Podcast transcript
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another live episode of Marketplace Masters brought to you by MerchantSpring, the leading Marketplace analytics platform for Amazon agencies and vendors. Marketplace Masters is all about going deeper into the challenges that brands and agencies face to lift performance, fire, practical, actions, and insights.
Paul Sonneveld
I'm your host. Paul Sonneveld and today we're going over how to organize your Amazon agency to deliver success for your clients and how to set up your Agency for success as well. Now, to help us do this, I've invited Tom Baker to join us and to share his expertise. So let me introduce Tom to our audience today.
Tom is the founder of FordeBaker and the CEO and FordeBaker is a global Amazon marketing and operational Agency for ambitious plans. The agency provides a one-stop shop for brands and Tom now leads the business development and client strategy at FordeBaker across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia, so he brings with him a broad range of experience today and it's great to have you on Tom.
Tom Baker
Thanks for the invite, Paul. It's a pleasure to be here and to share our learnings from the agency as we've grown over the last few years.
Paul Sonneveld
It's fantastic to have you Tom. Where I want to start today is I want to talk a little bit about your personal story. I'm always interested in. You know, how do we agencies start? How did they come about? What's your story? What drove you to start an agency it.
Tom Baker
So I think it is a personal story because it comes from my own experience actually being in-house. I was in-house with lots of different businesses, for 10-12 years and use lots of different agencies in that time not necessarily for Amazon, but for SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and also a lot of marketing Tech vendors in that time as well. So, I saw lots of different types of agencies, locally, and globally, and it kind of learned and what I certainly learned a lot from those different agencies that we work with.
More specifically about six, seven years ago, I took a job head of marketing for a toy company and they kind of landed Amazon on my desk. I never done it before. But, you know, I'd always been in the sort of traditional digital marketing space, say with Facebook and Google and so on. So Amazon is completely new thing to me. I looked naturally, I look for an agency at the time to help me do all those things. I got plenty of other things, I needed to get on with, but I couldn’t really find an agency that I thought had the breadth and the depth of experience and expertise that I wanted to be able to meet my ambitions as head of marketing and the kind of global aspirations that we had for the brand at the time.
So we decided to do it, in-house. I tried to learn everything as quickly as possible. It was a massive learning curve as I'm sure the same for everyone. You make a lot of mistakes along the way but you start to grasp it and you start to understand how it all works, all the different aspects of selling on Amazon, how to do that globally, and so on and so forth. And in the end, we had a really successful time of it. That quickly became sort of a third of that businesses, revenue within sort of 18 months. I was quite proud of proud of that fact. And I thought, well, let if I've had these challenges along the way, there must be thousands of other sort of brand managers head of e-commerce, head of marketing people in-house that have got the same experience that asking the same questions, got the same challenges. So can I take what I've learned over the last two years and provide that as a service to those people.
So that was sort of about three years ago. I started freelancing as you do, you know, picking up a couple of clients and doing everything for those clients and myself, you know, obviously that, that gave me actually, that was a real eye-opener because what I'd learned within one particular brand, was just a very small slice of, actually, what goes on with Amazon. But then starting to work with new clients, in different categories. So, seller vendors, so on and so forth. Really opened me up to sort of all of these possibilities, but I was able to provide that service and we had a great time in those first few clients. And actually, they're still with me today, actually, those first two clients. And so that developed into the agency and quite organically and naturally really.
Paul Sonneveld
That's what I want to ask. You know, how did you sign your first client? It's always getting that, particularly as you're starting out, getting that vote of confidence.
Tom Baker
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
How did you persuade and convince them to give you a go, right?
Tom Baker
So if I mean first and foremost I was extremely lucky, like, as I say, those two clients is still with us that and they kind of started just about the same time. I think part of it was when I said I was lucky and part of that was down to timing. In the UK and actually goes back to what I was just saying they were they were brands, established companies that wanted to maximize the opportunity on Amazon, but just had no idea how to do it. And but we're struggling to find someone that they could trust. It was really credible that could take that on.
