How to Find, Vet & Hire Your Next Marketing Agency with Behdad Jamshidi, Founder at CJAM Marketing Matchmakers
In this episode of Exploring Growth, host Lee Murray welcomes back Behdad Jamshidi, Founder at CJAM Marketing Matchmakers. With experience across nearly 1,000 agencies, Jim breaks down agency types, the importance of strategy alignment, and why culture fit matters. He offers actionable tips on reference checks, using your network, and managing relationships for long-term success.
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Behdad – https://www.linkedin.com/in/behdadjamshidi/
Behdad Jamshidi
00:00:00
Agencies are tool. If you're thinking about using an agency for strategy and then execution, you're just using them wrong. You have to come up with a strategy and then you figure out which tool to basically use for that. Relying on them to do your marketing strategy is probably a pretty quick plan to just not succeed.
Lee Murray
00:00:19
I have no intro for this episode because if you've been following the podcast, you've already seen my intro with Jim Seed from GM marketing. In our last interview, he walked us through how to vet and hire virtual CMOs, and today he's back to walk us through how to vet and hire marketing agencies. So welcome back to the show.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:00:39
But thanks for having me back.
Lee Murray
00:00:41
Yeah, this is good. I like the first conversation because I think it brought a lot of value to people who want to hire a virtual CMO, and I think there's probably even more organizations out there that are actively vetting and hiring, marketing agencies. So this is even more timely for us to talk about that. the people who didn't see the last episode just give a quick brief on like, who are you and what you do?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:01:06
Yeah.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:01:06
So, my background, the brief of it is I used to be an engineer. I used to work with, medium sized companies, doing a lot of business consulting, understanding things from, like, a sea level perspective and then matching them to the right, technology solutions of how to get from A to B to C through that adoption. on the other side of the fence, on the marketing side, I'm a super connector in the marketing space. I realized there was a big gap between different marketing, agencies and businesses where marketing agencies didn't really understand business. Business people didn't really understand marketing. And so seeing that gap, I was like, oh, maybe if there was someone in the middle to help bridge that gap, maybe we can get businesses finding the right marketing partners faster. And so to date now, I've talked to over 981 different marketing agencies and experts, and I work with about 11% of those in my vetted network.
Lee Murray
00:01:51
Oh, nice. Okay, so you're really choosy then you got a hard filter.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:01:56
Yeah, there's a big filter and the filter keeps getting harder year over year as I get even better at what I do.
Lee Murray
00:02:02
Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. so with that, let's jump into how to find vet and hire agencies. I thought maybe we just kind of talk broad strokes, like, what are the different kind of agencies that are out there? Because we have all different sized companies that are listening to this. I mean, I know you've got SEO, you've got paid ads. you know, what kind of agencies do you have in your network?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:02:26
Yeah. So I mean, it's quite wide. So you start off with like, for example, when I say agency and experts, like I have people that do fractional CMO type work where it's the strategies with the talk that we had. there's branding websites, Google ads, SEO, social media, copywriters, there's copywriting agencies. you can go all over the place across the map when it comes to different marketing agencies and partners. And then there's like unique ones, too, that people don't really think about.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:02:50
Like, for example, if you're a large enterprise, and you have multiple different subsidiary companies that you own. Someone needs to do the design for all those companies. And do you hire individual ones? Or there's like for example, one marketing company in my network that is literally built to handle that type of design load. So they do like 44,000 assets for just one company a year, right? And so there's like really niche ones there too. And then you find like your creative your UGC, your influencer. There are so many different agencies and it just depends on the different marketing strategies businesses are running.
Lee Murray
00:03:22
Okay. So yeah. And that was the first place I was going to go really is size. So you I mean you kind of explained that you outlined it like the bigger the organization you are, the more niche of an agency. You're probably going to look forward to solve a certain problem. But you also might look for a maybe like a title agency or a primary agency to handle a lot of things.
