Should Your Agency Create Products?
Key Takeaways
- Key questions: how to allocate time between agency and product, and how to communicate a clear vision to the team
- Validate market demand before extensive product development to avoid building something nobody wants
- Separate SaaS products from agency operations structurally to prevent one from consuming the other
Andrew Dymski and Gray MacKenzie tackle a question many agency owners consider: should you create products alongside your services business?
The Good, Bad, and Ugly
The first half of the episode covers the broader question of inbound agencies creating products. Examples include Paul Roetzer at PR20/20 who wrote Marketing Agency Blueprint and Marketing Performance Blueprint, Max Traylor at IMR Corp with the Content Marketer’s Blueprint, Ethan Giffin at Groove with HubShop.ly, and Bob, Tom, and John at IMPACT with the Blog About tool.
The second half dives into personal lessons from launching DoInbound. Andrew and Gray share the honest challenges of building software while running an agency - the time demands, the technical learning curve, and the impact on team focus.
Two Key Questions
Two critical questions emerge for any agency considering product development. First, how do you allocate time between both businesses? The pull of client work is constant and urgent, while product development requires sustained, focused effort. Second, how do you communicate a clear vision to the team when the company’s attention is split?
Practical Takeaways
The recommendations are practical: validate market demand before investing heavily in development, separate the product from agency operations structurally to prevent one from consuming the other, and prioritize user experience design early rather than adding features reactively. Building something out of nothing is a unique experience - exciting and frustrating at the same time, and always taking longer than you first expected.