Junaid welcomes Joshua Ramsey to discuss agency frustrations.

Intro

Joshua explains why expectations often fail to match reality.

Agency Red Flags

Why being a generic roofer kills your ad performance.

Unique Selling Position

A case study on high traffic but zero leads.

The SEO Roofer Story

A warning about micromanagement and losing focus.

The Vending Machine CEO

Why Joshua advised a client to burn ten thousand postcards.

Sunk Cost of Postcards

Using business directories to boost Google trust.

Citations Strategy

How tracking cookies creates user profiles for ads.

Programmatic Ads

You hire an agency. You pay the retainer. The phone stays silent. Why? Joshua Ramsey exposes the hidden gap between what agencies sell and what you actually need. He shares the brutal truth about contracts that lock you into failure and the specific metric most owners ignore until it is too late. Learn why burning ten thousand printed postcards saved a business money and how a simple vending machine key explains your leadership bottleneck. This episode fixes your marketing mindset.

Highlander

Boston Dynamics

Peloton

Google

Stop Wasting Money on Ad Agencies That Fail

Joshua Ramsey joins the show to dismantle common marketing myths. He explains why businesses struggle with agencies and how rigid contracts destroy results. You will learn to value agility over loyalty when data proves a strategy wrong. Joshua shares a story about a roofer losing leads despite high traffic and explains why programmatic ads might be your best investment. This discussion centers on setting clear goals and holding teams accountable.

Stop Burning Cash on Bad Ads

# Unmasking the Marketing Maze: Joshua Ramsey on Agency Failures and Strategic Fixes

In the world of business, where intentions are noble but execution often falters, the journey of transforming ideas into tangible results can feel like navigating a complex maze. Many entrepreneurs pour their heart, time, and resources into their ventures, only to find their marketing efforts fall flat. This frustration with advertising agencies, the uncertainty of marketing spend, and the desire to truly own one’s strategic direction is a common experience. It is a space where clarity and direction are not just helpful, but absolutely essential. To illuminate this path, we welcomed Joshua Ramsey, a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, speaker, and author with over two decades of experience. Joshua has orchestrated more than 80,000 campaigns across the United States, specializing in helping businesses reduce costs while boosting their marketing performance. His insights cut through the noise, offering a clear guide for those seeking to truly understand and master their marketing.

## The Expectation Gap: Why Your Marketing May Be Stumbling

Joshua’s expertise immediately zeroes in on a core vulnerability in the business client agency relationship: the absence of **properly set expectations**. He observes that often, a business owner is sold on an agency’s strengths, rather than on what the business truly needs. This misalignment creates an immediate expectation gap.

> "Too often the immediate impact is you expect a business owner would expect the phone to just immediately start ringing and that leads are just flowing in. And agencies are selling you on that, but the steps to make that phone ring is a ramp time. Therefore expectations are one, and you get another, the frustration hits, and nothing ever seems to go well."

This mirrors a fundamental truth about growth and progress. Just as one would not plant a seed and expect fruit the very next day, a marketing strategy requires time, nurturing, and adaptation. The soil must be prepared, the conditions right, and the growth gradual. Businesses need to understand who their audience is, how to speak to them, and how to build a connection before leads truly flourish. Joshua's initial point is a powerful reminder that **discipline beats motivation** and that **consistency is key** to long term success.

## Identifying Red Flags and Crafting Your Unique Story

Beyond misaligned expectations, Joshua highlights other critical signals business owners should watch for when choosing an advertising agency. He emphasizes the need for a deep understanding of one’s own business requirements before engaging with an outside partner. It is not enough to simply say, "I want to make money" or "I want to sell something." The path to these outcomes must be broken down into step by step processes, clarifying what an ad agency is truly meant to achieve for your specific needs.

Joshua also calls attention to a common blind spot for many business owners: the belief that their business is inherently unique in its core service. He explains that a roofer is a roofer, a remodeler is a remodeler. While the service itself may not be unique, what sets a business apart is its **unique selling position**, or more powerfully, its **unique selling story**.

> "Too often times we believe what we are doing is unique, and it's not. A roofer is a roofer, a general contractor, general remodeler is a general remodeler. They're the same as the next guy and the next guy and the next lady. They're all the same. You would think, but what happens is you get thisment of yourself and feel like that you are something unique. So what you choose to do is take your name, throw it on the wall, throw it on the radio, website, meta ads, Google Ads, and think that everyone should engage with you. Because you seem and see yourself as wonderful, and you wonder why does no one call you? Why are ads still dead? Why are you moving to your third or fourth ad agency, expecting a different output? And where you have to get back to is what's called the unique selling position. What makes you unique?"

