2025 online
schedule
Coming up At Agency Hackers
📣 Please note, these events are for Agency Hackers’ members only.
If your agency isn’t a member yet, get in touch with Anne or sign up here.
Event key:
🔵 Presentation
🔴 Interview
🟣 Demo/workshop
ALL our sessions are interactive, so cameras on and get your questions ready to ask!
- Many agencies rely quite heavily on inbound leads and referrals for new biz. But when these avenues start to slow down, that’s when the cracks tend to show. For Ryan Hall, founder of Friday Solved, this is why agencies should do more when it comes to their sales function.
- “Most agencies treat sales as a quick fix, rather than a long-term strategy,” says Ryan. “They often think it’s solved purely by hiring a salesperson, or a biz dev agency, but those options come with pitfalls.”
- In this session with Ryan, we’ll be talking about how agencies can approach sales in the right way. If you’re looking to improve your sales strategy, or find new ways of approaching the sales conundrum in your agency, this is the session for you.
- Most agencies measure success by tasks completed, hours logged, or KPI targets hit, but these don’t always reflect the real impact of the work you’ve done. This is important to Ryan McNamara, head of operations at Rise at Seven. For a while now he has been embedding ‘outcome accountability’ into both the agency’s culture and delivery workflows.
- “A lot of teams get into the mindset of, ‘We just need to deliver this piece of work.’ But really, they’re losing sight of what they, and the client, are trying to get out of that work,” says Ryan.
- Ryan has been leading this impact-led approach that shifts the focus away from pure deliverables, and instead towards clear ‘North Star’ outcomes that matter to their clients. It also means that his team are truly accountable for the impact of their work, not just the process they follow to get there. If your agency wants to drive better results by focusing on outcomes rather than outputs, this is the session for you.
- It’s easy to assume a competitive salary is the most important factor when attracting and retaining top agency talent. But Billy Johnson, CEO and co-founder of The Ink Group, understands the weight employee benefits hold.
- “There are certain benefits that are perceived to be extremely high value, even if they don’t cost much. It’s about finding those things that employees really care about,” advises Billy.
- If you’re looking to attract new talent and retain current employees but struggling to decide upon the right benefits for your agency, this is a must-attend session. Billy will guide you through the steps to create a compliant, competitive, and tailored package.
- Are agencies losing the art of client service? Last year, Katie Pospischil, client services director at Publicis Pro, saw an opportunity to refine her team’s client services standards.
- “Client service is like running a Michelin star restaurant,” says Katie. “The client should feel like everything is seamless – their glasses filled before they realise they’re empty, the linens crisply ironed. But I felt like we were starting to slip. It was feeling less Michelin star and more Little Chef.”
- In this session, Katie will be taking you through what she did to raise her team’s client service standards, and how she embedded a culture of humanised, genuine connections with clients. If you’re looking to deepen client relationships and move beyond transactional interactions, this session is the one for you.
- Every agency has that client. The one who constantly moves the goalposts. The one who loves your ideas – until they suddenly don’t. The one who nitpicks your work but forgets to pay their invoice. Some are demanding. Some are just delusional. And some even make you question why you ever started your agency in the first place.
- So, how do you set the right boundaries, protect your team, and, crucially, stop situations like these from happening in the first place? We can’t solve it for you – if only we could! But what we can do is give you the space to talk it through with fellow leaders and founders, and hash out what to do in situations like these.
- If you’ve ever thought, “I should have walked away from this client six months ago,” then this session is for you.
- Cold outreach gets a bad rap. But done effectively, it can be a powerful tool for generating leads, building relationships, and landing new business. For Leo Kesner, CEO of Unstuck, the key to success isn’t just volume – it’s all about the strategy behind it.
- “Most agencies approach cold outreach in a really high-level way. But without the right strategy in place – understanding your value proposition, targeting correctly, and structuring your outreach properly – you’re actually just stacking the odds against yourself,” he says.
- If you’ve struggled to generate results from cold outreach or want a practical, proven approach to making it work, Leo is here to help you figure out how you can use cold outreach in the right way for you and your agency.
- Middle management can be the missing piece in agencies looking to grow. Without it, teams either feel unsupported or senior leadership gets stretched too thin. So, what’s the best way to bridge the gap? Adam Reaney, client services director at SEO Works, has been through this process firsthand.
- Now, SEO Works has a pod structure, with leaders that have grown within the agency. And it works. “We don’t hire externally for leadership roles like that,” Adam explains. “The people we promote already know our business and our values. It just makes sense.”
