August « 2010 « FUEL LINES Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

Use Brevity for Ad Agency New Business

August 27, 2010

If you want to reach prospective clients online, copy for email, eNewsletters, blog posts, etc. should contain half the word count of conventional text. People read a lot online plus they receive a ton of email. A majority of your readers won’t have time to read your lengthy copy.

The most frequent advice study participants had for newsletter creators was - “keep it brief.”

Nielsen Norman Group ’s research found that 79 percent of their test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. A newer study found that users read email newsletters even more abruptly than they read websites.) People prefer sites that get to the point and let them get things done quickly

Improve your online writing style from this …

Nebraska is filled with internationally recognized attractions that draw large crowds of people every year, without fail. In 1996, some of the most popular places were Fort Robinson State Park (355,000 visitors), Scotts Bluff National Monument (132,166), Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum (100,000), Carhenge (86,598), Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer (60,002), and Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park (28,446).

… to this, to increase readability and usefulness:

In 1996, six of the most-visited places in Nebraska were:

Fort Robinson State Park

Scotts Bluff National Monument

Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum

Carhenge

Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer

Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park

Users spend 51 seconds reading the average newsletter. The layout and writing both need superb usability to survive in the high-pressure environment of a crowded inbox.

I highly recommend the Nielsen Norman Group, they are true pioneers in user experience studies that can greatly improve your writing for Web. Check out their online publications, white papers and reports:

Web Usability
Intranet Usability
Email Usability
Mobile Usability

Additional articles that may be of interest:

1 Comment | Agency Blogs, Best Practices, Creating Content, New Business Trends, Social Media | Tagged: email newsletters, Michael Gass, Nielsen Norman Group, writing for web | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

21 Blog Post Writing Tips for Ad Agency New Business

August 23, 2010

This is my collection of writing tips to help you consistently generate great content that produces inbound leads for your agency’s new business through social media.

Content marketing is a great means of converting prospects into clients by creating and freely sharing helpful, informative content that builds awareness and relevant relationships.

I hope that you find these 21 blog post writing tips helpful:

Write to a specific target audience. Having a target audience in mind keeps your writing focused. Plus, the narrower your focus the easier it is to write.
Reading fuels your writing. You need a good strategic reading program with a clear focus that is centered upon your audience’s interest and needs.
Keep headlines simple and direct.
Load each post title with the keywords you want to dominate through search (i.e. “ad agency new business”). This is also helpful to your Twitter audience as well.
Write post titles that are understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results).
Be predictable, so users know whether they’ll like the full article before they click.
The first sentence of your post should be the “takeaway or benefits statement”. Just simply answer the question, what will be my takeaway or benefit if I commit to read this post? This is the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion.
Remember that online readers prefer writing that is concise, easy to scan, and objective (rather than promotional) in style.
Avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Invest this time in writing thorough articles that are of value to your audience.
Publish on a regular schedule. Be consistent in delivering at least 3 to 5 posts per week. This will keep your readers coming back for more. Also, frequently updated content makes search engines happy.
Highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others).
Use often, bulleted or numbered lists. Readers love them. You are basically providing the “readers digest version” or an “executive summary” for your readers. You are doing work on their behalf, highlighting the rich nuggets of content for them and presenting it in an easy-to-read format.
Half the word count (or less) than conventional writing. Usually 350 to 450 words.
Don’t sell. Readers detest “marketes”; the promotional writing style with boastful claims. The moment you start to sell on your agency’s blog is when you will lose your audience.
Include at least one high quality graphic.
Write numbers with digits, not letters (21, not twenty-one).
Use short sentences. Get to the point. Break up long paragraphs. Make your copy easy for a persons eye to scan.
Your blog should become a repository of valued information for your audience. That means that it’s not all original content. I recommend writing 1 original post for every 4 or 5 resource post.
This is an example of a “resource post”: Steve Jobs: 10 Presentation Tactics for Ad Agency New Business. I found this info through my reading program. I made it relevant to my audience, added my own thoughts and provided some additional tips to create more value. It took only 25 to 30 minutes to write.
For original posts, I share my opinions, my point of view. Original posts usually take over and hour to write. Your prospective client audience is searching the internet for good, rich information that solves problems. They are attracted to fresh thinking, writers who have opinions that don’t always follow the status quo.
Think of your reader’s experience. Make your posts easy to find, your blog simple to navigate. Highlight popular posts, provide links to additional resources. Make their interaction with your blog’s content a pleasant experience.

