How to Hire a Marketing Agency

Kathy (host):  

Well, hello there and welcome back to Help! My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina.

Kathy (host):  

If your business does not have a solid marketing strategy in place, it just won’t thrive. And while you can have a general idea of how to promote your products and services, it’s really hard to keep up with the rapid changes in marketing trends and technology. Hiring a marketing agency is a potentially cost-effective way to attract new customers, boost brand awareness and increase sales. Because by delegating your marketing efforts to a specialized team of experts, you free up your and your team’s time to focus on other aspects of your business, such as production, delivery, and sales. So the question is, how do you hire the right marketing agency? And what should you be looking for? And how does working with an agency even look like if you’ve never done that before? 

Kathy (host):

And just a quick reminder before we jump into the episode. All of the episodes on this podcast including this one come with timestamps for topics that we discuss and each episode has its own blog post as well. You can find all the links and the detailed topics in the episode show notes. 

Kathy (host):

So our guests today are Alicia Williams, She is the CEO of Aliste Marketing. And Chris Viscomi who is the Co-founder of Aliste Marketing. They are a boutique marketing agency that helps companies build tactical marketing plans consisting of out-of-the-box marketing techniques, cutting-edge videos, and social media strategies that give brands a voice to attract new clients. Join us!

Kathy (host):  

Alicia, and Chris, welcome to the show.

Alicia (guest): 

Thank you for having us.

Kathy (host):  

Thanks so much for being here. When you’re running a business, and it doesn’t matter, what’s happened is that it’s a startup, but it’s an established business or one that it’s small and growing, which is what we’re focusing on in this podcast, it’s really important that you have solid marketing in place. And there’s a lot of options for you to use your marketing budget, you can either hire an in-house marketing person, you can hire a freelancer, you can work with an agency, or can do any type of those combinations. There’s a lot of options when it comes to marketing help. But what we really going to be focusing today is on marketing agencies, and when would a business hire or marketing agency over hiring an in-house marketer or work with a freelancer? When would they start doing that?

Alicia (guest):  

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that’s where a lot of businesses are kind of struggling to decide to be hired- a direct-hire, and they become really intertwined within the culture within the company. Or do we work with a freelance that can just help us get by through this growing pain or the third option is working with a marketing agency?

Alicia (guest):

We fell into that marketing agency bucket. We’ve found the majority of our clients is that when they do the route of the direct hire. They have that person boots on the ground, which is really important. And for us as an agency, we need somebody in-house, that’s our go-to person. Whether that’s a business owner, traditionally, it’s not right, because they’re the visionary, they’re running the business. 

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Alicia (guest):

Many times it is the CMO in that seat or similar position, and they find that having an agency that has built an ecosystem of talented professionals, allows them to scale faster about way more work than if they hired an in-house, entire marketing department. You have people internally taking vacations, maternity leaves, and disability, you have all these variables that happen just in normal life. 

Alicia (guest):

And with an agency, their job, ideally, is to make sure that the client, the company never feels those hiccups. They have no idea when the team is away. They have no idea when somebody’s on maternity leave, or if somebody’s out sick. 

Alicia (guest):

And so there’s definitely a huge advantage to working and partnering with an agency for these companies. The other is when I was talking with companies that are making that decision is that there is not one person that can do everything, right. Like you’re really skilled at videography, really skilled at photography. You’re really good writer, you’re really good at social media, you’re good at SEO, right? But you can’t do all of those. And you may dabble in each of those and be efficient enough, but you’re never excelling at one of those areas. And so the majority of companies realize that and they say,”Okay, well, I need this campaign to be rock solid and produce the metrics in order for the leadership team or the board to continually invest and they see those profits and working with an agency says, “All right, well, we have a video on the buffer, that’s all they do. We have an SEO specialist, we have an ad specialist.” That’s all they do. So the work quality is way higher than putting all of those roles on one person. Long-winded but there you go.

