Debate: Specialized agency vs full service - which actually scales better? My split test surprised me.

Ran two agencies out of my Denver office for 6 months last year. One focused only on Facebook ads for e-com brands. The other tried to do everything from web dev to email flows. The specialized one grew revenue 40% faster with half the team stress. But the full service one landed bigger retainers from clients who wanted one vendor. Seems like narrow focus wins on margins and sanity but loses on total contract size. Anyone else run this test and see which side wins long term?

2 comments

2 Comments

eric3595d ago

@derekwalker hold on, you ran both from the SAME office at the same time?

derekwalker6d ago

Wait, did you say you ran both agencies out of the same office at the same time? Thats a pretty wild experiment but I gotta ask - are you sure the full service one wasn't just hurting itself by trying to do everything, instead of being really good at one thing? Most agencies I've seen that try to do web dev plus email plus ads end up with one or two really weak services that drag down the rest. The specialized shop probably got way better at actually driving sales because they could focus all their energy on learning one platform inside out. So that 40% revenue gap might be more about quality than just narrow vs wide focus.