Why the Agency Playbook Myth Is Holding You Back
Every few months, the same request pops up in agency circles:
“Just give me the playbook.”
You’ve heard it.
Create the playbook so we can hand it to clients.
“Ten ways to get more customers.”
“Ten ways to put your prices up.”
“Ten ways to close deals faster.”
The dream is seductive: one universal recipe for success you can copy-paste into any agency. But here’s the truth, spoken plainly:
Playbooks don’t work.
They can’t. Not at scale. Not in this industry. Not in 2025.
Let’s unpack why.
1. Digital Marketing Is a Service and Services Are Messy
A service is a disposable unit of time delivered to a specific client with specific needs at a specific moment in time.
Digital marketing adds another layer:
What works today doesn’t always work tomorrow.
What works for one client rarely works the same for the next.
Everything “depends.”
And once you accept that, the idea that one playbook could work for 5, 500 or 10,000 agencies becomes… well, nonsense.
2. Your Clients Aren’t Generic. So Why Would Your Advice Be?
A 5-person PPC shop serving local businesses has a totally different customer, sales cycle, pricing tension and competitive landscape than a 50-person venture-backed e-com performance agency.
Yet the “playbook” treats them the same.
Agencies win when guidance is specific, contextual and built around a real customer with real needs. Not an imagined generic one.
3. Technology Moves Too Fast for Prescriptive Answers
One year, email is outperforming everything.
Next year, AI-driven video takes off.
LinkedIn switches its algorithm.
Google deploys a new AI surface.
Short-form content surges, stalls, returns.
And this is the simplest version of the story.
A static playbook can’t survive an environment where:
Channels evolve monthly
Tools change weekly
Tactics go stale almost instantly
Competitors adapt at speed.
You can’t freeze-frame a moving market.
4. Tactics Are Overrated. Context Is Everything.
Playbooks are almost always tactical.
But tactics aren’t the problem.
Yes, you know it’s “strategy not tactics”… but even that misses the point a little.
It’s about the customer.
Their pains.
Their desires.
Their urgency.
Their environment.
Their market.
Their emotional drivers.
Everything you do flows from the customer you choose to serve. If you change the customer, the “playbook” becomes unrecognisable.
5. If Everyone Followed the Same Playbook, It Would Stop Working Anyway
This one’s almost too obvious to state.
If every agency suddenly used the exact same 10 tactics, in the exact same order, the market response would collapse. Everyone would cancel each other out.
Differentiation would evaporate.
Performance would nosedive.
The playbook would self-destruct.
Uniformity kills advantage.
So… Is There *Anything* That Works?
Absolutely.
There’s Stuff What Works… the principles, approaches and moves that consistently outperform *right now* in the real world:
Operation Referrals (currently knocking it out of the park)
Repositioning that speaks directly to the client's pains
Tightening propositions so clients instantly say, “I’ve arrived”
Radical clarity in who you serve and why.
These aren’t prescriptive playbooks.
They’re tested, flexible, adaptive tools rooted in what the best agencies are doing today, not what someone wrote in a PDF three years ago.
They’re starting points.
They’re frameworks.
They’re “stuff that works for now.”
And that distinction matters.
The Bottom Line
There is no universal playbook.
There never has been.
There never will be.
But there *is* a smarter way to grow:
Understand your customer deeply
Build around their reality
Adapt faster than the market
Use Stuff What Works as fuel, not doctrine
Stay nimble as technology, competition and client behaviour shift.
Agencies don’t win by following scripts.
They win by thinking, adapting and delivering what matters in context.
That’s the work.
That’s the game.
And that’s why playbooks don’t work, but Stuff What Works absolutely does.
Have a marvellous day.
Let’s keep going.