r/agency

As the saying goes ‘The squeaky wheel gets the oil.’

How do you guys manage such clients?

They do not exactly exceed what the scope was agreed upon but they need a lot of communication and hand holding. Somewhat of ‘micromanage’ but not entirely to say. Haha it’s hard to explain. They needed to see our draft before work is publish online because it is their property (in their words).

We think they have the right to review but it also hinders our progress internally.

We run SEO for them and they are many moving parts including on page edits.

Thinking to drop them once the contract ends. How do we say we will not continue for them, in a respectful manner 😂

Hi folks, after months of testing at our partner volume, here's what actually held up.

Upfluence handles the hybrid case where your partners are creators who also act as affiliates. Commission tracking sits next to the creator relationship history rather than in a separate platform. Most pure affiliate tools force you to manage the same partner in two systems, which is a pain once you're past maybe 30 active people.

Refersion has solid tracking infrastructure and a clean Shopify integration. The partner portal is functional. It's better at the affiliate side than the relationship side, which is fine if that's all you need

Impact is enterprise-grade tracking and compliance. The breadth is real but implementation is heavy and pricing reflects that. Worth it if you're past 200 partners with significant revenue, overkill before that point

Tapfiliate sits in the mid-market range, easier setup than Impact, more flexibility in commission rules than Refersion. Worth a look if you're somewhere between those two scales and need both affiliate and referral in one place

Partnerstack is saas-focused which makes the use case pretty different from ecom. Won't suit most influencer-affiliate hybrid programs but it's the right call for pure SaaS partner ops at scale

ShareASale is established with a deep merchant network if you want broader partner exposure. Less flexible for custom commission structures though.

Curious which of these others are running at 50+ partners and whether the tracking vs relationship management tradeoff landed the same way for you.

We are about to hire my first virtual assistant, and I’ll admit I’m both excited and a little nervous.

I’ve owned my agency for years, but this is the first time I’m bringing on a dedicated VA. I know the goal is to buy back my time, but I’m curious how that actually played out.

Looking back, where did your first VA end up providing the most value?

What were the first tasks you handed off?

Who did they end up helping the most—you, project management, customer service, production, accounting, or someone else?

And were there any mistakes you made that you’d avoid if you were doing it again?

I’m hoping this becomes one of those “I should have done this years ago” decisions, but I’d love to learn from those of you who’ve already been through it.

For the record, I'm not. I am offering a real service and I have a deep background in my niche. I have happy customers (and one unhappy one).

Doing prospecting and sales feels like fishing. It feels like I'm trying to lure companies in and "trick them" into signing with me. I don't know where that feeling is coming from, because like I said, there's no trick. I'm an honest agency owner providing a good service.

I want to feel like I have an open shop and I'm helping people browse and pick things, not like I'm tricking them to hand over their money.

Has anyone else felt that way and what did you do about it?

AI makes it easy for clients to ask for more:

I run a small boutique studio in the EU, mostly web design and e-commerce for fashion and beauty brands. For context, I came from product design (a few years at Uber before going solo), so I lean heavy on the strategy and UX side, not just execution.

A typical project for me is the full thing: research, brand positioning, the actual design and build, copy, and launch. The client usually comes in with a vague idea and I turn it into a finished product. I'd say the strategy part is where most of the real value is, but it's also the part I'm worst at pricing.

I keep seeing other people talk about numbers that are way above what I charge, and I'm starting to think I've been underpricing for a while. So I wanted to ask people who actually run agencies or studios:

- How do you land on a price? What actually moves the number for you (scope, deliverables, number of features, revision rounds, the client's budget, the value it creates)?

- Do you charge for strategy and discovery separately, or just fold it into the project? I keep hearing that the upfront thinking should be its own line item, but I never do it.

- For those of you who raised prices and it worked: what actually changed? Was it the packaging, the positioning, the type of client, or just the number?

Not trying to become the cheapest or the most expensive. I just want to stop leaving money on the table for the strategy work. Real numbers and real reasoning would help a lot.

For me it's never writing the email.

It's finding enough good prospects in the first place.

Curious what everyone else struggles with most.

• Finding businesses?
• Finding emails?
• Personalizing messages?
• Following up?
• Getting replies?

What's your biggest bottleneck?

Curious to hear from people actually running agencies, not the polished conference talk version, the real day-to-day.

