Latest / Scalability School / What You Should Pay a DTC Agency in 2026: Real Pricing Benchmarks | EP 37

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What You Should Pay a DTC Agency in 2026: Real Pricing Benchmarks | EP 37 · Scalability School

0:00
I think you should pay five
0:01
grand per landing page.
0:02
And I think it should take
0:02
you three months to get from your fancy.
0:05
Yeah, because that's a standard, right?
0:07
Or at least was in 2024. Just kidding.
0:09
feel like that's what every said client
0:11
that would go to somewhere else
0:12
to hire a landing page
0:13
that was supposedly like
0:14
the best at landing pages
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would we just saw that story happen
0:17
over and over I think it depends.
0:19
It's like the most annoying
0:20
phrase in DDC.
0:21
depends on
0:23
would pay a landing page agency
0:24
a 20 grand for a page
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if I knew it was going to work. Right.
0:27
Like or even more. Right.
0:29
It's that's where the numbers game,
0:31
I think is really important.
0:32
And so I would rather pay, you
0:34
a flat fee per page.
0:35
Probably not percentage of spend,
0:37
though I do understand that
0:38
that could make sense
0:39
if it was like incremental spend above.
0:41
But that's really hard
0:42
to especially on landing
0:43
I'd probably pay a flat fee per page,
0:45
the assumption that you're going
0:46
have make a handful
0:47
of them before you crack
0:56
And now
0:57
let's take a
0:57
listen to the Scalability School podcast.
1:01
Okay.
1:01
Welcome to another episode of Scalability
1:04
School.
1:04
Really excited
1:05
to talk today about pricing.
1:07
We have so much pricing information
1:09
from ad agencies, from creative
1:11
shops and agencies,
1:13
landing page agencies.
1:14
And, you know,
1:15
we should talk
1:15
about any other type of agency
1:17
that people have out there,
1:18
like an AI agency and pricing,
1:20
you've heard or whatever,
1:21
to go through this.
1:22
So this episode is all about
1:23
covering what we have learned
1:25
and what we know about pricing today
1:27
and what it's
1:28
what what the costs are
1:30
that you can expect to pay big ranges.
1:32
Let me tell you,
1:32
it depends on where you are in the world,
1:34
but huge ranges is the narrative.
1:36
Brad, good to be with you,
1:37
as always Yeah. Likewise.
1:38
And if anybody sees, like,
1:39
a haze coming
1:41
across our cameras,
1:42
the air quality in Wisconsin
1:44
right now is 500.
1:45
I'm pretty sure that's the upper limit.
1:47
I don't think it can go any higher.
1:48
So, yeah.
1:49
Anyway, it's wild, but we're here
1:51
and we're excited that you are as well.
1:53
So as always.
1:54
So look,
1:55
you know,
1:55
the reality of this prices
1:57
are all over the place.
1:58
All right.
1:58
So we did a survey in the Fox
2:00
founders community
2:01
about how people are priced
2:02
and what pricing looks
2:04
And of that survey
2:05
we had actually over 200 respondents
2:07
that came in that survey.
2:08
And then this
2:09
is there's other data to that.
2:10
We pulled from Fox founders knowledge.
2:12
We have a Foxtel Founders MCP.
2:14
can check it out at Fox Digital MCP.
2:16
That has all of our knowledge
2:17
without the community.
2:18
it's pretty insane what we've seen.
2:21
four out of five agencies quote
2:23
either a flat rate retainer or retainer,
2:24
plus percentage dispense.
2:25
That's obviously very Nobody works on
2:28
peer performance.
2:29
It used to be a thing
2:29
isn't necessarily a thing anymore.
2:31
What they report
2:32
earning per client is what you're paying.
2:35
So mostly sit at 2500 to 10,000
2:38
a month
2:38
all And freelancers and in-house price
2:41
the same but work differently.
2:42
So it's kind of interesting
2:44
thinking about
2:45
So let's talk about paid
2:46
media management from a media standpoint.
2:48
I'll walk you through what I have.
2:49
And then Brad,
2:49
you can tell me what you think.
2:50
So straight media management I would say
2:54
usually flat retainer
2:55
I've seen floors at 1500.
2:58
That's typically going to be for
2:59
like an offshore.
3:00
You know, someone if they're good
3:02
then it's not necessarily
3:04
probably going to be a good number.
3:07
I think anybody that's quality
3:08
is going to be
3:08
at least
3:09
2500 to 3004 is like 1500 to 3000
3:13
a month, I would say.
3:13
And then big single accounts
3:15
can run up to 20 grand a month in fees.
3:17
The high percentages you hear
3:19
are bundles, not media only.
3:21
So there's 15% that were paid
3:25
organic email creative together
3:27
tapering to 11% of spend
3:29
as as spend climbs.
3:30
So it's kind of interesting.
3:32
Like if you start bundling,
3:33
things generally get cheaper.
3:34
But here's some examples from a survey
3:36
50 K a month spend
3:37
build at 10,000 or 10% $5,000
3:40
a month, right.
3:41
Media buying only at 500 K a month spend.
3:44
They're doing about 37.5 month
3:48
K a month.
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And then the creative is build
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separately a 7.5%.
3:53
There's a full service bundle,
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15% up to 200 K, 13%
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to 300 K, 11% to 400 K.
4:01
There's flat plus revenue share.
4:04
So 15 K flat fee plus
4:07
2.8 of revenue locked a year.
4:10
And then the hybrid
4:12
is the most recommended.
4:13
This is a base plus percent.
4:15
So three K or 10% is spend
4:17
whichever is greater.
4:19
So these are kind of what we heard.
4:22
Personally
4:24
I still think that doing a flat rate
4:28
plus paying on performance of
4:31
of agreed upon metrics that matter to
4:34
the business is a good idea,
4:37
just because then
4:38
the buyer is incentivized
4:40
or the agency's
4:40
incentivized to do better.
4:42
But Brad, your take on all this data,
4:43
when we looked at it,
4:45
yeah, there's
4:46
there's a ton of different ranges
4:47
for what it means to do
4:50
paid ad management
4:52
for something like Meta or Google.
4:54
And we'll talk about Google in a bit.
4:55
And so there's like there's as you as you
4:58
scale up your expectations for what your,
5:01
your media buyer,
5:03
whether that's an agency
5:04
or freelancer or, you know, etc.
5:06
whatever they do for you, it depends.
5:08
The price is going to depend
5:09
dramatically based on that,
5:10
which obviously makes sense.
5:11
And so back to your point.
5:13
I think the floor, you know,
5:14
1500 bucks a month
5:15
like definitely needs
5:16
to be somebody offshore.
5:17
I think you'd be hard
5:18
pressed to find somebody
5:19
that's going to be doing
5:20
a very good job at that rate.
5:22
But you might be able
5:23
to find a freelancer to do that.
5:25
But that's going to be that's,
5:26
that's that's paid media management only.
5:29
Right.
5:29
Like they're not
5:30
they're not making their probably
5:31
not making creative.
5:32
If they are it's probably not very good.
5:33
Right.
5:34
And so I think the expectations for
5:36
like what they're actually doing
5:37
is they're,
5:37
they're launching ads
5:38
or pressing buttons in the ad account.
5:39
Maybe they're doing
5:40
reports on a weekly basis.
5:41
So that's that's
5:42
kind of the baseline kind of that three
5:45
to to five K range,
5:46
I think is becoming like
5:47
the market rate for just add management.
5:52
Like no creative.
5:53
Although I think that's starting.
5:54
Those expectations are starting
5:55
to change a little bit.
5:56
Like I think the most common
5:58
and we saw this in the pricing
6:00
benchmarks, is like
6:00
the most common price range,
6:02
is that
6:03
2500 to $10,000 range
6:04
and the 25 to to 5000
6:07
is is the single most popular.
6:09
And I just think for paid
6:10
media management,
6:11
especially with people's
6:12
expectations around
6:13
AI and what cloud can do
6:14
and what all of the AI tools can do,
6:17
I think that's just
6:17
getting compressed down,
6:18
because I think people are feeling like,
6:20
hey, meta in particular is starting to,
6:23
you know, automate some of the media
6:24
buying for you, etc..
6:26
And so that
6:27
that's that's
6:27
kind of my expectation there.
6:28
And then anything above that,
6:30
like when you start to get into the five
6:32
plus $1,000 range,
6:34
unless the brand is spending
6:36
like considerable amounts of money
6:39
and what I,
6:39
what I mean
6:40
by considerable amounts of money,
6:41
I'm talking
6:41
hundreds of thousands of dollars
6:42
per month.
