It’s Time to Monetize Social Media for Ad Agency New Business

It’s time for agencies to get serious about social media. We’re beyond debating the validity of social and beyond just sticking our toe in the water. It’s time to monetize social media for ad agency new business.

Ad agencies will need an integrated social media strategy if they are ever going to see the payoff from their participation. An agency blog should be the central component. The place you can drive targeted online traffic through SEO, Twitter, email newsletters, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The blog becomes the “gateway” to your agency and the “face” of your agency. As important as it was to have an agency website, it is now equally important to have an agency blog.

But … having a blog isn’t something you check off your list of social media “to do list.” To have credibility and generate inbound new business leads your agency blog must be developed the right way.

10 Ad Agency Blogging Tips for New Business:

  1. The very first question you must answer, before you create your agency’s blog is, “who is our best target audience?”Without answering this question you will find it extremely difficult to generate traffic. If your blog has not traffic, no audience, no community … then you will have NO leads.
  2. Descriptor Statement: Clearly define what your agency’s blog is about. You can be somewhat creative with the title for your agency’s blog, but not with the subtitle, the descriptor statement. It needs to tell your readers exactly the purpose for the blog within seconds. Some examples: Fuel Lines: Fueling ad agency new business through social media, She-conomy: A guy’s guide to marketing to women, We Play in Traffic: Driving traffic and sales using retail branding and advertising.
  3. If everyone is responsible then no one is. If the blog’s primary objective is to generate inbound new business leads then the person charged with new business for your agency should be the one to oversee the agency’s blog. Someone has to be responsible for keeping the blog’s focus, generating blog content and repurposing that content through other channels.
  4. Keep the blog platform and template simple. The less people you have to depend upon the better. You want to be able to make changes easily and quick. As much as possible keep IT and the creative departments out of the process. You’ll need to be able to update the blog even when your agency is at its busiest.  New business stuff tends to be put on the back burner, especially when the agency is busy.
  5. Set a goal to post a minimum of 3 times per week. Its preferable to post each week day. To be consistent, your writing needs to become a ritual. Part of every business day.
  6. Repurpose blog content. You can easily repurpose your agency’s blog content through Facebook and LinkedIn using special applications available in each platform. You can create an Excel spreadsheet of your blog post titles and URLs and upload those into a special 3rd party application called Social Oomph to repurpose blog content through Twitter accounts.
  7. Focus on Client Benefits. Blogging keeps your agency focused on what is important to your prospective clients. It forces you talk to their benefit instead of talking about your agency. There is nothing about any of your agency’s 3 C’s … Credentials, Capabilities or Case studies. Remember, “the moment you start to sell on your agency’s blog is when you will lose your audience.”
  8. For your agency’s blog to be effective, your text must be scannable. There is a completely different writing style for web vs print. A lot of ad agency professionals have difficulty with the transition from print to web. Nielsen Norman Group ’s research found that 79 percent of their test users always scanned any new page they came across online; only 16 percent read word-by-word. “How do users read on the web? They don’t … they scan,” is a good resource article for writing your agency’s blog.
  9. Be Transparent. You wont appeal to everyone but the appeal can be strong of those you do. People want to work with people they know, trust and like. Social media, blogging in particular, allows you to network with hundreds of people on a daily basis. Here are some examples of agency CEOs who are blogging: Bob Hoffman, Park Howell, S.A. Habib, David Bohan, Avi Savar, Edward Boches, Steve Kleber, Stephanie Holland and Eric Brody.
  10. You must give to get. Show that you have a genuine compassion for your audience and a willingness to help with their marketing challenges and obstacles by “giving away your thinking.” That is opposite to our agency wired brains but to have success in social media it is a must. Prospective clients are drawn by the helpful content. They understand how you think, your points of view. Then when they are ready, they’ll initiate the contact and when they do the conversation is much further down the road than if it came by way of a cold call.

There have been a number of agencies reporting new business success through the use of social media and using an agency blog as the central platform to their social media strategy.  It’s time to stop playing around with social media and start to see its true potential as a tool for inbound lead generation for agency new business.

If you have any questions or additional tips, please don’t hesitate to share them in the comment section below or email them to me at michael@michaelgass.com.

Additional agency blogging articles:

 

Filed Under: Agency Blogs, Agency Leadership, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,
About Michael Gass

Consultant | Trainer | Author | Speaker

Since 2007, he has been pioneering the use of social media, inbound and content marketing strategies specifically for agency new business.

He is the founder of Fuel Lines Business Development, LLC, a firm which provides business development training and consulting services to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies.

Comments

  1. Renate N. Epps says
    February 15, 2010 at 3:05 am

    I enjoy the awesome updates you have to offer here.