What's the bottleneck that keeps coming back no matter how much you try to fix it? Is it hiring, client churn, ops, sales, delivery, cash flow? Something else entirely?

And on the flip side, what's the one thing you're genuinely trying to get to this year? Like if everything else stayed the same but that one thing moved, you'd feel like it was a good year.

No agenda here, just genuinely want to understand what the actual problems look like from the inside. Would love to hear from people at different stages too, whether you're a solo operator or running a team of 20+.

I run multiple ventures and AI is embedded in how I operate daily. The biggest unlock wasn't finding better tools — it was learning to write prompts that actually produce usable output.

The structure I use on every prompt:

Role — who the model is playing
Context — what situation it's in
Task — what I need
Format — how to structure the output
Constraints — what to avoid

Two examples I use weekly:

---

THE WEEKLY WAR ROOM BRIEF

You are an executive briefing AI that runs a weekly operating review for a solo founder.

Context: I am a solo operator across multiple ventures. I need a structured weekly review that forces honest accounting of progress, flags drift, and resets priorities.

Task: Run my weekly war room. Ask me the questions needed to produce a complete brief. Then generate the full output.

Questions to ask me: (1) What were last week's three commitments? (2) What actually happened? (3) What's the number one bottleneck right now per venture? (4) What am I avoiding?

Format: War Room Brief — Last Week Score (%), Wins, Misses, Active Bottlenecks by venture, This Week's Three Non-Negotiables, One Honest Observation.

Constraints: No encouragement. No positive framing of a miss. Call it what it is.

---

THE OFFER SHARPENER

You are a direct response strategist who has built and launched over 50 productized service offers.

Context: I have a service or product that isn't converting as well as it should. The market exists — the positioning may be off.

Task: Analyze my current offer below. Identify the single biggest positioning weakness. Rewrite the offer from scratch with a sharper ICP, a clearer result, and a more specific proof mechanism.

My current offer: [paste your offer description, price, and target customer]

Format: (1) Diagnosis — what's weak and why. (2) Rewritten offer — headline, one-sentence result, three bullet deliverables, price anchor, ideal client sentence. (3) One A/B test to run immediately.

Constraints: No buzzwords. No generic language. Every claim must be specific and provable.

---

Both work with Claude or ChatGPT. Run the War Room one on a Sunday night and you'll see what I mean.

Built 8 more in the same structure if anyone wants them — drop a comment.

It's just like the title says.

I ran an agency and have capped it at 15 clients max per month. I won't go into details about what I do. It’s already challenging to juggle 15 clients as it is.

I'm curious to understand how my fellow agency owners, who offer various types of services, are managing their businesses. What is the net margin you actually take home, both before and after incorporating AI? Has it increased? What is your client cap?

let's compare each other, lol at least we willl know someone is managing and optimized their agency like a god .
[ how can i leave the moment to gain some tips 😆 ]

I often see people claiming they are making $500k or $1M per month, which makes me wonder if, as you scale, the margin actually gets smaller. This thought leads me to believe that perhaps it's better not to scale too much.

i was researching about that with AI, and it somewhat agreed on that for some reason , that actually the margin shrink a bit until u cross a certain threshold of scaling ....

first of all my brain cant even think , how someone actually scale an agency 1M/mo or so tbh , even with all calcualtions and alll , combined it wont case at alll even asking performance fees not fixed fees as welll ,
but that topic lets leave it for other time ..

Hi everyone,
For context, I’ve been an ecommerce media buyer for six years and have managed large advertising budgets before I started my own marketing agency. One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes, no matter how much you optimize or improve the ads, the real issue is the product or the offer. In some cases, there just isn’t enough market demand.

I have a client who isn’t hitting their KPIs despite us following Meta advertising best practices. Based on everything we’ve tested, I don’t think the main issue is the ads anymore. I believe the product itself has limited demand, and I honestly think they’d be better off developing a different product.

The challenge is figuring out how to communicate this without offending them. They’ve invested millions into UGC, influencer marketing, and paid ads, so I understand they’re emotionally and financially attached to the product.

What surprised me is that they also spent millions on ads last year while only achieving around a 1.0X MER. Looking at the data from last year, it was already clear that the product wasn’t working at scale. When I reviewed the account before taking it on, I knew it was going to be a difficult account.
After we took over, we improved their MER from around 1.0 to about 2.0, so performance did improve. However, as an ecommerce media buyer, I still don’t think this is a scalable product, and I honestly think they should consider stopping or pivoting.

