Why Your Agency Needs Someone Above It
Agencies are great at execution. Growth needs someone connecting the plan to every channel.
I've worked with a lot of good agencies. Strong designers, sharp media buyers, solid copywriters. The problem usually isn't the talent. It's that no one is connecting their work to the business goal.
Here's what that looks like. The social team is posting about one product. The ads team is pushing another. The website is still talking about last year's offer. Each piece looks fine on its own, and none of it adds up.
Every specialist is optimizing for their own number. The ad buyer wants a lower cost per click. The SEO person wants more traffic. The email person wants a higher open rate. Those are all good things, but they aren't revenue.
That's the gap a CMO fills. My job sits above the execution teams. I set the priorities, decide what each channel is responsible for, and make sure the creative, the landing page, and the offer all say the same thing.
In practice that means a few things:
- One plan everyone works from, with clear goals for each channel.
- Reviewing creative before it goes out, so the message stays consistent.
- Looking at results across channels, not one report at a time.
- Telling the team when to stop doing something, which is just as important as starting.
You don't have to replace your agency to get this. In most cases, I make the team you already have more effective. They get clearer direction, fewer revisions, and work that actually connects to sales.
If your vendors are working hard but the numbers aren't moving, it might not be a vendor problem. It might be a leadership gap.