6:43
I think if you're not getting
6:44
additional things on top of that,
6:47
or like insane, insane
6:49
depths of like involvement
6:50
in your ad account,
6:52
that's where I start to wonder is,
6:55
is that worth it from
6:56
from an agency agency perspective?
6:58
Now, we've had Marin on the podcast
7:01
as an example,
7:01
and I know he charges percentages men
7:03
like that's an example of somebody
7:04
who cracked out in your ad account,
7:06
like relentlessly checking things
7:08
every single day
7:08
and moving the needle forward
7:09
with managing the account.
7:10
But just as a just as a baseline.
7:12
I think if we're talking strictly
7:13
about managing the ad account,
7:16
no creative,
7:16
nothing like I'd be surprised
7:18
if people were able to charge
7:20
like substantially
7:20
more than $5,000 consistently
7:22
for the average brand.
7:25
Totally agree.
7:26
Yeah,
7:26
I think a lot of folks,
7:27
they start to
7:28
wonder where the value is coming
7:30
when it's,
7:31
you know, when it gets higher than that,
7:32
you know, hey,
7:33
what's happening with just media
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Because straight media buying
7:35
is so much different, obviously,
7:36
than it used to Welcome to the show.
7:38
Zuck, co-host and friend of ours.
7:42
We're glad to have you.
7:43
Thank you.
7:43
We're talking
7:44
paid meta ad agency pricing,
7:47
I went through
7:48
sort of all the examples in the outline,
7:49
just absolutely all over the
7:51
what's your opinion
7:52
on the best
7:53
and most effective way
7:54
to price right now,
7:54
if you're a meta ad agency
7:56
or when you like,
7:57
the context for you is like,
7:58
you got all this in-house, right?
8:00
do you have anything outsourced?
8:02
It's not like an internal person
8:03
that's like
8:04
actually touching your ad count.
8:05
Like maybe somebody uploading ads
8:06
or something like that or not really.
8:07
So we do now for hollow.
8:10
So, yeah, we
8:12
I mean,
8:13
I have two
8:14
I have a few schools of thought.
8:15
I think,
8:15
like the agency
8:16
model makes a ton of sense
8:18
for a lot of brands.
8:19
Up to a certain point
8:21
that I think your goal
8:21
is to bring it in-house.
8:22
And then I think
8:23
once the business gets big enough,
8:25
there's a world where you also
8:26
then consider
8:27
going back to finding,
8:28
like the cracked, crazy,
8:30
extremely talented individual
8:32
that's usually just freelancing
8:33
the David Hermans of the world,
8:34
like Lucas's of the world, Kyle
8:36
leeches of the world. Right.
8:37
To then go and say, hey,
8:38
I'm willing to pay above. Above.
8:41
Like what?
8:41
I'd be comfortable
8:42
paying one individual freelancer
8:44
because of just their extraordinary
8:45
skill set,
8:46
because now we're spending enough money
8:48
that there's only
8:48
so many of these people in the world
8:50
that have spent that amount of money.
8:51
So that's kind of how I think about
8:53
So hollow
8:54
is now at the state
8:55
where we're spending enough
8:56
just trying to find
8:57
a media buyer in the house,
8:58
or just find an agency
8:59
that's going to work on it,
9:01
you know, a media buyers
9:02
probably managing a couple
9:03
different accounts,
9:03
like, wasn't enough attention.
9:04
And I really wanted
9:05
someone that spent real like big dollars.
9:07
So that's why we went with
9:08
like a contractor.
9:09
So like Hollow
9:10
Hollows running with Kyle Leach
9:11
right now, which we've seen
9:14
like wins
9:16
in the first couple of weeks because,
9:18
you know,
9:18
he's he's running very,
9:20
very large accounts
9:21
and I think he's in ads manager
9:24
all day every day.
9:24
And that's all he does.
9:25
He doesn't really have to worry
9:26
about a bunch of new business
9:27
and stuff like that.
9:28
Like he only works on a couple
9:29
accounts at a
9:30
But like that individual,
9:32
like we're willing to pay more
9:33
than what I'd probably be willing to pay.
9:35
Just like an agency,
9:36
knowing that I've owned an agency
9:38
and kind of how that model works.
9:40
But I think, like brands that kind of
9:42
in that
9:42
initial phase,
9:43
maybe like, I don't know, $50 a 59 a day,
9:46
50 K a month to like maybe
9:48
500 K a month
9:49
or maybe even up to a million.
9:50
I think an agency is like
9:51
a really, really good solution
9:53
most of the time.
9:53
I think that
9:54
then like anything above that,
9:56
I would either try to build it in house
9:57
or try to find
9:58
like a really talented individual.
10:00
And I think from a fee standpoint,
10:01
that's where it gets tricky.
10:02
Like I think if you're
10:03
if you're a brand spending,
10:05
you know, a grand
10:06
a day, like it's hard
10:07
to want to charge a brand,
10:08
spending a grand a day more than,
10:09
you know, 2 or 3 grand.
10:12
But I
10:13
do still think
10:14
that, I've talked about this
10:15
a lot in the past,
10:16
but like my threshold of like,
10:17
can you spend more
10:19
I think is actually valid,
10:20
like
10:20
I'm actually okay, paint
10:21
a percentage of spend
10:23
with a cap now
10:24
because it's
10:25
I think it's harder to, you know,
10:27
the media buyer should be responsible
10:28
for hitting your CPA goal,
10:30
like they should be spending more
10:31
if they're not hitting your CPA goals.
10:32
As long as you're tracking your CPA
10:33
or your Roas goal
10:35
that they're responsible for,
10:36
the more that they can spend that's
10:37
actually on them to like,
10:39
kind of go and accomplish.
10:40
So I think my
10:42
my thesis has changed
10:43
over the years, where
10:43
I used to think
10:44
percentage of spend was kind of BS,
10:46
and we never ran that at homestead.
10:47
Now I'm actually like
10:48
more inclined to say, hey,
10:49
if you can spend more
10:50
than like our average,
10:51
like we were willing to pay you a percent
10:54
with a cap always to do What's
10:58
what's the expectation of like,
11:00
what do you think
11:01
is the expectation of somebody
11:02
that's like,
11:02
if we're just talking paid
11:04
ad management, right.
11:05
Like what is maybe you can use Kyle
11:08
as a,
11:09
you know,
11:09
an anecdote for this,
11:10
but just across the board.
11:11
But like what should the expectation be.
11:12
Is is he leaning into creative at all
11:16
or is it like strictly in the account
11:19
strictly looking for levers of pole?
11:20
Is there any implication
11:21
of helping you understand,
11:23
like the financial implications
11:24
or our targets given to him?
11:26
Because like you could
11:27
you could walk into any agency right now
11:28
and you're going to get 17
11:29
different things
11:30
for like what they offer.
11:30
Like some are going to help you
11:32
set up your your financial targets
11:34
and forecasting.
11:35
They're going to manage your ads.
11:36
They're going to help you give creative
11:37
and like they might you know,
11:38
maybe they charge more or less.
11:39
But yeah, I guess
11:41
from like an expectation standpoint,
11:42
like what do you expect from that
11:43
So yeah,
11:44
Kyle is just very clearly given an NC row
11:46
as or a
11:47
target that he has to like,
11:48
withstand
11:50
and he can spend into it from there
11:52
because we kind of know
11:53
as long as we're at a certain threshold
11:54
and then we share like monthly
11:56
financial targets.
11:57
So he kind of knows where
11:58
like top line and blended has to land.
12:00
But what he's like,
12:02
our expectations from him
12:03
is basically bring new ideas
12:05
to the ad account,
12:06
which is like
12:06
maybe new bidding methodologies
12:08
or maybe new targeting strategies,
12:10
and then also tell us,
12:13
like pockets of areas
12:15
that we're missing in
12:16
when it comes to creative or landers.
12:18
So I think those are really
12:20
like the biggest things where he's,
12:21
you know,
12:22
he's probably like,
12:23
you know, in motion assessing
12:26
all the different creatives
12:27
that are getting proper spend
12:28
and then saying, oh, hey,
12:29
like we're missing
12:30
founder ads this month
12:31
or we haven't had a new founder
12:32
had in a long time,
12:33
go shoot one of those.
12:34
Or like, hey, we haven't done any,
12:37
like side by side comparison videos or
12:40
we haven't done this
12:42
or hey, we've run a lot of listicles,
12:44
I know, but can we try
12:44
and advertorial like
12:46
and could you know,
12:47
he's usually sharing examples
12:48
of other brands, two that he's seen.