Your personal narrative, the 'why' behind your work, is what truly connects with people. This belief that **your story matters** and that **when you show up, the world notices** is a central theme in our philosophy. When you can articulate this story, customers are drawn to you not just for the service, but for the shared values and connection.

## Mastering Agency Relationships: The KPI Imperative

Many businesses simply allocate a budget to an agency and hope for the best. Joshua champions a more strategic and **disciplined** approach: setting **clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)**. These indicators become the anchors of the client agency relationship, providing an agreed upon framework for success.

> "So, again, you set the proper expectations walking into an agency, but the management is really setting clear KPIs, key point indicators. When you set the right KPIs, then your relationship can hold true and steady in the sense of this is agreed upon and we're not going to change it. There becomes a level of agility that you need to have. However, that agility should still be outlined by the the KPIs."

Joshua illustrates this with a compelling account of a roofer client who, after working with several agencies, was frustrated by a lack of leads despite reported website traffic. The agency excelled at off page link building, driving traffic effectively. However, the true need was not traffic, but **conversions**. The website’s client retention optimization (CRO) was failing, with visitors spending only about 20 seconds on the page. The agency, locked into its agreement, refused to adapt.

> "The problem is the business owner got himself locked into a long term contract with that ad agency, and the agency wasn't willing to be agile. So if I summarize that, the agency was driving traffic to the website and the website was ranking really well. The problem was the CRO was not working, the client retention optimization. What you look for with SEO is not just getting the traffic, but ultimately what do we all want? Business. We want leads. What wasn't happening is that people were not staying on the website page and converting into an actual lead."

This story underscores the critical lesson: traffic without conversion is merely visibility without purpose. As a business owner, you must remain in the driver’s seat, with a marketing expert like a CMO acting as your navigator, guiding you through the terrain. This requires **agility** from both parties and a willingness to **recalibrate** when results do not align with the ultimate goal. The wisdom here is clear: **everything works out by His grace when your intentions are pure** and you are willing to adapt.

## The CEO's Role: Leading, Not Controlling

How deeply should a business owner involve themselves in their company’s marketing strategy? Joshua provides a clear guideline: the CEO sets the vision, and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) executes and guides. A CEO should consider bringing in a CMO if they spend more than 20% of their time on marketing. Even if a CEO enjoys marketing, their time is best spent leading the entire enterprise. Without a dedicated eye on marketing, things will inevitably fall through the cracks.

Joshua shares a classic story to illustrate the dangers of excessive control, recalling a CEO so controlling that he personally held the keys to the office vending machine.

> "I won't go through all of it, but there was a story I read once and it was really interesting where the CEO literally was so controlling that he held the keys to the vending machine... At some point, you can't control it all. At some point, you have to be able to step back and trust key leaders and key executives to follow the vision, execute the vision, and report back. I think that's a hard transition though for a lot of business owners. But when they're willing and able to make that transition, that's when they grow."

This resonates deeply with the principle of delegation and trust. You hire experts because they possess specialized knowledge and efficiency. Just as a homeowner hires a plumber for a quick, expert fix, a business owner benefits immensely from entrusting marketing to a seasoned CMO. This allows the CEO to focus on strategic leadership, knowing that their **purpose is found in helping others realize their potential** and that includes their team.

## Strategic Foresight: The Flight Plan and the Firewood

Joshua draws a powerful connection between a pilot’s flight plan and a business’s marketing strategy. Both require meticulous planning, clear objectives, and crucially, **fail safes**. One must plan for the worst outcomes while hoping for the best. This foresight, a gift Joshua believes he was given, involves knowing exactly when to pivot, when to cut losses, and when to acknowledge that a plan is simply not working.

He recounts a story of a business owner who had already spent money printing 10,000 postcards. Despite the first batch proving ineffective, the owner considered mailing the rest simply because the initial investment had been made. Joshua's counsel was direct and sharp:

> "My response was, don't burn good money after bad. He had the postcards, already paid for them, sitting there, but I said you're better to use that as firewood than you are to spend the money on postage to mail them out. Because that money on postage that you're going to mail them out, we could use in this or this area."

This principle, **don’t burn good money after bad**, is a crucial lesson in financial **discipline**. It is the recognition that repeating a failing strategy expecting different results is indeed a definition of insanity. Instead, those funds can be redirected to areas with a higher probability of success, embodying the spirit of continuous learning and growth.

## Agility in an Ever Changing Industry

Inspired by the idea of immortals battling in a timeless industry, Joshua identifies **agility** as the ultimate secret to survival in marketing. It is not about relentlessly pushing against a closed door, but rather finding new avenues, adapting to market shifts, and responding to results. The ability to shift, grow, and adapt to changing market conditions and performance metrics is what sustains longevity and success.

