By far FUEL LINE readers chose the following article as their favorite for 2oo8:
Four Ways Social Media is Changing Advertising Agencies New Business
To paraphrase Little Orphan Annie, “Tomorrow is only a day away.”
Traditional advertising agencies face significant technical challenges. Consumers have turned away from media channels that built the agency industry and have moved toward emerging internet media. Ad agencies must build new interactive competencies quickly in order to survive.
I receive inquires almost daily from ad agencies who are trying to discern how social media marketing will impact their current new business business model.
I’ve highlighted four ways that social media is changing ad agency new business:
A paradigm shift for how new business is acquired. According to a recent CMO survey, 80% of decision makers say they found the vendor, not the other way around. Instead of finding your prospects, the “new” new business paradigm for Marketing 2.0 is to help your prospective clients find your agency.
SEO is now a critical part of new business strategy. According to Marketing Sherpa, 80-90% of business to business transactions begin with a search on the web. That means that SEO is a very important component to your agency new business program.
An agency blog is a necessary component for marketing your agency. It wasn’t that long ago that it became understood, every business needed a Web site. Today it’s, every business needs a blog. This is especially true for ad agencies. We’re suppose to be leading not following our clients.
The growth of social media mandates agencies participation.Social media is now mainstream, your agency’s credibility is suspect if it isn’t walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media. One of the best ways to demonstrate your agency’s participation is to incorporate new media into your new business program.
Combining social media and ad agency new business, provides a powerful, inexpensive and highly effective combination for your agency’s self promotional efforts.
Out of the 200+ FUEL LINES articles for 2008 below are the readers Top 10 list:
Mashable, All That’s New on the Web blog, is one of my favorite for online resources. Mashable writer, Pete Cashmore assembled a great list of 39 social media tools that can be used for ad agency new business.
If you are like me you spend lots of time in front of a computer, could stand to lose a few pounds and have a tough time being consistent getting to the gym. Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic came up with the idea to slowly walk on a treadmill while working at a desk built around the treadmill…a Treadmill Desk.
Dr Levine’s research revealed that on the average his subjects burned 100 extra calories every hourwhile walking slowly — at 1 mile per hour — than while sitting in a chair.
This is the $6000 Steelcase’s Walkstation. Since I already had my own treadmill I was able to build my own version for under $30 using heavy duty plastic shelving found at Lowes. I used a 4 shelf unit (36″W x 18″D x 52″ high) and secured it to the treadmill using 14″ plastic cable ties. I used only two of the shelves and secured them to the treadmill with 14″ plastic cable ties. It literally took me less than 20 minutes to set up. I tested it out immediately and it works great. With the height of my treadmill the shelf height was perfect for my laptop, allowing me to have the right posture to walk while typing and reading online.
My first test “walk” was at 1 mph. With both hands resting on my keyboard I had no problem maintaining my balance even while typing. With the two shelves I have plenty of room for a mouse, TV remote and other tools. I’m able to talk on the phone with ease using my Blackberry and Bluetooth earpiece. My treadmill isn’t exceptionally quiet but there wasn’t enough noise to interfere with phone conversations. My treadmill desk: Photo #1Photo #2
If you are interested in additional ideas for building your own, Jay Buster, a treadmill desk evangelists, provides some great resources along with the links below on his blog:
I do understand the time pressures and information overload of small-to midsize ad agency CEOs. That said, your use of Twitter makes sense.
Web strategist and social media consultant, Karen OBrien posted an article CEOs Who Twitter which provides the outline and inspiration for this post.
Benefits to Ad Agency CEO’s to use Twitter:
Brand Building: ability to raise your own visibility and build awareness of your agency’s brand. Twitter allows you to communicate your agency’s culture and personality.
Networking Tool: Twitter is networking on steroids. You will be amazed at how rapidly you can network and how these connections provide viable new business leads for your agency. Many times these connections are with company decision makers. You have direct access to them.
Focus Group: Twitter provides for instant feedback to your posts, questions you may have, stats, opinions, you name it.
Monitoring: conversations that are going to take place about your agency with or without you. You should help to lead and direct those conversations. There are many Twitter tools that allow for the monitoring of your agency’s brand as well as your personal brand.
Generate online traffic: Within months of using Twitter it quickly became the second leading traffic generator for my blog and a large network of followers and own brand evangelists.
