Over the years, my inbox has been flooded with agencies promising enterprise leads, top rankings, and instant growth. Some pitches sound tempting while others are a total letdown.
I had a call with India’s biggest content marketing agency, expecting a solid plan to improve SEO for a Gen AI SaaS platform. It was a sheer disappointment.
The keyword volume for the use case was low, so I curiously asked: “Why would SEO be a good channel for us?” Hoping to receive a subject matter expert’s view on what we had been evaluating.
The sales head, with 10 years of selling SEO services, had no specific answer at all. All I got was a generic 101 answer on why ANYONE should do SEO. The answer was oranges to our ask for apples.
Most times, agencies don’t add the right value. Operators in-house end up working more, lowering revenues, and wasting time - all for disappointing results.
Having made these mistakes myself, I make it a point to invest considerable time and effort while evaluating agencies now.
How I (and we should) approach hiring agencies:
- Evaluating agencies without a clearly defined ICP is a no-no. Internal clarity on the GTM motion is a must.
- Dismissing agencies that are not big is not the best idea. Hire agencies that understand the growth stage, can fit into the tech stack and operations, and match the pace of the business
- Agencies should focus on scaling what works. Only work with agencies once you have a channel-market fit.
- Stick to agencies that specialize in their core competencies. For example, a web dev agency shouldn’t handle branding or content creation.
- Meet the team doing the actual work before finalizing the agency, not just the salespeople.
When there’s clear direction, generating high ROI becomes straightforward. I’m currently working with an SEO agency, with the founder investing $30K per month. Happy to share more about why we chose to collaborate with them.
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