12:50
So it's like not necessarily up
12:51
to him to like brief a creative or like
12:53
come up with a whole thesis of a
12:55
of a landing page.
12:56
It's just like kind of finding
12:57
like the holes that he's seeing
12:58
that he doesn't have the tools like,
13:01
and these are what the media buying.
13:03
This is what a media buyer
13:04
should be doing today
13:05
if they're value adding in your agency,
13:07
like it used to be,
13:08
that they would just run the ads,
13:09
and then the running of the ads
13:11
was enough of a chore.
13:13
And now it's like,
13:14
since so much of
13:15
that is on so much of the buying,
13:17
you know, you can
13:17
you can talk about structure,
13:18
you can talk
13:19
about bidding, which is important,
13:20
but it's not worth $5,000
13:23
a month to a lot of folks.
13:24
So it's like, you know,
13:28
these are the
13:28
these are the other things
13:29
that they're doing.
13:30
We're talking about gaps in creative.
13:31
We're talking about assessing.
13:33
We're talking about
13:35
like the things
13:35
that you just after mentioned.
13:36
So I think that's a
13:37
that's a big difference.
13:39
But jumping to your to your question
13:42
about
13:43
or jumping to your point,
13:44
like what is there like a purse,
13:46
you know,
13:47
and then spend percentage is good.
13:50
But do you also think doing it on
13:52
metrics is okay,
13:52
like I talked about before,
13:54
if they're agreed upon?
13:55
Or do you feel like that
13:56
gets really messy in agency
13:57
I think it's fine.
13:58
I think it's just
13:59
like whatever
13:59
is the simplest format
14:01
to get you the business target, right?
14:02
So like if you're willing to spend,
14:04
if if you've already forecasted
14:06
and know your numbers
14:07
well enough to say, hey,
14:09
you can scale up to here
14:10
and like if their fee structure increases
14:11
and our opex goes up,
14:13
as long as they're hitting target,
14:14
like, does the business balance out
14:16
to still end
14:16
at like the revenue and net profit
14:18
target for the month?
14:19
And I think if you know those things,
14:21
like I think any any structure
14:22
of if it's hitting a target,
14:24
hitting a CPA at a certain threshold,
14:26
if it's a percentage of spend,
14:28
if it's there's a
14:28
there's a bunch of different ways
14:29
I think you can do it.
14:30
I think it's obviously simplest
14:32
to just go with like a one number. Right.
14:35
So that's that's how I like it
14:37
now more than not.
14:38
So usually
14:39
if we're going to go higher
14:40
for this role,
14:41
it's like here's
14:41
your base retainer
14:42
or percentage of spend with a cap.
14:45
So it's like it might be five
14:46
K base or 10-K base, 1% of spend, 2%
14:50
of spend,
14:50
5% of spend,
14:51
whatever it is
14:51
capped at 15 K, 20 K-25, K.
14:54
And to me, that gap in gain
14:56
between paying the min retainer
14:57
and the top is like,
14:58
we can spend that much at our target.
15:00
That means our business is growing
15:01
dramatically. So I'm willing to do that.
15:04
And what are things
15:05
what this is a question
15:06
for both of you, Brad.
15:08
You can go first,
15:08
which is what are things
15:10
that a meta
15:12
ads agency or a paid media agency.
15:14
But yeah, the focus is on meta.
15:16
What are the things that you've seen
15:17
that have set
15:18
certain organizations apart from others
15:21
that are causing them to grow
15:23
above others are,
15:25
you know, more than others?
15:26
Like, is it
15:27
that they have better insights?
15:29
Is it that they have great reporting?
15:31
Is it
15:31
that they have a really good strategist?
15:33
Like,
15:33
what are the pieces of it
15:35
that you guys think
15:36
have are of the places you've seen?
15:38
Because inevitably, you know,
15:39
Zach, you've seen a ton.
15:40
Brad I know you've seen it on.
15:42
What do you guys
15:42
All right, friends, quick break.
15:44
This episode is brought to you
15:45
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16:44
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16:46
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16:47
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16:48
alongside the rest of your data.
16:50
Incrementally. Was broken.
16:51
North beam fixed it.
16:53
I think the
16:54
if you have somebody who is like
16:56
responsibilities, uploading
16:57
ads into the ad account,
16:59
like you should be paying
17:00
a very small amount of money,
17:01
like that's really not
17:03
it's just it's
17:04
just like not that valuable.
17:05
Granted.
17:06
Like there's a caveat to this,
17:07
which is like,
17:07
I still see accounts
17:09
that are set up in the most insane ways.
17:10
It's just like it's it's 2026
17:13
and I see the craziest shit
17:14
and it's like,
17:14
wow, there's still
17:16
there's still bad media
17:17
buying that happens.
17:18
And so I get there's there's
17:20
objectively bad media buying.
17:21
But I think for the most part,
17:22
like it's, it's
17:24
it should progressively
17:25
be getting better and better
17:26
as meta makes it easier.
17:27
So like I think like level
17:29
one is like launching ads
17:30
in the ad account
17:31
and and clicking buttons
17:33
for a budget up and down.
17:34
The additional things
17:35
that that can help you
17:36
start to,
17:37
I guess, like
17:38
not be just like a commodity
17:39
as a media buyer.
17:40
Somebody uploading ads is like,
17:42
I think reporting is a good one.
17:44
And just like
17:45
the insane depths of knowledge
17:46
that somebody like a Kyle
17:47
or a David Herman or,
17:49
you know,
17:49
like all the
17:49
all the people that we've mentioned,
17:50
they have,
17:51
it's like
17:51
they're not just looking
17:52
at the performance
17:53
of individual campaigns.
17:54
They're going in there
17:55
breaking down
17:56
every single possible, like,
17:58
okay, where's the
17:58
where's the delivery happening
17:59
from a placement standpoint?
18:01
Okay.
18:01
We used to be spending more on reels
18:04
and now that's going off well.
18:05
What creative is coming out of that.
18:06
They're making suggestions like that.
18:08
The looking at the breakdown
18:10
and spend across a million
18:11
different things and saying like okay,
18:12
we're missing something here.
18:13
Unlocking a more spend
18:15
can be by getting more
18:16
native Instagram
18:17
real looking content,
18:18
because we used to spend
18:19
like that's just one example
18:20
of a million different things.
18:21
So just like
18:23
super cracked out in terms of
18:24
like actually knowing
18:25
what the heck is going on in the attic
18:26
and like,
18:27
that's a it's a big gap
18:28
from uploading ads to that.
18:29
And like that just takes reps
18:30
and years of doing it.
18:31
Other levers would be helping
18:34
you understand
18:35
like what your targets should be.
18:36
So obviously, incremental
18:37
has been this big topic of discussion
18:39
over the last several years now.
18:40
But just like I really do, you know,
18:44
I think a lot of brands
18:45
should be able to set their own targets.
18:47
Like, I think it's just
18:48
financial
18:49
responsibility is understanding
18:51
how your pal works
18:53
and understanding
18:54
what you should be setting for break
18:55
even KAC
18:56
or or customer acquisition costs
18:58
or what your goals should be.
18:59
But like a good,
19:01
a good agency or media
19:02
buyer should be able to help walk
19:03
you through that.
19:04
And they should definitely understand
19:05
what the impact is of different levels
19:08
of efficiency in your ad account.
19:10
And so I think can I,
19:13
can I interrupt and ask a question?
19:14
This is like
19:15
maybe going to derail this for a second.
19:17
When do you think
19:17
income mentality actually matters?
19:19
Like if we were to put a scale threshold
19:21
to it
19:21
because I think
19:22
it gets talked about a lot.
19:23
And you know, we use house love house.
19:25
Great.
19:26
Is there
19:27
is there like a size
19:28
or amount of monthly spend
19:29
that you would say
19:30
anything below
19:31
that you don't need to worry
19:32
about incrementally?
19:34
I think mentality starts to matter
19:36
once you're spending
19:36
like between, let's say 205 hundred
19:40
K a month
19:41
like before,
19:41
then it's just the signals
19:42
not strong enough.
19:44
Brad, what do you think?
19:45
I know you didn't ask me, but no, no, no
19:47
I guess. Yeah. Sorry.
19:49
It's good to know I was I was curious,
19:52
I think I think the I kind of agree
19:55
with that with a couple caveats.
19:56
Like if you're spending on other channels
19:58
or you have like if you,
19:59
if you're an organic first brand
20:01
or a TikTok shop
20:02
first brand or something like this,
20:03
and like you're starting to expand
20:04
on other channels,
20:05
I think it can start to matter faster.