- But this approach isn’t without challenges – come along if you’re struggling with gaps in your agency, and want to figure out how to build a strong, sustainable middle management layer within your business.
- AI is reshaping B2B marketing. It’s making content creation faster, posting processes smoother, and campaigns more effective. But how can you use it in a way that is making a difference?
- James Carson, co-founder of Agentic, has spent years exploring how GenAI can be applied to B2B marketing. He’s looked at everything from content production and LinkedIn automation, to AI-powered sales workflows.
- In this session James will be sharing his tried and tested ways to implement AI into your B2B marketing strategy – without sacrificing creativity or control.
- Who’s responsible for what? What does ‘good’ look like? How do you measure success – and reward it fairly? These were the questions that Nicola Ray, co-founder and CEO of Modern, set out to answer. Alongside Sian Eddy, Modern’s operations director, she developed a comprehensive job architecture.
- “We use this framework for everything – from evaluating performance and identifying underperformance, to shaping personal development objectives,” says Nicola. “Every role is measured on a four-point scale, so we can have objective, meaningful conversations at review time.”
- In this session, Nicola & Sian will demonstrate how they’ve embedded this framework into their agency – and how you can do the same. If you’ve ever struggled with unclear roles, career progression confusion, or managing underperformance fairly, this session will give you a practical, proven framework to bring clarity and structure to your agency.
- B2B comms have a bit of a reputation. Safe. Functional. Sometimes – let’s say it – boring. But for Damian Nowell and Graeme Kendrew, creative directors at Radley Yeldar, B2B comms should be anything but.
- “You have the opportunity to collaborate with some of the world’s top brands to bring complex ideas to life”,” says Graeme. “The challenge is how do you approach that with excitement and energy?”
- Turning ‘boring’ into ‘brilliant’ is their guiding principle – especially when it comes to tackling dry, complex or difficult subject matter. In this session, Graeme and Damian will walk us through how they approach this B2B challenge – including the ten lessons they’ve learned from the world of corporate comms.
- Hiring junior talent should be a long-term investment, not a short-term headache. But too often, agencies find themselves with juniors who aren’t quite at the level they thought they were, or without the right structure in place to nurture them. So, how do you get it right?
- “We’ve had juniors who arrived, and only after they walked through the door did we realise, they weren’t really at the level we thought,” says Emma Krall, finance director at Athlon. “You have to be rigorous in how you hire, just as you would with senior talent.”
- Emma will be sharing how Athlon restructured its team to ensure junior hires don’t get left unsupported, and how they’re thinking about the next generation of agency talent. If you want to attract, retain, and develop junior talent in a way that actually works, and keeps them on the journey with you, this is the one for you.
- In an ideal world, you’d grow your agency without ever having to make cuts. But with economic pressure still looming and pipelines stalling, many agency leaders are having to rethink not just their costs – but their entire team structure.
- “There’s definitely a theme emerging,” says Pam Phillips, founder of deJong Phillips. “Plenty of agencies are thinking about how they restructure. Maybe they’ve overhired, maybe client work has shifted. They’re looking at ways to reduce spend, and sometimes that means making difficult decisions. There’s a lot to think about there from the numbers point of view, but from a legal point of view too.”
- In this CFO Surgery, we’ll be talking about how to make the right decisions, for right now, but also for the long term future of your agency. If you’re reviewing your team, your margins, or wondering whether now is the time to restructure, this is the session for you.
- To become a bigger agency, you first have to think and act like one. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? For Claire Lamb, director of Skout, this meant making a deliberate shift in mindset and operations to reach the agency’s ambitious £3m goal.
- “We made a very conscious decision about two years ago that we were never going to be a £3 million agency unless we started behaving like one,” she says, and this bold ambition drove a complete rethink of the way Skout operates. At the heart of this shift is a commitment to big thinking. “Think big, act big, win big is definitely still the mantra without doubt. And I don’t think that will ever change; it really works for us,” says Claire.
- Shifting from a start-up mentality to a £3m mindset isn’t a linear journey – it’s a delicate balancing act. For agencies like Skout, the hard work being done now may not yield immediate results, but it’s setting the foundations for future success.
- Towards the end of Q1, while things weren’t terrible, it was still quite a rocky time. Now we’re midway through 2025, and challenges remain. Client confidence is shaky. Sales cycles are still low. And for many, decision-making feels more complex than ever.
- But there has been SOME movement, and a growing sense that 2025 might not be a total write-off as it was first feared.
- At the end of Q2, we’re checking in again. What say you? How’s your pipeline? How’s your team? And how confident are you for the rest of the year? Join us as we take a temperature check on agency life, and figure out what’s really going on out there.