Humanizing your communications: Twitter shows the human side of your business. It gives your agency personality. People want to work with people that they know, like and trust.
Bottom line, Twitter is an excellent agency new business tool. Agency principals need to be out front as the face of their agencies.
Integrating the “social” good into our “social” media discussions.
Fifty-plus ways to give to charities this holiday, a list provided by Qui Diaz in a recent guest blog post for Mashable. The blogs readership is mostly tech and social media focused, so the list focuses on nonprofits that are making good use of the social Web to connect with their stakeholders. This is a great example of integrating the social good into our social media discussion. We can multiply our individual efforts by telling others.
I recommend using social media as a central component for your agency’s new business program. The primary reason is that it “teaches” small-to midsize agencies to do the things they should have been doing all along to acquire new business.
For social media to be effective you must:
Identify your niche and your best target audience.
Listen. Better understand your prospective clients marketing challenges, obstacles and frustrations.
Be transparent. The success of your audience must be more important than your own. But it goes without saying if you can help your audience with their success you will be successful.
Build relationships. People always want to work with people that they know, like and trust. Social media provides these opportunities. It is “networking on steroids.”
Always lead with benefits rather than agency’s capabilities. It’s all about your audience. The moment you try to “sell” your agency’s services will be the moment you lose your audience.
Become positioned as marketing leader rather than a marketing partner. Clients want leadership not partnership.
Better communicate and articulate what you know. Agencies are often poor communicators. Don’t believe me? Ask any of them what they do. They can’t succinctly define what they do apart from a prolonged discussion.
These are the things agencies should be doing but most don’t.
Social media becomes the tool to put these things into practice. It helps agencies create a more clearly defined focus and differentiating business strategy that will give them a competitive advantage for new business, a higher-profile reputation, and an improved ability to attract and win the clients they really want.
It’s time for you to vote for your favorite agency blog for the month of December. 14 ad agency blogs have been submitted to FUEL LINES. The winner will be featured on FUEL LINES throughout the month of January.
These are the 14 agency blogs submitted for the month of December:
Create an “unlevel” playing field for agency new business
The goal of most agency reviews is to “level the playing field”– a process designed to line up and compare agencies on a set of common characteristics. Your job as an agency executive is to unlevel the playing field. Rather than showing how well you compare, you should go out of your way to show how you don’t compare.
“In these times, clients expect their advertising to actually sellsomething. When it doesn’t, they get cranky.
Some years ago the ad industry decided that it no longer had to bother itself with the mundane task of selling. Instead, advertising could focus on the much more civilized practice of branding — whatever the hell that means.
The most effective, in fact, the only way to build a brand is to sell someone something.
It often comes as a shock to ad people when we find out how little the marketplace cares about our cleverness and our hipness. Apparently, consumers are more concerned with their own self-interest than with our brilliance.”
I’m often asked what is the very first step in developing a new business program for a small-to midsize ad agency? To have an efficient and effective new business program you must first …
… identify your agency’s point of difference and select a target audience.
Once this decision is made all other decisions are easy. But for the agencies that refuse to declare what they stand for and who they are trying to reach, they will constantly struggle because they try to be everything to everybody.
Trying to appeal to everyone appeals to no one.
Agencies without a declared expertise and target are generalists not specialist which means:
No premium pricing for agency services
Lack of client respect
Limited to acquiring new business because of location, personal networks and referrals
Difficultly in attracting the right kind of creative and strategic talent
Little if any regional awareness
Chasing new business instead of having new business pursuing the agency
Not able to attract the right type of client that best fits the agency’s core competencies
Acquiring new business is more speculative and expensive
If you’ve been a reader of FUEL LINES for awhile you know that I advocate that …
… agencies need to practice what they preach. They need to use the tools that they recommend their clients by using them to promote their agency.
I recommend using social media for your new business program. The primary reason why I love social media is that it “forces” small-to midsize agencies to do the things they should have been doing all along to acquire new business.
How to use social media for agency new business?
Once this initial decision is made I recommend that agencies develop a blog as the central online platform for their new business program.
For your agency’s blog to be effective you must:
Identify your niche and your best target audience.
Be transparent. The success of your audience must be more important than your own. But it goes without saying if you can help your audience with their success you will be successful.
Always lead with benefits rather than agency’s capabilities. It’s all about your audience. The moment you try to “sell” your agency’s services will be the moment you lose your audience.
Become positioned as marketing leader rather than a marketing partner. Clients want leadership not partnership.
