We are experiencing a paradigm shift in ad agency new business programs. The old way was the agency new business hunter seeking and intercepting prospective clients. Today, it is all about positioning your agency to be found by your prospective client community. When they are ready to engage, they will even initiate the contact.
With this new paradigm shift agencies must incorporate Web 2.0 tools into their new business program. The most important tool, at least for now, is the agency blog.
It wasn’t that long ago that it was said,
“Every business needs a Web site.” Today it’s, “every business needs a blog.”
Your prospects have come to expect a blog from your business. This is particularly true if you business happens to be an advertising agency.
There are a number of benefits to having an agency blog:
- A blog provides better search engine optimization.
- Helps agencies better articulate what they do, how they do it and why they are different than their competitors.
- Positions your agency as being experts at what you do.
- Allows agencies to narrow their target audience, test their messages and speak to a prospective clients benefits.
- Provides a personal enrichment tool to stay on top of the latest trends and technologies and pass that knowledge to your online community.
I’m a believer! An agency blog is a great new business tool to help your prospective clients find your agency. They’ll even call you.
WARNING: As with any other media tool, it must be used correctly.
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Michael Gass, agency new business consultant, primarily to small and mid-size advertising agencies, utilizing both traditional and new media tools.
Good morning, Michael. I enjoyed your post because we are experiencing the paradigm shift that your write about. We do not use a hunter, and have instead plugged in Tactical Contacts out of Seattle to help us with our list development, email and follow-up campaign to get “significant conversations” either on the phone or in person with our prospects. We have deployed both an external and internal blog and have experienced terrific subscription growth and interaction. One of the greatest stumbling blocks is walking potential new subscribers through the RSS process. It can be a real pain, and whoever figures out how to make this a no-brainer first will be rich, rich, rich. Anyway, look forward to receiving your enewsletter to see if we are of like mind (or more importantly, what we can learn from you) in the future.
Thanks for sharing.
Park, Thanks for the kind words. It is always good to hear confirmation from others. I looked up your agency’s blog (http://parkandco.com/blog) and am impressed. It looks like you agency practices what it preaches. I’m sure this is a strong demonstration to your prospective clients when they see that you actually use the tools you recommend. This is an exciting time for agency new business. The agencies, like Park & Co., that are incorporating these new media tools into their new business program are already seeing the payoff.
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