JoshuaOneNine is the marketing department for local brands, not just another vendor in a silo. Our comprehensive approach is best compared to having your own employees on staff. Imagine if you put out job postings looking to hire a team of professionals to handle all your marketing. What would you expect to pay each of them? (A lot.) What would you expect them to do? (Pretty much everything.) How often would you expect to communicate with them? (All the time.) What would that communication be like? (Warm and relational.) Would you expect them to also have a second job with your competitors? (No.) Would you have contracts with hard ‘renewal dates,’ or would they just, you know...work for you?
JoshuaOneNine has developed a model that puts the relationship first. We‘re always on the same side of the table. Here are the top ways we live that out:
Inclusive, Flat Monthly Fee
NOT Hourly, and NOT Commission
Business owners (including ourselves) prefer predictable costs. And as a relational agency, the overwhelming bulk of our conversations with you should be about marketing ideas, not money, fees, and invoice scrutiny. Since its inception in 2007, JoshuaOneNine has worked on a flat monthly fee, not hourly, and not on commission. You shouldn’t need to hesitate to ask us a question or call for a meeting because the clock would start ticking on an hourly fee. We also don’t care how much your separate advertising budget is. Whether you’ve got an additional $20,000, $200K, or $2M for annual advertising, we don’t make any more or less. There’s no secret ulterior motives, so we’re not constantly inventing reasons for you to increase the ad budget. We’re on your side of the table, with only the brand’s best interests in mind. You just sign-up for a custom-prepared package, pay us the same fee every month, and then we do whatever needs done within the scope of that package. It’s like paying an employee a salary, and it’s what it actually looks like to be a relational agency.
Our Fees are Separate from Your Ad Budget
We don’t “take our cut” from one big pile of money
If you were to hire a full-time marketing employee, your actual advertising budget itself wouldn’t be included in their salary. You would pay them for their work, and then the ad budget would come out of a separately-allocated pile of dollars. Again, because we’re serious about being a relational agency who functions as your marketing department, our arrangement follows that pattern. Our fees cover the cost of our services, value, and expertise, but when it comes time to actually place paid ads, that would come from a separately-determined budget, for which you would be billed directly as we place various ads on your behalf. JoshuaOneNine is not the middle-man for your advertising dollars.
Contractual Freedom
Like an employee, we just work with you until one of us decides otherwise.
Another perk of working with JoshuaOneNine is that our contracts don’t have “end dates.” You’re not signing up with us “for a year.” You’re just signing up with us. On purpose, our structure is “cancel anytime with 60 days notice.” If that never happens, we keep working together. But if at some point, either of us determines this isn’t a good fit, it’s silly to be stuck together 5 more months until the “contract is up.” Relationships should be mutually chosen, not artificially impacted by a calendar, and since there’ll always be a culture of reporting, communication and ongoing feedback, there’s no need to create unnecessary stress by manufacturing arbitrary ‘renewal’ dates. Again, this is how you’d approach hiring an employee. It’s what it means to be relational.
We Only Grow if You Do
Our flat monthly fee only increases if your revenue does.
Again, in the relational spirit of prioritizing creative ideas while minimizing conversations about money, our flat, monthly fee only goes up next year if your revenue does. Our agreements include simple, built-in annual escalators tied to results. We don‘t believe in expecting a raise “just because.” We need to earn it. So we only grow if you do. Which means if you’re paying us more next year, it’s because you can easily afford to...because things are working.
Category Exclusivity
We’re loyal to you. We’re not working with your competition too.
This is one of the big perks of working with JoshuaOneNine, and one we offer voluntarily. Within your category (which we’ll define together), you’ll be the only business on our roster statewide. As our work starts producing results, we don’t use our success with you to drum-up dollars from other related businesses in town. We’re committed to you. When our creative team brainstorms a new idea for your industry, we don’t spend 2 seconds wondering which of our clients should get it. You get it. Frankly, this is why we’re pretty selective about which local brands we partner with. We’ve only got one available roster spot per category, and (especially in highly competitive industries) we’re looking to work with the business who wants to grow, make an impact in our community (and beyond), and become a true local brand.