Kathy (host):  

You have access to more specialized talent than you normally would. And it comes with the benefit of an all-inclusive price versus going and hiring someone individually. You have to need, for example, SEO specialists, a videographer. Me also, if you’re what I’m hearing is also and you know, I’m as a Fractional CFO, I am also concerned from a budget perspective, that it’s a lot more budget efficient if you hire an agency versus going out there in the market and hiring all these people individually. Correct?

Alicia (guest): 

Yeah. And obviously, the caveat to that, too, though, is really aligning with the right agency. And I’m not just speaking of this of like, “Oh, work with us hire us.” It’s more of does that agency fit within the culture of the internal team? Do they play really well in the sandbox? Are they willing to go above and beyond to make sure that if the company has a goal of a certain metric? It could be a transition a new brand. It could be leads generated whatever that that goal or that milestone is that needs to be hit. Do they bring a fresh perspective – perspective, an outside perspective, and then somebody that’s internal in the weeds doing it? 

Alicia (guest):

From a budgetary standpoint? If you pay an agency anywhere between two hundred, and three hundred thousand dollars a year, for example, how many people internally could you get for that same amount? And would they be of the same caliber that an agency could be able to pump that out faster, better, stronger? So there’s a ton of different pros on it, and very little cons if you are aligned with the right agencies that really integrate themselves closely. 

Alicia (guest):

But many of our clients are the CMOS, and they are the visionaries, they’re the strategists, right? And they’re not going to hire somebody in-house that’s just really good at video are just really good at SEO. They need to work with an agency like ours, for example, that pulls our own creative, talented individuals to be able to do the work for them. And then they don’t have to manage that. Right? The management time. I mean, that’s like an unspoken time is a money, but like to manage a project and manage all of these different people. In order for that marketing vision to come to life. You need another full-time person to do that.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah. And you mentioned something really important about the agency being online with the business and their vision. What are some of the common mistakes that you see people making when they’re going out there in the market and researching these agencies that are trying to hire? Is there anything specifically that you see people go and doing wrong while they’re doing the research?

Alicia (guest):

Not necessarily wrong. I think that there’s so much information out there. So you’re trying to figure out what’s good information and what’s not good information. I think there’s a lot of resources out there that make brands and companies think that they can do it themselves. And I would say you can, but that’s going to be your full-time focus and job not actually building the business. 

Alicia (guest):

So do it yourself or the resources out there are very misleading. They only touched the surface level. 

Alicia (guest):

The other mistake is not really understanding what your goals are. So we always ask our clients, are you trying to get more leads? Trying to get more brand exposure? Are you trying to just organize what you already have and leverage it? Like what are you trying to do? Otherwise, you’re going to be sold? So many different things that don’t actually pinpoint what your business needs at that time?

Kathy (host):  

And is there any pre-work that a company can do before they’re hiring an agency? Should they hire someone who’s focused on brand strategy and figure that out first, before they hire an agency? Or is there anything else that they need to have in place before they’re ready for an agency like yours?

Chris (guest): 

I think one of the best things that they can do is really kind of, like Alicia said, was to decide exactly what it is that you’re looking for, but also have like expectations of what it is that they’re hoping to gain from it. That’s kind of one of the biggest things and then also just a budget. I think a lot of people get scared about talking about budgets. 

Chris (guest): 

But when you actually talk with the marketing agency and are very open with them, and let them know where you sit, they can literally develop a strategy that falls within your budget that can get them the best results possible. 

Chris (guest): 

I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they feel like if they share that budget a marketing company would say, “Okay, we can do everything for this amount of money”, but that’s actually not the case. You know, really kinda, especially with us. We love our clients when they’re open books because that’s kind of how we are.

Alicia (guest):  

That’s a good one. Like budget-wise, I’m sure we’ll even touch upon this later on but many types, the investment levels, deal with what your priorities are coming into having that understanding of what your priorities are, and then what your investment is, and do they align? And if they don’t, then how do we restructure it so that you do know when the time is right?

