Intro & Speaker Welcome that was so great learning about um everything that’s going on with Digital Ocean and Cloud Waves and their uh and their uh AI that they’re um integrating now we’re now going to talk about AI and the end of traditional outsourcing building a smarter agency model this time our guest is Tom Wardman tom is a marketing strategist and fractional CMO specializing in building trusted brands that attract customers through clear strategy HubSpot implementation and expert coaching tom I’m so excited to hear what you have to share with us today thank you great to be here um let me just get my slides up and running okay we good to go yes I can see them okay perfect so I’m I’m going to start with what I think is probably the worst client experience ever and it’s a real life scenario from when I was working um within an agency several years ago so the year is 2021 i’m working inhouse i’m actually responsible for agency marketing so I’m not even part of the client delivery team at this point and for various reasons one of their content writers ended up going on leave i had a content background so they brought me in The Worst Client Experience and What It Teaches Us to uh help with that and I ended up joining a client call never met the client before instantly they were furious and they were just unhappy about the level of service the team had no idea what the deliverables were and it ended with the client getting a free month off of their retainer that monthly fee was $7,000 a month given away for free like that one month then became several other free months and eventually that client left because of a lack of results and because of stagnation and ultimately that agency fell into administration but that meeting has stuck with me ever since ever since that that meeting and it’s because of that that I want to start this presentation with a a thought-provoking moment for you let’s get you all thinking and it’s this that most agencies as we know them today won’t survive the next 5 years most agencies won’t survive the next 5 years now that’s not an exaggeration for me and from what I’m witnessing that’s a direction of travel that is already taking place Why Most Agencies Won’t Survive Without a Shift however I also believe that some agencies which will be the ones that adapt that evolve that rethink their role those are going to be the agencies that absolutely thrive but they will look very very different so with that in mind let me put a question to you guys and you can pop your answer into the chat i want to see some some yeses and some nos and any any other thoughts that you’ve got so have you lost a client in the past 12 months that you felt like you shouldn’t have lost go ahead and drop a yes in the chat if you have had that scenario excellent getting lots of lots of people commenting so if you if you’ve also been feeling like client relationships are harder to retain like your proposals aren’t landing like your results are harder to justify I think people also agree with with that as well from what I’m seeing in the comments but the good thing to know is you’re not imagining that so let’s dig a little deeper i want you to also comment yes in the chat if in the last 12 months you’ve seen any of the following so if you’ve seen longer sales cycles tighter margins increased client churn harder to show return on investment with the work that you’re delivering excellent great now I’m going to put my neck on the line here and say that I think that’s a good thing and I might sound crazy in saying that but I absolutely do think it’s a good thing because in a way we’re now all in this together but what we need to recognize is that these aren’t isolated issues in fact they’re symptoms of a much bigger shift and that bigger shift can be seen with The Perfect Storm: SEO Decline, AI Flood, and Distrust these headwinds in this perfect storm that we’re facing so we know that zero click is on the rise so SEO traffic is shrinking and Google is sending less traffic we know that content volume is up but performance is down we know we’ve got a massive trust deficit people and buyers just don’t trust us like they used to they’re skeptical of these done for you promises that agencies continue to shout about and another thing Google ads and wider ad platforms are starting to cost more and getting more pricier but they’re less effective and we’ve got less performance to show for it we know that 18% of our search traffic now isn’t happening on Google clients are learning from pretty much everywhere they’re learning from YouTube Reddit Tik Tok and it’s not just search or blogs this is all to say that for us the agency we’ve been riding the same bike for 15 years which is what I’m trying to emulate with this image of someone riding a bike with bizarrely an AR headset kind of lends nicely to to the AI analogy so we’ve been riding that bike for 15 years but the terrain has changed and we haven’t changed with it we’re not on a flat road anymore we’re on a mountain trail and AI isn’t changing the bike it’s changing the environment so what do I mean by this i’m pretty sure we can all agree that the buyer has changed and that’s not just buyers of agencies that’s buyers for pretty much any purchasing decision that we make in this digital world that we’re all living in as a buyer we’re more impatient we’re learning fast we don’t want to feel sold to we want to feel empowered but if we think about it Agencies vs. the Modern Buyer the buyer has every right to have changed and in fact we the