Where the next marketing dollar goes: what a customer can cost you, which channel earns the budget, and whether to hire in-house, an agency or a consultant. Strategy on this blog means the decisions taken before any channel work starts, because they are the ones that are expensive to get wrong and cheap to think about properly. The acquisition cost post works from your own contribution margin rather than an industry benchmark, and explains why blended and paid figures answer different questions. The channel comparison starts from which demand already exists in your category rather than from funnel-stage theory, because a channel that harvests nothing when there is nothing to harvest is not underperforming, it is empty. And the hiring comparison gives each of the three options the cases where it genuinely wins, including the ones where hiring an independent consultant is the wrong answer. These posts are written for the owner making the call, not for a marketing department, and they say plainly when the honest answer is to do nothing yet.
Every page ranking for this is an agency selling itself or a listicle comparing agencies to each other. Nobody tells you what the markup over a single consultant actually buys, or when you should hire one instead of me.
The ranking guides hand you twenty tactics with equal weight. A store under $50,000 a month can do about three of them well. Here is how to tell which three.
Every ranking page on this question says do both. For a store under roughly $50k a month in revenue that is the expensive answer. Here is the threshold and why it sits where it does.
Every article on this question is written by an agency, and not one of them names a spend level below which you should not hire one. Here are the thresholds, including mine.
If every agency you speak to sounds the same, it is because you are judging the pitch. Here are the questions that expose the work behind it, and the answers that should end the call.
Everything written about unilateral pricing policies is written for the manufacturer drafting one. This is for the dealer who just got suspended under one.
Every guide to competitor brand bidding is written for the brand being bid on. This one is written for the dealer deciding whether to do the bidding.
Most articles about brand bidding are written for the brand trying to stop it. This one is written for the dealer deciding whether to do it.
Most explanations of MAP pricing are written for the brand setting the policy. This one is written for the retailer who has to sell under it.
Everyone answers this with a pros and cons list. The answer is actually a number you can look up in twenty minutes, and it decides the question before preference gets a say.