This concept of agility is not just theoretical; it is physical. Our own bodies are agile, able to move, flex, and withstand challenges. Similarly, businesses that embrace agility can absorb unexpected impacts and maintain their stance. This flexibility allows businesses to remain robust, responsive, and ultimately, triumphant in a constantly evolving landscape. **You can achieve anything you put your mind to**, but that often means being willing to change your approach.

## Legacy Strategies: From Yellow Pages to Programmatic Power

Reflecting on outdated marketing tactics, Joshua humorously points to the literal Yellow Pages book from the 90s as a relic of the past. Yet, he immediately pivots to reveal that the *principle* behind it, the **citation strategy**, remains extremely relevant today. Listing a business on hundreds of online directories, even those with lower domain authority, significantly boosts overall web presence and credibility. Google, in its vast index of the worldwide web, uses these citations as markers of reputation, seeing businesses listed across various platforms as more credible. While the physical book is gone, the underlying truth of being widely referenced by others still holds true in the digital realm. This is how Google builds its trust in your presence, just as referrals build trust in human networks. It is a modern application of a timeless principle.

When asked about the single most impactful marketing channel for the rest of his life, Joshua points to **programmatic advertising**. He describes it as the most advanced and innovative strategy currently available. Programmatic advertising leverages user cookies and search patterns to build detailed profiles, then serves highly targeted ads across various platforms, from display to video.

> "What programmatic does is it reads the pattern in the search history of each user and builds a profile on each of us. And each of us fall into certain types of buckets... What programmatic does is it reads your search patterns and then programmatic is basically sinking up your ad platforms and whatever ways that you, being the motorcycle enthusiast and the advertisements that sell the helmets or gear for motorcycles, yeah. On programmatic can feed directly to you, giving you the user what you want."

This hyper targeted approach ensures that marketing efforts reach the most receptive audience, maximizing efficiency and impact. It represents the height of technological integration with marketing strategy, allowing for precise delivery of messages to individuals based on their demonstrated interests.

## Building a Legacy of Marketing Mastery

Joshua Ramsey’s insights provide a clear and actionable path for business owners struggling with marketing agencies or seeking to optimize their own strategies. His wisdom revolves around the enduring principles of **clear expectations, agility, strategic planning, and the power of a unique story**. He reminds us that effective marketing is not about immediate gratification, but about **disciplined** effort, continuous learning, and a willingness to adapt. The true measure of success lies in setting the right KPIs, understanding your audience, and having the courage to pivot when necessary. By embracing these truths, entrepreneurs can transform their marketing from a source of frustration into a powerful engine for growth and impact. His work helps people **show up with confidence, share their story with excellence, and build legacies rooted in service and creativity**, ensuring that their message not only reaches but also resonates with those it is meant to serve.

The CMO Who Reveals Why Your Marketing Agency Is Failing You (And How to Fix It) – Joshua Ramsey

Hi there,

Ever feel like you're throwing money at marketing agencies without seeing the results you expect? You're not alone. 

On the latest episode of Hacks & Hobbies, Junaid Ahmed sat down with Joshua Ramsey, a fractional CMO who has managed over 80,000 campaigns. Joshua cuts through the noise and reveals the common pitfalls business owners face when working with agencies, and how to bridge the crucial 'expectation versus reality gap.'

In this episode, you'll learn:
* Why setting clear expectations from the start is vital.
* How to identify and leverage your unique selling proposition.
* The dangers of micromanagement and the importance of focus.
* When to make tough decisions about cutting marketing costs.
* Strategic approaches to programmatic advertising and building online trust.

If you're ready to gain clarity on your marketing strategy and ensure your budget is working for you, this episode is a must listen.

[Listen to the Full Episode Here]

Talk soon,
Junaid Ahmed

Hi Joshua,

It was a pleasure having you on Hacks & Hobbies today. Your insights into bridging the expectation gap with marketing agencies, the importance of a unique selling proposition, and practical advice on cutting costs were incredibly valuable for our audience.

We've just released the episode and wanted to share the direct link with you:
[EPISODE_URL]

Feel free to share it with your network! We'd be honored if you found it valuable enough to share on your platforms.

Thanks again for your time and expertise.

Best regards,
Junaid Ahmed

Thanks for joining Hacks & Hobbies, Joshua!

Hi Joshua,

Hope you're having a great week!

We're so grateful you joined us on Hacks & Hobbies. We've received fantastic feedback on your episode, particularly around your candid advice on navigating the complexities of marketing agencies and focusing on tangible results.

If you haven't had a chance to share the episode yet, here it is again for your convenience:
[EPISODE_URL]

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the experience and if there's anything else you'd like us to highlight or any future topics you'd be interested in exploring together.

