Agency Advisory
Helping operators evaluate, structure, and manage agency relationships.
Overview
How I approach this work
I have spent years on both sides of the agency relationship — as a fractional CMO running retainer work across paid search, paid social, email, and CRO, and as an operator selecting and managing external partners. I bring that perspective to organizations that need to decide whether their current agency is earning its keep or need help picking a better one. Engagements are project-scoped, not ongoing retainers.
Agency work typically starts with a diagnostic: what is the agency actually being asked to do, what are they reporting, and does any of it connect to revenue. I read through contracts, SOWs, and recent deliverables, then benchmark what I find against how the equivalent in-house or fractional function would look. From there I can help restructure the relationship, write a replacement RFP and score responses, or set up the internal KPI and escalation structure that makes the existing agency more effective. I try to avoid the two extremes — sacking the agency on day one or defending indefensible spend — and instead focus on decisions that hold up at the operating table.
Deliverables
What a typical engagement produces
Concrete artifacts from this kind of work.
- Performance diagnostic
- A written assessment of current agency performance against benchmarks, with explicit callouts for what is working, what is not, and what is unmeasurable.
- Contract and scope structure
- Rewritten SOW and KPI framework that ties deliverables to outcomes the business actually cares about, with escalation paths when things go sideways.
- In-house vs outsource split
- A written recommendation on which capabilities belong in-house and which are better kept with a specialist — based on cost, volume, and institutional memory.
- Years as fractional CMO
- 4+
- Paid channels managed
- Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok
- Engagement model
- Project-scoped
Related areas
Other parts of my practice that overlap with this one.
Brand Consulting
Positioning, voice, and visual systems that outlast a redesign cycle.
Analytics Consulting
Measurement systems built to drive decisions, not reports.