Lee Murray
00:03:40
It depends if you're local or global, you know, it's probably a different flavor for every every type of effort that you want to put forth.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:03:48
Yeah, I typically explain it in terms of like there's like five different levels of marketing partners, and the different levels actually correlate with the size of business. And so if you're starting out, let's say 0 to 500 K, you're primarily working with level one type partners. And these are basically just like freelancers and people that you can offload different things to. So say you don't want to do your social media posting anymore, or you want someone to help you a little bit with your social, your SEO strategy and build you out. You know, what does the landing pages look like? What the what kind of blogs do we need to write? And then bringing in the copywriters to do that type of work. Once you kind of like pass that 500 K range, you start getting between 500 K and 3 million. You start working with more value based agencies.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:04:27
So say that, you know, like a certain marketing channel is working for you. You typically want to hire an agency that that's their primary thing. And then the other stuff is stuff they do off the side of their desk, which kind of helps move your marketing forward on the core thing and some of the auxiliary things. Once you start passing that $3 million range, you start getting into like the 3 to 10. This is where it becomes more specialized. So you're either hiring like more specialized contractors, like the fractional CMOs or like agencies that do very specific things like you yourself, you do content, right? Like that's all you focus on. And so if a business needs that, you're not going to hire generalized agency to help you with the content strategy. you'll hire like a specific SEO agency or a specific ad agency. And that's all they do. And they're really good at it. Then you start to get into like this level four range. When you start passing that like, you know, low eight figure mark and start going up is where there's certain agencies that have built out certain parts of the funnel.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:05:20
So they'll have like 3 or 4 teams that work in unison. So think like you have someone that's doing the ad buying to the landing page optimization and CRO to the email marketing aspect. So they're managing multiple levels of the funnel. These agencies typically cost anywhere between 10 and 20 ish grand in retainers. and so it's more for a, a company that's already more established and know what they actually really need and the funnels that they need optimized. And then you end up in the enterprise world where we were just kind of talking about it. You'll have an agency of record. That agency of record. You might be paying a ton of money to a year, but they're hiring people on the back end, like the contractors and the specialists, to fulfill on whatever projects that you have or you have, like super, super specialized type agencies that work with the enterprises to get, for example, certain commercials done or, those types of projects which now you're kind of seeing. I take a little bit more of the front and center where internal teams are taking over some of those stuff.
Lee Murray
00:06:14
Yeah. And I is kind of across the board too, because it's helping in different ways at different levels. so most of the people I think listen to the show probably would slot around level 2 or 3. and so what they're looking for then, just to kind of reiterate, is that they're looking for kind of a primary agency that's going to help them with the thing that's taking them to market. That's the way I would put it, because I think a lot of a lot of, you know, they're really still focused on sales and marketing is going to support sales. So your go to market channel or, you know, motion is going to be primarily what you're investing in. And then you may have other freelancers or other, like you said, side desk. you know, efforts at that same agency, taken care of or maybe a different agency. is that the way to be thinking about it?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:06:58
Yeah, exactly. So as you as you're kind of going through that phase, you'll have that one agency that helps you kind of get to market, get things in the right people.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:07:05
and then you start getting more specialized as you get to a certain level, you'll, you'll notice when you'll need to write, like you're going to be asking your agency for specific things. You're like, this is not done at the level that I want it to be done at. And at that point when you start asking those types of questions, that's when you know you need to upgrade to the next level.
Lee Murray
00:07:21
Yeah, we see that a lot on the signal media side where we do a lot of podcasting, with our clients. And so they're bringing us in sort of as a specialized agency to help them with this one effort that bleeds, you know, the outcomes kind of bleed into the other efforts that they're doing. but they have other people that are helping with branding and other people that are helping with, you know, LinkedIn ads and, you know, performance ads. So that makes total sense that that structure is great, though, because I think a ton of like, I know a lot of marketers that don't really even understand that structure.