Here are a few thoughts on repurposing content from your blog and maximize the return on your time investment:

Don’t ever think that just because you’ve written it, everyone has read it. Repurpose content in a bi-weekly or at least monthly eNewsletter. It can take as little as 15 minutes to create and provide a great return on your time investment.
Take your most popular blog post, add some really good images and translate it into PowerPoint or Keynote.
You should also take advantage the time and effort that goes into writing for your blog and compile your best 100 blog posts into a book. You can actually think ahead and create an outline for a book as a guide for your blog post writing.

Some additional agency blogging resources:

11 Comments | Agency Blogs, Agency Leadership, Creating Content, Social Media | Tagged: advertising agencies, blog posts, Michael Gass, new business, Social Media, writing tips | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Status Quo Just Won’t Cut It Anymore for Ad Agency New Business

August 19, 2010

Bret Giles

A conference for ad ad agency principals and partners plus media, account, creative and business development leaders that helps them get their digital house in order.

Bret Giles, president of agencyside which offers high-quality, current training, coaching, staffing and consulting exclusively to advertising agencies. An advertising veteran of 22 years, Bret started his career at Ketchum Advertising in San Francisco.

Bret has asked me to speak at his annual conference for advertising agencies and I asked him to share directly with you more about it.

I ran across a great quote from Dan Wieden of Wieden + Kennedy not too long ago. He said “The hardest part of this business is to realize that what you knew yesterday and all the things that gave you a sense of empowerment and prestige and security and safety is perhaps not relevant this morning…perhaps somebody else sees something you missed because you keep thinking you knew it all.”

Like it or not, marketing is in a sea change. What held value to your clients at the beginning of the year might not by the end. Media is increasingly fragmenting. Agencies are increasingly consolidating. Technology is increasingly converging. And that leaves principals in an interesting predicament, one which I feel we have never previously faced.

How do we, as agencies, remain relevant in the communications channel?

At agencyside, we started a conference called BOLO – that’s “Be On The Lookout” – an agency-exclusive, 2-day event in October focused on issues facing agencies today. It’s forward-looking, focused on arming agencies with information to thrive, not survive. With a heavy focus on digital marketing, attendees learn from four keynote addresses, dozens of breakout sessions, Q+A “salons” and interactive sessions with other attendees.

We’ll feature the creative director on the Old Spice campaign at Wieden + Kennedy, the social media professional who effectively rebranded Mardi Gras and authors of books ranging from Content Strategy for the Web to Escape from Cubicle Nation, Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company to PR in a Jar.

You can find more information about the event and other speakers at www.bolo2010.com. As a reader of Michael’s, you can use the promo code “MGass” for $100 off your registration.

In short, status quo is boring anyway, let’s shake up the future together. I look forward to meeting you in person come October!

3 Comments | Agency Leadership, Digital | Tagged: Ad Agencies, BOLO Conference, Bret Giles, digital marketing | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Forbes: 20 Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns

August 18, 2010

Here are some great examples of agency creativity utilizing social media. Hopefully you will find a spark that will ignite your own creativity for your agency’s clients.

Forbes asked three experts to rank the 20 best-ever social media campaigns based on the success, execution and creativity of the campaigns. The three panelist included: David Berkowitz of the New York City agency 360i; Brandon Evans of the social marketing agency Mr. Youth in New York City and Michael Lebowitz of Big Spaceship, a digital ad shop in Brooklyn.

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary … A year later their footage was found …

The Blair Witch Project was considered to be the best-ever social media campaigns, cost $22,000 to make the film and generated $249 million worldwide. Not a bad ROI.

Forbes list of the 20 best-ever social media campaigns:

Read Victoria Taylor’s Forbes article, “The Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns” and “Forbes: In Pictures: Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns”

13 Comments | Social Media | Tagged: agency 360i, Big Spaceship, Blair Witch Project, Brandon Evans, David Berkowtiz, Forbes, Michael Lebowitz, Mr. Youth, Social Media, viral campaigns | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

4 Ways Goals Can Enhance Creativity for Ad Agency New Business

August 16, 2010

Shift Your Ad Agency’s Thinking to Stimulate Creativity, Spur Innovation and Create Enthusiasm for New Business.

A lot of small to midsize ad agencies have chosen to take shelter during the recession, but that strategy doesn’t provide any creative stimulation for ad agency new business. Perhaps the better strategy would be to dramatically shift your agency’s thinking, spur innovation and enthusiasm by setting some challenging new business goals.

