By: Maria Williams
WGA, a Chicago-based marketing agency that started in 2022, has quickly transformed the marketing landscape. Their revolutionary value model reveals the gaping inefficiencies of the industry standard.
Let’s say your small business has a new game-changer of a product that’s bound for the open market. But without a $120k/year in-house marketing director who would inevitably have to outsource some of their operations, you throw a stone instead and land at a typical SME marketing agency.
Marketing agencies serve an important function in today’s enterprising society. A full-service agency can provide clients with extensive market research, web development, SEO services, content creation, email marketing, media acquisitions, and more. They can become an integral part of success by expanding the market and targeting the right bases, and they offload effort that would otherwise take away from the real marrow of a company.
And, while each agency is unique in its specializations and campaign strategies, much of the sector has seemingly agreed never to disclose quotes for potential clients hunting for agencies. Consequently, the traditional value model that agencies offer is opaque, exceedingly expensive, and disorganized on labor and deliverables. This obliquity forms a marketing outlook that favors high-revenue businesses and leaves the potential growth of SMEs in the dust.
Traditional value models often require expensive retainers with limits on work hours and deliverables. “When I was working as a director in-house,” recalls Ryan Hernandez, founder of the US-based WGA, “at the end of the month, we would end up with a bill that could be anywhere between $6,000 and $20,000.” The extra hourly costs and the excessive, tedious itemization of every output result in a yearly loss in revenue for companies that far exceed the base retainer.
This lack of transparency extends beyond costs into their operational relationships with clients. Getting hitched to an agency through a retainer plan before they ever deliver results could be detrimental to a business’s value if their strategies or resources do not align with the overall vision or targeted base. Ryan continues, “Everything was just extremely complicated. Whether that partner ended up being the right fit or not, we were stuck with them for a year. This was detrimental to our decision-making process.” These inefficiencies add up and generate wasted resources on both sides of the equation, and clients and agencies alike end up inflicting losses upon themselves.
The clear conclusion is that simply being open about potential extra costs, or at least minimum prices, leads to client satisfaction, long-term partnerships, and an onboarding process that encourages confidence in an agency’s work. Even more important, in Ryan Hernandez’s opinion, is that a simplified pricing model would make valuable marketing resources available to mid-market businesses to grow into enterprises. While the current adage in marketing is that outsourcing that work is key to a business’s success, marketing in its current state does not live up to the promise of efficiency and broad profitability, especially to smaller businesses.
WGA offers this transparency and more through its guiding principles of honesty and championing effective strategy over all else. The agency, founded in 2022, caters to SMEs and uses a simplified, updated value model that provides a truly optimal return on investment. Beginning with a standard base retainer with no limit on hours worked and deliverables, they enable businesses to pick and choose which services would serve them best, based on need and availability of capital. “People are happy with that plan because it allows full customizability of services they usually don’t get. With us, instead of the invisible extras in a traditional retainer, clients immediately see the value they’re getting,” explains Ryan.
The inflated value of traditional models obscures the real impact of an agency’s services. Instead, WGA’s updated plan allows a focus on delivering tangible deliverables instead of billing. As a recent client of theirs comments: “Our brand engagement reached an all-time high. Now WGA is just competing against their own results.” The unlimited terms of their retainer allow them to jump the gun on the actual work, ensuring an internal human resources policy of lean, need- and quality-based hiring that will always meet the deadline.
“Most agencies have the same tools and technologies. It’s our strategy that is the ultimate money-maker,” Ryan relishes, as he explains how they stand out. Their updated model of unlimited deliverables on a fixed retainer allows each project to be truly dedicated to serving clients. It enables more time allotted for market research and producing campaign materials, making for the best possible outcomes. He continues, “A campaign developed and maintained by the same, well-oiled team has a cohesiveness that secures its success.”
Although this updated model leads to increasing returns for both WGA and their clients, Ryan is not keen on keeping it to himself or within the confines of Chicago, with clients based worldwide and plans on expanding further. He sees an industry of marketing that is infinitely more accessible to SMEs around the globe. “I would love to see more agencies adopt a model like ours because transparency would be the first step to truly democratizing the marketing space.”
Published by: Josh Tatunay