How would you approach this conversation with a client? Have you ever had to tell someone that the issue wasn’t the ads, but the product or the lack of market demand?

I run a content agency where I go and film for business and edit and post their content.

Today just the manager texted me and let me know they’re gonna pause services.

Half of our MRR just got cut with that. Feeling devastated.
Feel like this not even worth it. I loved working with them too. But yeah it hurts. Just a rant post. Any tips on how to move forward.

Oh god since some people have gotten AI in their hands I’m sick and tired of receiving multi page long vibe ass written messages.

It’s like they think they know everything, they go to free ass ChatGPT and ask it prove that they are correct fu**ing ChatGPT the golden retriever that it is gives long ass reply

This person will copy paste it on WhatsApp, 99% of the time it is wrong.

Why tf should we even talk with you if I had to deal with ChatGPT.

Don’t even get me started on Vibe written legal agreements 🤦🏻‍♂️

AI did not suddenly make every agency replaceable.

It exposed which agencies were mostly selling invisible execution.

If the client cannot see how the work becomes better over time, every deliverable starts looking like a commodity:

• posts
• ad variations
• reports
• landing page copy
• weekly updates
• creative ideas

The more interesting question is whether the agency has a visible operating system.

Can the client see:

• what was learned last month?
• what got reused?
• what got killed?
• what proof changed the strategy?
• what decision is being made next?
• what would break if the agency disappeared?

AI can make execution cheaper. It does not automatically make judgment, context, prioritization, and accountability cheaper.

I think the agencies that survive are the ones where the process itself becomes part of the value.

What part of your agency process is actually visible to the client?

Whats your go to event? Free, paid doesnt matter.

Do you go to conferences that are more general or niche specific

I've been building internal tools with Claude Code mostly for outreach/lead generation and just got my first calendar booking, fully automated!

The system scrapes facebook groups for leads, filters them, automates the DM messaging, follow-up & the AI Converse feature qualifies them.

If they're qualified, I built another feature that builds them a personalised landing page based on their company, with a video at the top of the page that records the custom built LP, which is like a mini-VSL explaining my offer.

The VSL is also fully automated, using HeyGen + Elevenlabs for the intro and then the rest is motion graphics using Hyperframes.

Theres other stuff I built in between like a CRM & Dashboard which keeps everything in sync

But honestly, super happy with the results so far! A lot more tweaking needs to happen but the because the entire thing was hands-off and automated, I was so fckin pumped!

Just had to share this, its amazing what you can build now!

Wanting to brainstorm, understand what other agency owners are focusing on for acquiring customers with AI in the picture.

One pattern I keep seeing in social media delivery: the client asks for more content, the agency says yes, and suddenly the account is unprofitable even if revenue looks fine.

The actual problem is not volume. It is unclear production boundaries.

Questions I would love to hear from agency owners:

• Do you price by output, channel, or outcome?
• Do you cap revision rounds?
• Do you separate strategy from production?
• Do you charge more for proof/reporting layers?
• When does "more content" stop being valuable for the client?

My current bias is that agencies need to productize the repeatable parts and keep only the strategic layer custom. Otherwise every new client becomes a custom content factory.

How are you handling this?

They are at 0.6x Net ROAS - which I clearly put up was NOT just marketing issue. Even a bad ad can atleast pull of a 1x ROAS.

Client got visibly offended. Call ended awkwardly.

Had I closed they would have said - ' Why did you go ahead if not confident?'

No correct answer. Mistake is ONLY on the agency in any case - which is the simplest answer.

"Why is there no growth? - Cuz our agency sucked"...Its a comforting conclusion.

I am curious how agency owners think about this.

Fully custom social media delivery sounds premium, but it can turn into chaos:

• different workflow per client
• different approvals
• different reporting
• different creative standards
• different posting cadence
• different definition of success

Productized delivery is cleaner, but it can feel too rigid if the client expects strategy.

The middle ground I am seeing more often is:

• fixed production workflow
• fixed approval system
• fixed reporting structure
• custom positioning and content angles
• clear boundaries on channels and revisions

For agencies doing social/content work, where do you draw the line between productized and custom?