Articulate and better communicate what you know. Agencies are often poor communicators. Don’t believe me? Ask any of them what they do. They can’ succinctly say without a prolonged discussion.
10 tips for the development of an agency blog for new business:
Do not incorporate your blog into your agency’s website. Allow it room to breathe, grow and germinate as you interact with your online audience. You will be amazed at the rich input your audience will provide as to their challenges, needs and the messages that appeal and motivate.
Blog posts should written by the agency’s principals. Prospective clients always want to know about the agency principals. How much will they be involved with their client’s accounts. Plus the agency principals are the least like staff changes within an agency. Social media is personal and you are the face of your agency. Therefore agency principals should lead the way.
Keep the design simple. Utilize WordPress, TypePad, Blogger blog platforms. Remember that it’s content that is king. If you want to slooowww down the process involve your creative and digital staff!
Own your domain name. If you ever want to change platforms you can easily do so without losing traffic if you own your domain name.
Before you start to write learn to listen. Identify and read other online resources that would important to your target audience. Read blogs of competitors. Subscribe to blog RSS feeds with Google Reader or the feed reader of your choice to strategize and organize your online reading.
Write out a creative brief for your blog. This will provide direction for the tonality of your blog and keep you reminded to write to the benefit of a particular target audience.
Outline your blog. I outlined a book and have used that outline for my blog. I will be able to reuse most of my blog content for the book, ebook, whitepapers, etc. Having an outline has been a tremendous time saver.
Keep a list of blog post ideas. I’ve been writing blog posts for a year now and have well over 200+ posts published and 45 blog post drafts. I keep a Word document on my laptop’s desktop with a running list of ideas. I have over 100 potential blog post ideas.
Set a goal for the number of posts to write per week. I saw a dramatic change in my blog traffic and audience interaction after I reached the first 50 posts. I encourage agency’s to get to fifty within the first sixty days. It establishes a habit for writing and helps them to find their voice. Beyond this initial phase I encourage agency’s to keep fresh content on their blog by making it a goal to posts at least five times per week.
Reuse your blog content. With over 200 posts I have lots of material to utilize through other new media tools. I’ve already mentioned that your content can be reused for books, ebooks and white papers but you can also use them for your agency’s newsletter, article marketing, microblogs like Twitter, etc.
I know that you are thinking, that is just great, something else for me to do. Please understand, using social media tools is like networking on steroids. You will be able to network with more people in one hour online than you could do within a week offline and the results will be far superior to the time you’ve invested. Prospective clients will actually call on you and when they do, the conversation is much further down the road. They’ll be ready for business.
I attended a PR Newswire emerging media seminar in Nashville. The seminar was led by Michael Pranikoff, director of emerging media for PR Newswire. Michael followed up the seminar with additional information that I thought would be a great social media resource for small-to midsize ad agencies. Michael’s information is very comprehensive.
PR Newswire Director of Emerging Media, Michael Pranikoff presents “PR In A Web 2.0 World”
One of the things Michael stressed throughout the presentation was to constantly be reading and taking part in that online conversation.
Wikipedia – www.wikipedia.org – If you aren’t using this great resource already, please start. Also, be sure to check to see if your company or key executive are listed. Be sure to check this on a somewhat regular basis to make sure that all the information is correct.
These are new services that really marry RSS and SMS (text messaging on your phone). They are called Microblogs because they can only be 140 character messages or less:
Wordtracker: www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com (please note that this site is not completely free. The do offer a free trial for some of their paid services).
PR Newswire Keyword Density Tool: log on to PRN Direct, click on “Quick Links & Tools”, then “Keyword Density Tool”. This is free and easy. Remember that you really want your words / phrases to show up between 1.5% -3.5% per 250 words.
FUEL LINES was started to help small-to midsize ad agencies and PR firms with their new business practices. New Business tips, tools, tactics and trends that help give them a differentiating strategy, a competitive advantage, a higher-profile reputation, and an improved ability to attract and win the kind of clients they really want.
December marks the first year anniversary for FUEL LINES. I ask for your input on how I can make my blog more useful to you?
Here are some areas you might like to comment on that I might improve upon:
Topics - are there topics (specific or general) you’d like covered in the coming months? What are the main new business issues that your agency is facing as we approach a new year?
Types of Posts - reader questions, tutorials, case studies, short tips, guest posts, tool reviews…. have your say about what you’d like most/least
Posting Frequency - too many posts, not enough, just right?