And so it was is actually about the kind of building that relationship with them. I think, you know, it'd be different, a different type of conversation today because, you know, there's a lot of brands are more familiar with Amazon now, but at the time, it was a case of, there's a real, you know, dearth of people that, you know, providing sort of either sort of consultancy or agency services particularly in the UK more developed in the U.S. definitely at that time and still is. But they were sort of, you know, open to the idea. I think, you know, obviously I've shown them what I’ve done when I was in-house and I could talk their language as well, which will probably come onto later.
Like I know what your challenges are being in-house. I know the Amazons this you know that the Amazon this massive opportunity but you also know your limitations as a business and therefore I could sort of fill those gaps and understand what that what they're really trying to achieve and where the sort of pain points were for them.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, that's great. So today, we're talking specifically about roles, structures, trade-off processes. To help contextualize that a little bit, can you paint a bit of a picture of what your agency looks like today, Tom. You know, obviously, you've been done a tremendous journey really growing out of that, you know, I'm a one-man band. I'm a freelancer, I'm a bit of an expert and I can do everything to actually having a team of people around you so just paint a picture. What does your agency look like today around some of the key parameters?
Tom Baker
Yes. So we're sort of organized into three team functions. Okay, so we've got our creative team which are working on listings, start from Ad creative. So copywriters and graphic designers doing all of that work. We've got our marketing function, which covers PPC, DSP, SEO, listing optimization, external traffic into Amazon. So all of those kind of, we work all that sort of marketing channels activity in Amazon.
And then the final column, which is the area that I head up is the account strategy so our account strategy team as the name suggests, are there to develop the strategy. But we also do a lot of the operational work, so the kind of day-to-day management of the Seller Central and Vendor Central inventory, planning, all of those kind of things. So it's a combination of the two things. So, we've got a nice project command into this in a bit more detail, but we've got a nice balance between the kind of specialization with the marketing and creative and their all-rounders within the Strategy team as well. So we find it. That's worked incredibly well for us, is very scalable way to work.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. What does it look like in terms of numbers wise and, are other all UK-based, we’re kind of remote first businesses these days, you know, what does it look like in terms of job geographical spread to?
Tom Baker
Yes. So from day one, you know, one of the central tenets of the agency and as I learned from being in-house, was that we had to have a Global Aspiration and to be able to prove to clients that were able to actually deliver globally. We had to sort of recruit globally that makes a total sense that sometimes that's sort of glossed over.
So, so we're an international team. We're dotted about all over the place. It’s not just because of the pandemic, that's kind of forced us to work remotely, it’s a very conscious decision. It means I've been able to recruit the best in the market and we've got a really diverse team, which I think adds a lot, not only for our kind of client work but also as an organization to have lots of different experiences and backgrounds within the team. So we're up to 16 people now, recruiting three roles at the moment. So anyone listening they wanted to apply please do.
Paul Sonneveld
I’ll hopefully take a recruiting fee on the back of this.
Tom Baker
Sort of order referral fee. So we're yeah will get up to about 20 by the end of this year.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, great. That's great. Seeing that growth from, you know, starting one to actually, you know, running it as a, you know, a sizable agency. It is also a great segue to start thinking about roles and structuring particular, right? So let's started with structure. You know, how do you think about roles in your agency? You know, maybe today and, you know, how is that evolved as you’ve grown?
Tom Baker
So I think, you know, just bringing together some of the points that we've touched on. If we, if we do a sort of, like, potted history of working with Amazon, over the last sort of six or seven years, and maybe the slides that I've got, we'll just kind of shows a little bit more about that. This is a very, very simplified version of what's happened with Amazon over as they’re kind of seven, eight years. So, kind of stage 1. And this is where I was when I was in-house. I had enough experience across Performance Marketing, SEO, content operations, those kinds of things. So be able to kind of run it myself, not saying I was brilliant at all of those things, but I was good enough at all of those things to be able to make that a success and I'm sure lots of people will have been in that situation at the time.
Essentially, the reasons why I was able to do that. Amazon advertising was very rudimentary at the time, pretty basic it’s definitely not there today which will come on to in a second. There was greater organic growth opportunities to be had. Amazon hacks as I've described it here. Some of those actually work pretty well. The time like, you know, obviously people were getting reviews through fair schemes and whatnot or using super URLs and so on and so forth.
