9 Shifts Every Marketing Agency Needs to Make

0:00John Jantsch:You know, I've spent 30 years or so around agencies and consultants, and I've never heard this much quiet exhaustion from good marketers. Not bad marketers, good ones. The work is fine. The business around the work is what's breaking.

0:25John Jantsch:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantz and it's just me. I'm doing a solo show. I've got some stuff I want to get off my chest, I guess. And so I love to use this platform to be able to do that. So if you are a marketer, a marketing agency, a consultant, a fractional CMO, this show is just for you. The agency model, as I've called it, is outdated. The people winning right now aren't working harder inside of it. They've replaced it. We have, I don't know, I've lost track, thousands of marketers I've spoken with. And a lot of the things I'm going to identify today are things that are really phrases, words, sentiments that have come right out of their mouths.

1:11John Jantsch:And I want to frame those as the nine shifts that I think every marketing advisor must make today. Can't get past two minutes here without talking about AI and the good, the bad, the ugly. I mean, a lot of our clients now think that AI can do the marketing for them. They're trying to bring it in, produce more at scale, be more efficient, and it's really just making more noise. And I think from a marketer standpoint, from an agency standpoint or consultant standpoint, it's added another hurdle in helping them understand the value that we bring. Because I think they're looking at, hey, this tool only costs 20 bucks and I can make it do all this stuff.

1:54John Jantsch:and really people aren't paying now for more stuff. They're paying for marketing leadership. They're paying for strategy. They're paying for a systematic approach to bring AI into their businesses. And that's really where I think we have to move as marketers. I'm not saying that AI is doing all the stuff yet, but certainly it is getting easier and easier to do and people are willing to pay less and less for it. I mean, the days when, you know, I used to get paid$10 ,000 to write an ebook, for example, and I can't imagine anybody paying$100 for that. So those days are quickly coming to an end. But again, I think that this is a real opportunity for people who embrace this idea of marketing leadership.

2:43So I'm going to get into the nine shifts, as I call them, that I think every advisor, marketing advisor, really needs to make right now. in order to kind of catch this next wave that I think is really upon us, quite frankly. All right, so number one, we have to go from invisible generalist to really owning a point of view. Here's a quote, and each of these shifts, I've pulled a quote from somebody I've either interviewed or spoken with recently. The quote, I sound like every other agency out there and I do not have a unique method to stand on. I mean, I think, This is number one, because it's the domino.

3:27John Jantsch:It's the one that makes all the other ones fall into place. If you aren't able to come into people and say, here's what I do, here's what you're going to do, here's what it's going to cost. And by the way, here are the results we can inspect. And this is the framework that I've built it on. And we have actually installed this in hundreds of other businesses and it's proven to work. If you can't guide and lead a business owner into what they need, rather than saying, hey, we do it all. Tell us what you need. You're setting yourself up for failure completely. So a lot of the people that license our methodology, our advisor certification, really lean towards this idea that we have this framework called strategy first.

4:10John Jantsch:We have a whole different approach to how we go to market, to what folks in our network sell. And I think that gives you or can give you at least a point of view. Strategy before tactics is a point of view, stockingly still very unique in the world of small business marketing. And so adopting that kind of point of view and going to somebody and say, look, you need a website? Sure, we build websites. But first, you're going to go through strategy first, because we know that the only way we can deliver a valuable website. In fact, your marketing in general is if you start with strategy first. That is a point of view.

4:48John Jantsch:That type of thing is something you have to hang on. Shift number two, from custom everything to a productized flagship offer. Here's the quote, I'm exhausted from writing custom proposals and starting from scratch for every new client. We have one engagement sold the same way, delivered the same way. So now instead of, I can do that when somebody, you actually are saying, this is my process. And now at first pushback, sometimes people are like, oh yeah, that's just like cookie cutter templated. No, it's not at all. It's a framework that delivers custom work that can be taught, that can actually be delegated, that you can actually hire people to do.

5:38John Jantsch:We successfully have consultants in our organization. We have successfully licensed over 400 agencies and consultants on this methodology. And being able to productize that so that you can get good at it, so that you can get delegated. You actually are able to deliver more value because you have a framework that you can apply everything to. Shift number three, from pricing effort to pricing outcomes. This one has been dying a very slow death for many years. I actually had somebody ask us how much we charged an hour. It's been years since somebody's asked me that. That mentality is just, not only is it a recipe for disaster, you basically are going to sell up all your time.

6:24John Jantsch:You're going to sell up all your usable capacity without any ability to scale. But when you have a proven framework, when you have a proven point of view, guess what? People will pay more. All people really want is a result. If they're trying to buy your price down, it's because they don't understand the value. And when you're able to go in with a specific point of view, a specific framework, a flagship offer that you can show them the results that you've got for others, price goes way down the list because the risk goes way down the list. And so if you can start thinking in terms of, I sell a strategy first for$15 ,000 and it doesn't really matter to the client what they get for that.

