Winning Without Copying: Brett Snyder on Agency Growth and Trust

Behind the Agency Podcast with Brett Snyder, Founder & CEO of Knuckle Puck

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Prefer the highlights? Key takeaways and summary below.

TL;DR – Key Takeaways

• Knucklepuck (founded 2014) runs SEO + paid media (LinkedIn ads, Google ads, social amplification), mostly for B2B lead gen SaaS, plus some e-comm and B2C.

• Brett’s big obsession: impact + proof — doing work is nice, but quantifying ROI is what keeps relationships healthy.

• Competitive research is useful… but dangerous when you treat it like a checklist.

  • The goal isn’t “copy what’s working.”

  • The goal is “find white space and figure out how you’d win if you played for the other team.”

• His example: a finance education client copied competitors’ “veterans section”… and it underperformed.

The insight wasn’t “we should copy better.”

The insight was “everyone is doing the same small thing and it’s not enough.”

So they recommended going bigger: a standalone microsite with 5–10x the content.

Selling to clients who had a bad agency experience:

• Harder to earn trust (they’re guarded)

• But often better buyers (they already believe in the channel and have budget/staff)

• You’re selling the relationship first—like convincing someone after a bad breakup.

• Brett’s practical move for those “burned” clients: prove it early.

• Knuckle Puck does a free audit as part of proposals to show how they think and to address past pain points.

• But he warns: make sure the last relationship failed because of the agency, not because the client was impossible.

Industry change = opportunity.

• When GA4 was coming, they learned it early, then built a conversion/migration offering to help clients transition.

• His POV: agencies should be the first person in the water, figure it out, then come back with a plan.

“Going against best practices” shouldn’t be cosplay.

• Their real non-traditional move: they stopped accepting resumes to improve DEI and reduce “polished resume bias.”

• Instead, applicants answer thoughtful questions that reveal effort, thinking, and written communication.

What makes a client successful long-term?

• Brett’s #1 filter: having an internal advocate who cares deeply about results and can pull the agency into the right conversations.

Meet the Guest

Brett Snyder is the founder/CEO of Knuckle Puck, a digital marketing agency built around a simple idea:

It’s not enough to “do marketing.”

You’ve gotta show it worked, in a way the client actually believes.

Episode Summary

1) Knuckle Puck in 60 seconds

Brett started Knuckle Puck in 2014. They focus on:

• SEO

• Paid media (LinkedIn, Google, social amplification)

• Most of their work is in B2B SaaS lead gen, with some e-comm and B2C.

The throughline: impact and measurement.

2) Competitive research: useful… until it makes you average

Brett kicked off with a good nuance:

He’s not saying “don’t do competitive research.”

He’s saying “don’t treat it like a roadmap.”

Because modern tools make it easy to see:

• what competitors rank for

• where they’re ranking

• what you’re missing

• what bids they’re using

And that convenience creates a trap: you start doing “me too” marketing.

His alternative lens: quantify white space.

Instead of only asking:

“What are they doing that we’re not?”

Ask:

“What’s missing across the market?”

“Where is the market failing?”

“Where is there real unmet demand?”

The veteran audience example was perfect:

A client saw competitors all had a “veterans” section. So they built one too.

It didn’t move the needle.

Then they stepped back and asked a stronger question:

“If I worked for the competitor, how would I win?”

And the answer was basically:

“Not with a tiny subpage. Everyone’s doing that and it’s not enough.”

So they recommended going bigger:

• a standalone microsite

• 5–10x the content depth

That’s the difference between “copying the ingredients” and “actually changing the recipe.”

Common misconception he called out (and I’ve seen this too):

People assume “if Nike does it, it must work.”

But you don’t know if it’s working for them.

And even if it is… you’re not Nike.

3) Clients with bad agency experiences: hard mode, but high upside

Brett’s take was super human:

Selling to someone with a bad experience is like dating someone after a rough breakup.

They’re guarded. They’re skeptical. They’re watching everything you do.

That’s the hard part.

The upside is they often:

• already believe in the channel

• already have budget

• already have internal support

• want it to work this time

So if you listen carefully, they’ll basically tell you:

• what they expected

• what they didn’t get

• what would rebuild confidence

His advice: sell the relationship first.

And his tactical move: prove it.

Knuckle Puck does a free audit inside the proposal process. Not as a gimmick—more like due diligence.

But he also dropped a truth that a lot of agency owners skip:

Before you blame the previous agency, make sure the client wasn’t the problem.

Sometimes the “bad experience” is because:

• expectations were unrealistic

• no one responded on the client side

• there’s no CRM so attribution is impossible

• implementation never happened

So you have to diagnose the “breakup” before you agree to date.

4) Growth during industry change: be the first one in the water

Brett sees shifts (like Meta privacy changes, GA4, etc.) as opportunities.

His mental model:

You can’t control the tides.

You can control the vessel and how prepared you are.

So when GA4 was rolling out, they:

• learned it early

• learned how to migrate UA → GA4

• packaged that into something they could sell to existing/new clients

I like this because it’s a very “agency as guide” mentality:

Clients don’t just want tactics.

They want someone who knows what’s next.

Also: he was real about it sometimes not working.

Sometimes you launch a change-based offer and realize there’s no margin.

Still worth doing, because now you know.

5) Going against best practices… without being a try-hard

Brett made a distinction I respected:

Being “contrarian” just to look cool is useless.

Their actual non-traditional move was hiring-related:

They stopped accepting resumes.

Why:

• resumes reward polish and coaching

• polish is correlated with privilege (career centers, coaching, etc.)

• it can hide the real signal

So instead, applicants answer structured questions in writing.

This gives them signal on:

• effort

• clarity of thought

• communication (which is a huge part of client work)

They even get positive feedback from applicants:

“This was refreshing.”

Also smart: those written answers become internal context for the team later.

6) The #1 client-fit factor: an internal advocate

Brett’s best “agency reality” moment was this:

The biggest difference between great clients and frustrating clients is having an advocate inside.

Because “we’re an extension of your team” is true…

…but only if the client actually brings you into the right conversations.

That advocate:

• pulls you into the rooms you can’t access

• routes feedback through the right lens

• helps implementation happen

• cares about outcomes because their job is tied to it

And he said something subtle but important:

That advocate doesn’t have to be the most senior person.

Sometimes it’s the person “in the weeds” who will benefit most if the work succeeds

Notable Quotes

“Competitive research isn’t supposed to be an explicit roadmap… it’s supposed to be an opposition brief.”

“Clients coming off a bad experience… you’ve gotta sell the relationship before you sell yourself.”

“Every change is an opportunity… we should be the first person in the water.”

“We stopped accepting resumes… we want you to answer questions that extract how you think and communicate.”

“The #1 thing we look for in a good client is an advocate inside the building.”

Learn More / Follow Brett

• LinkedIn (best place to connect + debate ideas)

• Knuckle Puck: knucklepuckmedia.com

(because the punk band won’t sell him knucklepuck.com — which is honestly hilarious)