Lee Murray
00:07:52
So I think the fact that we have that to start is great. Yeah. one other thing that comes to mind. in, in, you know, a marketing director or, head of marketing, leading the, the pathway for, for, for leadership to, to find an agency, vetted agency, and, and do some work is culture fit? How much is culture? You know, both your the agency culture and your organization culture, you know, priority.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:08:22
I think that's it's massive. It's like in the top three things that you should be looking for, because it's just like bringing on a team member within your organization. If they don't have the right culture, they're not the right fit. It just brings everything else down. and the key to building a scalable business does come down to culture, right? Like as things grow, what keeps everything together is the culture of the organization. And so if you're bringing outside partners that don't fit your culture, You're basically going against what you're trying to build.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:08:47
And so it's a massive aspect. And so there should be those soft questions. businesses should be asking agencies around like, hey, what are your values? What matters to you? Like how do you get back to things? And typically, knowing the founder of an agency and how they think will kind of tell you what the culture of the business is. So for anyone that's like hiring those agencies that are a little bit larger so that they actually have sales teams in the middle, I would almost always recommend like at least talking to the founder if you can get access to them. anytime that I'm vetting an agency, especially if they're larger, I'm like, I still need to talk to the founder. because I need to know where their heads are at. Like, are they in the business long term? Are they? I mean, you might not get all the answers that I'm getting when I'm asking those questions, but typically what I'm looking for is like, are they looking to sell or have they built a really good culture? Do they enjoy what they're doing? What's their vision for the agency and where they're headed? Because that's all going to affect your business in the long run.
Lee Murray
00:09:37
Yeah. You know, and the benefit to having someone like you as like a third party, like you said, you can go in and ask these questions and they'll they'll give you the answers where they might not to a prospective client. If you're going to be able to tease out are they just churning through clients like like what's really going on in this culture? Because I've seen a lot of especially ad agencies, they're going after that ad spend. And, you know, in web design companies do. They're always, you know, looking at that next project to get that next hit of cash flow, but all their clients are left in the dust.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:10:07
Yeah, that's exactly it. And you got to be watching out for that. I mean, almost every ad agency right now has the same ICP, right? I was kind of laughing the other day. I was like, our ICP is someone that's spending $50,000 a month. Plus they've had another agency that they've been burnt by, and then they come to us and I'm like, that's the same ICP every other person in this industry has, right?
Lee Murray
00:10:27
That's not an ICP, by the way.
Lee Murray
00:10:28
Yeah.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:10:30
That's exactly. And I'm like, if that doesn't really.
Lee Murray
00:10:31
Work my definition. Okay. So let's expand this a little bit. you know, let's say I'm a head of marketing. I'm going out to, you know, take either or go to market. strategy that we've been deploying internally. and looking for something to, to help support us there or we have a new effort that we're going after we haven't done any work on yet. We're experimenting. Like, what are some of the first things I need to do when I'm going out to look for agency?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:11:00
Yeah. I mean, if you're in that role of marketing director or strategist, like having what the strategy is initially, right? Like know what channels you want to be using before you actually go looking for different agencies and partners, because then you can be more targeted in what you're trying to look for. Right. Like if you're going out there and be like, well, we need to get more leads. So we're just going to go talk to some, you know, full service agencies.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:11:19
What ends up happening there is like there are no real full service agencies. They're just going to sell you what they're really good at. And so, you know, you go in, oh, we're we're just going to run Google ads because we think that's the best way to do it under the hood. They're just basically mostly a Google Ads team and maybe like one SEO person. So they don't really recommend the SEO piece. and so if you don't know what what you need in terms of like a marketing strategy. Like bringing an outside consultant figure that piece out of like what channels make sense so that when you're speaking to different agencies, you at least know what you're looking for. and then based on that, you can kind of like navigate and just know there are no full service agencies, especially in the mid-market and small space. They don't exist. And I say this in the nicest way possible, because I've talked to close to a thousand at this point, and if I haven't found it, I don't know how you're going to find it.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:12:05
Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:12:06
Yeah. You know, marketers are sort of in the Wild West still a little bit like in terms of education that's out there and, leveling up in their career and these type of things. And, you know, I feel for them because it's it's not necessarily a straight and narrow path, like some more like hard science type, you know, paths are. so, you know, just out of the gate, they are cut. They don't have a lot of, like, Traditional education on. You know, how to know where to take the marketing, where to take the company and how to report to management, all these things. So they're really trying to learn on the job, mostly in this role, no matter really if you're I mean, if you're head of marketing, you're learning, you know, you've learned a lot. but so they're taking this sort of mish mash of, experience in education and trying to go to market and, and lead. and I always think about, like, if I walked into Home Depot or Lowes and you see all these cool tools and you're like, oh, the one they have there on the end cap, that one's really cool.
