Shows
Build a Better Agency PodcastEpisode 504 Explore the Findings of the 2025 Agency Edge Research with Susan BaierWelcome to a timely episode of Build a Better Agency! This week, host Drew McLellan is joined by research partner Susan Baier from Audience Audit to unveil the results of the 2025 Agency Edge Research, fresh from its debut at the Build a Better Agency Summit. Together, they dig deep into how agency clients really feel about artificial intelligence—where they’re embracing it, where they’re hesitant, and what they truly want from their agency partners as AI becomes an ever-more central part of the marketing landscape. Susan and Drew break down the study’s findings, revealing surprisi...2025-06-0249 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastEpisode 501 Research Insights from Agency Core with Susan Baier and Brian GerstnerWelcome to a compelling new episode of Build a Better Agency! This week, host Drew McLellan is joined by familiar faces Susan Baier from Audience Audit and Brian Gerstner from White Label IQ to discuss the findings of the 2025 Agency Core research study. Together, Susan and Brian have launched Agency Core, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to providing agency owners with powerful, unbiased data about what’s really going on in the agency world—and the latest results are as sobering as they are enlightening. Drew, Susan, and Brian unpack the study’s in-depth findings, based on responses from o...2025-05-1256 min
Better Experiences by Design™Stand Out Moments From Season 1: Insights from 2024’s Industry LeadersWelcome to a special episode of Better Experiences by Design! In this episode, we revisit some of the most impactful moments from the past year, featuring seven remarkable leaders across various industries. Together, these thought leaders share invaluable insights into key themes like understanding your audience, building a strong company culture, mastering effective communication, achieving personal excellence, and driving growth through adaptability and leadership.Whether you’re looking to enhance your business development strategies, improve employee experience, or inspire your team to perform at their best, this episode brings together actionable takeaways to help you create better ex...2025-01-0734 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastLaying cobblestones for effective agency thought leadership with Susan BaierIt’s no secret that new business for agencies was brutal in 2023. And for some in 2024, it’s been equally difficult. So, for 2025, we want to challenge you to get unstuck from those difficult sales cycles and lay the groundwork for some new energy as we come to the end of this year. This week, Susan Baier joined me again to help us look at the agency sales cycle a little differently. Next year, it’s all going to be about using research studies to build your thought leadership portfolio, create cobblestone content, and attract right-fit client...2024-11-0459 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastImproving client-agency trust and other takeaways from the 2024 Agency Edge Research study with Susan BaierEvery year, we go out into the field to understand the biggest pain points and priorities for both agencies and clients. This year, we took data from the 2024, 2019, and 2014 Agency Edge Research studies to compare how client expectations have changed over the years. This year, the burning issue was client-agency trust — what clients look for in an agency, how an agency can retain clients, and what causes a client to look elsewhere for another agency. To help make sense of all the changes, Susan Baier from Audience Audit joins us to discuss what agencies ca...2024-06-1752 min
Agency LifeThe 3 Keys to Thought Leadership That Drives ROI w/ Susan BaierHow can you leverage thought leadership to gain new followers, win new clients, keep them longer and increase referrals for your agency?Susan Baier, Founder of Audience Audit, where they help agencies create thought leadership content based on quantitative research that builds trust with potential clients, has seen thought leadership done well (with great results) and has seen it done poorly (with wasted time and money).Based on her team’s on research into the topic, in today’s conversation you’ll hear from Susan:The 3 specific elements you have to have to execute great...2024-05-161h 00Build a Better Agency PodcastThe ROI of making your existing clients happier with Susan BaierIt’s that time of year again — we’re evaluating the 2023 Agency Edge Research study, where we polled people who hire agencies about what they expect from agencies and what gets them to open their wallets for us. Despite a challenging year of having to find creative ways to get existing clients to spend more money with us, a lot of good news came out of this study. Overall, existing clients with larger budgets are much more willing to stick with an agency and spend more money if we present them with a compelling reason to do...2023-06-1949 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastHow does your employee satisfaction stack up? - Agency Edge Research analysis 2022 with Susan BaierWhat makes an employee want to stick around at your agency? Every year since 2014, we’ve been doing the research and compiling it into our Agency Edge Research to help agency owners get to the bottom of how to maintain employee satisfaction. We expected certain things like financial compensation and work-from-home flexibility to be most important this year. Still, we were surprised to find many other desires shining through that have nothing to do with money. This year, Susan Baier returns to help me break down our findings. In our analysis, we’ll highlight three cate...2022-09-1959 min
On Top of PR with Jason MuddHow brands feel about their abilities to endure the recession with Drew McLellan and Susan BaierSend us a textDrew and Susan discuss their findings from the eighth annual Agency Edge Research Series, using input from approximately 1,200 clients in the U.S. spanning multiple industries. This study explores how clients feel about their organization’s ability to endure the recession, the actions they’ve already taken, and how likely they are to make changes that could either positively or negatively affect their agencies.Guests:Susan Baier is the CEO of Audience Audit and has been a marketing strategist and researcher for more than 30 years. She crafts cust...2022-02-1533 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastThe 2021 Agency Edge Research Series with Susan BaierUnderstanding how clients view the agency relationship is key to making the most of that partnership. Every year since 2014, AMI and Audience Audit have brought you The Agency Edge Research Series to hopefully give helpful insights into what clients and prospects are looking for when working with agencies. The 2020 research correctly indicated that 2021 was going to be very robust for agency business. This year’s study was built to better understand the thinking behind this growth on the client side, in particular how this explosion in engagement affected how they thought about their agency relationships. The Agency Ed...2021-12-0645 min
