Digital transformation is everywhere. Some agencies preach it, but why haven’t they achieved it for themselves?
Large media agencies spend millions of dollars on tech, data, and research to meet their large clients’ needs. They stack teams together to peer match and serve the many individual points of contact at their large clients’ offices. About two thirds of every expense dollar at an agency is spent on people. All these costs add up to large fees. Fees that large clients are willing and able to pay to secure the labor-based service model and scopes of work they demand. But what about mid-sized businesses?
Mid-sized businesses have much skinnier teams and scarcer resources. They care less about peer-matched teams or pages upon pages of expected deliverables presented in hyper-regular status calls. They want results more than anything, at a more affordable price. Many times family-owned, mid-sized businesses care deeply about every dollar spent. It is literally their money, and they often can’t justify spending it on those large agency fees, so they get scrappy and do what they can. All the while they are at a big marketing disadvantage versus their larger competitors because they are simply under-informed, out-tooled, and out-leveraged.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Many professional service sectors have already transitioned to a different service model – a service model that relies more on software and intelligent automation to cut back some of the high costs of labor. You no longer need a lawyer to write a contract, a stock trader to buy your stocks, or an accountant to keep your books. There are software-first companies that have taken their expertise, all of their knowledge and historical performance data, and built highly viable software-first service offerings. Of course, they still offer access to their professional teams, but you don’t pay for it as a default. That kind of model saves their clients a lot of money while still delivering exactly what they need.
That kind of model is overdue in the media agency category. Media is a process-oriented, data-driven business. People data, business data, cost data, geographic data, and performance data all wrapped around repetitive process and known business objectives. Sounds like exactly the kind of service ripe for a more automated, smarter approach, doesn’t it?
That is why we spent the last several years concepting, building, launching, and growing Empower’s Media Agent business line. It is purpose-built for the mid-sized business that wants to punch above their weight in advertising performance but doesn’t have time for the constant hand-holding.
The new model has arrived and clients are better off as a result. Operating since 2019, Media Agent clients have a 93% renewal rate, clearly indicating their satisfaction with a smarter approach for their business needs.