Lee Murray
00:13:12
And they start talking to the guy who works there and you're like, well, what does that tool do? And he's like, oh, you, you wouldn't believe it. I built the best deck off the back of my house with this tool. And and you should build a deck, right? And it's like, that's totally backwards from how you should shop at a store like that. You should go to your home and say, what do I want to build? And you say, well, I want to build a deck. Okay, what do I need to build a deck, you know, and then you end up at the store to buy the tool, and you're not even really talking to the guy either at that point. And so if you're if you're a seasoned marketer and you're more well rounded and educated, then you're going to have more of these plans together. When you go to market, you're going to be more established with your vetting for agencies. But, you know, there's a lot of marketers that are not.
Lee Murray
00:13:56
So I think that's the that's the issue that we we come into is that they're looking to the, the agency to solve the problem when the agency is really more of a hammer for a nail.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:14:08
Yeah. Yeah. They're a tool. Agencies are tools. and most people use them. And so that was a great analogy, right? if you're thinking about using an agency for strategy and then, like, execution, like you're just using them wrong. You have to come up with a strategy and then you figure out which agency is the right one for the tool. which tool to basically use for that, your project or the business? Most agencies haven't grown businesses. Right? Like they're growing their own businesses and they barely do their own marketing. Yeah. so relying on them to do your marketing strategy is probably a pretty quick plan to just not succeed. until you figure that piece out.
Lee Murray
00:14:44
Okay, so let's say that I have a strategy. I have a plan, and I know what agency I'm going to look for, for whatever effort that I'm going after.
Lee Murray
00:14:53
What are some good markers that would let me know that, you know, this podcast agency, this SEO agency, whatever it is that I'm doing, that they're qualified, that I should, you know, start a, you know, possibly start a relationship, but at least start a conversation. What are those markers?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:15:09
Yeah. So I think if you're a business owner or someone in a marketing position looking to hire a specific type of agency, one of the best things I can recommend is if you don't have the network, like try to reach out to as many as possible and have as many meetings as possible. So most people, when they're having meetings with like marketing agencies, they'll talk to like 2 or 3 that were referred by a friend or by another business owner. And then they'll pick one of the 2 or 3 and they're like, all right, we're done. right? Yeah. But to kind of give you an insight of like how I approach even like outside of my industry. Say I was trying to find an accountant last year because I had a certain account that I had to switch out.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:15:40
That's a.
Lee Murray
00:15:40
Great example.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:15:41
Yeah, right. That business was growing. So I mean, I was like, for one, I was like, I wish there was a I wish there was a like a, like a me like an accounting broker where I could see, like, this is my business what I need. Can you please just give me the resource?
