Stop Taking Orders, Start Calling Shots

Episode Transcript

Kelly Callahan-Poe: If you're tired of being seen as just an order taker, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms podcast. I'm Kelly Callahan-Poe and today's episode is called Stop Taking Orders, Start Calling Shots. Our guest, Sara Nay, is here to share how marketers can shift from executing tactics to leading with strategy. Sara is the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing and author of Unchained, Breaking Free of Broken Marketing Models. Welcome, Sara.

Sara Nay: Thank you so much for having me on the show, Kelly.

Kelly: One of the biggest challenges we have in advertising is being perceived as order takers by our clients. Move this headline here, make this image bigger. What are the signs that you're stuck in order taker mode?

Sara: It's essentially when you are working with clients and they are telling you what to do versus what I talk a lot about in Unchained. When you come in and you present yourself as the strategic advisor in the very beginning of a relationship—because it is somewhat hard to go from order taker to then being perceived as strategic advisor. It's oftentimes easier to start the relationship that way.

The strategic advisor comes in and creates the overall plan and vision for the direction moving forward, essentially educating the client on what to do and then overseeing the execution. When you're in order taker mode, you're essentially waiting to be told what to do or they're giving you the direction.

I think the true value that we can bring clients in the small business space is coming in and creating the strategic direction, creating the vision, overseeing all of the marketing. A lot of times small business owners are having to figure out and learn marketing and advertising. They really need experts to come in and help direct them from the beginning.

The challenge of being an order taker, if you're in a role as an agency, is it can be draining over time. You lose control and direction of the engagement. Oftentimes the person making the decisions doesn't have that true background marketing experience. And in the age of AI, it's our opportunity to be able to elevate to the leader and not necessarily just the order taker.

Kelly: So becoming a strategic advisor upfront is in the beginning of the relationship. Can you talk about what that means and also conversely what happens when you get into that order taker mode?

Sara: What we've been teaching in the marketing space for quite some time is coming in and creating an overall marketing strategy. We call it a strategy first package where over the initial 30 to 45 days for a client, we're conducting research, mapping out their ideal client profiles and their messaging and their customer journey. Then we're making recommendations based on that information.

So we're coming in to advise and educate and create the plan in the beginning. If you approach it that way, you're going to be seen as a strategic advisor. Other agencies might be coming into businesses essentially saying, "what do you need? Do you need execution on paid ads? Okay, we can do that." That's an immediately different relationship.

When we move from that initial strategy first package to long-term retainers, we're then staying on as what we call fractional CMO. Our role is creating the marketing strategy based on the business strategy, owning the metrics, owning the budget, overseeing all of execution—not necessarily doing the work because then you can bring in the doers to do the work.

I think that's where a lot of businesses struggle. They're expecting people to be strategists but also be able to execute in all lanes of marketing and advertising. There are different mindsets—there are strategists and there are people that are really great in Excel and in executing. It's too much to ask one person to do it all.

I'm not saying that no marketers should ever be order takers. There's absolutely a role for once the plan's created, someone has to get the work done. But if you're thinking about your marketing department, you need some sort of leadership or strategist, you need executors, and then you need AI ultimately below them to help those executors up level. You need a mix of people.

Kelly: That makes sense when you're on the client side and you have the knowledge, but when you're on the agency side, there's that ramp up time where you have to learn about the client's business and go through that listening phase. How do you move from that listening phase to "I hear what your challenges are and here's how I'm going to solve those challenges"?

Sara: Our process is first listening—asking all of those questions, gathering all of that information. Then you move to the planning phase. Once you understand where the client is, you need to conduct your own research to confirm and provide more information.

Oftentimes when we work with clients, we'll ask who's your ideal client. A lot of times they have high level information. But if you're thinking about advertising specifically, you need to know them on a deep level—on a pain point level, on a "what keeps them up at night" level, on a "where do they find their information" level. You take what the client provides you, confirm and build on it with your own research, turn all of that into a plan, and then move into execution.

Kelly: You explain some of these concepts in your book called Unchained. You have two concepts—the Anti-Agency Model and the Marketing Strategy Pyramid. Can you define those?

Sara: With the anti-agency model, I'm not saying agencies are bad. What I'm saying is there's a lot that's broken within the agency model. When small businesses become over-reliant on agencies, they outsource their marketing, they lose control. They have no idea what's actually working and not working, but they just keep paying every month because they feel like they need to. That's not a great scenario.

I was speaking to business owners who own a home remodeling company. They've been in business for 20 years, paying a marketing agency around $6,000 monthly. They had no idea what was going towards paid ads versus management fee. They didn't own the ads accounts. They were trapped—either keep paying or start over. I encouraged them to start over. They need ownership, they need to understand what's working, and they need to work with someone willing to include them in the conversation.

