Ep 28 - Paid Ads: Staying In-House vs External Partnerships

We heard from agency owners, DTC brands, and early-stage advisors about addressing paid advertising for your company’s stage of growth.

In this episode, our experts discuss when to switch from in-house to external partners, the value of hiring agency expertise for learning purposes, best practices for testing content, and how to onboard an agency to set them up for success.   

Here’s What We Discussed: 

• [01:01] Our panelists share their backgrounds and experience 
• [03:09] How do you know when to stick with ad vendors or find new partners? 
• [13:42] How the agency space is differentiating itself from its competitors through new offerings and services 
• [15:09] Our panel shares their best practices for testing content 
• [21:50] If you're not testing categorically and methodically, you're not gonna think about your marketing strategy on a bigger picture basis
• [24:36] Onboarding a new agency to set them up for success: How long should it take and what are some best practices? 
• [32:46] How to choose the right agency for you: Finding partners that care about your business and will hustle for you 
• [43:23] Our panel answers what rubric guides their decision to go from in-house to external partners and vice versa

About Our Speakers 

Andrew Gluck, GP at irrvrntVC – Andrew is a startup veteran, growth leader, and the GP of Irrvrnt VC. Before starting Irrvrnt Andrew helped clients like Rothy’s, Shake Shack, Goop, Nike, Spanx, Bandier and more generate over $ 5 billion in revenue. Today, Andrew partners with early-stage DTC, e-comm, and next-gen commerce companies with investments between $150,000 and $350,000. His direct investments include Lunchbox, Caraway Home, Coop Commerce, and more.

Sib Mahapatra, Co-Founder of Branch – Sib is the co-founder of Branch, where he runs the growth and digital product teams. Launched in 2019, Branch grew to an eight-figure run rate by making it easy and affordable to furnish corporate office space for enterprise clients. 

Prior to Branch, Sib spent time in venture and started his career at Redfin, where he worked with the executive team on partnerships, corporate development, and new revenue initiatives.

Steph Hon, Founder & CEO of Cadence – Stephanie is Founder and CEO at Cadence. Think of Cadence as the S’well of the portable personal space. Cadence is committed to eliminating travel-sized plastic with our capsules, which make it easy to bring your routine with you (everywhere.) Cadence allows users to put their products into durable, leakproof vessels for easy, aesthetically designed, transport. 

Mike Schanbacher, Head of Growth, Ex- Hawthorne – Mike is a cross-channel marketer with a strong focus on subscription products. He most recently led Growth at Hawthorne. Before that, Mike was the Director of Growth at Quip and led Paid Social + Search marketing at the New York Times after starting his career in the agency world at Ogilvy and Partner Commerce.

About Our Moderator

Anish Shah is the CEO & Founder of executive search agency Bring Ruckus. Anish has worked in-house in Growth roles at Snapfish and Getable. He started Bring Ruckus as a Growth consultancy 11 years ago working with 40+ clients, then re-focused his firm on executive recruiting for Growth leaders.

 

Quotes

“If you're trying to launch some channels, especially as you're growing a company and you're on the smaller side, it makes sense to dip your toe in the water with some of these expert agencies rather than just hiring an affiliate manager… It doesn't necessarily make sense to just hire an expert in every single channel as you increase your mix.” – Mike Schanbacher

 

“Our game plan is we have one or two really outstanding generalists on the team and basically they take care of some of the initial thesis testings… It's almost like an inverted curve. You start in internal and then you go to an agency to begin to scale it out a little bit more.” – Sib Mahapatra

 

“So there are a lot of tools that are going and trying to help you analyze the performance of the ads, what's working and what's not. That's one piece of the pie that's really critical. And then the other aspect is a balance of also being able to create enough content to test.” – Andrew Gluck

 

“One of the biggest strategies we've also used on the content side is bringing on interns. That has been able to allow us to test things so quickly. So that’s one of the best things we did early on that allowed us to really grow and test at the speed that we needed to.” – Steph Hon

 

“To me, a lot of times where the relationship falters, whether it's on the agency side or consultant’s side are different expectations around what success looks like.” – Andrew Gluck

 

“If you're trying to maximize your client LTV, obviously you'd want to swing for an enduring relationship, which you would assume would be predicated on better understanding your partner.” –  Sib Mahapatra

ABOUT RUCKUS

We are growth leaders who recruit your game changers. Visit https://bringruckus.com and connect on LinkedIn. Subscribe and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Google Podcasts, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts!  

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