Dear SaaStr: I Don’t Know Marketing. Should We Try to Do It Ourselves or Hire an Agency?
I’ve never seen a marketing agency get a startup qualified leads, especially at the earliest start-up phases. Never.
The only value I’ve really seen in marketing agencies is helping you with:
- positioning (sort of, but not too much)
- branding (yes, if you really need this so early), and messaging. And
- managing online marketing and advertising for you — once you’ve proven you can get the basics working yourself.
But outbound-style, ABM’d leads? And true customers?
No way. At least not from 99% of agencies.
Even the best marketing agencies mainly help you scale. They help you take something that is already working a little bit, and add more flexible resources to it. That the best agencies can do, and do well.
But prove out a marketing channel works at all for you? Almost never seen that work out.