Chris (guest): 

Yeah. And I think also setting expectations so I think a lot of times when companies get into this perspective of it, the marketing is not really their specialty of it, right? If they have the expectation, that things are going to start happening right away, they may be a little bit disappointed. It’s kind of those things that whatever marketing company you decide to go with, you should definitely have that conversation with, “Okay, how long is it gonna take me to get the results I’m looking for? Is my budget enough to cover with that aspect of it is?”

Kathy (host):  

I want to talk a little bit more about expectations. Because marketing, let’s say that you hire an agency, or maybe even you have a marketer in-house, they don’t have a magic wand that things just magically start working immediately, right? I mean, you have a little bit of a ramp-up. Usually, it’s a couple of months, sometimes even a year. So what would be a realistic expectation for marketing to start working? And I think the most important question here, too, is, as you’re patiently waiting for the work that either the agency or your in-house person working on or whatever, what are some of the, I would say, signs that the path that you have chosen is actually the right path? And things are really happening? Is there anything that you could say, “You know what, the marketing agency that are higher is really doing a good job, even though things are still in this progress developing stage?” 

Alicia (guest):  

Yeah. I think you have a mix of those quick wins, and then those longer-term wins, and identifying if an agency is a right fit- personality-wise, you can get a hold of them, they are responsive, and they’re able to be extremely transparent on what their deliverables are. And then where are those deliverables in the pipeline? So who on their team is working on it? When should it be complete? That transparency should be happening immediately? Those are your quick wins. If that’s not happening, then then you need to kind of rehash if that’s the right fit for you. 

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Alicia (guest):  

The other quick wins are looking at, “Okay, the strategy, what is the strategy that we’re going after? Are the buyers the right ones? What are the visual components look like? And how do we compile them all together so it’s really cohesive.” That’s another quick one, right? That usually happens within the first several months of working with an agency. 

Alicia (guest):  

And then when you actually roll out the strategy, then the focus on the measurement changes, right? Because we want to make sure that the campaigns are working. So the website traffic, the leads being generated, the products being sold, the social engaged, the videos about. All of the above, right, the checklist, and some things you’ll see right away, leads coming in videos being watched.

Alicia (guest):

But the majority of time, we tell clients within that seven to 10-month timeframe, that’s when you’re going to really start seeing the metrics and the momentum of SEO show. And once you get that momentum, you’re going to reap the rewards for years to come. So there’s quick wins, the transparency is huge. 

Alicia (guest):  

And then evaluating in every quarter, where are we what do we need to improve, but longer term making the decision if a marketing agency is really working for you, and the SEO is really working for you. It really should be determined after that six-month mark. 

Alicia (guest):  

And so many companies, they don’t see those quick wins. And so they’re like, “Oh, it’s not working guys, we’ll try something else. And they invest a lot into ads, or they stop blogging only after two months. SEO especially takes time to build so.”

Kathy (host):  

So would you say that in a six-month is a realistic timeframe to start seeing, not just the quick wins, but also a little bit more long-term?

Alicia (guest):   

Yes, I would say six. 

Chris (guest):   

I would say at the six-month mark, you should start seeing your marketing program kind of move forward. You’re going to start seeing the foundational pieces should start being to be complete. There definitely should be progress moving along the whole process, right? 

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Chris (guest):  

So you ask the question, “Does a marketing company have enough to do a good job or not? You know, it’s kind of like if they are working with you throughout the whole process of it.” They’re having those open conversations with you. There’s really should never be any kind of question in regards to where you’re headed. So throughout the whole time, you’re going to have those conversations of  “Look, this is working really well. This isn’t working very well. We should kind of alter or change the direction that we’re going and have those kinds of conversations with them.” 

