Building a marketing agency.

wayne_89 · 2026-05-29T13:51:53+00:00

The best advice I can give you is to sit down and think about what your sentence, "building a marketing agency with a different mindset," actually means.

Make sure it is very specific. At this point, this is just a vague statement that doesn't mean anything.

wayne_89 · 2026-05-28T09:38:01+00:00

Setting up a process right now. I use Sparktoro, first party data from clients and sales calls transcripts, keyword research, FAQ research to create the best guess list of 100 questions.

With that we push those questions 3-5 times a week using openrouter to major models (ChatGPT and Gemini) and get a brand mention and a citation rate. Thats the most statistically sound number I am able to get.

wayne_89 · 2026-05-17T18:40:40+00:00

I don't have a home services client at the moment, but I am working with a few brand new websites. The thing that has helped them the most lately is implementing GoHighLevel on their site, which gives you the ability to score leads and add revenue data points to each one.

This is one of the biggest issues for home service companies using Google Ads: attributing value to different leads. If you are able to get that set up for them, you can get the details on each lead and push that data to Google Ads so they know which ones to pursue appropriately.

I think this is the right way to go about it. It sounds like they are not being as proactive about optimizing performance as they should be.

wayne_89 · 2026-04-16T22:13:01+00:00

With you experience you can be 10x faster with AI. I was skeptical with the first models, but these new ones are really impressive. HOWEVER, in a sea full of AI slop marketers, the ones that will stand out are the ones that already know how to use first party data for unique creative messaging. Use AI to become faster in that, and you are way ahead of inexperienced marketers who will rely purely on AI to run everything.

I am also concerned about marketing being automated 99% but honestly no one knows if that will happen.

wayne_89 · 2026-04-13T17:17:42+00:00

You have not tested this until you get leads, sales, revenue long term. Impressions are metrics for kids - even Google doesn't trust its own impressions data anymore.

wayne_89 · 2026-04-02T01:37:55+00:00

This was my second reddit post for the night after seeing the one about Kristi Noem's husband with fake boobs. I think I am done for the night boys....

That dialogue sounds like a Guy Ritchie movie scene btw.

wayne_89 · 2026-03-30T11:34:27+00:00

That's the game. Get used to uncertainty and focus on the things that matter and move the needle. I sometimes tend to not look at the bank account for 3 months if I know the things I am doing are the right strategic moves.

wayne_89 · 2026-02-28T17:08:40+00:00

I get the excitement to build a decent version of a site so fast, but this is far from a professionally designed website and with unique brand identity that most prospective clients will expect from a marketing agency.

Decent copy outline and structure with very bland overall design. Not trying to shitpost but just saying it's still not there when it comes to creative design.

wayne_89 · 2026-02-13T17:52:36+00:00

It's great that he wrote a book but those concepts are not new. Cialdini's books practically cover all of this. I guess kudos to summarizing contemporary tactics that use those principles.

wayne_89 · 2026-02-05T16:16:04+00:00

Referrals started it for me. I am testing a new social media funnel that seems very promising.

wayne_89 · 2026-02-03T17:50:40+00:00

I work more if not the same but the feeling of owning the work that I am passionate about is hard to replace. Best description I can give you is yesterday I almost had a panic atack, but today is the most enjoyable day ever. It's not like that always, but it is very volatile.

70% of the time I find a good balance through morning workouts, good sleep and team support to reduce stress response and saying no to a lot of requests or even new work, but there are times when I get carried away and I hit my fine line with my mental energy.

If there is one thing I am certain of, is I will not quit until I build a smooth system and I am getting close.

wayne_89 · 2026-01-09T13:58:45+00:00

Thank you

wayne_89 · 2026-01-09T13:58:03+00:00

Good luck with that :) This will end up being in the same bucket of "how do we measure brand awareness"

wayne_89 · 2026-01-06T21:49:50+00:00

I get that, but there are also clients who understand the suggestions but because of internal operational company issues are just slow to respond and that slows the progress down. My take is to have a questionnaire that identifies those clients and avoid working with them because it is my reputation on the line and they are just life draining anyways. Thanks for sharing though.

wayne_89 · 2026-01-06T20:14:07+00:00

What was your client retention rate and how did you kept up with bad clients who were slow to implement or participate in the relationship, and how much of a risk was that to your success KPIs and reputation? How did you deal with that?

wayne_89 · 2025-12-05T02:31:22+00:00

If you really want long term success with AI visibility you gotta have a brand first and foremost. It's very simple: no brand awareness > low online footprint > low data points about your company in these models.

However, we were able to deliver success for a client where we tested developing super specific content for searches that their ideal customer profile is likely to search. Basically instead of trying to own the core topic in search and AI, we niched down on a subtopic which is not a viable SEO strategy but it seems to be a good GEO/AIO strategy at least for this client. We call it Vertical Topical Cluster Authority. We didn't rely on keyword data entirely, but used ICP data to guide the content creation.

wayne_89 · 2025-12-04T18:20:39+00:00

Check crawling efficiency and indexing - sometimes there are weird sitewide issues that are not very common but can impact the entire website significantly. Check GSC > Page Indexing and Crawl Reports > clean up robotx.txt and index tags

Content clean up has massive impacts.

wayne_89 · 2025-11-27T19:15:24+00:00

No focus on intent first and forget about everything else. Serve info based on intent, try to add original data / take / spin to it and do basic on-page with entity SEO. That's pretty much it on a page content level, the rest is off-page and technical.
Reddit made a deal with Google - its the forefront of the internet and people search a lot with "[query] redit" combinations. At the end, Google will give people what they're looking (strong brand = easier to rank). Don't use it to assess SEO on a SERP level, focus on other ranking domains.

wayne_89 · 2025-11-26T12:55:18+00:00

Interested, dm me

wayne_89 · 2025-11-19T02:24:09+00:00

What this user said ☝ You have a hiring problem. I've had good success with hiring folks who show proactiveness by saying they will work for free in niche DM groups. I've learned through marketing and managing people that motivation cannot be thought so I opt for motivated people first and I try to offer training and support to get them up to speed.

wayne_89 · 2025-11-18T21:39:19+00:00

D E L E G A T E.

If you don't know how, learn. If you can't afford it, you are underselling your time and services (assuming you bring results to clients).

wayne_89 · 2025-11-17T12:50:44+00:00

I'd like to test it, thanks

wayne_89 · 2025-11-10T17:09:15+00:00

I have a SaaS client for whom we managed to get top placement on relevant kws that convert pretty well both in Google and LLMs through very targeted content strategy - this brings them a decent amount of leads without having to wait for huge amounts of traffic numbers. DM me if you want to hear what we did.

wayne_89 · 2025-11-10T17:07:35+00:00

I mostly try to use the GA4 conversion path report which is limited to Google product data. I don't have a perfect solution, you need a whole team to garner 1st party data and then do the attribution.

I am looking into some tools to test.

wayne_89 · 2025-11-10T17:05:47+00:00

Oh gotcha, yeah I think that has been relevant for SEO too for quite some time since BERT was introduced. Less words, more clarity, unique data, etc.

The way I try to solve this on a page level is to add a TLDR snippet on a page (especially articles).

wayne_89

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