7:14John Jantsch:I mean, they want the result for that, but like the output or the input, I'm sorry, how many hours, who does what, how many pieces of paper they get for that. They no longer care if they're convinced that you can deliver the result. So those first two shifts go hand in hand with shift number three. So shift number four, from execution retainers to leadership engagements. Here's the quote. Clients treat me like a vendor, question my tactics, and cancel when budgets get tight. That's a sure sign that you are a vendor rather than a trusted advisor. As I said before, there's still business out there for execution, but it's going to go away.

7:59John Jantsch:It is going to become less and less, and it's going to become commoditized. Even if there's plenty of people willing to pay for it, they're going to be willing to pay a lot less for it. So you have to shift now. You have to take that strategic leadership seat because that's the piece that's really missing. And most of the businesses I've worked with, even if they have a founder who has built a tremendous business, and maybe they've brought in a couple of people to do the marketing or they have an agency to do the marketing, they're still lacking that price. person is making judgments, that's making decisions, that's actually keeping them on track and owning the results.

8:37John Jantsch:And those are retainers people will pay handsomely for. In fact, they will pay far more than they will pay for somebody to do their SEO. SEO may be part of what you end up selling, but if you sell the leadership engagement, you sell strategy first, all of a sudden you have a completely different relationship with a client. What are we up to? Shift number five, from referrals and hope to a lead system. Now, here's the quote, I have no idea where my next client is coming from if word of mouth dries up. Again, many of the agencies that we work with, I mean, you do good work, you're going to get some referrals.

9:17John Jantsch:You work your warm network, you're going to be able to uncover some opportunities, but actually having a lead system in place. I mean, marketers, I mean, every industry does this, but marketers are the worst marketers. Let me ask you this. How many LinkedIn posts or email, cold emails have you gotten telling you as an agency, they are going to help you generate leads? That's the thing we're supposed to be doing for our clients. We're supposed to be really good at doing for our clients. And yet the industry realizes we're terrible at it. And so shifting to a pipeline that is constantly being filled by having channels that you own fill that pipeline up and never, ever, depending on cold email.

10:04John Jantsch:There, I said it. There are some people listening that probably will debate that. And maybe there's some people that have had success. But you want to be in a position where you wouldn't want a client that would come to you based on a cold email because they wouldn't be the right fit client. They wouldn't understand the value you bring. They wouldn't understand what it is to hire a trusted advisor. Shift number six, from selling to advising. This one really gets people. I mean, here's the direct quote. I hate feeling like a salesperson. I spend too much time doing proposal theater. Boy, isn't that true?

10:42So what you have to do is start changing the entire dynamic of what you think selling is.

10:50John Jantsch:Essentially, what we do is we actually demonstrate to somebody, here is a process that we're going to run you through that will help you understand the gaps that you have in marketing, maybe help you understand what marketing actually is. And by virtue of doing that, the conversation will not be, can you send me a proposal? It will be, can you do that for me? What you just ran me through, could you do that for our business? That's the difference between selling and advising. And it changes how you feel about it. It changes who you deliver to. It changes how you deliver. And you'll never say, I hate selling again, because it's a joy to actually do it.

11:29You've got to adopt that. So I'm up to number seven. And coincidentally, these are all

11:37John Jantsch:things that we do. People that come into our certification program, our duct tape advisor program. These are all things that we have figured out that you not only need to make, but we've actually got the solutions. We've actually built it for you. So you don't have to make any of this up. You don't have to create any of it. It's all been done for you. So I'm going to give you one URL right now. If you want to go through an assessment, all nine of these shifts are on an assessment. It'll ask you, it's very simple. It takes five minutes. It'll ask you nine questions. They're essentially, you're going to rank yourself one to 10 on where you are in these shifts.

12:12It'll help you identify your three lowest, the ones where you actually could use the help. So I'm going to give you the URL right now, dtm.world slash shifts. It's a hard word to say, harder than It should be shifts, S-H-I-F-T-S, dtm.world slash shifts. All right, going to keep moving here. Number seven, from doing the work to running the system. If I step away for a week, the whole business stops because everything lives in my head. You ever experienced that one? So this is about SOPs and templates and delegation at 60 % to 70 % margin. but it's also about this idea of where you position yourself, how you position yourself to a client.

13:02In fact, we actually talk about installing a marketing system in a business.

13:08John Jantsch:In fact, we have a marketing, all the components of what we call a marketing operating system. So after strategy first, we're actually going to work on what's next, what's next, what comes in the stage that they are in now and the stage that they're going to be in 90 days from now. And we're constantly building on that. It's one of the reasons I think that we have such long retention. We keep our clients three, four, five, heck, one's been with us over a decade. And I think a lot of it has to do with this mentality of installing a system. We have built all the components and I don't think there's anyone else.