agency are the one that has made them change because it’s us the agencies that have constantly been shouting “Yeah you just need to publish more content.” In the early 2010s 2012 that was the main mantra of agencies just publish more content you’ve just got a blog you’ve just got to put all that content on your website and Google won’t find it and everything will be hunky dory but it gets worse than that because now history is repeating itself the AI floodgates I’m sure we can all agree have opened we’ve seen so much more content there’s an influx of AI content on websites on social media on LinkedIn in posts and comments and everything in between because of AI what we’ve seen in the last 18 months is the biggest democratization of content tools in history but the reaction of most businesses and in fact a lot of agencies has been just to crank that volume up so history is repeating itself in 2012 we said just publish more content now we’re saying just ask chat GPT we’re making the same Content Volume Mistakes—From 2012 to the AI Era mistake but just with new tools we’ve got the same pig but a different shade of lipstick so I’m going to ask you another question as well and I want you to pop in the chat if you’ve had a client say something like this to you in the last 6 months oh well we just just don’t know what we’re paying for anymore or we’re trying AI internally do we really need an agency if you’re getting comments like that from your clients go ahead and and say so in the chat don’t be afraid to to hold back and whilst we wait for those comments what I want to suggest is some bad news i hate to break it to you guys but this is where we need to hold the mirror up because if your clients are starting to test AI in house and your pitch and retainers based on outputs then the writing is on the roll uh the writing is on the wall sorry what I’m saying is that AI has fundamentally changing what clients are going going to be expecting from us the agency in other words they want control back now we might not like it but that unfortunately is reality because your clients now are paying five Why Clients Don’t See the Value in Agencies Anymore seven $10,000 a month for content that they could easily draft with a prompt and with Grammarly and they’re saying things like “Well why should I be paying these thousands of dollars a month for the same generic output that AI can draft in seconds?” And here’s the thing they’re not wrong to ask that because AI is letting them do more and more in-house than ever before we’re also seeing agencies replaced by fractional CMOs because those people are embedded they’re strategic they’re trusted in other words clients no longer want execution alone they want enablement they want insight and they want ownership and they’re not buying just the execution so if you are an agency that’s only offering execution not only are you competing with lowcost contractors and DIY solutions but you’re now competing with AI tools and that unfortunately creates a race to the bottom so suddenly agencies are fighting for relevance we’re not just fighting for leads anymore so if I was to sum this up the best thing I can say to you is that AI is no longer your competition your old business model your old agency model is because there are three big problems with the agency model that has been the creme de la creme for 10 20 30 odd years um up to date if we’re honest with ourselves if we want to survive as an agency we have to accept that we’re not designed to make our clients self-sufficient we’re designed to create uh to keep that retainer alive and because of that you have misaligned incentives because you’re paid to do not teach you’re paid to produce more blog posts not better results essentially you’re paid to do not to empower but 3 Fatal Flaws in the Traditional Agency Model your clients are wanting autonomy you also have bottlenecks and bloat project delays slow turnaround overservicervicing underwhelming results you name it i once saw a client have to wait 9 weeks for one blog post because of the feedback loops internally and externally nine weeks for a thousand words you won’t be surprised to hear that we did lose the client and the AI can now draft that in a matter of seconds and number three as well there’s no strategic seat because ultimately we’re seen as a vendor and not a partner we’re reactive we’re not proactive so for instance another scenario I saw when a CEO CMO was promoted the agency was dropped because they wanted a partner they didn’t want just someone to outsource their content so one thing to think about is that if your client your biggest client left tomorrow how much internal marketing capability did they actually build whilst they were working with you how much self-sufficiency would they have but more importantly how damaged would your agency become especially if it’s your largest client so AI is not going to replace the work ai is going to replace bad processes slow delivery and that’s where the value and the value model needs to shift but before I show you what that looks like I just want to give you a bit more background about myself because you’re probably wondering why I’m so passionate about this shift so I spent six years working within agencies i started as an account manager and then over that six-y year period went through different agencies and eventually moved up to a senior leadership position i built I led a client delivery team from scratch so I was sat in pitch rooms i was working with budgets big budgets and I saw