Lee Murray
00:15:54
Let me introduce you. Yeah.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:15:55
Doesn't really exist. Or maybe they do exist, but I couldn't find them. So, I literally went out to my network, and I just reached out to a bunch of different people, like, who are using for accounting. Who do you like? Who do you recommend? Man, I got like, probably 20 or 25 recommendations. Just I kind of have a bit of a crazy network. So I probably get more recommendations than most people. But just just to show you an example. Yeah. And so I literally just started like I just created a little questionnaire sheet and I was like, give me the answers to these things.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:16:19
And the people that answer the questions the way I was like, okay, this makes sense. The pricing is around the right point. They deal with small businesses. They're based out of Canada, like all this stuff. Then I started setting up calls. So I talked to like eight ish different accountants and just figuring out who they are, how their systems are built. So I basically use my same vetting process for marketing partners, but for the accounting range and just that process of asking all those questions, I started getting a lay of the landscape where O pricing is typically around this. Oh, this is how much a bookkeeper typically costs. Oh, if they're doing accounting it's like this range. And so I got a pretty good sense of like what the pricing should be. Who does both. Not a lot of people do both. And then who's outsourcing, who's not outsourcing. And based on being able to just talk to enough people, I got a good sense of the industry, which made me make a better informed decision moving forward.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:17:06
I also still knew that, like the likelihood of me finding someone right the first time was likely not going to be that great. Probably 5050, sure. Luckily, I got on the other side of that 5050 side where I love my accountant now, but that's just kind of the process that you would need to take on the marketing side as well. Just meet as many people as you can. You'll start noticing patterns, and when you start noticing those patterns, you'll know, like these three guys talked about this, but this one went deeper. Okay. They clearly know more about certain things because these other three guys seem to be very surface level. Right?
Lee Murray
00:17:36
Yeah. And it would seem like two, as you're going through that process, if you're really making note of your interactions, you're learning about how to buy, you know, you're going to like you just said, like there's going to be things that some people say that others don't, and it's going to open up another door. You're gonna say, well, you know, actually, if we go to if we went to market looking for an agency in this way, we could probably get a better deal.
Lee Murray
00:17:57
And you know, it, it meet our needs better. So there's a learning process that happens there, too.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:18:03
Exactly. Yeah. There's a whole learning process there. And that's kind of like when when people use my service like so I have some people that will come in, but we've already talked to like five SEO agencies. I'm like, cool, great. Like you want to talk to like three of mine, because if you talk to three of mine, I've talked to hundreds at this point. Like if the the out of the five you have beat the three that I have, then you like, that's going to be a good partner to choose and like before you're there. And so it's it's kind of crazy to me when I have like, customers come in and they're running a business and I'm like, yeah, it only costs a thousand bucks for me to give you a bunch of recommendations. And they're like, no, we'll just go there. I'm like, you're about to spend 3 to $6000 a month for at least six months.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:18:41
Why would you not want to protect that investment with a thousand bucks, even if my service doesn't work?
Lee Murray
00:18:45
It's funny. It's like trip insurance.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:18:47
Yeah, exactly.
Lee Murray
00:18:49
You know, like, hey, you just bought these tickets. 80 other people insured these tickets. You know, it's like, yes.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:18:55
That's exactly it. And so it's kind of funny because almost every time someone does use my service and they talk to other people, they typically like nine out of times out of ten, they end up picking my partners. So I'm like, yeah, cool. The insurance works.
Lee Murray
00:19:05
Yep. It does. Yeah. Okay, so what about, this idea of checking references? Because, you know, you go to any, pretty much any website. the agency is going to have a bunch of testimonials that they've curated and, you know, all of that. I was looking at some the other day and there's, someone trying to kind of answer this question of, Do you like as an agency? Do you provide references? And, you know, there's there's there's kind of two sides of this coin because it's like, yeah, I could provide you all the people that are going to talk and say great things about me.
