What I Learned From Counting Every Marketing Agency in America [4 Takeways]

It is a crucial human impulse – the desire to quantify the world around us. Given the upcoming U.S. 2020 census, it seems an appropriate time to make a contribution.

Recently my team did just that: Like our astronomical ancestors under the ancient sky, we looked outside and started counting.

What did we count?

Any marketing agency in America. Type of.

To be honest, it would be stupid to take stock. Our source was online entries, so there is enough scope for mistakes. Some agencies are devoured two weeks after counting competitors. Others close in the real world but endure online. And some never existed; It was always empty hulls built by hustlers with an UpWork account and which their “team” pronounced for your next big project.

What I can say is this: there are at least several thousand marketing agencies in America. We searched 6,000 listings and analyzed 600 websites and LinkedIn company profiles to cover as many disciplines as possible. This includes:

advertising
Branding
Content marketing
design
PR
SEO / SEM
Social media
Web design
Web and app development

We also collected a number of measurements, including:

Agency size
Age of the agency
Agencies per capita
Top disciplines
Hourly rates
Gender distribution in leadership
Homepage hero images
Company name
Company slogans

You are encouraged to read this Complete report.

Below I will present our four key findings from the state of marketing agencies in America in 2020. I encourage leaders and contributors alike: sit back, breathe in, and think about your development in the agency universe.

1. Keep something special when growing

Our analysis showed 77% of the agencies employ 10 to 49 people, and 18% of the agencies employ 50 to 249 people.

I wonder how many in the smaller area wish they could go to the next level and how many big agencies are longing to be small again? Are agencies like rock bands graduating from arenas just to fall behind the stage over a shrimp buffet and yearn for their leaner, dirtier club days?

It raises the basic question: What do we lose when we grow?

Small agencies should anticipate the challenge and commit to certain values that may be at risk when scaling. Large agencies should take stock. What was sacrificed – flexibility, focus, community? Choose something that you have defined and that you want back. Make it your goal for 2020.

What I Learned From Counting Every Marketing Agency in America [4 Takeways] 2

2. Anticipate the lifespan and legacy

On average, a dog will be 10 to 13 years old. How for a marketing agency? Not for long.

In America, 61% of marketing agencies are between five and 19 years old, then the population drops significantly.

Why is that?

Think about what affects the lifespan of an agency. How much does it cost externally or internally? Agencies rarely survive dogs because markets and technology tend to develop beyond their original mastery? Or because 20 years roughly corresponds to the sweet spot of a human career and visionary founders struggle to get their companies to survive?

In both cases there is a lot to anticipate and act at different points in the life of an agency.

Pay attention to where the heart is in your agency – its energy center. If it comes from a single charismatic founder, be careful. The heartbeat of an organization should be borne by many people.

Take a steadfast look at the evolution of the markets and technologies around you from the start. Just because you have mastered something that was new five years ago does not mean that you are able to master what is around the corner. A long life depends on a lot of planning (and some luck).

What I Learned From Counting Every Marketing Agency in America [4 Takeways] 3

3. Don’t just hire women, but empower them to lead

This topic is a monster and certainly deserves a lot more attention than I will give here. But I want to share an open note about how our agency was founded and what this means for gender equality in agency management.

The founders of Digital third coast are both men. At the beginning of their careers, they worked together on an early iteration of a digital marketing agency. They left this agency and set out to start their own company.

For the purposes of our analysis, we have classified our agency as “all men” in the management. In this case, “owner” is the highest identifiable management level and there are two owners, both men.

Our owners are conscientious, fair and progressive. They value the contributions of women as well as men, regularly hire women and give women the opportunity to lead in our organization. But none of that changes where they started. When they were in their previous agency, they looked around and found themselves among other men.

The numbers are miserable in the agency world, as in so many other business areas. But female leaders don’t materialize out of nowhere, and we’re not going to achieve a state of equality through promotions alone. If we flipped a switch and suddenly every marketing agency in the country with more than 250 employees only had female C suites, these numbers would hardly move.

This is a small business problem, not a business problem. We need an industry, economy and society that young women feel empowered to do start your own company, just like our owners once did.

A challenge for agency managers: are there any women in your organization at this moment who are working together and growing with other women in terms of content and who one day feel empowered to become self-employed? There should be.

What I Learned From Counting Every Marketing Agency in America [4 Takeways] 4

4. Make an authentic first impression

(A little) easier – can we end the scourge of stock model photography? You’re welcome.

In a world defined and dominated by user-generated content and unprecedented intimacy and access to social media, agencies shouldn’t present themselves with sterile stock images.

The homepage hero image is an enormous opportunity. Marketing agencies in America do different things with it. Most of them show people, objects or places. You may see a lightbulb, a group of people around a table, or a city skyline.

The opportunity is of course not straight look good or look trendy, but reflect expertise, integrity and professional values.

Those in charge of the agency should think about it: is my homepage hero everything he can be or is it what I have seen in everyone else?

What I Learned From Counting Every Marketing Agency in America [4 Takeways] 5

Much of our day-to-day life is characterized by an adequate level of concentration – we manage the work ahead, our employees, our quarterly and annual goals, our corporate vision. Occasionally, we venture beyond and consider our competitors and our markets.

And every now and then we are asked to go one step further and to examine existential questions about longevity, equality and connection to our past. I hope this data will help you.