There used to be a time where marketers and advertisers were respected for their different disciplines. Agencies specialised in one thing and they were damn good at it.

For most digital marketing agencies, defining a niche and creating a narrative about their brand is at the bottom of their priority list.

The dichotomy of running an agency is that the areas in which you spend most of your time for your clients are often the areas you spend the least amount of time in for your own business.

There’s a trend in marketing agencies to huddle together for warmth. This usually means looking at what everyone else in the industry is doing, and then doing exactly the same thing - after all, nobody likes to be the outlier.

There’s been a lot of talk in the agency space recently about whether or not agencies should productise, and the answer seems to depend on who you listen to.

How often do you think about your agency’s brand and its equity? Over the years that you’ve been building your agency, your brand has started to mean something - to you, to your clients, and to your referrals.

Even in the age of automation, the digital marketing industry is powered by people. This is true of every agency: people write the ads, people make the sales, people build the client relationships. And most importantly: people buy from people.

The question of whether or not digital marketing agencies should do their own advertising, or hire an agency to do it for them, seems to be something of a sensitive topic.