I owe inspiration for this post to a recent Stephan Shapiro, a well-known business innovation author, speaker and consultant. In a recent article, , How Goals Enhance Creativity, he said,

“… businesses are driven by goals, how can we leverage them as a tool for enhancing creativity? One way is to use stretch targets. REALLY stretch targets.

What if they set a target of growing by 50% a year? It might have a fundamentally different impact on the organization.

That level of growth is unprecedented. It will certainly stretch the way they think. A 14% improvement can most likely be attained through conventional thinking. But a 50% growth target would require some breakthrough thinking; radical ideas.

The future gives them the present, rather than present giving them the future.”

4 Ways Goals Can Enhance Creativity for Ad Agency New Business:

Shifts thinking. Instead of being reactive, it provides a proactive approach to generating new business. A shift from defense to offense and getting your agency out of its hunkered down, bunker mentality.
Stimulates creativity. I have never liked setting unrealistic goals. To me they are meaningless. But I do embrace robust new business goals, that will stretch and challenge your agency’s creative thinking to attain them.
Spurs innovation. Most agencies are not good in creating a consistent new business program. They are always busy. Client work comes before their own. But, there are solutions to these types of challenges, always a “work-around” if you will take the time to figure out an innovative solution.
Creates enthusiasm. Big goals can be the spark to generate a spirit of enthusiasm. A rallying point for your beleaguered troops. These may seem like the darkest days your agency has ever faced but in reality this could be the greatest of times for growing your agency. You will NEVER have another opportunity like this in your lifetime. These times present the perfect conditions for small to midsize agencies to shine.

I would encourage you to read Steve’s full article, “How Can Goals Enhance Creativity?”

3 Comments | Agency Leadership, Best Practices, Fuel for Thought, New Business Tips, New Business Trends | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, Creativity, goals, innovation, Michael Gass, Stephan Shapiro | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Steve Jobs: 10 Presentation Tactics for Ad Agency New Business

August 13, 2010

Steve Jobs has something to teach small to midsize ad agencies about pitching for new business.

Every new business pitch should do three things: inform, educate and entertain.

BusinessWeek.com columnist Carmine Gallo reveals the techniques that have turned Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, into one of the world’s corporate presenters. There are some helpful nuggets that will add punch to your next agency pitch.

Here is the ‘Readers Digest’ version of his 10 Ways to Sell Your Ideas the Steve Jobs Way:

Plan your presentation with pen and paper. Begin by storyboarding your presentation. Steve Jobs spent his preparation time brainstorming, sketching and white-boarding before he creating his presentation. All of the elements of the story that he wants to tell are thought through, elements are planned and collected before any slides are created.
Create a single sentence description for every service/idea. Concise enough to fit in a 140-character Twitter post. An example, for the introduction of the MacBook Air in January, 2008, Jobs said that is it simply, “The world’s thinnest notebook”.
Create a villain that allows the audience to rally around the hero—you and your product/service. A ‘villain’ doesn’t necessarily have to be a direct competitor. It can be a problem in need of a solution.
Focus on benefits. This is important for ad agencies to remember. Your audience only cares about how your service will benefit them so lead with benefits rather than agency credentials and capabilities.
Stick to the rule of three for presentations. Almost every Jobs presentation was divided into three parts. You might have twenty points to make, but your audience is only capable of retaining three or four points in short-term memory. Give them too many points and they’ll forget everything you’ve said.
Sell dreams, not your services. Steve Jobs didn’t sell computers. He was passionate about helping to create a better world. That was the promise that he sold. For example, when Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, he said, “In our own small way we’re going to make the world a better place.” Where most people see the iPod as a music player, Jobs saw it as a tool to enrich people’s lives.
Create visual slides. There were no bullet points in a Steve Jobs’ presentation. Instead he relied on photographs and images. When Steve Jobs unveiled the Macbook Air, Apple’s ultra-thin notebook computer, he showed a slide of the computer fitting inside a manila inter-office envelope. Keep your agency presentation’s that simple.
Make numbers meaningful. Jobs always put large numbers into a context that was relevant to his audience. The bigger the number, the more important it is to find analogies or comparisons that make the data relevant to your audience.
Use plain English. Jobs’s language was remarkably simple. He rarely, if ever, used the jargon that clouds most presentations—terms like ‘best of breed’ or ‘synergy’. His language was simple, clear and direct. So don’t use agency speak when presenting, “integration, proprietary process, etc.”
Practice, practice, practice. Steve Jobs spent hours rehearsing every facet of his presentation. Every slide was written like a piece of poetry, every presentation staged like a theatrical experience. Steve Jobs made a presentation look effortless but that polish came after hours and hours of arduous practice. Agencies often are forced to rely on spontaneity to provide creative energy for a pitch because they have spent all of their time on putting together the presentation and leave little or no time for rehearsal. Most unrehearsed pitches end up falling flat.