The marketing strategy pyramid gets into the better way of working. The bottom layer is business strategy. A lot of marketers miss this—they come in and create a marketing strategy but don't understand what the business is trying to accomplish. They just start executing, but it's not tied to overall business goals.

Once you understand business strategy, you move to marketing strategy—the middle of the pyramid. We have three layers: brand strategy (ideal clients, messaging, how you want to be seen), growth strategy (how are you going to grow, what channels), and customer strategy (how to retain customers and turn them into referral sources—an area a lot of people miss).

The very top of the pyramid is team strategy. Once you understand what the business and marketing are trying to accomplish, then you answer who's going to get the work done—internal team, agencies, contractors. A lot of people start with the "who" and then try to figure out what to do. I think that's backwards.

Kelly: I've found that a lot of clients don't really know what their goals are. They can't verbalize them. Is it shifting market share? Increasing awareness? Behavior change? That's always a challenge.

Sara: In those scenarios, can we actually move the needle for this client? Can we actually support them? Is this goal real and something we can work towards? If not, then maybe it doesn't even make sense to work together. Part of running an agency is making that decision—is it clear what we're trying to accomplish?

Kelly: Let's shift over to AI. We're all worried about AI and getting replaced. How do you use it to get ahead without replacing yourself?

Sara: You say we're all worried about AI. I see two sides—people that are worried about it or people that are really excited about it. I'm trying to preach that as marketers, we should be excited about it. We should be embracing it. It's here and it's going to continue to evolve quickly. Agencies that are afraid of it and aren't taking action are falling behind already.

I have a framework in my book about future-proofing our careers. Make a list of everything you're doing on a regular basis, then categorize them in three groups: things that are gaining in importance because of AI, things that are staying stable, and things that are decreasing in value or importance.

After you've identified which category your tasks fall into, come up with a plan of how you can spend most of your time on the things increasing in importance and delegate to AI the things decreasing in importance. Also think about what you actually like and enjoy.

Then write a future bio for yourself—something to strive towards or work towards. We did this exercise with our whole team. When I was going through it for myself, I identified that speaking, developing relationships, networking, podcasting, and training are increasing in importance because people enjoy that personal connection.

Some things decreasing in importance for me to do start to finish is creating content—I can use AI now to do that more effectively. So I'm able to free up time and be on more podcasts, join more networking events, and connect with more humans.

Kelly: I love the idea of creating your future bio. That's really smart.

Sara: We did it with our whole team. One of the girls on my team said afterwards, "Can I actually use this as my bio now? It's way better than what I had." I said no, because we're working towards this bio. But even within our team, there were people thinking "are they going to fire me because of AI?" Even though I've been saying all along we're not firing anyone, we're not just asking you to do more. What we're asking is to elevate the work you're doing. When they went through the exercises themselves and thought about how to future-proof their own career, it changed from uncertainty to excitement.

Kelly: Let's talk about your journey from an intern to a CEO. What do you wish you had known earlier about becoming a strategic leader in marketing?

Sara: There was a time when I felt like I needed to be great at everything when it comes to marketing—and marketing is complex. There's ads, organic, data, strategy, each channel. Earlier in my career, I felt like I needed to be an expert at all of those things. It's incredibly overwhelming. Now throw in AI and there's a new tool, a new system, a new process every single day.

I got really close to burnout on a number of occasions. I had some deep thinking and aha moments where instead of trying to be a great marketer on all of the channels, I should get really good at where my strengths lie—a lot of that is in the strategy, not necessarily even in the execution—and then surround myself with people that are great at execution.

If someone's just getting started, pick your lane, lean into your strengths, go through an exercise like I talked about in terms of future-proofing your career, and get really good at where you believe you can bring the most value. Stick to that versus feeling like you have to learn every new AI platform that comes out.

Kelly: I like to think of it as you need to start as a generalist. You have to understand the basics. Eventually, after 10, 15, 20, maybe even 30 years, you become a specialist.

Sara: That's so true. It's going to be interesting with AI to see what happens with generalists. When I was coming up in marketing, I learned everything from scratch. Now when people are entering the job market with AI from the beginning, they'll learn approaching content with the assistance of AI. I believe you should still learn how to do most of this stuff on your own so you then can direct AI to assist you. If you start with AI, you're missing some of the foundational education that will help you be a better generalist and a specialist eventually.

Kelly: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much, Sara, for joining us. Find her information plus more career acceleration advice at twomarketingmoms.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe and share.

Sara: Thank you, Kelly.