20:09
I have an ad account
20:09
that's been 600 grand
20:10
last month, and like,
20:11
I know that it was entirely meta.
20:13
Like, I don't
20:13
I don't need
20:14
incrementally to tell me that, like,
20:15
I know because they're not doing
20:16
anything else.
20:17
Like I just, I just know. Right.
20:18
And so there's, there's
20:19
there's no doubt in my mind
20:20
that it's just not it's not that useful.
20:22
That said, like how
20:26
I haven't had the chance
20:27
to work with them
20:28
really much, but like,
20:29
I know it's a great tool.
20:30
It's just like it's very cost
20:31
prohibitive for a lot of people.
20:33
And I know it's getting less cost
20:34
prohibitive to do conversion
20:35
live studies inside of meta
20:36
and all these other tools.
20:37
But I think
20:39
if you have a ton of channels,
20:40
that's when it starts to make sense.
20:41
But otherwise
20:42
I think you can get away with it
20:43
for a long time,
20:44
you know,
20:45
especially if you're like,
20:46
if you are
20:46
if you are ripping
20:47
$1 million a month on meta,
20:48
you're probably still okay
20:49
if you're only running meta
20:51
like you, just keep going.
20:52
Yeah, I agree,
20:53
I mean,
20:53
if if it's a straight econ play,
20:55
I think that's true.
20:55
I think your point of like
20:57
if some of these things, you know,
20:59
like I talked to a company
21:00
that was selling,
21:01
they're selling an office chair
21:03
and the office chair,
21:04
it's a new office chair.
21:05
It's got a patent.
21:05
It's 2100
21:07
a month or 1800 a month or whatever,
21:09
or not a month like per purchase.
21:11
And it's like they have to
21:13
not just spend on meta, like they,
21:15
you know,
21:15
because the funnel is a lot longer
21:17
and bigger.
21:17
So obviously in that
21:18
they're probably going to
21:19
maybe spend in 150 K range.
21:22
Like I think it
21:23
wouldn't be a bad idea to understand,
21:25
I don't know exactly what do you think?
21:26
I mean, I'm
21:26
kind of like the, the,
21:27
the other case
21:28
where I'd push that number up
21:29
as high as I possibly mean.
21:30
Like, I think if you're
21:31
I think you spend a million a month,
21:32
you don't need incrementally at all.
21:33
Like I think
21:34
even if that's like 85 meta, 15% Google
21:38
you should be looking and able
21:40
to look for most brands.
21:41
For most brands, again,
21:42
not the brands
21:43
that the purchase windows 180 days.
21:45
But like for most brands
21:46
that it's even 30 or less,
21:47
you should be able to look at an MTA
21:48
and make decisions off of
21:50
and I think that
21:50
that is more than sufficient
21:52
up to like seven figures a month,
21:53
you know, a million a month and spend.
21:55
I've been telling a lot of people
21:56
that that have asked like,
21:57
oh, should I be running house?
21:59
And I'm like, how much are you spending?
22:00
They're like ten k a day.
22:01
And I'm like, doesn't matter.
22:02
Like does not matter.
22:03
Keep spending on meta.
22:04
Do do better there.
22:06
It's the same thing as always better
22:08
creatives, better
22:08
lenders, better offers, better crow.
22:12
Get your email.
22:12
And it's like the same thing.
22:14
I was just curious.
22:14
Like I think
22:15
it's it's interesting to talk about,
22:18
but even like us at Mars, who's
22:19
spending a lot of money,
22:20
like we're just starting
22:22
to really dabble with incremental.
22:23
And I think it
22:24
I think you can really get
22:25
a lot more scale
22:26
for depending on the business type,
22:28
of course,
22:28
but for most brands,
22:30
I think it matters less.
22:31
let us not go without talking
22:33
about the fact that one of our
22:34
that our main sponsor, Northeim,
22:36
does have incrementally built in as well.
22:38
So you can test it there too,
22:40
which I'm sure you guys have.
22:41
So you're going to ask another question.
22:44
Then we should talk
22:44
about Google agencies,
22:45
which I know you love.
22:46
Talk big big, big, big Google guy.
22:49
Did you give us your next venture? Right.
22:51
That's the next thing
22:51
you guys are doing at Easy Street Brands.
22:53
You're launching a Google ad agency.
22:55
Yeah, we they only manage
22:56
branded search campaigns.
22:57
Yeah.
22:58
The only thing that was stricken
22:59
from my non-compete
23:01
when we sold
23:02
the deal was let me start
23:03
at Google Ads Agency.
23:04
I had a really fight for that one.
23:06
No. Yeah. Let's talk about Google.
23:08
I mean,
23:09
I think again, I'd love to hear
23:11
what you guys have found and saw and.
23:13
Yeah, okay, I was talking about it.
23:14
So so Google
23:16
in the survey
23:17
we talked
23:17
about the survey at the beginning.
23:19
We have a ton of data on this.
23:20
So actual examples from the Google,
23:22
from Google agencies,
23:23
from the survey,
23:24
10 to 20% of the people
23:28
that we surveyed,
23:29
their minimum is around 500 a month.
23:31
So Google agencies get really cheap
23:33
and they're
23:34
very commoditized in my opinion.
23:36
There's people that also
23:37
do a flat retainer
23:39
of 500 to 5000 mid-market 1500 to 5000.
23:43
So there's so many of these Google
23:45
ad agencies that are like,
23:46
yeah, we'll take it on.
23:47
And it's like easy for them to manage.
23:48
I think they just price basically,
23:50
you know, do very little
23:51
I mean 500 a month in fee.
23:52
They're not spending anything.
23:53
But that's a lot of like
23:54
small business stuff I think.
23:56
Then there's base
23:58
plus percent over a threshold
23:59
like we talked about with meta.
24:01
So some example
24:02
I had $1,000 base
24:03
plus 10% of spend over $5,000.
24:07
A freelance consultants
24:09
generally were like up to 3000 a month.
24:11
And then they sometimes went higher.
24:13
But you know, it's cheaper.
24:15
Generally,
24:16
I think we're talking about
24:17
Google agencies.
24:18
And then the contractor passed
24:19
through a client at 10 to 15 K a month.
24:21
Google spend price
24:22
a contractor at $1,000 a month.
24:25
So, you know,
24:26
I think
24:26
you guys have talked about before,
24:29
Google should be a flat fee.
24:30
Most skilled
24:31
and spend is branded search.
24:33
It's not incremental. You get it anyway.
24:35
So you know
24:38
I don't know what you guys
24:38
think about this.
24:39
There's there's a lot
24:41
we could tell you
24:41
about Google ad agencies
24:42
and how they go about this.
24:43
But I think generally speaking, Zack,
24:46
your opinion is that a lot of
24:47
people are overpaying for this.
24:48
Do you disagree with that assessment?
24:50
I just don't think anyone should charge
24:51
a percentage
24:52
of spend for brand search like,
24:53
first and foremost,
24:54
it doesn't make any sense to me.
24:55
Like zero sense.
24:56
I think percentage of spend for YouTube
25:00
spend I think is really interesting.
25:02
And again, it has to be
25:05
the whole nuance of presenting to spend
25:06
or even any of these target.
25:08
They have to have a target, right?
25:09
Like you have to be able to have
25:11
some type of either last click,
25:13
which I know is like not the best,
25:15
but like some type of target to look at
25:19
to, to
25:20
to hold them accountable for the spend,
25:22
the increasing spend
25:24
if they're doing that,
25:25
I think non brand of YouTube
25:27
is totally fine
25:28
to run a percentage of spend.
25:31
It's just so rare to see it done
25:33
where anyone gets any proper
25:36
scale out of it.
25:37
Proper scale,
25:37
I mean even like to 10-K a day, right.
25:39
So, I'm in the I'm in the bulk,
25:43
you know,
25:44
I'm in the camp of saying
25:46
percentage of spend is fine,
25:48
but it just shouldn't be on brand.
25:49
That's really it.
25:50
That's like my biggest thing.
25:51
And why like
25:51
most Google spend
25:53
is brand spend,
25:54
especially if
25:54
like you actually dig into it.
25:55
A lot of agencies have done a bad job
25:57
of actually
25:57
filtering things out correctly
25:59
where they're saying it's not
26:00
saying it's non brand,
26:01
but it actually still is brand.
26:02
So that's that's my number
26:04
one thing that I just like
26:05
get frustrated about.
26:07
Outside of that
26:08
I don't really have any issues.
26:10
I mean candidly like where
26:11
to spot with
26:11
both both Holland
26:13
Mars that we have like a
26:14
we've been using a contractor
26:15
for a while.
