How CoEfficient Labs is Different Than 99% of Digital Marketing Agencies

Ever worked with an ad agency before?

If so, this may sound familiar…

Two days into my first major management role, the CMO of Creative Circle called me into his office.

“You have 2 tasks to complete in your first month here,” he said.

“First, Get an understanding of our digital marketing funnel from top to bottom, and second, source a media agency to place ads for us.”

I grabbed a sheet of paper and jotted down the following To-Do’s.

• Research Paid Media Agencies for Hire
• Review Proposals & Choose the Best Agency
• Manage Communication Between Our Teams

It was during my research phase that I noticed fundamental problems with how most digital agencies do business.

In reviewing dozens of pitch decks from different media buying shops across the country, the same three issues kept coming up:

#1: Long-Term Commitments (12-24 Month Minimum)

#2: Fee Structure Based on a % of AdSpend

#3: Designs Not Included

After 12 months working with these digital marketing agencies, I began to realize the bottlenecks that their typical frameworks created.

I remember thinking: “there must be a better way.”

And exactly one year later, CoEfficient Labs was born.

Let’s now break down these three problems and examine how CoEfficient Labs takes a different approach.

1. Why Long Term Commitments Are Bad for Growth

Have you ever heard of Scrum Development?

The word “Scrum” describes a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common goal.

It’s a framework that has been used by the best companies in the world from Facebook to Amazon, Salesforce to Spotify, and thousands of others.

Basically, Scrum methodology takes a BIG goal: like building a mobile app, and breaks it into smaller goals, usually divided into weekly sprints.

CoEfficient Labs runs on a Scrum Framework.

What does that mean for companies that hire us?

It means that rather than being your ‘agency of record’ and locking you into a twelve month commitment, our team treats each engagement as a 90-Day project that is broken into 12-weekly sprints.

99% of our clients are looking to do one of three things:

• Reduce Cost Per Lead (CPL)

• Reduce Cost Per Install (CPI)

• Reduce Cost to Acquire a New Customer (CAC)

With clearly established Key Performance Indicators, CoEfficient Labs can work with you to assign a 90-Day milestone to your company. That way you’ll know whether we have achieved your goals at the end of the 90-Days.

We either hit them, or we don’t.

There is no gray area, and we believe that that’s the way it should be.

The 90-Day Agreement ensures that both CoEfficient Labs and our clients remain focused on short-term goals and not bogged down by long-term commitments.

2. The Unfortunate Truth About % of AdSpend Pricing

I’m actually amazed that this form of pricing is still the norm.

It makes absolutely no sense.

When an agency is paid on a % of AdSpend, their incentives are ALWAYS misaligned with the goals of the company who hired them.

Said another way, most Media Buying and Marketing Agencies are incentivized to get you to spend more on Advertising regardless of whether they hit their goals.

Why is that a problem…aren’t they the same?

Not really, because most companies have ‘hot times of the year’ to advertise (like during Christmas), whereas others, like Digital Agencies, spend more in the early months of the new year.

Here’s a great example.

While I worked at Creative Circle, we spent the majority of our Ad Budget in Q1 and Q2.

As August came around, we reduced our ad spend significantly.

Guess what happened next with those same agencies we were working with?

• Their # of new optimizations went down

• Their communication with our team went down

• Their overall services and attention just went down

And it wasn’t just one or two of them, it was every agency I worked with.

3. Neglecting to Offer In-House Designs is the #1 Reason Most Agencies Fail. (And Why CoEfficient Labs will Succeed)

Let’s talk about bottlenecks for a minute.

If you have ever worked with an agency who does not design their own ad creatives, this may sound familiar.

 You: “Hi Digital Media Buying Agency, we’d love to test new facebook/instagram/ [insert channel here] ads”

 Digital Agency: “Sure, just shoot over the ad creatives you’d like to use and we’ll get those up asap.”

“OK Perfect!” you think….

And then you realize the hardest part of this “advertising test” is still ahead of you.

“Who the hell is going to design the ads?”

You have 3 options:

• Do it Yourself

• Reallocate ‘Advertising’ Time from Your Team

• Hire a Freelance Designer

All of these options are expensive and take huge amounts of time.

In fact, these are distractions that could ultimately be detrimental to your business.

Social advertising requires an iterative approach.  

It’s not just point and shoot.

It’s point, shoot, learn, and point again.

The process must build on itself if you want to achieve your long term goals.

This is the secret to CoEfficient Labs’ success.

We hire the best and brightest minds coming out of top advertising programs, period.

When you work with CoEfficient Labs, you’ve just added a creative director, two graphic designers, a data scientist, and a team of growth hackers with over 10 years of digital marketing experience to your squad.

Each member of the team works tirelessly on your advertising campaigns during our 90-Day sprint.

From concept to design, launch, management and up through A/B testing; we are an extension of your Growth Team for 90-Days.

How CoEfficient Labs Prices Our Services & What’s Included:

• Flat Fee Pricing – no minimum advertising spend required.
• 90-Day Itemized Deliverable Calendar – you know what we’re working on at all times.
• Designs Included – We’ll design 100 Ads+ throughout our engagement.

We believe that by spending your money efficiently and hitting your stated goals, we can continue our business relationship and build a foundation for new referrals.

Are You the Right Fit for CoEfficient Labs?

There are three types of companies that work especially well within our iterative, 90-Day Growth Hacking Framework:

#1: Series-A (and later stage) Startups looking to acquire users at scale

#2: Mid-Sized Businesses looking to improve their digital marketing metrics

#3: Seed-Funded Startups looking to set their acquisition baseline

Interested in learning more about CoEfficient Labs?

Reach out.