Chris (guest):

So yes, I think the six-month mark is a great aspect. We should start seeing your metrics kind of improved and the interactions between all the posts really kind of start engaging more like you should definitely start seeing the build-up. Then, what you would have seen the previous month, but after the six-month mark if you haven’t seen what you’re hoping to see then you should obviously Have a conversation with the marketing company, really kind of understand what their plan is for next couple months to kind of see, is it worth it to keep moving forward with them or not?

Kathy (host):  

And how does this look like on a day-to-day scale, for example? And I know it really depends on an agency and the way how they operate. But is there a general guideline? Should you have a weekly meeting with them? Is there like a probably not daily, I think that would be a little too much. But how does that work look like from the operational standpoint, on a week-to-week or month-to-month basis?

Chris (guest): 

We typically like to have at least weekly conversations with our clients just so they understand what’s going on. Honestly, the day-to-day, when we work with a company, we want them to literally forget about marketing, and let them focus on what’s important, which is running the business and growing the business. 

Chris (guest):

So literally, once a week, we’ll have a conversation with our customers, informing them what went on, and at the end of it, you should be completely caught up to what’s going on and hopefully have that relief of, “Okay, they’re handling it, and I don’t even have to worry about it.” We actually even have even bigger meetings usually around a month mark each month, just kind of make sure that everything that we said we were going to do was done. And if not the reasons why I’m kind of moving on from there.

Kathy (host):  

And what is the involvement of the marketing agency in terms of like strategic planning, because what I do with my clients, we do it once a year. We have this whole strategic planning of where we’re going to be in the next three, or five years. And marketing really plays into that because you cannot reach those goals if you don’t have marketing in place, right? Otherwise, it’s just numbers and spreadsheets, and it’s wishful thinking. So where does or do you think the marketing agency comes into those planning processes as well?

Alicia (guest): 

I think the planning process is huge. And so our strategies are really geared towards a 12month strategy. A client can understand or a business can understand, what are the campaign ideas. Each quarter, there’s a different initiative that we’re focusing on, right? What does that entail? What’s the costs going to look like? So that from a CFO standpoint, you can budget and say, “Okay, this is what we’re allocating towards marketing. There’s maybe variables 10% here or there. If we’re putting money into ads, or we’re doing this and whatnot. But this is what it’s going to be for the upcoming year.” That has been huge for our clients, and really not allowing them to realize that “This is not something that at the end of the month. We tally up our hours and say this is it. Good luck!”Right? Like we have we know what the strategy is, and we know what our team is capable of doing. And if we go above what we’re estimating on time that’s on us. But we’ve done this long enough that we know where we need to come in at that our clients appreciate that, because they’re retainers are the same, and the only time that ever changes is because of that, right? They’re in control of what they’re changing on that. So that and transparency are huge and the strategy part.

Kathy (host):  

How about of more of a long-term strategy, not just the 12 months, would you go and be involved in the conversation for a business? In the next, let’s say, three-year strategy or five-year event? I know there’s a bit of longer terms, but figuring out like not just the immediate marketing needs, but what do we need to build to get the business to the goals that they have in the next five years?

Alicia (guest):

Yeah, many times though it does. Our clients are with us for 2,3,4 years, right? So that initial strategy, that quick win is what we’re focusing on many times a year one is foundation. It’s building the foundation of what the brand needs to do needs to look like but the processes have to be in place, the software that has to back it up. 

Alicia (guest):

Year two is actually implementing it, and building upon it in year three. It’s just it’s now on autopilot. We can start thinking about the next three-year initiatives that are going on. I think if a company is able to visualize three years out, that’s unbelievably important. 

Alicia (guest):

It’s also important going back to what Chris said about sharing the investment with the agency share that, “Okay, we want a three-year roadmap of what we’re looking to do for marketing so that they can factor that into their scope because the priorities change.” If this is a three-year initiative, then we’re not trying to cram three years of amazing work into six months. So we can kind of build out a program that works and builds up with the company.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, and again, it also comes down to the whole thing of you cannot really cram everything in those six months, because marketing does take time. It takes six months to just see something moving, right?