Click on the link for a downloadable copy of Carmine Gallo’s, “How to Sell Your Ideas the Steve Jobs Way”

This article was based on Carmine Gallo’s book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Applying this simple formula can greatly improve any agency’s pitch and help them to stand out from the rest. It is a must read for ad agencies, PR firms and digital shops.

Additional articles that may be of interest:

29 Comments | Agency Leadership, Pitches, Speaking | Tagged: Ad Agencies, Advertising, Apple, Businessweek.com, Carmine Gallo, Michael Gass, new business, presentations, Steve Jobs | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

The 2010 Creativity 50 for Ad Agency New Business

August 11, 2010

There is a paradigm shift for how new business is being acquired for small to mid-size ad agencies.

Innovation and creativity are important elements for any small to midsize ad agency. They are also critical for ad agency new business. They can set your agency apart from the pack.

Creativity Online provides excellent innovative examples to spark some creative ideas of your own. Just be sure that you use some of your agency’s creative moxie for business development.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the inspiring 2010 Creativity top 50.

Ad Age and Creativity’s fifth annual list of the most inspiring and innovative thinkers and doers from among advertising, marketing, designers, directors, entrepreneurs, and others who have made the largest impact upon all creative cultures. Be sure to check out : Ashton Kutcher, Mike Hughes, Linus Karlsson and Paul Malmstrom along with Ty Montague, Ian Tait.

Care to share your favorites from this elite group?

Additional articles that may be of interest:

1 Comment | Agency Leadership, New Business Trends | Tagged: Ad Age, Advertising, Blogs I Recommend, Creativity | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Square One Ad Agency: Voted as Best Agency Blog of the Month

August 9, 2010

Congratulations to the Square One agency, Dallas, TX. Their blog, SQ 1 War Room, was selected as Fuel Line’s Blog of the Month for July, by 61% of the 638 votes cast.

“Ever wonder what’s going on inside our heads? Our blog is a peek into our thought process, an exhibition of work we’re proud of, a celebration of things that impressed us, and a few observations and insights into what makes advertising work.” Square One, Dallas, TX

Fuel Line’s Blog of the Month not only provides examples of agency blogs but it is an opportunity for agencies to showcase their blog and participation in social media, generating traffic and interest in their site.

Square One’s blog will automatically be included in Fuel Line’s Ad Agency Blog of the Year.

How is your agency using a blog for your new business? Submit it for August blog of the month.

Ad agencies all need an integrated social media strategy if they are ever going to see the payoff from their participation in social media. 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.” Nor is it a place to lead with agency capabilities and credentials. It must be of benefit to your audience. Here is a collection of agency blogging resources:

Leave a Comment » | Agency Blogs | Tagged: blogs, Dallas, Michael Gass, Social Media, Square One Agency, TX | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

52 Facts About Social Media for Ad Agency New Business

August 6, 2010

The following is a treasure trove of information that you will want to have handy as you discuss social media with your agency’s clients and prospective clients.

Danny Brown, co-founder and partner at Bonsai Interactive, pulled together this great resource that you will want to bookmark and handy. Danny does a great job of filtering through a lot of published facts to pull together these 52 from the 5 most popular social networks.

Here are a few tidbits but you’ll want to check out Danny’s article, 52 cool facts about social media, for the rest:

The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.
Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.
The very first video uploaded to YouTube was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005.
YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
77% of Internet users read blogs.
Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.

Danny’s blog, is featured in the AdAge Power 150 list as well as Canada’s Top 50 Marketing Blogs, and won the Hive Award for Best Social Media Blog at the 2010 South by South West festival. I would encourage you to be a subscriber.

Additional social media | new business articles that may be of interest:

2 Comments | Agency Blogs, Agency Leadership, Social Media | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, business development, Danny Brown, Michael Gass, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

6 Simple Steps for Using Content Marketing to Attract Ad Agency New Business

August 4, 2010

Relevant and valuable content will attract a clearly defined and understood target audience.