Design - before initiating a redesign – your comments and ideas would be helpful at this point
Blog Features - what would make your reader experience better?
Community - do you feel you connect well with other readers? Are there features that you’d like added to help connect more?
Services and Tools - what could I offer you to help you improve your agency’s new business?
What Frustrates You about FUEL LINES? What is Best about it?
Other Ideas and Feedback - anything goes, big or little.
The ‘Rules’ - Any feedback, suggestions or ideas that you have are welcome. I make a commitment to you to read anything you have to say.
All that I ask in return is that you be honest, courteous and constructive with your feedback.
FUEL LINES is a project that I pour a lot of time and effort into – as a result sometimes criticism can be a little difficult to hear – however I think it’s vital to take it all on board if this is to continue to be a valuable resource for agencies wanting to improve acquiring new business.
So it’s over to you. Feel free to either leave your feedback in comments below or to share them privately with me via my Contact Page. Your input is very much appreciated.
A recent CMO study reported that 80% of decision makers found their vendors, not the other way around. SEO is important for agency new business. You need to optimize SEO for your agency’s target audience to be able to find you. Hubspot’s marketing blog provides the shortest tutorial ever for SEO (Search Engine Opitmization).
Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, ANA, recently observed that “more and more advertisers are leading their agencies into new media, not the other way around,” and that “clients are the ones who are personally and professionally experimenting with new media forms and directing their agencies to look into them.”
“When I started out in this business in the mid 80’s as an assistant product manager at The Frito-Lay Company, we expected our advertising agencies to be innovative and inform us about what was hip and cool – now it appears to be the other way around,” she wrote in the ANA blog.
These examples represent only a few of the many companies that are effectively leveraging social media. Agencies should practice what they preach and use the tools they recommend their clients use. That includes the use of social media. It is a great tool for ad agency new business because to do it right, it forces agencies to do new business in the right way by always leading with benefits.
A blog is the central platform for promoting your ad agency utilizing social media. But to be effective it MUST be done correctly.
Chris Brogan is among the current social media influencers. He was also one of the early adopters. Chris’s writings were a big help to me when I created my blog FUEL LINES. These links provide some of Chris’s best advice and thoughts about blogging that you will find anywhere online:
Google Alerts is a great agency new business tool for daily marketing leads.
If you aren’t familiar with Google Alerts they are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. You can also choose to have your alerts delivered via feed to the feedreader of your choice (e.g., Google Reader or add the feed to youriGoogle page). You can choose to have these alerts sent as-they-happen, once-day or once-aweek. Of the different type of alerts I choose the ‘comprehensive’ alerts from news, web and blogs.
Some ways you can use Google Alerts for your agency’s new business leads and info:
Monitor for RFP opportunities
Instant updates for ad agency reviews
Your niche industry’s upper management personnel changes
Mergers and acquisitions within your agency’s niche industry
Set up an alert for each of your agency’s competitors to see what they are up to online
Manage your agency’s reputation
Create an alert for your agency’s URL
Test the keywords your target audience might be using, increase SEO
Keep updated on your industry and stay ahead of the curve
Google Alerts allows you to take a keyword phrase (for example, your name or company name) and receive a notification each time Google finds a new page using that phrase. My Google Alerts has my name “Michael Gass” and my clients, amongst other words and phrases.
Whenever someone mentions my name or one of my clients online, I know about it IMMEDIATELY thanks to Google Alerts – it sends me an email letting me know where the mention is.
Getting started with Google Alerts takes just minutes:
“As a general rule ad agencies try to be all things to all clients for fear of losing potential business. We were no different. But narrowing our focus on a particular target audience gives us a much better focus for new business and has led to more opportunities than we could have imagined.”
Stephanie Holland, President/Creative Director Holland + Holland Advertising, author of the blog She-conomy, A Guys Guide to Marketing to Women
Twitter continues to have tremendous growth. It is getting attention of C Suite executives who understand the benefits of participation of this social media tool.
Welcome to my blog, FUEL LINES: The best business development tips, tactics, practices and trends to help ad agencies, PR firms and digital shops create a more clearly defined focus and differentiating business strategy.
Click here to listen to my experience using social media from an ad agency new business perspective, BlogTalkRadio interview conducted by Trey Pennington
Posted by Michael Gass 
This is the $6000 
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