On Top of PR with Jason MuddWhy your company marketing efforts should stay active during a recession with Drew McLellan andSusan BaierSend us a textLearn the three ways brands are responding to the current economic climate and why you shouldn’t ditch your marketing efforts during a recession with Susan Baier, president of Audience Audit and Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute.Five things you’ll learn from this episode:What three ways brands are responding to the economic climateWhy brands who are actively building attention and being aggressive in their marketing efforts will win out over their competition when the recession is overHow to work with an outside agency during this...2020-12-0336 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastHow are clients being impacted by COVID and the recession with Susan BaierHow are clients thinking about and reacting to both COVID and the recession it triggered is on every agency owner’s mind. Will our clients go dormant? How are they approaching 2021 budgets and plans? Because we know this is vital intelligence for you, we decided to make that the focus of the 2020 Agency Edge research project. You’re going to find the data insightful and a relief. The Agency Edge research series is a collaboration between AMI, Audience Audit, and Dynata. Audience Audit’s Susan Baier joins me to walk you through the highlights of the research findin...2020-11-091h 13Build a Better Agency PodcastThe ROI of thought leadership with Susan Baier and Stephen WoessnerThought leadership is one of those buzzwords that has been so overused, it has almost been rendered meaningless. But as Stephen Woessner and I preach to agency owners in our book, Sell with Authority, when done well for the right reasons, being an authority can drive significant revenue for your agency. Stephen’s agency, Predictive ROI, decided they wanted to quantify the value of thought leadership so they engaged Susan Baier (Audience Audit) to do some research to answer the question “is there an ROI to being a thought leader?” Creating unique, relevant content targeting a very narrow...2020-10-261h 03
Onward NationThought leadership and trust, with Susan BaierA marketing strategist for over 30 years, Susan Baier founded Audience Audit in 2009 to help organizations understand their best audiences based on attitudes and needs rather than just demographics or purchase behavior. She develops custom segmentation research for marketers and agencies around the world, supporting their efforts to create marketing initiatives that are more relevant, more efficient, and more impactful. What you’ll learn about in this episode: How Susan and her team conduct studies and use the organic data they have collected to identify common, shared attitudes between respondents and identify patterns Susan breaks down the fo...2020-07-2900 minOnward NationHow to market your way through the crisis [Part 2], with Stephen WoessnerGood Morning Onward Nation — I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host. Thanks very much for taking the time — please know — it’s always an honor to have you here. Today’s episode is going to be a solocast — where it will be just you and me exploring a topic with some real depth. And this episode is Part 2 of the solocast from several weeks ago that I entitled, “How to Market Your Way through the Crisis.” If you missed that episode — click here to listen to Part I. I will start off with a q...2020-07-1700 minOnward NationHow to market your way through the crisis [Part 1], with Stephen WoessnerGood Morning Onward Nation – I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host. Thanks for coming back – and if you’re new to Onward Nation – please know – I greatly appreciate your time and it’s wonderful to have you here. Today’s episode is going to be a solocast – just you and me exploring a topic with some real depth. And sort of a house-keeping heads up – this may very well be one of the longest solocast I’ve ever recorded – if not the longest. In fact – during one of the morning kick-start meetings with my Predictiv...2020-04-2900 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastAgency Edge Research Results 2019 with Susan BaierEvery year we partner with Audience Audit to conduct research that we know will benefit agency leaders. This year, we decided to re-visit some of the questions we initially asked in 2014 to see if there had been significant shifts. In some ways, the results showed a consistent trend and in some other areas, there’d been some pretty significant changes. In the 2019 study we included clients from the US, Canada, Australia and the UK and there were over 1,000 respondents who participated. In this episode we’ll walk you through some of the most significant ah ha m...2019-10-2158 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastEpisode 72: What We Learned in Our 2016 Research, with Susan Baier.Susan Baier began her career as a brand manager for companies like Dial and Conoco-Philips. She also worked agency side and within client companies in their research departments, honing her skills as a research professional. Recognizing that primary research was often too expensive for small to mid-sized agencies, she launched Audience Audit, where she conducts quantitative attitudinal audience segmented research. She helps her agency clients develop marketing strategy for their clients based on customer insights. They find it much easier to develop messaging, strategic plans, and business development plans with real data that helps them understand how...2017-02-2047 minBuild a Better Agency PodcastEpisode 14: Using Research to Grow Your Agency, with Susan Baier.Susan Baier began her career as a brand manager for companies like Dial and Conoco-Philips. She also worked agency side and within client companies in their research departments, honing her skills as a research professional. Recognizing that primary research was often too expensive for small to mid-sized agencies, she launched Audience Audit, where she conducts quantitative attitudinal audience segmented research. She helps her agency clients develop marketing strategy for their clients based on customer insights. They find it much easier to develop messaging, strategic plans, and business development plans with real data that helps them understand how...2016-01-1149 min
Social Pros PodcastWhy Agencies Get Fired so OftenSusan Baier and Drew McLellan, Founders of Audience Audit Inc. and Agency Management Institute respectively, join Jay and Adam on Social Pros to discuss the surprising reasons why companies give agencies their walking papers and what that means for the evolution of advertising. 2016-01-0549 min
Social Pros PodcastWhy Agencies Get Fired so OftenSusan Baier and Drew McLellan, Founders of Audience Audit Inc. and Agency Management Institute respectively, join Jay and Adam on Social Pros to discuss the surprising reasons why companies give agencies their walking papers and what that means for the evolution of advertising. 2016-01-0549 min