So these sort of like weaknesses as it were within the system. Did it work to some degree? Naturally, there was less competition back then and also really, really importantly, there were fewer brands was you know established companies in the space. So, Me as one person, essentially acting as a generalist, doing a little bit of everything could actually be really successful.
Now over time I was a that's evolved, you know, the marketplace has matured as with every kind of platform and marketplaces, so kind of stage 2, the development on from that brands, obviously start to take notice if we you know roughly speaking just pre-pandemic and also into the pandemic, you get more and more brands coming onto the market and Amazon put real kind of emphasis on advertising and start to develop the add console into something more but obviously more useful. Amazon started to come down on a lot of these sort of gray hat tactics that people use, but and also the opportunity with Amazon becomes much, larger, not only is the audience growing but the international scope of what Amazon are doing because much greater as well.
So, understanding all of those different things like FBA programs across Europe for example. Like there's a lot to learn as well as doing content, advertising becoming more sophisticated. They're being more competition as bigger brands come onto the market. And so what we start to see this stage is the need for specialization. And that's really been sort of one of the fundamentals of our structure as an agency is understanding this sort of Journey that Amazon's going on. And that trend and then our organizational structure reflects the way that Amazon has developed over time.
So us as a full service agency, I say we do everything. We're kind of one-stop shop for our clients. That means that we need to have specialist skills in all of these different areas because it's a full-time job to keep up with advertising changes and do a really great job with that. And if someone can do all of those things plus a myriad of other things it likes absolutely fair plates and there are a genius and like full credit to them. But others an agency being able to do that at scale, means that we have to have specialization.
And that actually, youknow, we took what this is all about it. Really is delivering the best results for our clients. So we found that over time. Specialization is becoming increasingly important, whether that's graphic design, copywriting, advertising, SEO, listing optimization those things are specialist skills and they should be treated as such, you know, their professions in their own, right? Just as Google SEO or doing paid social or full-time roles as well.
And then we have our generalist so our account strategist who are overseeing everything. That's a tough job. You know, you got to learn a lot and you've got to have that kind of global outlook on everything as well. And you've also got, you know, from a very high level of like, what's the object is? what budget do we need? How do we decide which products we're going to prioritize? Answering those big chunky questions, but also, like the minutiae of stranded inventory. And, you know, all of those kind of pains that we all go through. So I think that works really well for us as I say we’re a full service works really well for the generalist overseeing things and then specialist in their particular channel and function.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. So what does the split look like between generalist and specialist now? You said, you know, around, you know, for 16 to 20 people.
Tom Baker
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
What is the rough split look like in terms of getting this?
Tom Baker
Yeah. So it's so I'd say like two-thirds of the team also to specializing in particular functions. I think that's actually a really nice balance for us to have account strategists, have a group of clients that they will look after. And then oversee at, you know, set the object and then, you know, work on the delivery and then the rest of the Specialists are actually working on the execution and the practical elements on a on a day-to-day basis within the account.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. So in a model such as that where you’re using both Specialists and Generalists obviously, There's only one client, but multiple people working on an account. How do you set responsibilities and accountabilities? You know, where does the box stop with the client in particular?
Tom Baker
Yeah so that's as a very very good question. So the way that we do that is that there's a clear and we have a couple of slides that we showed everyone when they start there's a clear relationship between the things that people are doing and particular KPIs that we're measuring. So in the very most obvious and simplest way to explain that is to the PPC specialist is responsible for ACOS row as KPIs right. They're not responsible for the IPI score. So there's a very clear relationship between the thing you do and how that's measured and it's the same across all of the roles within the company and then that's obviously visible across the teams. Everyone knows that, if its an issue with conversion rate, then we go and speak to the listing optimization team. They're responsible for that and obviously the things they do will influence conversion rate.