Content marketing is an overarching term that involves the creation and sharing of content for the purpose of engaging your prospective clients. Educating your potential clients results in building your agency’s brand awareness and recognition as a thought leader and industry expert. The primary objective is lead generation for new business opportunities.

Here are 6 steps for using content marketing to attract prospective clients:

First, define your target audience
Second, determine what are their marketing and advertising challenges, “what keeps them up at night”
Third, create a blog as your central communication platform that becomes a repository of information, “a one stop shop” that provides consistent solutions, rich helpful content
Fourth, continually measure how well you’re doing and adjust as you go
Fifth, “Jump start” your blog’s traffic, accelerate its growth by repurposing content through other social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn using third party tools to that help to make the process easy to manage and time efficient.
Sixth, now, what you’ve done for yourself, do for your clients

Additional articles that may be of interest:

11 Comments | Agency Blogs, Agency Leadership, Best Practices, Content Marketing, Fuel for Thought, New Business Tips, New Business Trends, Social Media | Tagged: blogs, Blogs I Recommend, content marketing, lead generation, Michael Gass | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Reading Can Fuel Your Writing for Ad Agency New Business

August 2, 2010

“Okay, I believe that content marketing can create significant traffic to my agency’s blog and generate inbound new business leads. But my main concern is that I wont have enough to write about that would be of interest to my audience. What should I do?”

I’ve been writing about ad agency new business for four years. My wife will occassoinaly ask how can I possibly have anything more to write about regarding “ad agency new business”. But I still have plenty of ideas. At last count, I had over 200 post drafts that await my completion.

What fuels my writing? A solid reading program that keeps me ahead of the curve and provides the resources for writing.

My reading had to be strategic and more efficient. It also had to be focused, geared to the interest of my target audience which is small to midsize advertising agencies and specifically, ad agency new business. I learned early on to constantly manually searching online was a huge time waster.

The primary tool that simplified, strategized and focused my online reading more efficiently has been the use of an RSS Reader, specifically Google Reader. This Reader is set as my Homepage, on my Firefox browser to help me ritualistically start each day using it. I found that if I opened even on email, most of the day my reading was put on the back-burner.

Also, I’m ADD enough, that when I just Google information, I’m easily distracted and chase lots of rabbits. An hour or two goes by and I can’t even recall what I initially was searching for. Google Reader resolves this issue for me.

Using Google Reader can be awkward and first, but you will soon see its value and time-management benefits. I have hundreds of focused, daily RSS feeds coming to me instead of me searching for them. They are all one central location, organized in specific topical folders.

A couple of tools will enhance your Google Reader experience and make your reading seamless:

Bit.ly is a little tool is becoming a big deal. It is now the default shortener for Twitter and has rapidly become the most popular URL shortener available.Google Reader included it in their new “send-to” feature, which lets you share any post on Twitter, automatically shortening long URLs with bit.ly. Just sign up for bit.ly and drag and drop into your browser bar.
Press This. This tool is for WordPress.com users. You can collect and share bits of the web easier and faster than ever with Press This, the new WordPress bookmarklet. Grab an article title, URL and info quickly and add it as a draft post. When you are in your writing mode, all you need do is go to your blog post drafts and you’ll have plenty of writing resources to kick start a new post.

In addition to an RSS Reader, eNewsletters also provide a great resource. Some of these are daily briefs and others are received either weekly or monthly. Here are a few of my choice newsletters:

A couple of other online sources that are directed to my Inbox allows me to stay organized and focused.

Google Alerts (Some handy uses of Google Alerts include monitoring news stories, keeping current on a competitor or industry)
TweetBeeps (Keep track of conversations that mention you, your URL, your clients, anything, with hourly updates)

Additional articles that may be of interest:

2 Comments | Agency Blogs, Best Practices, Social Media, Time Management | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogs, content marketing, lead generation, reading online, Social Media, writing | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Agency Blog of the Month: Which of these 16 agency blogs makes the cut?

August 2, 2010

Review and decide which of these 16 agency blogs really understands social media. You may also pick up some fresh ideas for your agency’ blog.

The following 16 advertising agency blogs have been submitted to Fuel Lines. Review and vote for the best agency blog of the month. The winner will be featured on Fuel Lines throughout the month and included in the voting for ad agency blog of the year.