An agency executes against the funnel you hand them. If that funnel is leaking trust, you are paying a specialist to amplify a problem they did not cause and cannot see.
The pitch will be good. The strategy will sound right. None of it changes the fact that you are about to put a monthly fee behind a buying journey nobody has measured.
The real risk
You brief an agency into an unvalidated funnel and own the result. The agency optimises channels while the leak sits upstream of their remit. Six months in, the spend is up, the result is not, and the relationship sours.
What happens if you skip the check
You buy execution against a structure you have never tested. The leak in the part the agency does not control keeps costing you, and the blame lands in the gap between you.
The standard before you hire
Before you sign an agency, the funnel should pass Marketing Due Diligence. RAMMP is a patented quantitative behavioural diagnostic of trust in the buying journey, run before marketing budget is committed. Patent granted in Australia (AU 2021105053); patent pending in the United States. The engagement starts on a Brand Trust Score, the leaking checkpoints, and a verdict the agency can scope against.
STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE
- —STOP briefing an agency into a leaking checkpoint.
- —KEEP the channels the data shows work.
- —FIX the structural leaks before the retainer starts.
- —PROVE the lift with a re-score, so the agency's value is measured.
Hire the agency when
The funnel has been scored and the leaks named, the brief points the agency at the milestones that need work, and you can measure impact with a before-and-after score.
Optimisation is not governance
An agency optimises. It does not, by default, govern the decision to spend. Diagnose first, and the agency optimises a funnel worth optimising.
Close
Hiring an agency to fix a leak nobody has measured is a fee against a guess. Measure first, then brief.
The standard behind this → Marketing Due Diligence
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