what worked and I also saw what didn’t work but I also saw something incredibly heartbreaking which was great people losing their jobs multiple times because that business model that agency model wasn’t evolving so agencies were losing clients not because the work was bad but because the relationship was breaking down expectations weren’t aligned value wasn’t clear and unfortunately many people in many agencies that I worked at including myself had to lose their jobs so now today I work as a fractional COO for agencies i help them design and redesign how they operate and how they can systemize their service delivery i help them with operations and I help them essentially evolve from being a doer to becoming that strategic enabler i’m also a certified coach in what’s known as the endless customers methodology and that’s a framework that I use with with businesses to help build in-house marketing self-sufficiency From Vendor to Growth Coach: Rethinking Your Role because over the years I’ve I’ve spent agency side and inhouse I’ve recognized that that what’s that’s what clients actually want and now that’s what I want to help agencies deliver so without further ado let’s take a look at what that new agency model is going to look like and it’s a model that a lot of industries already use so I want you to think about your favorite athlete your favorite business guru your favorite non-fiction author so chances are they have or have had at one point in time a coach in some form or capacity so I ask you what if you became the coach instead of the crutch what if you made the shift from execution to enablement what if you helped your clients build that internal capability instead of outsourcing everything to you in other words that means we would move from being a vendor to a growth coach and to me this is the opportunity that most agencies are missing because your clients have access to the same tools you can teach them how to build the systems around those tools so in other words help them do it themselves but just do it better so think strategist think trainer think systems builder it’s about leveraging AI not selling AI ai can write the blog but it can’t build the editorial calendar or integrate with the CRM or build the full funnel strategy clients already know about the tools so why not show them how to build everything else around those tools that’s where you come in agencies can easily facilitate this but only if you rethink your role and that’s a role that has new delivery models so we’re going from done for you to done with you as “Done With You” is more than “Done For You” I’ve said we’re going from execution to enablement you would go from a retainer to a sprint and training and in terms of internal roles you would go from things like a content writer to a content coach and an AI workflow designer let me show you how you can do that so essentially you want to coach your clients instead of just serving them you want to use AI to accelerate the capability not replace people we’re not getting rid of of people in a business we’re building standardized systems and we’re building that AI capability that you can then frame everything around imagine something like this where you’re offering a $35 $5,000 a month package that isn’t content creation but content coaching think of how low fulfillment that would be but how much higher trust and how much valuable uh how much more valuable that would be to your clients and if you don’t believe me all I can say is I’ve seen what happens when agencies don’t evolve like I said I’ve been on the receiving end of that many times when agencies have had to make cuts because the value model has broken What to Offer Instead: Coaching, AI Workflows, Enablement down but I’ve also seen the agencies course correct before it’s too late and I recognize that you’re probably sat there going “Well we we can’t do that you’ve got hesitations you’ve got concerns so let me address some of those myths and assumptions for you.” And there’s top three AI myths that I would say are hurting your agency so number one is this idea that well AI can just replace our writers that’s not the case ai is there to replace the inefficient processes because there will always be a critical need for writers who understand the client’s point of view whether that’s in your agency or with the client number two is this idea that well clients just aren’t going to pay for coaching which I can tell you is categorically untrue coaching already taking out of taking agencies out of the equation for a second coaching is already a 20 billion industry and businesses want that enablement especially mid-market teams and finally if you’re sat there thinking well I’m too small of an agency to change the model i would push back and say that’s absolutely and exactly why Breaking the 3 AI Myths Holding You Back you need to and the smaller agencies can easily pivot faster than the big ones so if you like what you see here here’s what I would do either today tomorrow or in the next couple of days these are your first five steps and if you want to transition out of that dependency trap and into that enablement model this is what you would need to do so number one start by auditing your current services so have a look at things that are scalable and things that are not scalable and understand how you can then transition your services around that i always say when you’re moving the model and changing the model start small so identify one or two client accounts that could benefit from the coaching