So it is just about that connection between the actions you take and the KPIs that we're attaching to that work which is largely common sense by think actually, visualizing that and discussing that helps people to understand, particularly, if they're not completely familiar with every kind of KPI or metric and all the Amazon Jog and still actually displaying that taking people through is really critical. And also for our clients. So, you know, actually saying to them, like, here's your team, here's your account strategist, their your main point contact. They're responsible for this this and this, you got your PPC specialist and then everyone else, here's the things they work on here. Here’s the KPIs that their performance is measured against. And again just that just that visibility and being able to show people means a lot.
Paul Sonneveld
And actually I think as you are talking about setting different KPIs and communicating it to the clients, you know, maybe I'm inferring here but does that mean that there are multiple touch points with your clients from within your organization. So it's not just the account strategist that's talking to the client that presents that umbrella interface. Yeah, you've got multiple points of engagement with your with your clients, you know. How does that work at your agency?
Tom Baker
Yeah. So what I mean, we try to be a very lean organization so you know our account strategies are called account strategist and not account managers because they're there to actually properly understand how Amazon works and be able to lead the strategy. Whereas there's a tendency in agency land not necessarily within Amazon but like to have an account manager who's there to sort of I go to meetings organize things, maybe do some project management, but they're not really experts within the particular channel of functional platform or Marketplace that they're actually talking about.
So that's the most important thing because they're like an Account Strategist we have to talk to the client about pretty much anything within their account. So most of the conversation is done by the account strategist, but that, yes, there's absolutely points where the market either Marketing, because the ones spending the money or deciding which keywords using and so on and so forth, will come into those conversations with the client.
Usually what we'll do is you know an intro call with the client so like just a very general sort of chat so this is everyone working on your account. The account strategist is the day-to-day contact with the client and then let's say, you know the PPC Specialist may come back in a month time to show what the advertising strategy is, what we've done so far, what the plans are for the next few months. And then kind of work on that kind of cycle.
So there's kind of Specialist are not regularly in client meetings, they're getting on with the work. So that's why I say us being a lean and efficient organization but that what that means is an account strategist has to know everything basically. Not great depth, they don't need to know what's the latest new targeting option within advertising space, but they need to know in a very general terms.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, I guess they part of the role they serve is to protect the rest of the team not to spend the entire day in meetings with the client, right? And yeah, you know, making sure you've got some effectiveness there. Yeah. So this links quite nicely to be to this idea of service models, right? We started as an agency and you've got some very big clients that are really easy to serve, and you've got the really small clients that are super demanding, you know, different. No one client is the same, yet as an agency dealing in human capital, you have the challenge of trying to run a profitable business and somehow aligning resources and costs to serve to revenue-generating. How do you demystify? Or how do you untangle that particular challenge at FordeBaker?
Tom Baker
Yeah, so I think it's like an ongoing process to optimize that. I mean, that sounds very functional and like practical but the reason I say that is we've decided not to go down a route of fixed packages, of day rates and we don't do any time tracking for the team. And the reason for that was again just getting back to my own in-house experience. Was if an agency said to me we're billing too many hours or we can't do that because we've already done X amount of days or hours this month, then that's one it's annoying, they're not aligned they're not perfectly aligned with what the client needs to happen and what they're sort of goals are. Now, obviously that can be taken too far, absolutely. That can be the client can sort of take advantage of that.
But if we assume that every client is a reasonable human being and a rational actor, then I think it's fair to say, look, this is roughly the amount of time that we spend on your account and it actually might change over time as well. So as you know, we tend to front-load a lot of the work and say like, you know, let's say it's a business is new to Amazon and naturally we've got to create all of their listings, get them set up, in FBA, whatever it is. So there is a lot of front-loading that can happen. And yeah, we don't make any money as it were on that particular, on those first few months. But our business model is always about long-term relationships and the way to do that, essentially is to deliver great results. It doesn't mean to overload the resource. We've got to strike a balance between those things, but it's absolutely about thinking long-term and building a long-term relationship with the client. So, yeah, it can be a real sort of of struggle to get that. That right. I think actually the way the way to sort of solve that really is actually before you start working with the client.