26:16
We haven't been able to scale
26:18
Google a ton, Google
26:20
YouTube a ton for for Mars yet.
26:22
And so we're going
26:22
to build the team in house.
26:24
And so we're bringing in
26:25
like basically someone
26:27
to just own the channel
26:28
and then someone to media by.
26:29
So it's like a two person role or two,
26:31
two people to kind of run it.
26:33
I think for agencies like, again,
26:36
I think it's
26:37
just also really rare
26:39
for my experience in D to see,
26:41
to see many agencies
26:42
that understand
26:43
how to scale non brand correctly
26:45
at efficient targets
26:46
and scale you to effectively
26:47
ad efficient targets.
26:48
So again, to do that correctly,
26:52
I would be willing to pay them
26:53
just as much as I'd be willing to pay
26:54
a meta freelancer agency. Yeah.
26:56
Would you agree?
26:57
Yeah, I largely agree.
26:58
Yeah.
26:59
I don't think I have a ton to add to
27:01
to that point specifically.
27:02
I think,
27:03
I mean, this is probably true of most
27:05
most people
27:06
in the marketing space in general is like
27:08
there's just people
27:09
that are really not very good
27:11
what they do.
27:11
And sometimes evaluating
27:13
that can be difficult.
27:14
Agreed that like Google branded search
27:17
should, should,
27:18
should be relatively braindead in that
27:21
you set it up, you don't spend on it.
27:22
And like you don't
27:23
need to stress too much
27:24
about the income mentality
27:25
of Google branded search.
27:27
We had Colin Slattery
27:28
on a couple months ago at this point.
27:30
And you know, I've we've talked
27:33
chatted with him a few times
27:34
and you know,
27:35
there's there's folks like that
27:36
who are maybe able to scale
27:38
non brand search.
27:40
Actually back
27:40
to the point of incremental,
27:41
I think Google is actually interesting to
27:43
maybe do it sooner
27:44
because like let's say you sell
27:47
but you know let's
27:48
we can even use hollow as an example.
27:49
I'll try to think of this on the fly.
27:51
But if somebody types in
27:52
70 types in hollow
27:54
socks, right,
27:55
what's the value of that click.
27:57
Like what should you be expecting
27:58
from from an efficiency standpoint.
27:59
Pretty fucking high
28:01
Somebody types in alpaca
28:03
compression socks okay.
28:06
Well that's
28:06
that's still that's
28:07
still pretty pretty pretty narrow
28:09
and pretty pretty narrowly defined.
28:11
But if somebody types in compression
28:13
socks or socks for whatever support,
28:17
whatever ailments that people have
28:18
than where compression socks for
28:20
like there's,
28:20
there's varying degrees of incremental
28:22
within that.
28:23
And I think there's a lot more nuance to
28:25
some of that stuff.
28:26
Whereas like
28:27
I think meta,
28:28
as long as you're excluding customers,
28:30
you know, you're using clickbait
28:31
attribution as a lot harder to
28:35
to get fooled by
28:36
the mentality of that platform.
28:37
So I don't have anything to add
28:38
on the pricing side.
28:39
That all sounds like totally fair to me.
28:41
I think YouTube is like
28:42
a completely separate thing.
28:43
Like is
28:43
it's like not even worth lumping in
28:45
because of the creative aspect of
28:46
it is just so different
28:47
compared to to Google.
28:49
So what about creative agencies,
28:51
you guys? Like what?
28:52
How are these priced?
28:53
Because, I mean, I've seen everything.
28:56
I've seen $1,000 for a thousand statics,
28:59
and I'm just kidding.
29:00
But, like, close, you know.
29:01
So, I mean, seriously, like,
29:03
what of the great ones
29:04
that are out there?
29:05
What are they charging?
29:07
Are they charging? Percentage of spend.
29:09
If you spend on them.
29:10
And then a base fee or what's the latest
29:13
Zach you've got 17
29:15
creative agencies on retainer
29:16
so you probably have the best insight.
29:19
Yeah I mean we've candidly we've like
29:21
rotated out of a lot of them too.
29:23
I mean,
29:23
so the way that we think about
29:25
this is completely based off of spend.
29:27
If your creative agency
29:28
you want to work with Mars
29:29
men are hollow
29:30
and you want to come in at zero retainer
29:33
and we'll pay you a percentage of spend
29:34
or a flat retainer that's high
29:36
and you think you can crank, like,
29:38
feel free to hit me up.
29:39
But basically
29:41
I like percentage of spending
29:43
or no or no minimum.
29:45
I'm okay with the minimum,
29:46
but I like that model
29:48
because they're incentivized
29:50
to make us bangers that get spend
29:52
that, you know,
29:53
and we have had so many that are like,
29:56
hey, but like,
29:57
you know,
29:58
our ads have high Roas, who cares?
30:00
Their bottom of funnel statics,
30:01
it doesn't matter.
30:02
So like
30:03
I think it all depends
30:04
on what the target is.
30:05
And if I were to say like
30:07
what makes it great
30:08
creative agency, it's people
30:10
that understand that
30:10
their job is to make ads
30:11
that go get net new visitors
30:13
and get a lot of
30:14
And so if you're able to do that,
30:16
I think a creative agency,
30:17
candidly, right now
30:18
is probably the one agency
30:19
that I would pay the most money
30:20
to even versus like a media
30:22
by an agency and email and SMS agency,
30:24
Google agency
30:25
like that is the agency
30:26
that I'm willing
30:27
to pay the real dollars for.
30:28
Because one good ad, one good
30:30
breakout ad can literally
30:32
ad we've we've all seen it like 20,
30:35
30, 40,
30:35
50 k a and spend to a business
30:37
if if it's set
30:38
up correctly and like has the inventory
30:40
and has everything like set yeah I like
30:43
you know, I like a flat retainer
30:47
or a even minimum
30:49
retainer with percentages
30:50
spent with a cap.
30:51
Like those are my favorites.
30:54
Kind of similar to to
30:55
the above,
30:55
but yeah, I think I think that's my
30:58
my biggest
30:59
kind of like stance on
31:00
how the scope should be
31:02
thought about
31:02
is I also I like
31:04
minimum scopes of like output.
31:05
And then I like the ability
31:07
that if an agency like
31:08
wants to make more money with you,
31:09
which should be their goal
31:11
and should be to keep you
31:12
around, is like,
31:13
let them make as much as they
31:14
possibly want.
31:15
If they want to go
31:16
make a bunch more ads for you,
31:17
or if they just have random ideas,
31:18
I'll give a shout out
31:19
to like the agency x Roas.
31:21
Like we've been using them for a
31:22
long time for both of our brands.
31:24
They've been
31:24
and they consistently just like
31:27
send us more creatives
31:28
than what
31:29
our scope entails,
31:30
because they're
31:31
they're on a model where, like,
31:33
they want to keep us
31:34
and they want to push up
31:35
more spend to their creatives,
31:36
which keeps us happy
31:37
and keeps them around.
31:38
So, that's my
31:39
that's my take on kind of fees
31:40
and creative agencies. Yeah.
31:41
I think it's pretty common to be like
31:43
if you're,
31:44
if you're working with an agency
31:45
and it's we're talking
31:46
like content creator,
31:47
anywhere from like 3 to $700
31:51
per video is kind of like the range
31:53
I think you're landing in now.
31:54
If you're starting to get
31:55
like higher production than that,
31:56
it's probably going to scale up
31:57
pretty quickly,
31:58
especially depending on
31:59
like the actual scale of that production.
32:03
Just had a sick new
32:04
video that I'm sure
32:05
was not in the 3 to $500 range for
32:09
for the GNC launch, but like, that's
32:11
an example of how
32:13
that how that changes really quickly.
32:15
What about
32:15
what about like when you pay
32:17
content creators directly
32:18
because you guys have in-house teams
32:19
and I can give some anecdotes.
32:21
The range that I see is like
32:23
and obviously depends
32:24
on the complexity of the strip.
32:25
But like we're talking content creators.
32:26
I've seen, you know,
32:27
low end 100 hours of video
32:29
where it's like fully scripted,
32:30
given to them.
32:31
And we had somebody the other day
32:32
who's like, it's $2,400 for like a video.
32:36
And it was fully just fine because like,
32:38
she makes bangers like,
32:40
so when you guys work
32:41
with creators directly,
32:42
what's what's the range that you see?
32:44
And
32:45
I guess I'm interested
32:46
how you contrast that with the agencies.
32:48
Like are you taking learnings
32:49
from agency concepts
32:50
and you're just scaling it out
32:51
with more creators
32:52
because you've got it proven out or
32:54
you guys are doing your own.
