the will marlow agency culture

OUR CULTUREThe Will Marlow Agency

Data-Driven MarketingThe Will Marlow Agency

Why does culture matter?


A culture is a set of shared values, attitudes, behaviors, and ideals.


By promoting a meaningful company culture, you, and we, will have an easier time knowing if you

will enjoy working with us.


By talking about the values we share as acompany, we can better hold ourselves accountable for living up to our values.


Why is culture extra important for marketing agencies?


Because we are a people business.


A product company invests more in product than in people.

An agency like us invests more in people than in product.


Put another way, we are a human capital company.


Agency = People > Product


Since we are a human capital business, hiring towards our culture is a key part of our

growth strategy.


“A bad plan is better than no plan”-Gary Kasparov

Chess Grandmaster


But let’s think about it another way.


What does an agency do?


What does an agency do?An agency solves problems.


And a data-driven agency like we are eliminates uncertainty for our clients.


The Will Marlow Agency aims to be the world’s leading expert in a highly confusing

field: data-driven inbound marketing.


We do two specific things: (1) manage digital campaigns

(2) train other agencies.


Our job is: To help our clients grow.


Our mission is: To make our clients feel like geniuses.


“Every day, it’s your flat-out responsibility to make your boss look good. You have to make him or her

smarter…all the time.”-Jack Welch

CEO, GE


And we hire people who share our three core values:


And we hire people who share our three core values:

(1) pursuit of knowledge(2) helpfulness(3) hard work


We invest in people who share these three traits.


We obsess over hiring the right people, because we want to invest

for the long-term.


We obsess over hiring the right people, because we want to invest

for the long-term.Age of our agency: ~5-years

Average client tenure: ~5-years


Who do we hire?


We hire people who want to be helpful.


We hire people who want to be experts.


Who do we promote?


We promote people who want to be continuous, life-long learners.


We promote people who aren’t satisfied by easy answers.


We promote people who ask the same questions repeatedly in

order to dig deeper.


We promote people who aim to make our clients look like heroes

inside their own companies.


We promote people who work hard to be proactive, solving

problems immediately, or before they appear.


We succeed as an agency by investing in the right people.


What don’t we care about?


We don’t care where you live.


We don’t care where you live.We are not limited by geography.


We don’t care about your impressive-sounding degrees &

certifications.


We value your credentials,but we care more about what you can do.


And, finally, we don’t care about BS.


There is too much BS in marketing.


There is too much BS in marketing.And we want to remove it all.


There is too much BS in marketing.And we want to remove it all.

We have our work cut out for us.


There are easy-to-follow 7 principles that guide our daily work, in support of our culture (knowledge helpfulness hard work) (1) Never brag about clicks, impressions, or traffic.(2) Focus only on leads, conversions, sales, and revenue. (3) Always explain and question why a marketing idea is good or bad.(4) Always stay ahead of the client in questioning the ROI of a campaign.(5) Always imagine that you’re spending your own money on ads. (6) Always talk about recent accomplishments & current priorities. (7) Always ask yourself how you can communicate impact through data.


Example of proactively removing BS: we developed a free, “AdWords ROI Calculator” to answer the question, How can you

measure whether an AdWords campaign is profitable?


What’s the point of building a positive culture?


What’s the point of building a positive culture?We are pursuing excellence, and hiring the right

people will help us succeed.


We want you to love your job.


People like being around likeminded people.


Studies show that the #1 predictor of happiness at work is whether you like

the people you work with.


That, in essence, is why culture matters.


If you love our culture and mission, then we would love to hire you, promote you,

and reward you.


Key Summary – Major Takeaways(1) Ad agencies like ours our human capital companies, and so hiring the right people is critical to

success – people our our primary investment.(2) Our culture is defined by joy in (a) the pursuit of knowledge, (b) helpfulness, and (3) hard work.(3) You’ll be happy here if you want to: (a) develop deep expertise in data-driven marketing; (b) ask lots

of questions to dig deeper; (c) care deeply about making our clients look like heroes; and (d) are proactive about solving problems before they appear

(4) We don‘t care where you live, we care more about what you know than your credentials or certifications; and we don‘t care about BS.

(5) Our job is to make our clients grow.(6) Our mission is to make our clients feel like geniuses and look like heroes, which you can do by

following these 7 principles, (a) never brag about clicks, impressions or traffic; (b) only focus on leads, conversions, sales, and revenue; (c) always question why a marketing idea is good or bad; (d) always stay ahead of a client in questioning ROI; (e) always imagine you‘re spending your own money; (f) always talk about recent accomplishments and current priorities; (f) always communicate impact via data.

(7) The point of this is: we want you to love your job.