In this episode, Henry McIntosh explores the significance of agency partnerships and how they can mutually benefit both parties. They emphasize the importance of agencies referring to and showcasing each other’s strengths, fostering a supportive community. They also touch on the potential for monetizing these partnerships and keeping introducers engaged through incentives. With a unique approach to positioning and industry-agnosticism, collaborations can be a powerful tool in boosting thought leadership and market traction.
Henry McIntosh is a marketing strategist and Director at Twenty One Twelve Marketing, specializing in creating predictable lead-generation systems for high-ticket businesses. With a knack for reinvigorating marketing strategies and reaching even the most elusive markets, Henry’s agency has helped a diverse range of businesses scale quickly. He’s also the co-founder of GLOW Festivals, bringing Alpine-themed entertainment to winter music festivals.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
- Proposing commercial collaborations as a strategic approach to business growth
- Positioning as a lead gen agency with a focus on partnering with complementary businesses
- Leveraging know, like, and trust to extend reach and drive results
- Reflecting on successful case studies to determine the most effective positioning strategy
- Offering industry-agnostic collaboration opportunities to a wide range of businesses
- Finding the right incentives is crucial for keeping introducers engaged.
- The power of natural, conversational episodes can result in valuable insights and content.
- 7:13 – “We break collaborations down into three segments. So the kind of thing you’re talking about, which we’ll be doing is what we call a value exchange. So, it is a win-win. So although I’m your target market, I’m winning because my personal brand is getting further out there. I might, you know, be heard by a marketing director who wants to work with us, right? For you guys leveraging me, I have a lot of agencies in my own network. So when the podcast episode comes out, I’m going to share it. So you are leveraging my trust within that network. So we call it value exchange, we call it co-created content.”
- 12:51 – “So we started off as creative collaborations and what we realized was: it was positioning us against creative agencies and, weirdly, although we can get super creative and we can bring that in, why clients like working with us is because we look at the… we get involved in their business, right? It’s like, well how much margin can you actually afford to give away? You know, okay, we’re only going to pay commissions on the first piece of business done. So we’ve got to look at customer lifetime value within that. But we get, we become quite close to a lot of our clients because they rely so heavily on us because we’re advising them on, you know, that business development rather than it just being straight up marketing focus.”
- 06:09 – “So the way we position our podcast is there’s a company we work with, Podcast Chef, they produce our podcast, they help us with some of the outreach and their value prop, which we bought into was that you can create a podcast for your network of best clients essentially, which for us is marketing agencies. We’re a white labeled development partner for marketing agencies. And so that’s exactly is what we did. As we reach out to marketing agency owners, we talk to them, we don’t always pitch them, but if there’s a need, it becomes a good resource for us.”
- 03:27 – “One of the lessons that he said, if you want to really grow as a business or as a business person, you need to go and talk with other people outside of your business. Like go and talk with like the artists and go talk with the engineers or whoever and that’s how you’re really going to grow.”
- 16:56 – Alex: “I told her about the show, and she said, oh, so you interview marketing agencies. She’s like, we are going to, we’re going to need a lot of help as I create the strategy for them, we’re going to need people to implement. She’s like, could you make introductions? I was like, I have a list of every single marketing agency we’ve interviewed, every service that they do. Let me know when you’re ready. And so, yeah.”
Henry: “Yeah. That’s cool. That’s really cool. It, it is a major resource right. To have that at your fingertips as well. And you know, if you were our client, we’d probably be saying that there are probably ways you can monetize that as well. Like whether you look at it as we, you know, got a big list, but are they going to refer back to you? Right? So if they’re not, do you make it a commission? So we’ll introduce you but we’ll take 10% of the first year’s earnings Right? Or something like that.”