32:55
Net new concepts or combination of it
32:57
one of the brands.
32:58
We've had a content creator
32:59
that started at like,
33:00
I don't know,
33:00
it was like $1,000
33:01
for like two videos or something.
33:03
She did a great job,
33:05
like got decent spend money on the ads.
33:07
And so we kept working with her
33:08
and worked on
33:09
like a slightly increased retainer.
33:10
But what's been really interesting is
33:12
we brought in a new creative agency
33:14
who's like,
33:15
absolutely knocked it out of the park.
33:16
And now we have that creative agency
33:18
writing scripts for this content creator,
33:21
because this, like, content creator
33:22
really resonates with our demo.
33:24
So, I think it can be hybrid.
33:27
I think, like ideally you're
33:28
kind of finding the sweet spot of,
33:30
I mean, really
33:31
it comes down to the brief
33:32
or the scripts more than anything,
33:35
if you're hiring creators
33:37
and then how good they are at being real.
33:40
Right.
33:40
Like,
33:40
I think
33:42
the whole idea of just
33:43
like hiring one off
33:43
UGC creators for $100,
33:45
just like that shit
33:45
doesn't work anymore, right?
33:46
Just like consumers have seen through it.
33:48
They know it's an ad right away
33:50
if they like,
33:50
you know, there's like the classic
33:52
like they're showing
33:52
the product right away
33:53
and they're like, whatever.
33:54
It's like,
33:55
what was the phrase that everyone use?
33:57
This is this is game changer.
33:59
Yeah. It wasn't game changer.
34:01
It was something like that
34:01
that all the UTC creators would say,
34:03
hey guys, think of it.
34:06
Yeah, yeah.
34:07
Today I'm going to talk to you about.
34:09
Yeah.
34:10
Anyway,
34:11
so I'm never going to believe this.
34:13
Yeah, that's not a bad hook.
34:15
But I think it depends on, on that.
34:20
So we, I mean, at Hollow Mars, we paid.
34:22
You know, we only pay creators.
34:24
Now if we get whitelisting.
34:25
For what it's worth,
34:26
we don't really pay any creators
34:27
just for content alone.
34:28
We pay agencies
34:30
who will pay creators for content alone.
34:32
Right?
34:32
That we don't whitelist, but that.
34:36
Yeah, can range.
34:36
I mean, like,
34:37
it could literally be $100 for a video
34:38
plus whitelisting if they're very
34:40
they're just getting started
34:41
in their career
34:42
to $5,000 a month for,
34:44
you know, even only a couple of videos
34:46
with whitelisting.
34:49
I think
34:49
I think that
34:50
at the end of the day,
34:51
creative agencies
34:52
job is to get you scale, like get you ads
34:55
that can drive, scale and drive
34:56
more net new visitors to your site.
35:01
that I think
35:02
if, if your CFO
35:03
or if you're in charge of the finance
35:04
because you're just getting
35:05
started as a brand, like
35:06
that's the one agency
35:06
I'd be willing to pay the most money to.
35:08
Max, who's my CMO of holla.
35:10
I basically tell him, like,
35:12
here's your kind of like fun
35:13
budget every month now,
35:14
like spending on whatever you want.
35:16
He usually spends it all on creatives
35:17
or creative agencies.
35:19
Like that's that's where he's putting it.
35:24
how I think about Yeah.
35:25
So we have
35:26
we've talked
35:27
about all these different
35:28
agencies, talked about creators
35:29
and by the way, creators stuff
35:31
fear brand.
35:32
You haven't heard.
35:32
We have hive House as well,
35:33
which is a creator community.
35:34
You can come in.
35:35
A lot of founder members
35:36
get the automatic access hive House.
35:38
UGC tons of people in there
35:40
just worth checking out.
35:42
We we vet all the creators
35:43
that are in there.
35:44
It's a really good set of people.
35:45
We help the creators grow in their career
35:47
like we do with founders
35:48
and the agency founders of like we do in
35:51
founders community
35:52
for agency owners and brand owners
35:53
and that kind of thing.
35:54
So anyway,
35:55
just wanted to toss that in there.
35:56
So let's
35:59
talk about a couple of other ones
36:01
an email, SMS, agency pricing.
36:05
Usually this is baked into full service.
36:06
This is what everybody does now.
36:08
And it's like really hard to know.
36:09
I mean, I don't know
36:10
anybody that's doing a standalone
36:12
email agency now.
36:14
It's like very rare to hear that.
36:17
I've heard of one the other day
36:18
that these guys that I'd never heard of
36:20
before that are crushing
36:22
it seem to be doing
36:23
only retention and email stuff SMS is it?
36:27
This seems to be,
36:28
from what I've seen, priced
36:30
similarly to the Facebook
36:31
ads game in terms of, you know, look,
36:35
it's it's
36:36
based on a certain amount of emails
36:38
going out
36:38
and sometimes there's
36:39
a percentage of revenue attached,
36:41
sometimes there's not.
36:42
What do you guys think about this?
36:44
How is it
36:44
how is this priced from what you've seen,
36:46
if you're if you're paying
36:47
for like per email,
36:49
like more than hundreds of dollars
36:52
per just like email and SMS output
36:54
I think is probably pretty insane.
36:57
I personally
36:58
also hate the
36:58
idea of percentage
37:00
of percentage of email
37:02
attributed anything,
37:03
especially if
37:04
you're using Clavijo defaults.
37:05
Like you're just getting fleeced.
37:07
For sure.
37:08
It's the warmest
37:09
traffic gets some of the easiest to
37:11
to produce.
37:11
Now, if we're talking about increase
37:12
in efficiency or sorry,
37:15
increase in attributed revenue,
37:16
that's still tricky,
37:17
because increase in attributed
37:19
revenue doesn't necessarily
37:20
mean increase
37:21
in incremental contributed revenue.
37:24
So there's some big caveats there.
37:25
But I think if you're paying more
37:27
than a couple
37:28
hundred dollars per
37:30
email design,
37:30
if that's all you're expecting,
37:31
you're expecting email design
37:33
and outputs, that's probably too much.
37:35
That's if you're just like giving them
37:36
the brief yourself.
37:37
Now, if they're helping you own
37:38
and craft the marketing calendar,
37:40
that's that's a big value add.
37:41
If they're helping you own craft
37:44
and hone retention.
37:45
And like retention is a massive
37:47
like retention
37:48
could be post-purchase
37:49
upsells on the website.
37:51
It can be post-purchase.
37:52
What happens in email, your flows.
37:54
Maybe it starts to seep into
37:56
like actually managing
37:57
your subscription platform
37:58
in a way,
37:59
and coming up with ways
38:00
to reduce reduce churn
38:02
by suggesting one,
38:03
you should change your gift.
38:04
Like that's where I think you start.
38:05
It starts to get much less commoditized,
38:06
and it's
38:07
you're paying for people
38:08
who have the source
38:09
and who have done it
38:09
a million times over.
38:11
But I think if you're straight up paying
38:12
for just like paying for emails
38:14
and paying for SMS,
38:16
yeah, if you're paying
38:16
more than a couple hundred
38:17
bucks for each of those,
38:18
you're probably getting fleeced.
38:19
So yeah, I think, yeah, it's 3 to 5
38:23
grand a month
38:24
if they're doing
38:25
like a pretty basic job,
38:26
if they're doing strategy,
38:27
I'd imagine 5 to 10.
38:29
And then if you're a larger brand
38:30
that has more velocity
38:31
and a bunch of like flows and stuff,
38:33
it's probably like ten to
38:34
maybe even up to even 50, up to 20,
38:38
probably like the 10 to 15 K
38:40
a month range.
38:41
I would not be surprised
38:44
if there is a strategist on your account,
38:46
a copywriter on your account,
38:47
a designer and implementer.
38:50
Like if you
38:50
have like a full,
38:51
robust team working on your stuff,
38:52
I think that that's more reasonable.
38:58
this is my take
38:59
is that copy is actually,
39:01
you know, it got really easy with AI,
39:02
but then it got too easy.
39:03
And so I think a lot of email and SMS,
39:06
you know, agencies
39:07
just kind of chalk it up.
39:08
And that's where the brands
39:09
like feel really falls apart
39:11
very quickly.
39:12
It's very easy
39:13
to catch an email and be like,
39:14
oh yeah, like AI wrote that
39:17
besides just seeing a bunch of em
39:18
dashes, right?
39:19
So I think that's where I think
39:22
the copyright is.
39:23
Honestly, the most important thing
39:24
I think design is, is isn't as hard to do
39:26
as what it used to be.
