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You could hire the best marketing agency in the world and your ads could still flop.
End up wasting your money.
All because they don’t stand for the values that actually benefit you in the long run.
Look, I’m not trying to get people to fire their agency or anything. But after running multiple businesses myself and being a marketer for over 30 years now, I’ve learned some things.
And today I want to talk about what we stand for and what we stand against at Radical Marketing.
Because here’s the thing. Having the right marketing agency philosophy is what separates agencies that actually deliver results from the ones that just collect retainers while doing nothing.
Each of these philosophies is guided by one simple idea: I want both me and my client to win.
Not just fleece them with a retainer while doing nothing that actually brings results.
So let’s get into it.
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Philosophy #1: We're Against Fixed Fees (And Here's Why That Should Matter to You)
In the agency world, we believe in performance-based remuneration.
Think about it. If you had a salesperson, you’d pay them based on their performance. Right?
You don’t pay them just because they show up to work. Or just because they pick up calls.
You need to make sure you treat your marketing people the same way. Whether it’s an agency or an in-house person you’ve hired.
Because if they’re remunerated based on the results they get for you, you will see a much improved performance in your marketing.
That’s why for us, we never go with just a fixed retainer. There has to be some performance incentive to it.
So that we’re constantly finding ways to say, “Hey, how can we make more for this client so that they can pay us more?”
It’s a win-win situation. It’s logical.
So I don’t get it that people pay agencies $5,000, $10,000 fixed fees whether they deliver or not.
Of course you can sack them if they don’t deliver. But why not put in place an incentive so that they’re always on the ball?
We either go with a retainer plus a percentage of sales, or we just go pure sales percentage.
That’s our number one philosophy. As marketers, we’re like a growth partner. And growth partners should be rewarded based on their performance.
Not because they turned out 20 ads in one month. Or because they created five new ad copies this week.
Anyone can churn out five new ad copies or 10 new videos using AI nowadays in just a few hours.
But what you need is someone who’s focused on getting you the quality results that your business needs to grow.
This marketing agency philosophy alone changes everything about how your agency works with you.
Philosophy #2: Heavy Split Testing (Because Most Agencies Are Too Lazy)
I have seen so many ad accounts where there are six ads, 10 ads. And people call that testing.
My goodness.
You should see how many ads we test at the same time. It’s usually at least 20, if not 30 or 40 or 50 ads that we test at the same time.
And we don’t test that on one platform. We test it on multiple platforms. Be it Meta. Be it YouTube. Be it TikTok.
We’re testing different platforms because different platforms have different reach to different types of people.
And at the same time, we have multiple landing pages as well.
Because if we’re speaking to more than one customer avatar, each customer avatar needs to have a specific message towards that customer avatar.
For example, in some cases where we’re targeting retirees and at the same time we’re targeting working white collar professionals, if your message for these two avatars is the same on the landing page, how effective can that be?
It’s just watered down.
So you need to get specific landing pages. And we even split test those landing pages as well.
So it’s not just ads. It’s funnels. It’s platforms.
Here’s the thing that most marketers won’t tell you: Only roughly 3 to 5% of ads actually work.
Think about it. If you have six, 10, 12 ads, you’re not even giving yourself a fair chance of finding an ad that actually works.
It’s only when you get to 20, 30, 40 ads that’s when you have a chance to find a real winner that’s gonna propel you.
And sometimes we get ads where one ad, when we strike it right, is just a game changer for our clients.
That’s why we produce multiple variations heavily with ads, with funnels, with platforms. So that we have the best possible chance of helping our clients find that ad that completely changes their business.
This is a core part of our marketing agency philosophy. Test everything.
Philosophy #3: No Boring AI-Generated Ads (Emotional Intelligence Still Matters)
Oh my gosh, there are so many boring ads nowadays. Especially with AI now.
People are just so freaking lazy. They just tell ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever it is, “Hey, here’s my business, spit out some ads for me on Meta.”
And everybody’s ad looks the freaking same.
There is no thinking. There is no thought. There is no research into the customer avatar.
Now if you study all the greatest copywriters, all the greatest marketers of all time, guess what they’re doing most of the time?
They’re not looking for some magic word that will make people sign up or buy their stuff.
Guess what they are doing? They are on forums. They are doing surveys. They are out there talking to the customers.