over the execution and use that to build a content coaching offer which might be weekly sessions um AI guided workflows feedback on work they’re producing and so on and as you’re doing that you can use AI to templatize and systemize that internal delivery model and you can also look at potentially piloting a fractional coaching model with yourself First 5 Steps to Reinventing Your Agency so use the agency as the client before you then roll that out to your clients so let me show you an example of this in action this is an a agency in the states called Impact um and this is their website in 2017 i’m sure you’ll agree that they look like your typical marketing agency they look like everyone else they offer the same thing as everyone else their pricing is typical agency pricing again looking like every other agency on the planet and I remember their CEO Bob who’s a who’s a good friend of mine i remember him telling me how tight those margins were but that was 2017 this is impact today so impact today is an 8 figureure agency and their flagship offering is facilitating coaching on the endless customers framework that I mentioned earlier so their main service offering is that’s all they do is coaching they have services kind of supporting that such as web web design optimization AI training and that sort of thing um but by and large they pivot their services around this coaching of of the endless customers system Real Example: How Impact Pivoted to an 8-Figure Coaching Model and this is what their pricing looks like today highly profitable this gives you a picture of what a coaching first model can look like and like I said earlier it’s low fulfillment it’s high trust it’s exceptionally valuable and what I would always say is what’s powerful is that your team is becoming the guide you’re not building the capability the dependency the client is the one for that so I appreciate that i’ve said a lot to you and as I draw things to a close um what I’m saying is there are two paths forward from here so number one is you keep running the old playbook you sell time you outsource tasks you cling to that retainer you’re like the character floating on the door um after the sinking of the Titanic clinging to that retainer for dear life come hell or high water option two is that you evolve you become the enabler you become the coach you become the strategic partner and I truly believe that the agencies that go with option two will be the ones that build smart that remain lean that scale more profitably because you’re not just choosing a service model at this point Two Paths Forward: Retainer Survival or Strategic Coaching like I said at the start in terms of agencies surviving the next 5 years you’re choosing your survivability that’s what’s at stake here in a world where AI is now leveling that playing field trust is now what’s going to become the differentiator and that trust will come when you help your clients own their growth rather than renting their growth from you so I have a final message for you to think about and this is probably a phrase that you’ve heard some sort of variation of on social media from influencers and everybody posting on LinkedIn at the moment and that’s this you won’t be replaced with AI or by AI so that’s the take of the AI is not going to replace your job that everyone and their mom is screaming about you won’t be replaced by AI but you will be replaced by someone who helps your clients use AI better than you do i truly believe that the next generation of agencies won’t be content vendors they won’t be media buyers they won’t be link builders they’ll be growth architects they’ll be trainers they’ll be system enablers and those agencies that thrive won’t be the ones with the biggest delivery team they’ll be the ones with the clearest model for enabling their clients and that ultimately is what I want to help you build so thank you for your time i appreciate you listening to me for the last um however long it has been if today’s talk has has resonated with you and you want to look at changing things in your agency what you can do is scan that QR code on screen that will take you to um tomadman.comwhabel and you can find out more about my fractional COO and my fractional coaching services feel free to also connect with me uh on LinkedIn as well um I also shameless plug um have a book coming out later in the year so if you go to tom wardman.combook and use the discount code agency you can get 10% off the pre-order packages there um but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking to you about everything um and I wish you guys every success in the future but thank you for your time thank you so much Tom for all of that it was really incredible um and what I keep coming back to what I’m hearing over and over again is as the tech increases its capability it calls us to be more and more human and more and more relational and I I feel that that theme coming out from you um was you talked about coaching over execution right and trust being that big differentiator um and and I have confidence in every single agency here uh joining us that they have something that sets them apart uh that will will build that trust with their clients so thank you so much for setting that that exciting vision for the future my pleasure thank you for having me yes thank you Tom so next we are going to have a panel on AI versus human creativity and where should agencies draw the line so that’ll be coming up here in just a few minutes thank you guys so much for joining us