39:27
I think, like,
39:27
you can design really
39:28
beautiful things easier now.
39:32
I also think like
39:34
the way
39:34
that people
39:35
think about agencies and if team like
39:39
we haven't really talked about this,
39:40
but like I would love to kind of
39:41
wrap some things about like the team
39:42
that you're working with,
39:43
if you care
39:44
if they're like stateside
39:45
or onshore versus offshore.
39:47
I think that for a lot of e-commerce
39:50
brands,
39:50
like for them
39:51
to want to pay the fees
39:52
that they want to pay for.
39:53
I think a lot of agencies
39:54
do have to offshore roles to, like,
39:56
make it work for everybody, right?
39:57
If the agency is not able
39:58
to be profitable
39:59
in any way,
39:59
like the brands can't be, you know,
40:02
the agencies won't exist.
40:03
So the brands can't get fees
40:05
for a certain certain degree.
40:06
So, yeah, I mean, I think
40:09
I think it comes down to what
40:11
Brad said,
40:12
which is like if they're adding
40:14
strategy that's improving returning
40:17
customer rate
40:18
or increasing
40:19
like the or tightening the window
40:21
from like first purchase,
40:22
a second purchase.
40:22
And they're like sharing data on that.
40:24
The things they're doing to like
40:26
improve that,
40:27
increase LTV, reduce retention of churn.
40:30
If they're doing those things
40:31
and reporting on those things
40:32
in your scene like improvement,
40:34
those are the agencies
40:35
I'd be willing to pay 15, 20
40:37
grand a month to
40:37
because that's like
40:38
substantial compounding effects.
40:41
But yeah,
40:41
if you're just getting email and SMS and
40:44
no real strategy
40:45
is just implemented like a couple grand
40:46
a month, makes sense. Yeah.
40:48
I mean,
40:48
I think so much of it is,
40:50
you know, talking about your
40:51
your question about onshore, offshore,
40:53
and I think even just a thread through
40:55
any of this is like,
40:56
how much is that agency,
40:58
a strategic partner of yours.
41:00
And really like what does strategy mean.
41:02
Right. Like that.
41:04
That means different things
41:04
to different people.
41:05
To me,
41:06
it means that they are proactively
41:08
taking action on your account
41:11
to be testing new things,
41:14
be trying
41:14
new things, to be preemptively
41:16
bringing up issues
41:16
they might see,
41:18
and to be innovating essentially on new,
41:21
new things that can bring you
41:24
new net new revenue.
41:25
Right?
41:26
That
41:27
that is what you're paying them for.
41:29
I think that there are agencies
41:31
that are great at execution,
41:33
and where they lose clients
41:37
is they turn into an execution
41:39
execution agency, and they just do.
41:41
And there's not a focus on the strategy
41:44
and the partnership.
41:45
And so that's one
41:47
I would say that as it relates
41:48
to the offshore stuff, you know,
41:52
offshore isn't bad
41:54
if you have a good way to
41:57
that,
41:58
the people that you're working with.
41:59
But I think we're offshore
42:01
I've seen works
42:02
better for agencies
42:04
is if there is a partner
42:05
that they're working with
42:07
that knows how to
42:09
and keeps the offshore
42:11
employees accountable
42:12
and educated
42:13
with the best practices, then.
42:16
And that's not necessarily as much on you
42:19
that that is where I've seen
42:22
that be a little bit better,
42:23
because then it's
42:24
that you managing someone
42:25
in wherever this person is,
42:27
as much as it's like you're working
42:29
with an intermediary that's saying, hey,
42:31
these people need to be
42:32
on top of their shit.
42:33
They need to know the best practices.
42:34
We're educating them,
42:35
and you're paying a little bit
42:37
more of a premium,
42:38
but you're still paying offshore pricing,
42:40
and that can really help a lot.
42:42
And those are those types of firms like,
42:45
you know,
42:46
go have varying levels of quality,
42:49
I would say. Right.
42:50
But like in in the community.
42:53
I don't know.
42:53
Leandro at Propellers has landed like 85
42:57
offshore employees
42:58
for eight
42:59
people in the founders community.
43:00
And it's
43:01
because there's an intermediary there
43:03
that does that.
43:05
I don't know what you guys
43:06
think about that,
43:07
but I think
43:08
you have to have somebody that's
43:09
kind of
43:09
watching over that crew,
43:11
because otherwise
43:11
it becomes a whole other thing
43:12
for you to manage.
43:13
Yeah, yeah.
43:14
I've I've got nothing useful to add.
43:16
Thank you said that.
43:17
Very well I know, yes.
43:20
I don't know if you have anything,
43:21
but I think
43:22
last on our one of the last things on
43:24
our list is landing pages in CRL,
43:27
which is like the last
43:28
17 episodes we've done,
43:29
have been all about landing pages.
43:31
But so we can
43:32
we can bring it home with that.
43:34
We should just start
43:34
a company called congruency.
43:36
Yeah.
43:37
Look, congruency,
43:38
that's probably expensive.
43:40
It's also a really hard word
43:41
to spell and say, maybe that's just me.
43:44
It's available. It's available.
43:46
We can call the number
43:47
number on the screen right now
43:48
if you want to buy it.
43:49
It is available.
43:50
So just throw it out there okay.
43:53
Yeah.
43:53
Oh yeah.
43:54
Nice big guy.
44:00
I think landing pages.
44:02
Yeah, I think
44:05
I think you should pay five
44:06
grand per landing page.
44:07
And I think it should take
44:08
you three months to get from your fancy.
44:10
Yeah, because that's a standard, right?
44:12
Or at least was in 2024.
44:14
Just kidding.
44:15
But I feel like
44:17
that's what every said client
44:19
that would go to somewhere else
44:20
to hire a landing page
44:21
that was supposedly like the best
44:22
at landing pages would do.
44:23
And we just saw that story happen
44:25
over and over again on.
44:28
But yeah,
44:30
I mean, I think it depends on it depends.
44:33
It's like the most annoying
44:34
phrase in DDC.
44:36
It depends on like,
44:38
candidly how I would pay
44:40
a landing page agency
44:41
a 20 grand for a page
44:43
if I knew it was going to work.
44:44
Right. Like or even more.
44:45
Right.
44:46
It's just that's where the numbers game,
44:48
I think is really important.
44:49
And so I would rather pay,
44:53
you know, a flat fee per page.
44:56
Probably not percentage of spend,
44:58
though I do understand that
44:59
that could make sense
45:00
if it was like incremental spend above.
45:02
But that's really hard to track,
45:03
especially on landing pages.
45:05
I'd probably pay a flat fee per page,
45:09
with the assumption
45:10
that you're going to have to
45:12
make a handful of them
45:12
before you crack it.
45:14
So yeah, I don't know.
45:16
I don't know of any
45:17
like just straight up,
45:18
I don't know many straight up
45:19
landing page agencies,
45:20
but I'd say like flat fee
45:24
makes the most sense.
45:25
Yeah, I think you can.
45:26
You could find somebody
45:27
who can build the page.
45:28
They're not going to be able to,
45:28
like, copyright an idiot.
45:30
And that's like hundreds of dollars.
45:32
But if you need somebody to,
45:33
like,
45:34
come up with the ideas,
45:35
copyright idea design
45:37
dev is,
45:39
you know,
45:39
the dev continues
45:40
to get easier and easier.
45:41
Yeah.
45:41
I think you're in the,
45:43
the 1000 to $2000 range.
45:45
And that's that's somewhat reasonable,
45:47
especially for people that are like
45:49
just getting started
45:50
and trying to test things out.
45:51
But I think there's, there's
45:52
there's definitely people
45:53
like like Ryan Downey
45:54
and Kanika
45:56
who are both in Foxhole Founders Group.
45:57
Like they are just they are a tier CRO
46:02
individuals who just like they
46:05
they can command higher numbers
46:07
because their actual process
46:09
is just like super dialed.
46:11
And they just look at things
46:12
that other people don't look at.
46:13
And so, you know,
46:14
I don't actually know what those,
46:15
those people individually charge.
46:16
But, you know,
46:17
that's when you start to get into
46:19
the $5,000
46:20
plus per month range for, for proper,
46:23
you know, CRO and landing pages.
46:25
But I think like
46:26
how do you what about you just doing like
46:29
small on site things.
46:33
It's like not that in small.
46:34
It's not like totally fair because like,
46:36
you know,
46:36
a 2% increase
46:37
in something for Mars men
46:38
is is a massive, massive win.
46:41
But at the same time, like the
46:43
the efforts to to impact
46:47
like a different.