It is to make sure that they understand when you're talking about your fees. What they're going to get from those fees and maybe give them a few different scenarios and say, look not that, we don't package things like gold, silver, bronze or things like that, but like this roughly amount of time we would spend on it for this amount is for the amount of time we can spend on it for this amount like and here's the kind of pros and cons and here's the trade-offs of those different approaches. And, you know, clients will sort of tend to be able to work that out for themselves. They know again just assuming your client is a rational actor and they obviously they've got to meet their objectives like explaining that if it's under resource then they're not going to get anywhere. There's no point doing it then you know you can find the right sort of level to sit at. And then that should in theory then give you enough sort of financing to be able to actually properly resource that account.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. Are there rules of thumb or tricks or maybe tools that you use to plan that workload and the resourcing against that? and What time period do look? Is that a kind of a monthly exercise or quarterly exercising? How do you think about resourcing?
Tom Baker
Yes. Actually, a lot of it comes down to sort of agency muscle memory if you like. So, what I mean by that is if we take on a client and they're in X number of countries and they've got X number of products, whatever. We roughly know what that is going to take in terms of days per month and how much we need to front-load the work and how long things take. So, so we've we don't have like a perfect formula and, you know, some kind of calculation to say like this is the amount of days or whatever, but we just sort of, naturally, know, sort of what those levels look like.
In terms of like there are things that we do obviously to plan resource and manage resources. So, one is to sort of is to have a project plan with the clients so let’s say like this is what is going to happen at a high level. You don't need to give them all of the detail, but month one, month two, month, three. These are the key initiatives. This is what we need from you you to be able to do these things. This is roughly when they'll be completed by and we kind of refresh that on a quarterly basis with the client.
And then internally, we use Asana for all of our project management that's been like integral to how we act as an agency. So all of the briefing into the team, all of the day-to-day conversation around workflows and actually getting things done is done through Asana. So we can sort of keep track of what's happening, what the status of that is, who's doing it so on and so forth and that you know, there's just no way, that we could have scaled up without something like Asana to be able to help this project manage.
Paul Sonneveld
Did you start with Asana or did you sort of evolved to Asana over time? Like, did you try all other tools along the way that maybe didn't meet your need to the same extent that Asana does?
Tom Baker
So we use Asana from day one. I think I'd used it in a previous organization and just fan that was to be like, it worked really well for us. You know, we've definitely evolved with it along the way and we have our own sort of processes. How we manage Asana and the templates we use we like, we've customized it basically to our needs, but it's very adaptable. So, it works really well for us.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, it's great. Now, always good to hear what people are using on that front. We're always thinking about what is the next agency software, we need to integrate with ourselves. So, you know, Asana is high on the list now.
Tom Baker
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
Let's go to some really practical questions here around, how do you keep clients happy? You know, I remember the early days and one of my frustrations were running my own agency was you can have 20 great clients but they'll always be one or two, there's always a fire, right? There's always a drama. There's always you're dealing with humans and people, you know, and if most of them are happy, that it's probably a good week, but what is your secret sauce to keeping clients happy?
Tom Baker
So, I think this is definitely something that we've learned along the way, like, I'm very honest and like, it's a learning curve, you know, one of the downsides of me, sort of, being a sort of In-House for 12 years. Although I, you know, I can talk the language of clients, and those kind of things, but, actually being on the other side of the fence, you don't know what that's like until you go and do it. So that's definitely been a learning curve for us. There's a few principles basically that we will work by. And this is something when I bring on a new account strategist in particular, these are the things that we talked about and kind of not drill into them as a bit extreme but make sure that they properly understand, give them the examples so they can get the context before they actually start to work with a client. So I've put a few on onto a slide so it run a share that and then I'll walk through those.
So, kind of six fundamental now that there's much more to client management this, but these are sort of the things that we've sort of found to really help us, the kind of make the difference, really? So first one is to recognize their personality. So understanding who your client is, how they like to work, how they like to communicate, I think it's really important that that does not mean you completely rip up, how you work based on kind of their particular circumstances. But I think acknowledging that you're working with people basically and you need to sort of adjust your approach for different types of people is critically important. So that's definitely number one.
