The Thing About Marketing Agencies

I have worked with over 20 agencies specialising in all aspects of marketing in the last 13 years of my marketing career. I’ve seen it all - the good, the bad and the ugly. This is rarely one-sided, a good agency-client relationship takes two invested parties to work. Here’s my breakdown of what good looks like, and where things can often go wrong.

It Takes Two

I’m not writing this post to bash agencies - the opposite is true. In fact, I’ve seen many examples where the agency is ready and willing to work, and the client is often the one impeding performance or growth.

For example, one business I worked with had little to no stock forecasting or management processes, resulting in key products going in and out of stock continuously. Now imagine you’re an Amazon agency, working with this client, not being told of stock issues in the first instance, and then having to play catch up.

Amazon are unforgiving - they don’t like to see listings go out of stock, they prefer consistency. When a listing is put out of stock, it loses its footing in the algorithm. Reviews, rankings and historical performance don't disappear entirely, but visibility often suffers and recovery can take weeks or even months. An agency can only optimise what's available to sell.

The agency, in this instance, is always fighting an uphill battle. How are they expected to grow Amazon sales when the best selling products are suddenly found to be out of date and there’s a 3-4 week delay on the new stock landing in the warehouse?

On the other side, I have also seen plenty of examples where the agency impedes performance. In my experience this is often the result of a breakdown with the client-agency relationship.

The most common reason for this I can think is if the agency has over-promised and under-delivered. They say they will do A, B or C, and achieve X, Y and Z. They win the client's business based on this. But within the first few months it becomes apparent that they either do not have the resource, capacity, experience or sometimes plain willingness to meet the promises. This can make for a very rapid, and often permanent, deterioration of the relationship.

Imagine you’re a brand ready to invest £30k in TikTok marketing. You bring in a few agencies to tender for your business, and there is one clear winner. They are giving you the most value for money, promising you the world in terms of results and costing less than the other agencies you’ve spoken too. It’s a no-brainer, right?

Fast forward three months, and very little has been implemented or achieved in this time, the team for whatever reason hasn’t been able to follow through with the proposal. Not only would you be annoyed, you’ve already spent the £30k budget, not seeing any returns on it and you’re tied in to another 3 months’ on the contract. A lot of businesses, especially nowadays, simply can’t afford this. This inevitably places pressure and stress on the client, which in turn is likely to be fed directly back into the agency relationship. Calls become awkward, emails passive agressive, and ultimately no one is winning in this situation.

After working with so many agencies over the years, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what separates the great ones from the average ones.

All Agencies Are Equal but Some Are More Equal Than Others

It goes without saying, like anything in life, some agencies are simply better than others. So what is it exactly that makes an agency great?

I don’t necessarily think this comes down to who has the best resources or tech, or which pitch is the glossiest. In my experience, it comes down to culture.

Every agency I've worked with has its own vibe. It's a bit like a family. From the outside looking in, everything can seem polished and well put together. If you're pitching to win new business, you're naturally going to put your best foot forward and be on your best behaviour.

What you don’t see in the pitching process, before signing a contract, is what is going on day to day. How well the team work together and communicate, staff turnover, leadership styles and how do things change when pressure is introduced to the mix. Simply, is the agency’s culture a fit for your business?

What Makes for Good Culture?

When I think of the best agency I've worked with, Circus PPC immediately comes to mind.

I first worked with Rick and the team in one of my first proper jobs after university in 2014. Back then, Circus was a small agency of just a few people. Since then, they've grown significantly and now have a team of more than 20.

Over the years, I've met several members of the team, and they all seem to share the same mindset. I believe that starts from the top.

It's actually very simple - they care.

They don’t want to just sign new clients, they make it their business to retain them too, and they do this by being obsessed with performance. Not just to appease the client, but because they genuinely take pride in what they do, and invest in the agency-client relationship.

The best agencies give a shit. They care about the numbers and results, yes, but they also care when things aren’t going to plan. And most of all, they genuinely care about the people - not only in their own team, but on the clients’ side too.

That's why Circus wasn't just the first agency I worked with in 2014, they were also the last agency I had the pleasure of working with in employment over a decade later in 2025.

Finishing Thoughts

You don’t need a psychology degree to understand that people tend to respond to how they're treated. If you're trying to get more out of your agency through pressure, passive aggression or pettiness, do you really think the people working on your account are going to be (or even want to be) at their best?

Just as I said I was made to feel part of the team at Circus PPC, the same is equally true the other way round. Even if or when things aren’t going well, the relationship can still be collaborative, friendly and personable, just as it would be with a colleague. And if you can keep this approach, then the relationship will never sour past the point of no return.

I started Ambery Consulting with a simple philosophy born directly from experiences like this:

“I believe great partnerships are built on trust, transparency and results, not long-term commitments. I work with every client as if their business were my own.”