Recommended Tools & Resources for Agencies

Good non-fiction writing is the opposite of everything you learned in school. Whether you're doing content writing or just sending emails, this book will make you a better writer. We know, because it did for both of us.

New entrepreneurs have a tendency to overshare and talk too much about themselves. People hate that. I (Jake) didn't realize that until I read this. It's a guide to becoming the most fascinating person in the room without ever talking about yourself, and building a network of people who want to work with and trust you.

The gold standard for marketing books. If you only ever read one book about marketing, let this be it.

Spend a lot of money on ads? That's what this card was designed for. Use it right and get 4X points on advertising spend.

Another good card to use for advertising spend. Not quite as good as the Amex Business Gold Card, but some places have problems with Amex, so it can be a good backup. It's also more newbie-friendly with a lower annual fee. Get 3X points for ad spend on social media sites and search engines.

HubSpot is a lot of things. There is very little that it can't do, and some people build their entire business on it. We don't go that far, but we do like, use, and recommend their CRM.

Easy, intuitive cloud design software for the whole team. See the images on this site? They were edited in Canva.

At this point we have dealt with domains at all of the major registrars. Hover is our favorite. Simple to navigate, good support, and no upsells.

Google Workspace is the office suite we use and regularly recommend to clients. Some of them only use it for a professional email solution, and it's worth the price for that alone. It's a good pick for agencies and their clients.

Solid email marketing software. Great for agencies and for clients — as long as you don't touch affiliate marketing. If you're going to play with affiliate marketing, we recommend skipping Mailchimp and going straight to AWeber.

Email marketing software that is affiliate friendly. Cody used AWeber for years before we started using it for the podcast. It does everything you expect an email marketing service to do.

We use Mailgun as an SMTP relay server. It makes sure the contact form submissions on our client websites actually make it to their inbox. Easy setup and affordable at scale.

Want a yacht? Stop it. Private jet? Knock it off. If you're serious about business, then you should also be serious about your money and investments. Welcome to the wonderful world of Vanguard. This message is brought to you by Cody.

We used to subscribe to all major industry publications, then unsubscribed after realizing everything that mattered was covered in Stacked Marketer. If you run a marketing agency, you should subscribe.

We use Deel to handle the logistics of our global team. If your team is global too, you can manage your own contracts and handle payments through Wise, or... you could use Deel. Reimburse contractors, employ team members through an EOR, get global visa support — all of this is possible through Deel.

Stripe clearly prioritizes ecommerce businesses, but still does the best job we've found for invoicing and processing payments for agencies. The ability to set up recurring subscriptions works well for productized services and determing monthly recurring gross profit.

ClickUp keeps our team in sync for both one-off projects and monthly marketing accounts. It's where we keep track of website builds, client requests, and even this podcast. Super customizable for diferent use cases.

Agency Analytics is what we use for client reporting. After a few failed attempts at alternatives (including Looker Studio), we ultimately settled on them. They're not perfect, but they are reliable, and that's what our clients need most.

If you're new to this and using WordPress as a website builder, go with Bluehost for web hosting. When you're new, what matters most is customer support that can afford to waste time answering your newbie questions. Bluehost has the economy of scale to do this (24/7 chat, phone, and email support).

MDDHosting has reseller hosting that works well for both marketing and web design agencies. Their support team has taught us a lot over the years. They're very knowledgable and always respond quickly to support tickets.

Wix Studio is an all-in-one website builder for agencies. It combines a lot of other tools recommended here into a comprehensive WordPress alternative. This website is built on Wix Studio, so if you want an idea of the kind of websites you can build, take a look around the rest of this site.

We use Divi by Elegant Themes as our WordPress theme and page builder. Our team of non-developers can edit client websites relatively easily with the visual builder, and the community surrounding Divi regularly provide simple solutions to common problems. The lifetime license was one of the best purchases we made when starting our agency.

Ninja Forms is one of the few WordPress plugins we use. The top-tier price package includes all add-ons and allows for easy contact form customization. Our clients are happy with how they look and can get the information they need without us needing to code. It also cooperates well with conversion tracking.