Why marketers must shift to value-based work

May 19, 2025

You’re great at your job. You put in the hours, stay responsive to clients, hit every deadline, and keep campaigns moving.

But here’s the thing: if you’re a salaried marketer at an ad agency and you’re still being measured by how many hours you’re online—or how fast you turn decks—you're stuck in a system built for a different era.

It’s time for marketers to stop being valued for the time they clock in—and start being recognized for the impact they deliver.

Because here’s the reality: agency life rewards visibility. But the clients you serve, and the results you help drive, care about outcomes. And so should your career.

Why Agencies Still Prioritize Time Over Impact Ad agencies are built on a legacy of billable hours. Even if your role isn’t tied to direct billing, the culture often is:

Slacks at 9 p.m. to show you’re available
Praise for being “fast” and “on it”
Endless email threads and emergency decks that keep you reactive

But modern marketing isn’t about speed alone. It’s about clarity, creativity, and results.

You could spend 20 hours polishing a pitch deck. Or you could spend 4 hours asking the right questions, analyzing the data, and pitching a bold new angle that lands the client.

Which one creates more value?

The Hidden Cost of Being Measured by Time When your agency work is framed around effort instead of impact:

You optimize for busyness, not results
You keep taking on low-leverage tasks to “look productive”
You deprioritize strategic thinking because it’s less visible
You burn out

And ironically? The better you get, the faster you work. But in an hour-based system, that can make you look like you’re doing less.

That’s a trap.

What Value-Based Work Looks Like Inside an Agency This doesn’t mean working fewer hours. It means tying your hours to higher-leverage impact.

1. Outcomes over outputs

Start thinking beyond deliverables. Ask yourself:

Did that social campaign improve engagement or retention?
Did the audience strategy reduce CPM or increase ROAS?
Did my creative pitch help close the new business?

Even if your agency isn’t tracking those KPIs directly, you should be.

2. Own metrics that matter

Go deeper than impressions and clicks. Start measuring:

Conversion improvements
Client satisfaction after your input
How fast a project moved because of your work
ROI from creative/testing frameworks you helped implement

Agencies love when clients are happy. Tie your work to the parts of the work that keep clients renewing.

3. Act like a strategist, even if you're not one

If you’re the media planner, social manager, analyst, or copywriter—great. Now ask better questions:

“What’s the business goal behind this brief?”
“How will we know this campaign worked?”
“What’s the simplest version that delivers the same outcome?”

Bring proactive thinking to the table. Clients (and your bosses) notice.

4. Use AI to create leverage

Agency work moves fast. The marketers who thrive are using AI to move faster—strategically.

Use ChatGPT or Claude to:

Draft version 1s of copy, posts, or slides
Brainstorm creative themes from briefs
Pull insights from messy campaign data

This doesn’t replace your thinking. It accelerates it—so you can spend more time adding insight, not formatting boxes.

How to Start the Shift (Even If Your Agency Still Tracks Time) You might not change the system overnight. But you can start shifting your mindset, and documenting your value:

Step 1: Track your impact

Keep a personal log of:

Projects where your work influenced performance
Campaigns you optimized that outperformed baseline
Times you solved a problem no one else caught

Step 2: Reframe your status updates

Instead of “Wrote 3 versions of the carousel copy,” say:

“Tested 3 versions; version B had a 26% higher engagement rate.”

Instead of “Helped with the pitch deck,” say:

“Streamlined the pitch story and included a test concept that the client chose for rollout.”

Step 3: Make your wins visible

Bring your results to 1:1s. Share learnings in team Slack channels. Present optimizations in a quick Loom.

You don’t need to brag. Just tie your work to impact.

Use These Prompts to Support Your Shift to Value-Based Work

Track your impact

I work at an ad agency as a [insert role]. Help me create a log template to track the impact of my work—not just the tasks I complete, but the results I influence. Include prompts to capture project goals, actions I took, and measurable outcomes.

Reframe status updates

I need help rewriting my weekly status update so it focuses on impact, not just tasks. Here's what I did this week: [insert 2–3 bullet points of completed work].

Rewrite each item to show the outcome or value it delivered to the client or internal team.

Connecting work to business metrics

Help me map the work I do as a [insert role—e.g., social media manager, strategist, analyst] to real business outcomes like retention, conversion rates, or revenue growth.

Include examples of how each type of deliverable (e.g., reports, decks, campaigns) ties back to value.

Act like a strategist

Act like a strategist reviewing a campaign brief. Give me 5 smart questions I can ask to better understand the business goals behind this brief: [insert summary of brief].

Also suggest how to position myself as a proactive thinker during the client meeting.

Use AI to increase work value

I’m a marketer at an agency. Help me use ChatGPT to speed up my work without sacrificing quality. Suggest AI workflows I can use for:

1. Drafting campaign copy
2. Brainstorming creative angles
3. Turning data into insights
4. Writing POVs or internal memos

Make wins visible

Give me examples of how to share high-impact results on Slack or during a 1:1 without sounding like I’m bragging. I want to make my work visible and tie it to outcomes.

Here’s a recent win: [insert description of project or result].

Plan career growth in an outcome-driven role

I want to move from being seen as a task-doer to a value driver at my agency. Create a simple 30-day plan I can follow to reposition myself internally. It should include daily/weekly habits and ways to document progress.

The Bottom Line Your job isn’t just to fill in slides or reply fast. Your job is to move the needle.