Why Are Australian Business Owners Choosing Workshops Over Marketing Agencies?

Across Australia, more business owners are rethinking a decision to outsource customer acquisition to a marketing agency.

For years, the retainer model has been the default solution for founders who want more enquiries but don’t have the time, confidence, or internal expertise to run advertising themselves. In many cases, agencies do deliver results. But a growing number of Australian founders are finding that even when leads come in, the arrangement can leave them with limited control over the system that drives the growth. That’s why workshops have started to gain momentum as alternatives where owners learn how to build acquisition systems they can operate internally.

One example is “Where U?,” a two-day in-person workshop designed to teach Australian business owners how to generate leads using Meta and Google Ads, framed less as a “marketing hack” and more as a repeatable engine.

The Problem Is Dependency

Many business owners walk away from agencies because the dependency can become uncomfortable. When customer acquisition sits entirely outside the business, owners often feel exposed. If results drop, they may not know why. If an account manager changes, the strategy can shift. If communication slows down, decisions get delayed. Over time, a business can end up paying for outcomes it can’t clearly explain or replicate.

That’s a serious risk when customer acquisition determines revenue stability.

Even strong agencies can struggle to understand the nuances of a business the way the founder does. Business owners know the real objections customers raise, the offers that convert, the services with the highest margins, and the reasons clients choose them over competitors. Translating years of customer experience into a short onboarding call rarely captures the full picture.

Workshops appeal because they reduce that gap. Instead of outsourcing understanding, owners build it themselves.

Workshops Offer Internal Capability

The biggest difference between a workshop and a retainer isn’t cost. It’s what the business owns at the end of it. With an agency, you may get leads, but the expertise often stays with the provider.

With an in-person workshop, the goal is capability transfer. Owners leave with knowledge of how the system works and what levers move performance. They understand how targeting influences lead quality, how messaging impacts the conversion, and what metrics indicate a problem BEFORE revenue is affected.

That doesn’t mean every founder becomes a full-time marketer. But it does mean they become far more effective decision-makers.

Once a business understands the mechanics of acquisition, outsourcing becomes smarter. Instead of relying blindly on a provider, owners can hire specialists selectively while maintaining strategic control.

Why In-Person Workshops Are Gaining Traction Again

A growing number of founders are starting to treat lead generation like key infrastructure to their business.

That shift is being driven by a simple reality: referrals aren’t predictable. Reputation takes time. And in many industries, the speed of growth is limited by how consistently new customers enter the pipeline.

That’s why more owners are focusing on building systems that create repeatable demand. Systems that don’t rely on luck, seasonal spikes, or platform changes, they don’t understand.

Workshops fit this new mindset because they deliver structure. Instead of random marketing activity, owners build a process that can be measured, improved, and repeated.

“Where U?” (Founded by Brandon Willington) was one of the first Companies in Australia to push this direction with strong satisfaction and increasing demand for workshops as momentum continues to build.

Owners Want Control Over Growth

The rise of workshops is a response to the new reality of running a modern business. Growth is harder to predict. Competition is higher. Customer attention is fragmented. And when the pipeline slows, the consequences hit quickly.

Workshops are gaining popularity because they offer business owners something that outsourced lead generation often doesn’t: control. The most valuable outcome isn’t simply generating leads. It’s understanding how demand is created so it can be repeated, improved, and scaled over time.

For Australian business owners looking for stability, that shift toward ownership may become one of the defining growth strategies of the decade.

For more information about “WhereU?” Workshops, visit: https://www.whereu.com.au/