Lee Murray
00:19:34
Yeah. So yeah, I can provide you references, but, you know, you calling them disrupting their business and you wouldn't want someone to do that with you. It's like, you know, so I don't know, where do we stand on all this?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:19:44
It's a tough area. So I think always check references. and but you have to do it when you're serious about hiring an agency. Like, don't just do it right in the beginning. Be like, hey, I'm about to hire you. Like, this is basically the last step. and so there's kind of two ways to go about it. One is obviously the agency is going to give you references that aren't going to say good things about them. You already know this, but having like, I have actually a reference check guide that I built that I give to my customers when they go through to ask a bunch of different types of questions. And ultimately, you're just trying to pay attention to when you're talking to someone. Are they the same type of person as you like? Do they have similar types of businesses? are they like really in tune with what that marketing agency is doing, because a lot of times you'll like.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:20:24
You'll notice when I talk and I check some references. Is that like a business owner will be like, yeah, they're great. They're doing good. I'm like, what are they doing great at? And they're like, I don't know. They send us a report. It looks good. My marketing person says it looks good, but they don't actually know, right. And so you get a bit of a sense of like, okay, what kind of relationship is this? and the depth of what they get into the answers for like, hey, yeah, the really good Google Ads partners are checking stuff all the time. They're giving me an 11 minute video that I watch. They've increased my cost per acquisition by acts like those are the when you hear those types of things, you're like, okay, this is a good reference. Yeah. The other thing that you can do is ask for and not all agencies will do this, but can I talk to a customer that's left you in the last six months? Right.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:21:04
And if they say, oh, they left because they grew so much, and when they grew, we, they grew so much that they brought things in-house.
Lee Murray
00:21:10
Validates it.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:21:11
Yeah. Validates it. Right. And I'll tell you pretty much nine out of ten times it's not the story that the agency was told. And it's not the agency's fault because people are afraid of conflict. And so therefore they'll say, we're taking this in house, but then they just move to another agency. Yeah. so you get a lot of insights through that process. and just be aware of just those different types of things as a reference checking.
Lee Murray
00:21:33
So where where would someone go to look for good agencies, obviously, if they didn't come to you.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:21:39
Yeah. They didn't come to me. This is hard. This is like this is the hardest part and why I do what I do. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know how business owners can do this in this world, because there's some marketplaces that you can go to, right? Like people go to the fibers and the outworks of the world.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:21:52
or if they're hiring people like the market hires of the world. but a lot of those platforms are not great. Like the success rate is very, very low. the next place people typically go to is like clutch. and they go through there. But a lot of stuff on there is also paid placements as well. and people just they choose the reviews that they want. So it's really hard to find really good marketing partners. Typically if you're part of different business networks, you can ask for referrals there and kind of go down that path. but what I've realized running my business is that the best marketing agencies are deep within networks. And so they're in like, like you ask businesses for, you know, the different people that they work with and that they like. And so you add them. And then once you find a certain layer of partners that are good, you start asking them who they know. And because like excellence kind of breeds excellence. And people like to keep those types of people around them.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:22:42
and so you kind of have to look at that as like a network layer. If you have nowhere to go. You start with Google, you start with the marketplaces, and then you start within networks of business communities. There's a ton of different marketing agency communities around, which is the stuff that like, I try to get plugged into a lot, and that's kind of where I start finding like, really good people. But you have to be a marketer. Yeah. For someone running a business to be in those groups or like, you almost can't get into those groups even if you wanted to.
Lee Murray
00:23:07
Yeah. Well, it seems like if you want a great agency to handle this effort, a great agency is going to be covered up. They're going to have high demand because they're already going to have been doing what they're doing for some time. They have great references, all these things, but they're already not necessarily fully booked, but they're they're covered up and and like you said, they've found what their sweet spot probably in a niche somewhere that's working.
Lee Murray
00:23:35
And so, you know, that's where it kind of comes back to how do you get to that agency. Because if you don't get to that agency, you're going to get to maybe a good agency, but it's going to be somewhat diluted because they're they're not in high demand. Yeah. And they may not have had the experience or time to do what you need to be done. So there's some experimenting they're doing on your watch. it just seems like that's the whole game. Yeah.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:24:02
It's exactly so like, think about it like this. So say you're trying to find a Google Ads agency, right? they're not running SEO. They're likely not taking care of their website because they don't really care about that. All they do is they run Google ads, like, that's that's it. Are they gonna run Google ads themselves. Probably not, because it's so competitive in that space. So there's literally no way for you to find this, this partner unless you find a business that's working with them or someone that's a connector into there.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:24:26
Like there's people like myself who basically referring to these types of businesses. That's the only two ways. maybe another marketer that knows them. Like so it is only through referrals and connections to really get to the good people. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:24:39
Like you have to reverse engineer good work, you know, and get to the people who are doing good work. But then how do you figure out who's running the greatest ads? Because, yeah, you can type your, you know, your competitor and see they're running ads, but you don't know if that was a fluke because that ad was a good ad of bad, you know.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:24:56
Yeah, yeah. And if you look at your competitor, like the likelihood is that agency is not going to work with you anyways, even if you find them because they're working with your competitor. so it becomes a conflict of interest. And so, yeah, you can go try to poach and that kind of stuff. But if you get someone that's like, if you can poach an agency from a customer that they're doing well for, like right off the bat, that tells me that integrity of that agency is not very high.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:25:17
And so why would I want to hire them. So like that's also a losing game.