13:42John Jantsch:Certainly no one that has 30 years of doing this, but I don't think there's anyone else that takes this really system view of installing marketing inside of a business. Shift number seven. No, we're up to eight, aren't we? From dabbling in AI to installing it. So here's the quote. Clients think AI can do my job for free and I'm losing my margins just trying to keep up. So here's how I think we need to view AI. Sure, use it in your business. It does so many wonderful things. I'm not really going to extol the virtues of that. Anybody who's in marketing right now realizes that this is a tool that we have to embrace.

14:21John Jantsch:But a lot of our clients are trying to embrace it as well. And they are hacking their way through it. They're getting terribly frustrated. They're actually discovering it costs more in terms of time and effort. And so what really is resonating with the small to mid-sized business is part of marketing is actually having a systematic approach to installing AI. Instead of everybody just bring your favorite tool and use it however you want, we actually need to get them to think in terms of if we build it this way, if we build these skills, it's all still based on strategy. We've built the strategy to begin with.

14:59John Jantsch:So now we have the tools and the ability to build the strategic approach to using AI with humans inside a business. And that mindset shift of not just like, oh, we're going to create this automation, or we're going to create this hack or we're going to save you this much time. It just needs to be part of the plumbing of the marketing system. And I think that you will find if you go out and start using just that message that we're going to help you install a systematic approach because right now it's chaos in most businesses. And so somebody who's actually offering to manage the chaos as part of marketing is going to be invited into a leadership role inside that business.

15:44All right, number nine, from going it alone to being in a network. I'm tired of trying to figure out every problem myself and grind is incredibly lonely. We have over a hundred agencies in our network that we meet monthly. We do things quarterly.

16:01John Jantsch:We share resources. We share assets. We share a strategic partner network to actually do some of the implementation, to actually build some of the AI automations and things that our clients need. And so that's a huge component. If any of you are out there, even in an organization with 10, 12, 15 people, a lot of times the founder, the leader feels at least a little bit alone in terms of addressing or getting advice on the things that they are experiencing. So imagine tapping into an entire network of folks that could help you do that, help you wrestle with the problems that maybe they've actually wrestled with, that they're wrestling with at the same time.

16:43John Jantsch:So it's not just camaraderie. It has tremendous value in terms of assets and people and network and mentoring as well. So those are the nine shifts. I want you to imagine the next time a client says, oh, okay, you want us to do strategy. How much is it? And you just, without batting an eye, you don't look down at your shoes. You don't do anything. You just say it's$12 ,000. And the reason you say that is because the last 10 prospects that you talked to, you said the same thing and they said yes. And you had the confidence. You had the position, the posture to say that's what it is. And I know that it brings tremendous value.

17:28So the Duct Tape Marketing Certified Advisor Program is really built around these nine shifts. And here's how we structure it. When you join us, you will go into a 90-day one-on-one coaching engagement with our lead consultants who have now done this training for many, many years that have actually implemented strategy first and the marketing operating system with clients for a number of years as well.

17:59John Jantsch:And they will fit this to where you are. We have people that are just starting out, and this is a great model for them because all of a sudden it's like, here's the entire roadmap done for you. Boom, you're out there next day. We also have a lot of folks that are feeling like, hey, the model has changed on me. It's let me down. I need to do something different. But they've got experience. They've got team. They've got processes. And we're able to mold this to exactly the shifts that they need to make. There's also an entire library of training for you, for your team, that you get access to, an entire network of partners that you get access to for implementation gaps that you might have.

18:40John Jantsch:And as I said, you'll be part of this network for monthly masterminds and quarterly training on kind of the latest and greatest thing. We bring in lots of folks to kind of keep us all up to speed on that. So if any of the shifts that I've talked about make sense, and you want to jump on a call with Sarah Nay, who's our CEO. She's one of the people that does the training, the one-on-one training as well. Just schedule a time with her. I'm going to give you a link to do so. And she'll go over these nine shifts. She will walk you through. In fact, if you take the assessment, she'll actually have what you've identified as your lowest scores, and you'll spend time doing that.

19:19So if you want to take the assessment, it's dtm.world slash shifts. And then if you want to schedule with Sarah, it's dtm.world slash chat. So dtm.world either shifts or chat or both. When you take the assessment, you'll also be given the opportunity to schedule a time with Sarah as well. So if you

19:41John Jantsch:didn't get all of that written down because you were driving into your car, you can also find it at Duct Tape Marketing as well on the podcast homepage. And you will find this as well as the links in the show notes. So thanks for tuning in. Appreciate it. And hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Let me also offer one other piece if you haven't clicked off yet. Which one of these nine shifts resonated the most with you? I'd love to hear from you. And it's just John at Duct Tape Marketing. Send me a note. All right, take care.

20:21We'll be right back.