In partnership with
| ISSUE №199 · AGENCY SALES | AGENCY POSITIONING |
All The Cool Agencies Are Doing It. What Are You, A Loser?
We all really just want to fit in. There is an enormous human drive to belong. We all want to be part of the club. Once you've been accepted and are on the other side of the velvet rope. You tend to assimilate to the standards and expectations of that group.
When I went in high school, there were the jocks, the nerds, the stoners, the popular kids, and then everybody else, if you were lucky. You were in more than one of those groups, so you could always find safe harbor, regardless of the social situation. But for the people that didn't fit into one of those groups, they were unaffiliated and left on their own, and not part of something. If you’ve ever seen the John Hughes movies of the 1980s (I went to high school in the 1980s…), like 16 Candles, you get what I mean…
You get status and safety from belonging. It’s just human nature.
My Agency Brethren, Some of Y’all Are Taking This Too Far
Using data from our agency directory - Agency Field Guide - we discovered that so many of you are using almost the exact same language to describe yourself. This is across agency size, agency location, and agency client focus. This is based on almost 15,000 agency websites that we’ve crawled…
Data courtesy of Agency Field Guide
62% Of Agencies Use Some Version These Meaningless Agency Tropes…
DATA-DRIVEN - 44.6%
ROI-FOCUSED - 24%
CLIENT-CENTRIC - 22.8%
EXTENSION OF YOUR TEAM - 8.8%
NOT TYPICAL - 1.7%
I'll be honest, I was surprised that "extension of your team" and "not typical" were so low. In my experience, those two always come up when there's some sort of group discussion around what makes your agency different, but that's a much smaller sample than what's in Agency Field Guide.
Leave Granola and get up to 12 months free of Wispr Flow Notetaker + Dictation
If you have paid time left on an individual Granola plan, we'll match it with a Wispr Flow subscription that includes Notetaker and dictation, and add bonus time, up to 12 months total. Sign in or create a Wispr account and submit proof of your plan to check eligibility.
OK, Timbo, We Use The Same Words. What’s The Big Deal If What The Words Say Are True?
it isn't that any of these phrases is wrong to say. It's just that when everybody says the same thing, those words cease to have meaning, and they make you forgettable because you sound EXACTLY like 62% of the agencies that prospects might talk to…
I would guess if I were to split this by type of agency, we might have fewer creative agencies suggesting that they are data-driven, but in general, if nearly half of agencies are saying one thing, wouldn't you imagine that that's table stakes?
Just like “best practices” (which is consultant-speak for “shit other companies do”), no prospective client is going to buy “table stakes”. Table stakes aren’t enticing, unless everyone that prospect has spoken to has explicitly said, "We don't have table stakes".
Minimum Viable Product Is Fine (If You Are A VC-Backed Startup), But Minimum Viable Positioning Is A Surefire Way To Waste A Ton of Time
There's all sorts of advice around product development saying that you've got to start out with an MVP, and if you are rolling out a new service, you should try to sell it before you actually do it. That way, you know that there is sufficient market interest.
All of that minimum viable product stuff is fine, if you are building a technology product or a hardware product.
But in a service business like agencies, there is no such thing as a minimum viable service. It just doesn’t exist - the service you provide either gives the client what they need or not. You don’t get the same benefits that pure tech companies get because they are selling a future roadmap. Agencies are typically selling this month's performance or this project's delivery. The timeframes are much more immediate.
Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
How Do We Break Out of Minimum Viable Positioning (aka Trying To Sell On Anything Other Than The Lowest Price)?
Positioning & sales are actually part of a spectrum. They are intricately related, and your positioning defines what you can sell, how much you can sell it for, and how much trust it takes the prospect to become a client.
If you start with minimal or less differentiation, like those almost 1 in 10 agencies who hit 3 or more of these positioning cliches (I would guess that they are probably below “minimum differentiation” and somewhere in the “did you TRY to make it this bad?” category), you don't really give your prospect anything to hold on to. It’s like your messaging is like running water - you understand what it is, but as soon as you try to hold on to it, it skips away through your fingers.
Think of the steps below like a ladder - we are going to start at the lowest rung and get higher as we go along - and these rungs are intentionally generalized. We aren’t talking about Return on Understanding or tactical positioning:
Positioning Ladder
Limits: You position around the limits of who or what you serve. You express your limits vertical focus, or channel focus, or even area focus. Think of an agency that only serves dentists, or only does paid search, or only serves North Carolina. none of these are bad, and in many respects, it really helps your potential market to know if you are the potential right fit. The ecommerce store can ignore all dental-only agencies, the business who needs creative help can skip the paid search agency, and the Rhode Island business can skip the North Carolina-focused agency.
Options: This is the realm, typically, of “full-service” or “integrated” agencies. These agencies offer multiple services - typically without one being a standout. This positioning is helpful because it serves businesses that don’t have clear definitions of where they fit or what they need. This agency differentiates itself by having fewer limits and more options. The “full service” agencies that combine vertical or location limits alongside options are pretty well positioned to win when the prospect needs full service and fits within one of the limitations.
Experience: This agency is almost always multi- or full-service, but they differentiate by the people that they have worked with. For instance, there are 37 agencies in our data that have mentioned or have case studies indicating that they’ve worked with Starbucks. If the agency can serve an enormous brand with remarkable access to resources, it is unlikely that they can serve a local coffee roaster, too. These agencies differentiate by showing you that they’ve worked with enormous brands - and if you aren’t one of them, they probably aren’t right for you.
Problem Solvers: Typically, these are tackling whole business problems. They aren't limited to a business type, a location, or even a marketing channel. They are horizontal. They diagnose, create strategy and they may or may not handle the execution side of things. They typically work with large or very complex businesses and bring a wide array of disciplines to bear on a project. They might build new software for a client or use data analysis that isn’t possible in the client’s current configuration. These blur the line between agency and consultant.
If you think about your positioning as:
the assemblage of limits or the lack thereof
the combination of broad services and vertical limitations
broad services and your client experience as a differentiator
your approach to marketing as a differentiator
These are ways to really start to break out from saying the same things that the majority of your competition is saying.
Are you using one of these meaningless positioning statements? Need help ? LMK or BOOK A CALL
Quick Heads Up:
If you haven’t already, submit your agency to Agency Field Guide - it’s 100% FREE.
Once you’ve started your positioning journey, maybe you out to continue to refine, expand and share it with a newsletter from WTF Growth. We’ve got launch pricing in effect.
State of Product reveals what AI still hasn’t solved
80% of product professionals say AI helps them ship faster, but customers aren’t seeing value any sooner. Atlassian’s State of Product 2027 explores the gains AI is delivering and the challenges that remain, from decision-making that hasn’t kept pace to gut instinct overriding customer evidence.
Our sponsorships are ads (obviously - duh). But some of the companies or services linked in our content may pay us a minimal commission if you buy something from them. Potential payment is never a factor in what we link to, and we have direct experience with every company or service where you can buy something that we mention in our content.