Lee Murray
00:25:20
If she'll break up with him, she'll break up with you.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:25:22
That's exactly it. Someone else will bring more money and it's going to be a different scenario. So it's hard man, like that. That's why I stayed in this business. Like, truthfully, 2 to 3 years into the business, I was questioning like, why am I doing this? I met with like 300, 400 agencies. At this point, I do a lot of work and I'm like, I still need to meet more. I'm like, this is not done. And it was a big question for me. And like, I would sit there and I'm like, and sometimes some of my matches don't work, right. Like I'm like, right. Probably 70, 75% of the time. The likelihood of you getting a really high level agency for me is much better than you doing it yourself. That's right. There's always this thing where sometimes it doesn't work, whether it's like the business doesn't know how to communicate with the agency or vice versa, or something breaks within.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:26:01
And I take those hard because I really want to do a really good job for the people that come to me to, to grow their businesses. And the answer I always came back to my wife also telling me this is like, if you weren't there, how would they do it without you? And like that answer every time. Like there is no other good way of doing it. And this is the best way I can think of doing this, being in the space that I'm in. And so that's ultimately what's led me to continue doing what I'm doing because I'm like, there is no better way. And I haven't been able to engineer a better way for it yet either. Yeah, I'm still thinking on that.
Lee Murray
00:26:35
Yep. Yeah. No, I think that's well said. And it's such a draw down on time and energy and resources to vet and hire an agency to help you grow your business and do whatever you need to do. and then spend the time with them and spend the money with them and try not to, you know, fall out of love with them or them with you or, you know, that whole thing.
Lee Murray
00:26:58
So, you know, having a little kick in the front end of like, hey, you can trust that, that, you know, a much higher percentage, you're going to already be down the road. Yeah. is is where it's at. Before we wrap up, I had one more kind of, question for you. So, you know, a lot of agencies are very notorious for selling hard on the front end and not delivering on the back end. This is kind of follows agencies around, you know, in this domain. if we look at like, even if you find a good agency, right, first 90 days, second 90 days, like the first six months of first year of that relationship, whatever it may be, if it's running ads, obviously, like you're talking day to day, you know, SEO is a little bit longer term results, outcomes. What should a marketer how should they be thinking about that relationship in, you know, early on days and then later on days?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:27:50
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:27:52
And it's going to always depend on the type of agency you're working with, right. Like, so, for example, if you're hiring a paid ad agency initially the first 30 days is the onboarding piece like just really understanding your business, understanding what ads are going to work, all that different kind of stuff, building out the creative, getting you onboarded, like just getting everything set right and then between like the 30 and kind of like the the 90 day period. Like testing start should start happening. You should be having different types of creative and all that different kind of stuff. Getting stats back, building a baseline, seeing kind of where things are headed and having a lot of those like one on one touchpoints like make sure you're having like not just monthly meetings, but like, you know, every two weeks, especially in the beginning, you want to build those relationships. And then once you start getting to like that six month range, like things should probably start settling in a little bit more where, you know, you're testing different things, you're following the strategy, and you're kind of moving forward.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:28:37
You might notice that the agency is doing less work because things are a little bit more automated at that point, and there's less like upfront stuff, but you want them to continuously be testing depending on the strategy of the platform that you're on. Right. so and this all depends on the type of agencies that you're working with, right. If you're doing like a, a branding and a website project, that strategy is entirely different. There's still an onboarding. Just make sure they have systems and processes in place. So as you're doing the interview and vetting, you can even ask like what does it look like to get onboarded. Like what? What does it look like? Like do we get into slack? Do we get put into Monday. Do I do actually use these different types of tools, like what does it look like and what do you need from my side? And if you get a pretty detailed answer, it tells you they have the right systems and processes in place to kind of get you through.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:29:17
those are the kind of things you're looking for. And then once the relationship starts passing a year, like just having check ins, just making sure that you're right on the right page and moving things forward. And you don't always need to, like, shake the boat, you know what I mean? Like marketing. Like if you can get things running and it's running smoothly, and even if it's being run at like 85, 90% of what it is, it'll hit the flywheel over time to get you where you need to be.
