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independence2 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
standing

contested · 2 claims against 1

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

3 claims · 3 articles · 3 receipts

window

2017-03-14 → 2022-03-22

2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Run the ads yourself before you hire anyone

One founder repeatedly brought in outside firms promising a multiple on spend, and after a few months the platform return was barely up while the service fees left them worse off than doing it themselves; he says no external company ever beat their internal team. Another gave a marketing partner equity and revenue against a steep growth target to run search, then shut it down five months later when it had barely improved on free traffic. The dissent is a cost of time argument: one operator paid an agency a fixed monthly fee, added about a dollar per subscriber to his cost, and counts that as buying back work he did not want to do.

Where this splits

Two builders found paid specialists added nothing over running the campaigns themselves, while another treats the agency fee as a fair price for his own time at about a dollar per subscriber.

2 claims against 1

Matthew Griffin · Tyler Tringas

Run the ads yourself, agencies add nothing

  1. 01Do not outsource paid acquisition to an agency promising a multiple on your spend. Learn it from free tutorials, run your own ads, measure at a granular level, then scale and hire.
  2. 02Handing paid search to an incentivised specialist does not rescue it either; expect to spend months learning that the campaign adds nothing on top of the traffic you already get for free.
the objection · 1 claimNathan Barry

The agency fee buys back your own time

Paying an agency to run the ads is a legitimate purchase of your own time, and it costs about a dollar per subscriber on top.

What it returned

  • $1,000

    $1,000/month agency fee, discounted because of an existing contract

  • Combat Flip Flops repeatedly integrated outside marketing firms promising large returns. After a few months the direct platform return was barely up, and once the service fees were counted they earned less than doing it themselves. The founder says no external company has ever beaten their internal team.

  • The author gave a marketing partner a slice of equity and revenue against a steep growth target to run Adwords, and shut it down five months later when it had barely improved on organic search

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in ads

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.