Warmly,
Junaid Ahmed

Joshua, How Was Your Experience on Hacks & Hobbies?

Hi Joshua,

Just wanted to send a quick follow-up regarding your appearance on Hacks & Hobbies. We're thrilled with how the episode turned out, and your practical, no-nonsense approach to marketing strategy really resonated with our listeners.

If you're planning any upcoming promotions, webinars, or new content related to our discussion, please let us know! We'd be happy to help amplify it.

Here’s the episode link once more:
[EPISODE_URL]

Looking forward to potentially collaborating again in the future!

Sincerely,
Junaid Ahmed

Following Up: Your Hacks & Hobbies Episode is Live!

Are you pouring money into marketing agencies with little to show for it? Does your phone stay silent despite 'high traffic'? 

Join us for a live, no-holds-barred discussion with Joshua Ramsey, fractional CMO and author, who has overseen 80,000+ campaigns. Joshua will cut through the agency jargon and reveal the real reasons why your marketing might be failing.

Discover:
* The hidden 'expectation gap' agencies exploit.
* How to spot an agency that sells services, not solutions you need.
* Why your USP is more than just your industry.
* The leadership trap of micromanagement.
* When to 'burn the postcards' and cut your losses.
* How to leverage programmatic ads and citations effectively.

This is your chance to get direct answers and reclaim control of your marketing budget. If you're ready to stop wasting money and start seeing real results, you NEED to be here.

RSVP now to ensure you don't miss this critical insights session!

Live Q&A: Fixing Your Agency Spend with Joshua Ramsey

Is your marketing budget vanishing into a black hole? Join Junaid Ahmed as he sits down with Joshua Ramsey, fractional CMO and author, to expose the truth about ad agencies and the costly expectation gap.

Joshua, who has managed over 80,000 campaigns, reveals why businesses often fail when working with agencies and how rigid contracts can lock you into poor performance. Learn why 'high traffic' means nothing without conversions and how to define what your business *truly* needs from its marketing.

In this episode, you'll discover:
* The biggest mistake business owners make when hiring agencies.
* How to identify and leverage your unique selling proposition (USP).
* Why leadership focus is crucial and how micromanagement (even of vending machines!) kills progress.
* The hard lessons about sunk costs and knowing when to cut your losses.
* Strategic insights into programmatic advertising and citation building.

This conversation is packed with actionable advice to help you stop wasting money, improve your marketing ROI, and hold your agency accountable for real results.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:15 Agency Expectation Gaps
05:30 The Power of a Unique Selling Proposition
08:45 SEO Roofer Case Study: Traffic vs. Leads
13:20 The Vending Machine CEO: Leadership Trap
18:00 Sunk Costs: When to Burn Postcards
22:30 Citations Strategy for Trust
25:00 Programmatic Ads Explained

Stop Wasting Money on Bad Ad Agencies | Joshua Ramsey on Marketing Fails

So, being agile and being able to shift and grow and adapt to the market, adapt to the results that are happening or lack of, making shifts. That's going to be a big key.

Are you burning money on marketing agencies and still not seeing results?In this episode, Junaid Ahmed sits down with Joshua Ramsey, a fractional CMO with 20+ years of experience and 80,000+ campaigns under his belt, to expose the hidden truths behind agency relationships—and how business owners can finally take control.
Joshua shares raw stories of frustration, costly mistakes, and the emotional rollercoaster of trusting the wrong partners. Discover the mindset shifts, strategies, and KPIs that separate thriving businesses from those stuck in a cycle of disappointment. If you’re ready to stop wasting money and start scaling smarter, this episode is your wake-up call.
What You'll Learn:

Why most business owners set themselves up for disappointment with agencies—and how to break the cycle.


The single most important question to ask before hiring any marketing partner.


How to set KPIs that actually drive results (and what to do when they’re not met).


The power of agility: why sticking to a failing plan is the costliest mistake of all.


Programmatic advertising explained: the future-proof channel you can’t afford to ignore.



Timestamps:
00:00 – The Hidden Frustration: Why Most Agency Relationships Fail02:26 – The Unique Selling Proposition: What Really Makes You Stand Out?05:33 – Setting KPIs That Matter: The Secret to Agency Accountability10:26 – Should You Hire a CMO? The CEO’s Dilemma13:56 – When to Cut Your Losses: The “Good Money After Bad” Trap16:54 – Agility or Die: The Real Secret to Surviving in Marketing20:26 – The One Channel Joshua Would Bet His Career On

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Junaid Ahmed

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The CMO Who Reveals Why Your Marketing Agency Is Failing You (And How to Fix It) - Joshua Ramsey