PPC and Leading Clients Through a Defined Journey with Tom Pritchard

Tom Pritchard is the founder of Skypoynt Digital, a Sydney agency he started in his bedroom in 2014 after a background in business directory sites like Hotfrog. Gray MacKenzie hosted episode 167. They covered how a PPC-first agency moves clients through a defined journey on monthly retainers, the spreadsheet forecast that won Tom bigger retainers, which clients fit, and how he keeps the tool stack in check.

Every client is on a retainer, and the journey starts with PPC

Gray asked how the work breaks down by service. Tom answered with a sequence.

“We work on basically retainers for all clients… When you’re looking at a three-month cycle, that’ll normally include starting from PPC services and conversion optimization services, so that’s basically PPC and landing pages. And then once they’ve established that, they then move into… growth-driven design style optimization of their website, and then it moves from there into some more content marketing, and then… inbound marketing with some sales enablement services as well. But the entire time, we always leverage PPC as a base level of activity.”

(Listen at 04:38)

He put PPC at “at least 50%” of service revenue.

Four pillars, three channels each, start with one of each

Gray asked how much of that roadmap clients see up front. Tom’s team built a simple map they call the digital growth system.

“It’s basically only got four segments to it, but under each segment there’s three channels… You’ve got attention-driven services, you’ve then got experience-driven services, then relationship-driven services, and then the last one’s insights.”

(Listen at 06:30)

Attention is traffic (AdWords, PPC, social), experience is the site and landing pages, relationships is CRM and marketing automation, and insights is consulting plus analytics. The structure keeps the start small.

“We only need to start by making sure we’ve got one channel in each segment… Let’s start with digital ads… Then let’s make sure you’ve got a landing page in your website that’s optimized… Let’s make sure you’ve got a CRM attached, HubSpot or something like that… Let’s make sure we’ve got analytics plugged in. That as a start-out is always something that, if they can see and make sense of that… provides a lot of value for them and they don’t feel like it’s… overwhelming.”

(Listen at 08:24)

A spreadsheet forecast was the biggest retainer win

Gray’s point was that if you want $5-10k retainers, you don’t start people at $200 a month. Tom agreed, and said what moved his retainer sizes most was financial modeling.

“I did a lot of work around financial modeling. Quietly, I’m a bit of a massive spreadsheet nerd… If we were able to generate this for this client, what would that look like over time? So what we found was we’d be turning up to client meetings and providing them with this forecasted model, which they’d look at and they’d be like, wow, we’ve never seen this before. We’ve never seen an agency come in here… You guys have actually done your homework.”

(Listen at 10:15)

PPC makes the model easy to defend, he added, because once data comes in you can quickly show how results will scale by adjusting the inputs. He called it “the biggest winner for us in terms of generating bigger retainer numbers.”

The clients that fit, and the shoe shop that didn’t

Gray asked where Tom draws the line on services, since young agencies tend to say yes to everything. Tom said that caused “a lot of trauma” in the first couple of years.

“There were a number of clients that we had which, even going into them, I knew it was the wrong thing for us to be working with them… We aren’t a great design agency, so to speak… But when it comes to the sheer numbers on campaigns and putting together highly profitable, conversion-centric campaigns, that’s what we’re brilliant at.”

(Listen at 15:07)

Fit is now defined by the type of business: service-based B2B like consultancies, accountants and lawyers, plus dental practices and not-for-profits, where someone inquires and then buys rather than checking out online. They once took on a retail shoe shop, didn’t understand the business, couldn’t show value fast enough, and Tom said it brought “disaster into every conversation.” The best accounts have one marketing person on the client side, “but no more than one,” and Skypoynt takes over all of their digital activity.

Tools: replace, don’t stack, and track your time

Gray asked about the tool stack. Tom admitted the team are “suckers for tools” and described a quarterly ritual.

“One of the activities we do every quarter is actually go through Tom’s credit card bill… and ensure that we cancel out of the ones that are starting to charge, that I’ll go, I don’t even know what that is.”

(Listen at 21:48)

They dropped WordStream and AdStage once Google improved its own platform (“we actually just use the raw Google Ads platform now”), run on HubSpot, and moved project management from Accelo to Basecamp when per-head pricing got expensive. When a teammate pitches a new tool, Tom runs it through a filter.

“What does it actually bring to the agency in terms of value? How does that remove the use of another tool, not add on top of another tool?… How long is it going to take to actually train people on it?… When you’re only one or two people, 500 bucks a head isn’t so bad. If you grow to 10 people, that’s a big problem.”

(Listen at 27:13)

His closing advice was about fundamentals rather than tools.

“Make sure your staff are always tracking time. That’s probably the biggest challenge. The fundamentals, costs, expenses, and then project management, in terms of making sure everyone’s actually able to keep track of what’s being done… and what needs to be done.”

(Listen at 28:25)