Managing expectations. So again, this isn't necessarily about, you know, I think sometimes there's a tendency to sort of just try to do the best that you can without sort of explaining to the client. What the sort of trade-offs are, what the pros and cons are, what the possible risks are, what the possible delays are. Now with Amazon like we all know, Amazon's just going to go and do something that, you know, tears up your nicely laid out project plan. So it's really critical from the early stages to actually explain how Amazon works and how you work as an agency as well. So things like you know you might say, look I won't be able to reply to your emails within our everyday of the week or we can't do a meeting every week. It has to be fortnightly or monthly. Like you've got to put some boundaries in place, but you've also got to explain that, you know, how Amazon works and kind of what to expect along the journey.
Next one, Adapt but don't fully customise. So this sort of relates that first one about understand the personalities that you're working with. So we don't have a very fixed approach and where we are doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way for all of our clients. Now partly, that's just because they're different types of businesses and they're in different countries are there in different categories, you know, there's all sorts of varieties that goes on. But in terms of the way they want to work like we again we set some boundaries around that. So for example, if a client says can you do your project management through our project management tool which they know there are certain boundaries where say absolutely not that would just be you know, a massive change in the way that we work and it just it's just a step too far.
Obviously, we’ll use Microsoft teams, if they want to use Microsoft's teams rather than Google or Zoom, whatever that's fine. Doesn't really make any difference. But like fundamental structural change the way that we work, then that's a kind of no. So, setting boundaries around those really important. And as I said, I talked about it looked like a rational actor. If you like, like a reasonable person on the other side of the fence, will understand the reasons why, you know, as long as you explain why, then the reasonable person will understand. So, don't shy away from sometimes saying no to a client because in the end, it's things for the right reasons for their particular account.
Quick wins. So, this isn't necessarily about, like completely tearing up their advertising campaigns and like rebuilding that straightaway and but increase, you know, increasing their ROS, whatever. It's just about identifying what the priorities are and being able to show the client what you're made of basically so they can see, they can build confidence in who you are and what you're saying. So that could be across a million and one different things. But I think it's just about showing that level of professionalism and expertise that build confidence.
Visibility is really important. So just transparency around what you're doing when you're doing it, who's doing it. Obviously, all of the reporting sales performance, all of those kind of things really critical. We don't hide anything away from our clients. They have access to everything. You know, they can see the reports you know, that we deliver to them through MerchantSpring and obviously that's incredibly detailed. And that's a good thing. You know. We shouldn't shy away from any sort of things that are not necessarily great. We've got to show them everything and actually you'll get to a better position if you're just sort of very open and transparent with the client.
And then that kind of leads on to the last one and probably the sort of most important one which is about reducing uncertainty. So, the biggest sort of pain point that I've found running an agency essentially is clients get unhappy not necessary that something hasn't happened or not know what or something's gone wrong. It's just when they don't know that something's gone wrong or that they don't know when something's going to happen or why something's happening. So, reducing the uncertainty and essentially communicating properly to the client is critical. So that's the fundamental thing. It's like, you know, let's say your flights delayed and you're waiting in the airport lounge and you don't get an update that the frustrating thing isn't necessarily the delay, the frustrating thing is not knowing that what the delay is or when things are going to change. So, that that's really important.
Paul Sonneveld
And so there are some great nuggets there. I think, you know, all of this stuff you sort of think about. And actually you know what, if I was a client, I would like that. That seems like good common sense. It's amazing how I think the risk is you get busy, running your agency. You get busy doing the doing and you forget about these things. So I mean purposeful and mindful about it is really, really important. I was going to ask you what you know these things don't tend to come about because you know from a theoretical standpoint. Sometimes these frameworks and these ideas come about and the focus comes about from some painful experiences, right? and some hard learnings. If you care a share, what I mean, what are some of the hardest learnings you've had to you’ve had to take in since you started your agency?
Tom Baker
I think in the early days, There are things that you just don't know that you don't know. I sound like Donald Rumsfeld. But if anyone remembers that, but there are absolutely things you are not going to know that you don't like. So like let's say, for example, when I first started out, you know, as in-house with a toy company and I didn't know about sort of what we needed to do from that perspective in Amazon. And then low and behold, Amazon suspended the account because we didn't have the right information in there.