To find out exactly what triggers them. What attracts them. What makes them not able to sleep at night. What keeps them awake at night. What questions do they ask themselves. What questions are they talking to their wives and husbands about at dinner time.
Those are the things that you need to find out if you want to be a good marketer.
And that is why we don’t believe in boring ads produced by AI.
Yes, we use AI to do some research, to help us generate ideas, to refine things, and to spot check spelling mistakes. But we do not use AI, plonk it, and then copy paste run ads.
It just doesn’t work.
AI does not have that emotional intelligence that you should have as a marketer.
And recently when we launched this new campaign for clients, we’re getting 17% click-through all on the ad. Almost one-fifth of everybody scrolling on Facebook was actually stopping and clicking “see more.”
The link click-through rate was something like 5 or 6%. And if you ask anybody out there, they’ll tell you, “Yeah, 1% is pretty good, you know, that’s the standard.”
We’re getting 5-6% on this particular ad because we spent the time doing the research, getting into the minds of the consumer, and writing copy that matters to them.
The Other Thing About Copy: Shift Beliefs, Don’t Just Inform
What happens with ChatGPT and a lot of amateur copywriters is they basically are putting information on the ad. Which is fine, so that people understand what they’re signing up for or what they’re buying.
But pure information does not create shifts in buying or decision-making.
What you need to do is to create an emotional shift. Maybe also by delivering an aha moment.
Focus on shifting a belief in your ad rather than blasting and trying to force information down the brain of your prospect.
Because by shifting that belief, the prospect would then be able to say, “Huh, maybe this could work for me. I never thought of things this way.”
So that is our ultimate goal in our ads. To create that shift in belief rather than just, “Here’s the information, guys.”
Dan Kennedy, the great copywriter, once said, “If I haven’t offended anyone by lunchtime with my ads, that means I have written boring ads.”
So we believe at Radical Marketing you cannot just be informative and boring. You need to shift beliefs. You need to step on some toes.
Of course you can’t violate policy. But don’t be afraid to step on some toes.
That’s our marketing agency philosophy for writing ad copy.
Philosophy #4: Against Vanity Metrics (Sales Are All That Matter)
You’ve all heard that before with your other agencies where they’re saying, “Oh, we’re getting a lot of engagement. We’re building the list. We are generating lots of awareness.”
Guys, all that is bullcrap if it just doesn’t generate sales.
Look at Radical Marketing. We do run some branding ads as well. But the branding ads, the whole purpose there is a two-step thing where we’re generating awareness, shifting a belief, and then having a call to action.
So in that sense, we’re still getting a decision from the prospect. We’re not just running ads for the sake of it. Getting likes. Getting views. And all that stuff.
Because that does not pay the bills.
Do not be fooled by saying, “Oh, I’ve got so much engagement with my post and all that kind of stuff.”
That doesn’t matter, guys. What matters is the bottom line dollar.
That’s why at Radical Marketing, we track everything. We track every single ad to see not just how many leads it generated, but down to how many sales it generated.
And which variation of the ad that generated that sales.
Maybe we had one video ad that generated lots of sales. But which variation of that video ad? Because we generally create multiple variations of the video ad. Maybe there are five different openings.
So which one of the openings actually generated it? And which one of the headlines that we wrote for that video ad actually generated the sales?
All that is important as well. Bottom line is that we track everything at Radical Marketing so that our clients do not waste money on unnecessary metrics that do not make an impact on the bottom line of their business.
Our philosophy is that every ad should have a clear outcome that leads to a result that leads to a sale.
Philosophy #5: No One-Size-Fits-All Solutions (Bespoke Strategies Win)
There are many agencies out there telling people, “Hey, just use this one solution, just use this one funnel, and you will make it to seven figures. You will scale from six to seven figures if you just use this one funnel.”
Guys, that may have happened in like 2016. But in 2025 or 2026 or whenever you’re watching this video, it’s not gonna happen.
The market has shifted. Things are sophisticated now.
Even though we ourselves when we advertise, we advertise one service right now. For example, we’re advertising our Sprint webinar service.
But if someone comes in and we realize that, “Hey, this Sprint webinar service is not the best thing for them. Maybe we should do a product launch for them instead to their email list. And maybe we should do a JV promotion with this other client that we have to get them immediate results first to prove that their offer works first before we launch a Sprint webinar.”
Or before we do like a three-day challenge which might be in consideration as well.
