AMP 236: How One Agency is Fixing Client Relationships (And How Yours Can Too) With Tyler Elliston From Right Side Up

05/25/21 • 28 min

Are you frustrated being on an in-house marketing team working with external agencies? And vice versa? Client and agency relationships can turn sour for several different reasons, such as unreasonable expectations, misaligned objectives, overselling capabilities, or poor communication of needs.

Today’s guest is Tyler Elliston, founder of Right Side Up. Tyler talks about how his company is structured to set up client relationships for mutual success using basic philosophical and strategic approaches. Actual measures and practical guidance can prevent and avoid problems from starting in the first place.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

Right Side Up: What goes wrong and what should be done
Both Sides: Tyler was a marketer and one of those difficult clients to work with
Differentiators: Pricing, in-house staffing support, and indexing individual talent
Wrong Workarounds: Use agencies as transactional vendors, hire/fire managers
Control and Commitment: Lack of ownership mentality and product/market fit
Radical Transparency: Figuring out frustration and honest about what’s needed
Challenges: Starting business and building systems without sacrificing quality
Solution: Hire great people to help solve problems and scale business
Structure: If not aligned with client’s desires/interests, it’s not the individual’s fault
Customer Satisfaction: Apply client mindset and treat business as if it’s your own
Difficult to deal with?
- Apply high standards
- Set clear expectations
- Deliver on and strive to exceed them
- Treat people like people

Links:

Quotes from Tyler Elliston:

“Ultimately, our goal is to help them build a best-in-class organization that consists of full-time people, agencies (not us - Right Side Up), whatever sort of makes sense for their business. So, we try to take a more kind of holistic approach to their success.”

“We really index on individual talent. We really believe that great marketing comes from great marketers.”

“I felt like I had relatively little control over the talent I was working with.”

“In a lot of cases, the problem is not the person. A lot of times, the problem is the structure that the person is in.”

Some of the highlights of the show include:

Right Side Up: What goes wrong and what should be done
Both Sides: Tyler was a marketer and one of those difficult clients to work with
Differentiators: Pricing, in-house staffing support, and indexing individual talent
Wrong Workarounds: Use agencies as transactional vendors, hire/fire managers
Control and Commitment: Lack of ownership mentality and product/market fit
Radical Transparency: Figuring out frustration and honest about what’s needed
Challenges: Starting business and building systems without sacrificing quality
Solution: Hire great people to help solve problems and scale business
Structure: If not aligned with client’s desires/interests, it’s not the individual’s fault
Customer Satisfaction: Apply client mindset and treat business as if it’s your own
Difficult to deal with?
- Apply high standards
- Set clear expectations
- Deliver on and strive to exceed them
- Treat people like people

Links:

Quotes from Tyler Elliston:

“We really index on individual talent. We really believe that great marketing comes from great marketers.”

“I felt like I had relatively little control over the talent I was working with.”

“In a lot of cases, the problem is not the person. A lot of times, the problem is the structure that the person is in.”

Previous Episode

AMP 235: How Marketing Teams Can Implement Effective Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategies (And Why They Should) With Jimi Vaughn

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, or the ‘DEI’ initiatives, have received increased attention for a wide variety of reasons. How and why should marketing leaders and teams implement effective DEI programs and strategies? The consequences for not understanding what DEI means does matter.

Today’s guest is Jimi Vaughn, a DEI consultant and expert. He talks about making a case for DEI by aiming for both the head and the heart of organizations’ decision makers and internal stakeholders.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

DEI: Diversity is state of things; Equity is fair treatment; Inclusion is belonging
DEI Strategy: Communication and connecting with audience about business
Bottom Line: Understand the $3.9-trillion buying power of minority groups
Dismissing DEI: Incorrect belief of discrimination, exclusion is hatred, intention
Default Assumption: Everyone’s norm is the same or close enough to yours
Reality: We’re more alike than different, but we still have significant differences
Decisions: Embrace, celebrate, recognize, understand, and realize impact
Cultural Values: Who and how we value different people in different stages of life
Resistant to change? Start the conversation to build a fact-based case
Starting Steps for DEI Strategy:
- Look internally at team to determine if and why perspectives are missing
- Listen and engage by cultivating collaborative environment to contribute
- Tie actions back to purpose and know the why to make better choices
- Establish key performance indicators, benchmarks to measure success
Cancel Culture:
- Hold people accountable
- Audience demands better
- Recognize buying power
- Key analytics tell a story
- Utilize feedback and evidence

Links:

Quotes from Jimi Vaughn:

“When I talk about diversity, I’m really referencing the traits and characteristics that makes us all unique.”

“Equity is really about fair treatment, where equality is about the same treatment. Sometimes, equality isn’t necessarily fair.”

“I do believe that there’s an ethical responsibility for organizations and marketers and basically any business to be thinking about these types of things.”

“It would be foolish to not understand the buying power of minority groups.”

Next Episode

AMP 237: How to Actually Leverage Social Media and SEO to Boost Your Content With Dmitry Dragilev From Criminally Prolific

How can marketers leverage social media to influence search engine optimization (SEO) and boost their content? Social media does and does not influence organic search performance for content.

Today’s guest is Dmitry Dragilev is a public relations (PR) and SEO expert from Criminally Prolific. Dmitry talks about what he knows based on what Google does, what works in the industry, and what works for himself and his clients. He describes how to leverage social media to drive short- and long-term SEO gains and amplify your content through channels.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

Remember: Social signals are not used by Google for ranking purposes
Why? Too much volume/information to go through; Google can’t index everything
What ranks? Getting your brand reputation and recognition on social media
Google indexes social media content when assets are used to share information
Simple Idea: Get people to share content w/ other people to find and link to it
No Shortcuts: Google always keeps quality content at the top of search results
Relationship Building: Help people bring value to people, then they will help you
Two Things: To rank on Google, your need epic content with links and traffic

Links:

Quotes from Dmitry Dragilev:

“Social signals are not used by Google for ranking purposes. I think that's really important to remember. If you are trying to think about that or trying to rank that Google will not use those social signals to rank you.”

“Your brand reputation, your brand recognition, and getting that out there via social media do indirectly impact your rankings.”

“Those assets, which are going to be linked to from many different pages, many different sites, and used in all these different posts, that's where I think the gold mine really lies with sharing information on social that people can use in all sorts of different avenues.”

“The name of the game should be spending time and money to create quality, engaging content. I think that is worth every penny. Whether it works well on social media or organically, it should probably be both.”