Chris (guest):

A lot of it also comes down to what did the company do previously to hiring on the marketing agency. So did they set up all the social media pages? Do they have a foundation or website so that also dictates how long items are going to take and the expectations you should have? 

Chris (guest):

If none of those things are set in yet. It’s going to be a little bit longer of a road than you typically would say. But you did ask the question before as to how quickly should you expect to see some kind of strategy in place. I would honestly say if you don’t see a strategy within the first month or two, I would ask questions. Typically how we work is we spend the first two weeks or so kind of getting to know our client like really diving in deep, just to kind of figure out what their goals are, what they’ve done. 

Chris (guest): 

And then we usually take the next two or three weeks to build out a social media strategy that really outlines the whole tactical plan for the next 12 months in regards to what our goals are, what our expectations should be, what your expectations should be and then go from there.

Chris (guest):

And then at the end of that year, we do it again, we kind of take a look at it, and we say, Okay, this is what we planned on month one, and then we’re at month 12. What changes do we have to make in order to get to where the goals need to be?

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Alicia (guest):  

Yeah, what Chris just said is really important to go back to your first question about hiring and house versus agency. Now, in-house for one person to develop a strategy in four weeks, is an unbelievable beast of a project. 

Alicia (guest):

When we’re saying a strategy that an agency can put together in four to six weeks, understand that we have an SEO company or an SEO team member that’s just focusing on the website- what’s the audit? What’s the SEO strategy? Or ad specialist? What’s the ad strategy coming in? Right? Our writer, what’s the writing time, so all of these different people that are that make up our collective team are all putting their best minds together into this strategy. And then the client success manager is saying, “Okay, I have all of these pieces, how are we going to bring them all together to tell your story in the most cohesive way?”

Alicia (guest):

So that four to six weeks is doable, because there’s not one person, there’s 15, 20 people all touching the strategy. So that’s really important. You don’t go back into your team and say, “Marketing manager, you should have had this done within the first month of working here.” Like that would probably take a year for somebody to do.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, and I think also the bigger your company is, the more people you have to manage, the more challenging it gets. I’ve seen this happening in big companies, and I can tell you, that strategy in big companies takes probably about a year to develop. It’s a lot of work.

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Chris (guest): 

They don’t have also say about the strategy is that a lot of people, they take a look at the strategy at the very, very beginning, and then they just kind of like honestly forget about it. But it should be something that we review constantly. As we work with our clients, as we start rolling out new items, we actually go back to that strategy and implement or put those strategies into the presentation itself. Just so we have an outline of “Okay, these are the changes that we made. These are the results that happen.” It’s almost like a Bible for the company. 

Chris (guest):

One thing I would strongly encourage is that don’t take a look at the strategy once, review it every couple of months and say, “Okay, this was the idea. That’s the plan, where are we? What are the changes that we made.”

Kathy (host):  

And again, I think the planning piece is just so, so important. It’s just like, and I would say like, even when you putting financials together, you don’t just put a budget, you slap a budget once a year, and then you completely forget about it. Like things happen in the business, like the economy changes, where you might have a new competitor come in, or my might be something new happening on social media that you want to implement in the marketing. There’s all sorts of things that are happening. But that doesn’t mean that you chase the shiny objects, it just you revisit it. And let’s talk a little bit about this. Because I’ve seen a lot of things happening on the marketing sphere right now. People are using Tiktok, or whatever. When do you see that something is indicative of a shiny object versus trying something new and constantly reiterating because marketing is a lot of art and part science? How do you distinguish between “Oh, let’s try something new” or we’re chasing shiny objects?

Alicia (guest): 

My answer to that would be what are you chasing? And what’s the goal of it? Let’s use TikTok for example, right? Why are you gonna go on TikTok? Is it because it’s new? And there’s a lot of people using it and it’s addictive? Or is it because your audience is on it? And your buyers are on it, and your readers or your listeners and your followers are on it? 

