The Will Marlow Agency Culture

OUR CULTURE
The Will Marlow Agency

Data-Driven Marketing
A culture is a set of shared values,
behaviors, and ideals.

Why does culture matter?

By promoting a meaningful
company culture, we will have an
easier time knowing if you will enjoy
working with us.

By articulating our culture, we give
ourselves a roadmap to help make better
decisions.

Finally, a great company culture is our way
of making a place that we all can enjoy
together.

By understanding our culture, you’ll have an easier time
thinking about the statements below:
1. If the answer isn’t hell yes, it should be no.
2. Clausewitz’s 1st principle: “Act with the utmost
concentration.”
3. Unhappiness is caused chiefly by an excessive focus on
self.
4. The little things are the big things.

Why is culture extra important for
marketing agencies like us?

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
Client tenure goal: ~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.

And we want to remove it all.

And we want to remove it all.
We have our work cut out for us.

There are easy-to-follow 8 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 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) Know that you are not spending money on ads, you are investing it.
(6) Always imagine that you’re investing your own money on ads.
(7) Always talk about recent accomplishments & current priorities.
(8) 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.

You’ll remember these maxims from the beginning of the
presentation, and it helps to return to them now:
1. If the answer isn’t hell yes, it should be no.
2. Clausewitz’s 1st principle: “Act with the utmost
concentration.”
3. Unhappiness is caused chiefly by an excessive focus on
self.
4. The little things are the big things.

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) know you aren‘t spending on ads, you‘re
investing with ads (f) always imagine you‘re investing your own money; (g) always talk about recent
accomplishments and current priorities; (h) always communicate impact via data.
(7) If it isn‘t hell yes, it‘s no – and other maxims.
(8) The point of this is: we want you to love your job.

The Will Marlow Agency Culture

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The Will Marlow Agency Culture