The pattern repeats with disturbing consistency.
The pattern repeats with disturbing consistency. A business owner hires what looks like the perfect marketing partner. Six months later, they’re hemorrhaging money with nothing to show for it. A year later, they’re starting over with someone new, carrying the scar tissue from the last disaster. The average client-agency relationship longevity sits at 3.2 years. For smaller agencies, that number drops closer to 2 years. But here’s what those statistics hide – most of those relationships were dead long before the contract ended. They just kept lurching forward on autopilot, burning budget and generating mediocre work nobody believed in. I used to think the problem was incompetence. Bad agencies hiring bad people doing bad work. I was wrong. The real problem is structural. The way most business owners select marketing partners guarantees failure before the first invoice gets paid. You’re making predictable mistakes in a predictable sequence, and the agencies you’re hiring are perfectly designed to exploit every single one of them. Here are the 5 rules I wish someone had told me before I learned them the expensive way. Rule 1: The Skinny Chef Test Would you hire a personal trainer who’s 40 pounds overweight? Would you trust a financial advisor who just declared bankruptcy? Then why are you hiring a marketing agency whose own marketing looks like it was assembled by a high school intern during lunch break? I call this the Skinny Chef Test. If the chef is overweight, the food probably isn’t that good. If the marketing agency can’t market themselves effectively, they definitely can’t market you. Look at their website. Actually look at it. Is it fast? Is the copy clear? Does it make you want to keep reading? Or does it feel like every other agency website you’ve seen – vague promises, stock photos,…
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