That is what we need to be looking at because that is how we see things.
We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all. We believe in a bespoke solution for each and every client in every scenario.
And because of our 10, 11 years of running ads, doing marketing for clients so far, we have accumulated a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, and different techniques and strategies that can help our clients to grow their business.
Ultimately, we’re not just an agency that runs paid ads or builds funnels.
What we do is we come in and we are the growth partner for our clients. We will look for opportunities to help them to grow their business.
Because once again, that ties back to the first thing where we are a performance-based agency. We want to help them to grow in any way possible.
And sometimes it could be cold email might be the thing. Could be LinkedIn outreach might be the thing.
So there is no one-size-fits-all. Whatever is best for the client, that is what we will recommend. And we will create a customized solution for each client.
Philosophy #6: Against Evergreen Solutions (Innovation Beats Repetition)
The final thing that we’re against is evergreen solutions.
What do I mean by evergreen solutions? These are people who have done the same thing over and over again. And it’s worked for them in the past.
And the agency is like, “Oh, we’ve done this for like a few hundred clients in the past, so we will continue to do this step by step exactly the same.”
With Radical Marketing, we know that marketing in the digital space is always changing.
What was working two years ago is not working now. Not to mention like five years ago or 10 years ago. That’s just crazy.
For example, shorts, short videos weren’t a thing until 2020 when TikTok came in. And now it’s a common thing.
And now we have AI chatbots. AI voice bots.
So if you’re not using stuff like that and you’re still doing the old thing where, say, if you’re running an event and you’re calling everyone that registers for the webinar saying, “Hey, are you gonna show up?” rather than using AI like a voice AI to call or a chatbot AI to follow up on SMS or WhatsApp or whatever the platform is, then you’re wasting a lot of time and energy.
And it could drastically negatively impact your business.
So at Radical Marketing, what we’re doing is we’re constantly innovating. We’re constantly finding new solutions to existing problems.
Our goal is not to shoehorn our customers into one process. We’re always looking for new ways to streamline the process for our customers, to streamline the process for ourselves, so that we can serve the customers better.
And saving cost for the customers while getting better results.
So we’re fully adopting AI. But again, not in the whole replacing a copywriter kind of thing or replacing graphic designers.
We’re using it so that we can help our clients to stand out more. We’re using that to streamline our clients’ sales and marketing process even more so that they can ultimately get better results.
Which in turn, because of our performance remuneration philosophy, we get paid more.
That’s the final thing that we’re for and what we’re against. We’re constantly innovating, constantly finding better ways to help our clients win in their business.
Why This Marketing Agency Philosophy Actually Matters
Look, you made it this far. That means you actually care about getting real results, not just pretty reports.
Here’s the reality. Most agencies will sell you on their portfolio. Their case studies. Their fancy tools.
But none of that matters if their marketing agency philosophy doesn’t align with actually making you money.
You can have the best designers, the best media buyers, the best tech stack. But if the agency isn’t incentivized to get you results, if they’re not testing enough, if they’re lazy with AI-generated copy, if they’re tracking vanity metrics instead of sales, if they’re forcing you into their cookie-cutter process, and if they’re using outdated tactics from 2016, you’re going to waste money.
Period.
That’s why before you hire any agency or before you renew your contract with your current one, ask yourself:
- Are they performance-based or just collecting a fixed retainer?
- Are they testing 20+ ads at once or just running 5-6?
- Are they doing deep customer research or just using ChatGPT?
- Are they tracking actual sales or just showing you engagement reports?
- Are they giving you a bespoke solution or forcing you into their standard funnel?
- Are they innovating with new tech or doing the same thing they did three years ago?
These questions matter more than their portfolio.
Because the right marketing agency philosophy is what separates the winners from the ones who just waste your ad budget.
And if you want to work with an agency that actually stands for these principles, let’s talk. We’ve generated over 1.5 million leads for coaches and experts over the past decade. And we’ve done it by following these exact philosophies.
No BS. Just results.
This podcast is hosted by Terence Tam, author of Lead Surge: 8 Radically Effective Marketing Funnels for Coaches and Experts. He is also the Founder of Radical Marketing, a digital marketing agency that partners with high-ticket coaches to scale their businesses with Webinars – by using a proprietary blend of story ads and battled-tested sales funnels to achieve better returns on ad dollars.