Lee Murray
00:29:38
Yeah. A couple thoughts on that. I think checklist and sort of client facing SOP thinking is is something good to be looking for in an agency? I'm sitting here on one of my screens looking at a document that we're working with the client right now, first 90 day checklist of build, launch and running a podcast. And we literally here's what it's going to look like. Do you want to do it right. And if they say yes I mean this is supporting the sale.
Lee Murray
00:30:03
And then after they say yes, we literally just start working on that list. And then we have we scratched through the thing so they can see that we're making progress on the time and date. So checklist is good. And I think another thing that kind of goes to what you're saying is, you know, like I'm running an agency, so I'm in a little bit different position. But if I were sitting in a marketer seat, I would be looking at agencies to be leading me. You know, I'm paying you the money to help us with this particular effort. I don't really know what we should be doing past, you know, for the specialty. That's why we're hiring you. So I need you to lead me, you know, as short time frame as needed checklist or whatever. And show me the way. Right. And if the agencies aren't doing that in their whatever form or fashion that works, then there's a problem there. If they're waiting for you to constantly give them the next task, then you're already.
Lee Murray
00:30:59
That's a huge red flag.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:31:00
No 100% said it, right. Like you're hiring them to kind of guide you across their specialty, right? Like, and I think there's a distinction between like, like your business and your objectives and your goals versus what you hired them to do. Because a lot of businesses say, like, oh, you should be running all this other marketing stuff. Like, no, no, no, you hired me for like, Google ads or you hired me to do content. Like, yes, they should be leading in those specific areas. And then you as a business owner should be leading the strategy. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:31:24
Deliverables and outcomes. There are two different things, but you need to map everything you're doing in a relationship to both. So hey, we delivered everything. But the outcomes didn't we didn't achieve these outcomes or we fell short. Okay. Let's have a conversation about that. We think we can make that better. We we delivered these outcomes but the deliverables were not there.
Lee Murray
00:31:42
Well okay. That's a different conversation right. Yeah. Generally a more positive one. But still why did why were this. Why is this stuff not done. So you know I think being led I don't see it a lot you know. So we always try to over index on leading our clients and really being in there helping them. and I think there's a balance too because clients get put in there, their bit of work as well. but I think that's a huge deal. Marketers need to realize, like, hey, okay, I'm hiring you now. Lead me through this.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:32:11
Yeah. No, it's really well said, and I fully agree.
Lee Murray
00:32:15
Okay, well, this has been awesome. Again, thanks again for coming on and talking about this aspect of a marketer's world. I this has been great. I think it's super valuable.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:32:26
Thank you for having me and giving me the opportunity to speak about the agency life.
Lee Murray
00:32:30
okay. So again, if people want to find you, where do they go?
Behdad Jamshidi
00:32:33
Yeah.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:32:33
The best way is my website, so. and I'm on LinkedIn, so if you. Right, you'll find me on there as well. And I'm always happy to chat with people and help them across the journey.
Lee Murray
00:32:47
Yeah. It's great. It's a wealth of resource there. So check them out. And, I wish you well.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:32:54
Yeah. Thank you. You as.
Behdad Jamshidi
00:32:55
Well.