46:48
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
46:51
yeah like I've seen.
46:53
Well if it's a Crow agency
46:54
that's a different story.
46:55
I've seen,
46:56
I've seen guns that are, that are great,
47:00
that are going to do
47:01
like tweaks that you're telling them
47:03
and they're going in
47:04
and coding it and everything,
47:05
which is obviously like a different story
47:07
now with Claude and everything.
47:08
But I've seen that at like
47:10
as low as like 3000 a month,
47:13
you know,
47:13
because they're just going in
47:14
and they're just executing
47:15
on what you're telling them to do.
47:17
Now, if we're talking about CRO agency,
47:19
CRO agencies,
47:20
every crow
47:21
starts at a pitch with no one's
47:23
there's very few CRO agencies.
47:25
They are always like,
47:26
there's so few of us that are great
47:28
and like
47:29
and then and it's it's true relatively.
47:32
But like I've heard the pitch
47:33
many times and then it like keeps going
47:35
and in terms of the pricing and then like
47:37
now I feel like a Crow agency
47:39
that's great is like 7000 men,
47:43
you know, 7500 like big.
47:45
And then a lot of brands
47:46
just bring it in house
47:47
or start to code their own stuff,
47:48
which gets messy.
47:50
And I think this is why so few brands
47:53
do a lot with landing pages, because it
47:58
the cost of the agencies is too high
48:00
and they think they can execute it
48:01
on themselves.
48:02
And they do,
48:02
and then they don't
48:03
necessarily
48:05
know how to track and set up systems
48:07
the right way.
48:07
And so it just gets lost in the mess.
48:09
And they just keep
48:09
launching Facebook ads or meta ads.
48:12
I don't know how you guys
48:13
feel about that,
48:13
but I've seen that pattern happen
48:15
a few times.
48:16
What exactly.
48:17
Like what's your expectation from.
48:19
And you guys are pretty far along in your
48:21
in your landing page journey.
48:22
But like what's your expectation
48:24
from idea to life with your team?
48:27
Is it
48:27
like 48 hours that needs to be live
48:30
or is it okay.
48:30
No, it's going to take a bunch of time
48:32
and a bunch of additional research,
48:33
and it should take a week or two
48:34
because like to your point,
48:35
when you kick it off,
48:36
it's like,
48:36
I mean, I've seen I've seen landing
48:38
page projects literally take weeks.
48:40
And I'm talking like
48:41
just to get the first round,
48:42
not not the back and forth
48:43
because like that stuff's required.
48:44
But yeah. What's your expectation there?
48:47
I think a week is realistic.
48:49
We've turned pages around in a day.
48:51
You know what I mean?
48:51
It's not like it's not.
48:53
It's it should not be possible
48:54
to do it in a day.
48:55
But I think realistically
48:57
it should be like a week. Right.
48:58
Because it's, it's usually idea.
49:00
So like what is the thesis of this page
49:02
going to be.
49:02
What is like the
49:03
what are we going to talk about
49:04
on this page.
49:05
It's going to be different.
49:05
That's going to increase conversion.
49:07
That's maybe a day or a conversation
49:10
in a meeting. Then it's okay.
49:11
We got to go write the copy at a day.
49:14
Got to go design it out a day.
49:16
Review out a day like deploy it,
49:19
get it ready, whatever.
49:20
Make sure everything's good at a day.
49:22
I mean, you're at like a full workweek.
49:24
So I'd say like a week, a business,
49:26
you know, a full, full workweek, I think
49:27
is like realistic.
49:31
Mars were turning around, I
49:32
think right now,
49:32
like 2 to 5 pages a week.
49:36
It's kind of like the ruff,
49:37
ruff ballpark number that we're
49:39
that we're at right now.
49:39
And I'd say hollows around around
49:42
probably like the lower end of that,
49:43
maybe like two a week.
49:45
And also it depends
49:47
on like the amount of spend. Right.
49:48
Because it's like
49:48
if it's a brand new page,
49:49
like got to drive enough
49:51
spend to, to validate
49:52
if it's working or not.
49:53
So there's a certain
49:54
threshold of how many
49:55
actually landing pages
49:55
that you can launch based on your spend.
49:58
So,
50:00
but yeah,
50:00
I think that that's realistic is a week.
50:02
Yeah, yeah. Cool.
50:04
The only
50:05
my only call out on Crow agencies
50:06
that I will say
50:07
is there's a handful of things
50:10
that just work. Right.
50:12
There's just a handful of things
50:13
that you should just do.
50:14
They just work like everyone should.
50:15
Just like,
50:16
these are like five things
50:16
that you should go do right now
50:17
one, your draw cart should probably show
50:22
the subtotal,
50:23
the cost of shipping, and then the total
50:26
and or
50:27
the amount of discount
50:27
that's happening in the ecosystem.
50:30
And if it doesn't,
50:31
it should show those things.
50:31
Because the more clear that your price
50:33
can be on that page
50:33
before they have to go,
50:34
make one more decision on the checkout
50:36
is really, really great,
50:37
especially if there's like
50:38
automated coupon codes being applied.
50:40
Anything there
50:41
that if you're running like coupon
50:42
strategy or anything like that,
50:43
you can do all of that in the draw cart.
50:46
Huge lifting conversion rate.
50:48
Show that that you're
50:49
getting free shipping.
50:49
Make it abundantly clear
50:50
that you're getting free
50:51
shipping or not, or what
50:52
that free shipping
50:52
threshold is in the draw cart.
50:54
That's like kind of CRL
50:56
1.0 from my perspective.
50:58
Then there's things like
50:59
your carousel images.
51:00
We've talked about this a lot.
51:01
Just have plain carousel images.
51:02
You should optimize your carousel images.
51:04
The thought of the carousel images
51:05
should be any bit of information below.
51:07
The carousel images
51:08
should be able to be summarized
51:09
by just flipping
51:10
through the carousel images on your PDBs.
51:12
So like go do that. Go look at hollows.
51:14
Go look at Mars.
51:15
Means you can very clearly just like
51:16
see how we think about that
51:18
huge lift in conversion rate.
51:20
Talking
51:22
about when like
51:23
the customer can expect the shipment.
51:25
Another obvious one
51:26
big lifting conversion rate
51:27
showing like this product ships tomorrow
51:30
and it ships from a US facility
51:32
can usually see a lift.
51:33
The other one is showing
51:35
like credit card or payment
51:36
options on the PDP
51:38
can be kind of ugly,
51:40
but like lifting conversion rate
51:42
like these are just
51:42
like a few things that it kind of sucks
51:45
if pay an agency to go
51:46
do some of those things.
51:47
But like a good agency
51:49
should already have an arsenal of
51:51
about like 20
51:52
tests that they can run over the course
51:53
of like a couple of weeks
51:54
to just like go and test for your site.
51:56
What's a bummer is like,
51:56
I wish the agencies are just be like,
51:58
oh, 30 grand,
51:59
just give me all the test right away.
52:00
And I could just,
52:00
like launch them all in one shot
52:01
and should just see a big lift overall.
52:03
That is like my only flack with Crow
52:07
agencies is like,
52:08
they usually have the arsenal,
52:09
but they like,
52:09
keep them in their back pocket
52:10
because they want to continue to like,
52:11
roll them out over time to keep your,
52:13
you know, keep you around.
52:15
So there's a handful of those things
52:18
I think are just, like fairly obvious.
52:19
That should should help.
52:21
So if you're not doing
52:21
the things I mentioned, like
52:22
go test all those immediately,
52:24
because we've run them across
52:24
both of our brands
52:25
and a bunch of clients at homestead
52:27
and like Salt Lift.
52:29
Yeah, I put ships from us by tomorrow,
52:32
but then the key is to no ship,
52:35
and then
52:36
there's a lot more margin to be made
52:37
when you just don't send the product.
52:39
So that's always a hacker.
52:42
Yeah.
52:42
We'll,
52:43
we'll hack for for the homies out there.
52:47
Well thank you
52:48
everybody for listening guys.
52:49
Thanks for being here.
52:50
And until
52:51
until next time, keep on scaling.
52:55
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this podcast is by
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53:00
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53:01
kind of don't really mean
53:02
anything too much anymore.
53:03
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53:04
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53:07
And so sharing YouTube links,
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53:12
we call it under the podcast app now,
53:14
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53:16
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53:18
Guys, anything else
53:19
you want to say on this?
53:20
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53:22
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53:23
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53:25
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53:26
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53:27
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53:28
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53:29
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53:30
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53:31
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53:33
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53:34
Thanks for listening. Honestly.