Alicia (guest):

Identifying what that shiny object is? Does it align with the goals of the company? Go back to the strategy that Chris was just mentioning. Does it hit the right buyer persona? We have clients that don’t touch TikTok because their audiences on it. We have other clients that don’t even touch LinkedIn because their audiences are on it.

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Alicia (guest):

So really focusing on not the “We need to do everything because that’s what’s really popular now” and honing in on we’re gonna be where are our audiences where our specific buyers are. The other end result appreciate this is to have somebody on your team that you could bring those shiny object ideas to and allow them to poke holes in it. And that’s me, I bring shiny ideas to Chris, and Chris will sit there and poke holes and if there’s no holes for him to poke or have an answer of all the holes that he did poke, then we can proceed and get to the next step and see what falls or barriers are we hitting? Having that kind of checks and balances among your team is really important, too.

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, I love that having someone on the team that’s playing a devil’s advocate, so to speak, then figures out “Yeah, maybe then that’d be a good idea to put our resources and funding into this.” So good job, Chris.

Chris (guest): 

I’m always smiling, because it’s funny because the women that I work with they’re all creative. They’re very, very good. They come up with the most amazing stuff. And unfortunately, that talent of mine is not there. I’m much more factual. Unfortunately, I’m the one that always pokes holes. But they do an amazing job and explain it to me and dumb it down. And I’m like, “You know what, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s roll with it.”

Kathy (host):  

You give us so many good tips on how to actually work with the agency. But let’s say that things are really not going well with the agency. And we might be time to part like, when do you know that it is time to really start thinking about maybe bringing someone in-house? Because if there’s a specific need that’s there, or maybe it just makes more sense to have someone let’s say a Content Manager on your team versus on the agency side? When would you make that distinction? And what are some of the questions that you should be asking yourself, as you’re working with the agency that maybe certain pieces need to be brought up in the house?

Alicia (guest):  

I think from an agency standpoint, within the first two months, if you’re not jiving with whoever your account person is, that’s a red flag. If the deliverables aren’t being met, you’ll know that right away. And the transparency isn’t there, and the only time they are transparent is when a bill comes, you’ll know that that’s just not a good fit. 

Alicia (guest):

Many of our clients have worked with agencies and then started working with us, and this is really important for any business that is going from one agency to another is to bring up the concerns to the next agency that you’re about to bring on. And I say that because our clients will come to us and we just came from an agency. And every time I called it was a different person that took over my account, I never had the same account person. So we know okay, well, you only will ever have one account person, right? So that’s really important to them. 

Alicia (guest):

But another thing they may say is, they had all these amazing strategy ideas, but then they didn’t implement it. We had implemented ourselves and hops. So knowing what the issues were within the agency that you were working with before you hire another agency is super important, right? It’s your vetting. It’s also your ability to say to the next agency. It’s very important for me to work with one person on your team. It’s very important for me to understand that you’re implementing it, not me. 

Alicia (guest):

And then another big question is always ask what is the time commitment that you as the business are going to need to contribute to the agency? Because that’ll really tell you, “Okay, I only need an hour a week, maybe an hour outside of that for emails, but the rest of the team has it”, or they want to talk with me for hours every week like that’s a huge commitment. So I think those are really helpful, the in-house question of hiring somebody directly. I don’t know how to answer that. Because the majority of our clients that have worked with us, they either only have one person in-house, or they decided that they no longer need a direct hire. And I say that only because I think they realize that one person, again, cannot do it all.

Chris (guest): 

And that’s definitely one thing. We can also touch on that you can have a hybrid where you have an in-house person, and you work with the marketing and marketing agency. We have some clients that really have a marketing manager that is in charge of the whole marketing department. And what they do is they use us as like their in house. They contact us and say, “Hey, I need a graphic design to do this. I need a video to do this.” It’s a very nice partnership when you have that, because you can see that both teams are working forward, are working to move the ball forward, I guess you could say. 