So, it's when you do, you don't know the things, you don't know. So that's, when you start an agency or any kind of organization from scratch, there's just things that you haven't considered. So there's always times where we drop the ball, particularly those early days. And I think it's just about being honest and saying look, I didn't know that, hands up like I will go and rectify that immediately. Here's what I’m going to do to address it, here’s when it will be done.
So, actually moving the conversation on to being proactive and solving it basically and communicating that to them. People will be most of the time, pretty understanding, if something goes wrong, and I didn't think you want to be in a situation where like you're fearful of having to message a client and say, look this thing has not gone quite right. I'd always sort of towards openness and like and if they have a problem with that, you can address it later. But always towards that side. yes, I think the challenge is just like, there's always something new or there's something you're just not aware of but being very mindful of that.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah. And I guess you're mentioning through your commentary there. It's not just acknowledging the promise also, how you respond. I certainly found my time, how you respond it every kind of disaster. There's a little bit of opportunity to, to just show that you take them seriously and to deepen the relationship, when kind of crisis hits, its true. Look, I'm looking at the clock and we're about to cross over the 40-minute mark. I know I promised you 20 minutes, but you know, let's just cover one last topic, I call it like the future of Marketplace Agencies. A bit of a vision casting question, where do you see the industry evolved? And, you know, someone like FordeBaker, Where do you think you'll be in three to five years?
Tom Baker
So I think so right now we're a full-service Amazon Agency. So anything to do with Amazon, we can take care of it. And so the natural step really for us is to do other marketplaces and we're talking to clients about that whether it's Walmart or some of the European ones as well as obviously, there's loads of different marketplaces, but I think like the real Evolution for an agency like ours is into sort of this for the burgeoning retail media landscape.
So I think where we will probably end up is having that sort of depth and it will continue to be full service, but they'll be this sort of layer on top of retail media. So kind of the bigger budget advertising across retail media, and it's obviously early days for that space and there's a lot of buzz around it at the moment. And we'll see how that develops but I think for an agency like ours, that's where it's going to go. But also for you know there are obviously Amazon agencies that only do Amazon Advertising right now and I think probably they'll evolve into something like that as well. But I also think there's always space and always will be for like for specialization and sort of niching down onto. I will be absolutely fine if we stayed as we are as an Amazon agency because there's just so much opportunity there. But, we're always looking for new ways to evolve.
Paul Sonneveld
Yeah amazing. Yeah it's only one thing we can be sure of is this place will not be static. Suddenly, just looking at the rate of change that Amazon's rolling things out just trying to stay on top of that is a day job and the suddenly you know clients will you know will ask for more services and broaden their remit particularly if you build that trust in a particular area.
So yeah, fantastic. Well we are out of time Tom. So I'm going to have to wrap it up. Let me first of all, say thank you so much for coming on the show today. I love the not just the expertise, but real and just a passion. You can see you're someone who cares deeply about your agency serving clients but also thinking really hard about, you know, how you set yourself up and those are mean you get it all right. The first place but actually specifically thinking about those questions and trying to answer them as well as you can. So thank you for being generous and just sharing your knowledge, your experience with us.
For any viewers that are interested in exploring your services always like to ask me, how did they get hold of you? What's the best way to get in touch?
Tom Baker
Yep, so they can book a free consultation with me through our website, if they go to fordebaker.com which is f-o-r-d-e-b-a-k-e-r.com, you'll see their book consultation link in the top right? That come straight through to me and you know I'm you know, as you say like I spend a lot of my time talking to businesses even if we don't work with. It's a really enjoyable part of what I do as a business owner and also wanting to read. I have a kind of passion for you know the Amazons space becoming more professional more interesting more collaborative for everyone. So happy to talk to people anytime or grab me on LinkedIn, there's a million and one Tom Baker's on LinkedIn. So search for Tom Baker,
Paul Sonneveld
You're the one.
Tom Baker
Yeah.
Paul Sonneveld
Thank you so much, Tom till next time. And that's it for today's episode of Marketplace Masters. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening whether you've done that live or watch the recording, great to have you. Don't forget to visit our website to check out all of our latest features and special offers for listeners of this podcast and I look forward to getting together for our next episode in a week's time. See you then, take care and bye, bye.
