clients to comment right inside your web page, content & design work. You & your team no longer have to decipher emails like “move that box thingy up a little and put it near the green part, ok?”

BugHerd brings clarity - you get to drop your comments & questions RIGHT where they are needed. BugHerd brings efficiency - no more moving feedback & responses back and forth from Slack or email to your workspace. Best of all, however, BugHerd brings structure to all of this by connecting to your favorite task management & workflow tools. They've got over 20 native integrations. With Zapier, Make & webhook integrations, you can plug BugHerd into any workflow or tool.

There are 2 more places where BugHerd really shines. 

First is in your team - you’ve got employees and contractors in all sorts of time zones & it’s not easy to get everyone on a Zoom call to collaborate. With BugHerd, managing and actioning team & client feedback asynchronously now becomes more integrated, more trackable & more efficient because now specific feedback is annotated to the EXACT spot on the page & is tied to your task management, bug tracker, and even directly to your Git repos.

The second is kind of sneaky. BugHerd now has a public feedback module where you can get direct feedback from web visitors. Connect BugHerd to your UI/UX team and your CS team and you’ve got an amazing feedback loop that keeps helping your site get better.

BugHerd isn’t some sort of vibe-coded plug-in - this is made for web and content teams of all sizes. It’s part of every web project at places like Nissan & Hilton. Believe it or not, BugHerd is good enough for the Ivy League - Harvard & Yale both use it for course feedback. And it’s used by thousands of agencies across the globe.

If you want to check out BugHerd (and I really suggest you do, because clarity & efficiency are keys to agency growth), pricing starts under $50/mo and they’ve got a 7-Day free trial - no risk, 100% reward, PLUS Agency Inner Circle readers save 20% off of your 1st 3 months - check out BugHerd today!

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