Chris (guest):

The other thing I will say to this because you asked the question of when you know it’s time to move on, the one thing I would say is talk with your current agency. If you have concerns, you should bring it up to them. It should never be one of those things where they’re blindsided or why you’re leaving. Be honest with them, like you’re paying off I that’s what they’re there for. Have that honest conversation with them. Tell them, “I’m unhappy because XYZ, neither they fix XYZ and if they don’t, then that’s fine.” And move on.

Alicia (guest): 

And give them the opportunity to fix the issue. Instead of just leaving. I think that that’s a really good point. And many times when a client has an issue and they bring it up, it’s so easily fixable, and it usually always comes down to just communication, which again is so easily a result. It’s have that honest conversation with them. We say put on your big boy pants and just have the conversation.

Chris (guest): 

If you do have that good connection with a marketing company, it should be very easy conversation. Most of the clients we work with overlap and half the time, so you bring up something that’s a concern to yours. Also, time will nod our heads. “Okay, we’ll just do what we can do to fix it.”

Kathy (host):  

Yeah, I mean, that communication is it’s not just- It’s important in business in general. We’ve talked a lot about- You gave us a lot of great tips on how to work with agencies and how to make sure that they’re successful. But if someone is just at the beginning of the journey of hiring and marketing agencies, and they have no idea where to start, what is the one small thing that they can do in the next week, or in the next couple of weeks, to get them closer to hiring an agency and not just hiring an agency, but hiring the right agency for their business?

Alicia (guest): 

I have one tip, and this is always a hang-up, no matter who you hire, they’re going to need this. Start putting together a folder with all of your brand assets. So like your brand identity guide, your logo, your color palette. Start compiling all of your logins, right? Sometimes we can’t even get started on a project because the client doesn’t know how to log into their website or their social pages. Those are just like general housekeeping. Get all your ducks in a row so that it’s easy to hand over to an agency. 

Alicia (guest):

And also outline what are your top three priorities working with somebody. Is it I don’t have enough time? So I need my time involvement to be very limited. When I’m talking with an agency, I want them to have control of being able to publish something without me having to read like, outline what your top three priorities are, and have your housekeeping all in order. Chris, what do you think?

Chris (guest):

Yep! My tip would be to look at the product, right? So take a look at the past clients that they’ve worked with. See the product that they produce, and they put out and just kind of envision your own brand within their work. I guess you could say. If you think that their work is going to support your brand and promote it, then yeah, they’re probably a good company to work with. If you’re not so impressed with the work they put out. You may want to move on.

Kathy (host):  

Alicia, Chris, where can people find you?

Alicia (guest):  

You can find us online at I don’t know if people still do www.alistemarketing.com. We are also on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, at Aliste Marketing and you can absolutely email us, as well, alicia@alistemarketing.com or chris@alistemarketing.com.

Chris (guest): 

Even if your clients ever have any questions in regards to where they should be looking right now, feel free to use our Aliste Marketing resources. We’re more than happy to help.

Kathy (host):  

Awesome, thank you so much. Both of you. 

Alicia (guest):

Thank you.

Kathy (host):  

Thanks so much for joining us today and I hope that this episode is giving you tips on how to work with a marketing agency and whether that is something that you should be doing in your business. 

Kathy (host):

Next week, we’ll be kicking it old school with my guest, Nedra Rozinas. As we were going to talk about old-school marketing strategies that work and work really well. So join us. 

Kathy (host):

Also, if you love this episode, you can find all the timestamps show notes blog posts, and links on the website, newcastlefinance.us/podcast. 

Kathy (host):

And before I go, as always, I do have a favor to ask. If you listen to this on the Apple podcast, if you could please go to the show and tap the number of stars that you think the show deserves. Because it really helps other people find it. Thanks so much. Until next time!