All Agencies and Contractors Have a Half Life. Move On Once You Hit It.

So I remember the first time I worked with a truly great marketer, one of my co-founders at Adobe Sign / EchoSign (now COO at StubHub). I learned many things from him about marketing and more, especially as he was often so direct. One was:

“You need to fire any PR or marketing agency after about 3 months. At that point, they’ve given you all the good press and connections they have.”

He was speaking very specifically about press and PR, and he was right. Most PR agencies — to the extent they still function in today’s world — have a few key contacts. One they know at TechCrunch, or the Wall Street Journal, etc. And they call in that favor when they sign you as a client for $7k, $10k, $15k+ a month. And after that, the quality of your press and PR hits declines. Because that was all they had, and they move the client effectively into maintenance mode.

But the reality is, it’s true of almost all agencies and similar consultants. They give you their best work up front.

And then, they need their underlings to do the routine work. And they often start phoning it in, staffing it with the most junior resources, and then ultimately, raising prices for less value. They almost always not only start moving in the B and C teams, but raising prices, often dramatically.

It’s their business model.

I’ve tried to work around this. I try to work with folks forever if possible. In one fashion or another, I’m still working with many of my old EchoSign / Adobe Sign colleagues, in some cases 15+ years later. And I’ve basically never fired anyone other than for inappropriate behavior. I’ve never laid off a single person in my entire career.

But I’ve found going long doesn’t always work. Especially with agencies and contractors, you have to be attuned to their half life.

When they start checking out on their client. I’ve tried to involve them more in the business, do profit sharing together, and many other things. And I’ve found none of it works that well. Agencies need a ton of relatively unsophisticated clients to survive. If every client was demanding of top tier work, they’d collapse from it.

I remember one of the most extreme cases here. I interview a senior events leader for SaaStr Annual, who had worked at a top events agency. One of their clients was Facebook. Her only job was to charge Facebook 2x as much as any other client, and not have them realize it. “They could afford it.” That’s the business model of many agencies at scale. Even some of the best ones.

Agencies are good in that they can be flexible and elastic capacity, and can fill gaps on the team. But their models aren’t always consistent with what you’d expect.

So I get it. In the past 2 years, two agencies we’ve worked with, that I’ve treated like a core part of the team, just didn’t want to do the work anymore. They were just done, and moved on. It was frustrating, given that we stuck with them for years when other clients fired them left and right. But in the end, I see sticking too long past the half-life of an agency or contractor was my error.

When they start phoning it in, find a new resource. It’s just part of the agency model.