Why You Shouldn’t Delegate Strategy to Your Agency

Lead Your Marketing Without Getting Buried in the Weeds

Most agencies are great at executing.

They’ll build you a nice website, launch ads, manage your socials, and crank out content. But if you ask them to set your marketing direction, to define your goals, shape your brand, craft messaging, or choose your metrics, you’ve already taken a dangerous step.

Because strategy isn’t something you can outsource.

If you’re handing over the strategic wheel, you’re not just outsourcing tasks—you’re outsourcing decisions. And no one will care about the right outcomes as much as you do.

Let’s break down why that’s a problem and what to do instead.

What Strategy Means, and What It Doesn’t

Strategy gets thrown around a lot. It’s the foundation of everything that follows.

Here’s what strategy is:

• Choosing who you’re serving (and who you’re not).
• Clarifying what job your product or service solves for that customer.
• Understanding why they buy (and what stops them).
• Deciding where to focus time, energy, and cash.
• Setting measurable goals that track progress and signal traction.

Strategy is not “We’ll post three times a week and run a few ads.” That’s execution.

Execution without strategy is like running fast in the wrong direction.

What Agencies Can Do Well, When You Lead Them

Let’s be clear: agencies and freelancers can be incredibly valuable.

They bring deep skills, extra bandwidth, and fresh perspective. They know how to produce, optimise, launch, and scale. But their job is to build the house, not decide where to put it, how big it should be, or who it’s for.

When strategy comes from the business, agencies thrive. They have clarity. They can focus on doing what they do best: executing well.

When strategy is vague, missing, or “left to the agency”, you get:

• Generic campaigns that don’t connect.
• Confusing messaging that misses the customer.
• Content that looks nice but doesn’t convert.
• A growing pile of work that’s busy, not effective.

Agencies can run fast. But if you don’t set the direction, don’t be surprised when they end up somewhere you never meant to go.

The Role of the Internal Champion

Here’s the missing piece in most underperforming agency relationships: the internal champion.

This is the person who owns the brief. The one who holds the vision. The one who ties marketing activity back to real business goals.

They don’t need to write every post or build dashboards themselves, but they do need to:

• Translate business goals into clear marketing objectives.
• Define positioning, messaging, and customer insight.
• Approve briefs, review progress, and give feedback.
• Spot red flags and course-correct early.
• Align internal stakeholders so the agency isn’t working in a vacuum.

Sometimes that person is the Founder. Sometimes it’s a Head of Marketing or a Fractional CMO. Whoever it is, their job is to keep strategy tight and execution honest.

Without an internal champion, the agency ends up guessing. And even good guesses burn cash.

Should You Be Leading Your Marketing?

Use this quick Strategic Leadership Self-Assessment to check whether you are ready to lead your marketing.

Strategic Leadership Self-Assessment

Score yourself (1 = not at all, 5 = completely)

1. I can clearly explain who my best-fit customer is.
2. I know what job my product or service solves for them.
3. I’ve defined what makes us meaningfully different from competitors.
4. I’ve identified my North Star metric and supporting KPIs.
5. I can spot the difference between good marketing execution and bad.
6. I regularly review performance against our goals and make adjustments.
7. I’ve created clear briefs for anyone working on our marketing.
8. I act as the decision-maker and quality checker for external work.
9. I ensure that all marketing aligns with our broader business strategy.
10. I have time blocked weekly to think about marketing, not just react to it.

Scoring:

• 40–50: You’re leading like a pro. Keep steering the ship.
• 30–39: Solid foundation, but tighten your strategy-execution feedback loop.
• 20–29: You’re at risk of flying blind. Time to take back control.
• Below 20: You’ve likely outsourced too much. Begin by reviewing your brief, goals, and agency alignment.

Don’t Panic. Take the Lead.

You don’t need to become a marketing expert overnight. But you do need to own the direction.

Here’s how to start:

1. Revisit your positioning and goals before your next agency brief.
2. Designate a clear internal owner for each marketing initiative.
3. Set aside time monthly to review results against business KPIs.
4. If you’re too deep in the weeds, bring in a strategic partner, not just another executor.