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

The Only Rule That Really Matters When Presenting for Ad Agency New Business

September 28, 2010

Every agency presentation must be focused on capturing your audience’s attention and keeping it. It is the presentation rule that matters most.

A lot of agency presentations are nothing but recycled insights, predictable services, with the same agency speak, nothing note worthy or memorable for an audience that must be bored out of their minds. I wonder how much new business opportunities were squandered because of boring ad agency presentations.

If you want to reach your audience, you must have something significant to say that you are passionate about, genuine passion will attract attention and attention will lead to action.

What can you do to keep the audience’s attention through your entire presentation? Chris Atherton, an applied cognitive psychologist, a self-described dork of attentionomics, suggests these 7 specific rules of attention:

People can really only retain about four bits of new, unrelated information — and sometimes not even that many.
It’s hard to process spoken and written words at the same time. Integrating your spoken words with pictorial slides makes it easier for the brain to process these two streams of information efficiently.
A story will keep people’s attention, because they will want to know what happens next.
People really like looking at screens. If you’ve ever been in a pub with the TV on and the sound off, you’ll know that screens are an attention-magnet.
Sustaining audience attention requires frequent changes. Unexpectedness is a great tool for acquiring and maintaining people’s attention as well as changes in your tone of voice, speaking volume, or where you are standing to draw the audience’s attention to a particular point.
Your audience will tell you when their attention is wandering. It’s a kindness and a courtesy to stay with your audience, and a presenter on auto-pilot is not a pretty sight.
Chris’s last rule, short is good.

Here are some additional rules of attention that I would add to Chris’s list:

Use a remote. I take one with me to every presentation. It is a great tool to keep me from losing eye contact.
Don’t use the podium. I tend to have less energy and am less engaging when I use a podium. I like to be able to move and my presentations tend to be much more animated without one.
Less text on the screen is more. People can read faster than you can speak. I find that using images and telling stories allows me to keep my audience’s attention better. I want to be so engaged that they wont break contact to write notes.
The fewer the slides the better. Some of my best presentations were less than 10 Keynote slides.
Get into a flow. I’m a student of the cadence, inflection and the use of rhyme and repetition that Black ministers have. Their delivery styleexcites their congregants with memorable effect.
Passion is more important than perfection. I strive to make my presentations inspirational, not flawless. Passion garners attention and will enthuse your confidence.
Know your environment. I almost always ask permission to view where my meeting will be held in advance. For agency presentations I would even make an onsite visit in advance and snap photos of the facility to discuss with our team in advance of our pitch.

Just this past week, reviewing a banquet hall an hour before presenting, I asked permission to make my presentation from a different spot. The speakers podium, set-up to the left of the stage, wasn’t as engaging as a smaller stage closer to the audience and that was more in the center of the banquet room.

Read Chris Atherton’s article, When giving presentations, the only rule that matters is the rule of attention.

I want to always improve upon my speaking skills. Having spoken in workshops, conferences and seminars in over 40 different cities this year, I’ve also found a wealth of presentation tips from Olivia Mitchell’s website, Speaking About Presenting.

Here are some additional presentation resources that you might find helpful:

5 Comments | Best Practices, Pitches, Speaking | Tagged: advertising agencies, Chris Atherton, Michael Gass, new business, Olivia Mitchell, presentations | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

10 Tips to Create a Consistent Ad Agency New Business Program

September 28, 2010

“Consistency is a key component to ad agency new business. Consistency is more important than perfection.”

Your agency’s new business program must be sustainable at the times when your agency is at its busiest. Too often new business development is put on the back burner until existing business decreases and a downturn begins. That creates a roller coaster effect on your agency’s pipeline of prospects which impacts agency income and causes you to accept the wrong type of client, from the wrong pool of prospects which do not fit your agency’s strengths and core competencies.

To be consistent, any agency new business program must:

Be realistically achievable within the culture and resources of the agency
Have a new business director/manager who is held accountable for its execution. If “everyone” is responsible for your agency’s new business, in actuality no one is. But that doesn’t mean that others, particularly agency principals aren’t involved in the process.
Look for ways to simplify your processes. From RFP responses, to new business reporting … always invoke the K.I.S.S. principle.
It may also be wise to outsource some services when possible. For some agencies outsourcing certain aspects of their new business program to services such as Catapult New Business or RSW is the best option. I know of a large full service agency,with their own PR department, that chooses to outsource PR for the agency to keep it consistent.
I say it often, you can’t improve it if you can’t measure it. Be sure to have measurements in place, but again, keep them simple.
Create rituals for new business. If you are responsible for new business, you know how easy it is to get side-tracked within the agency environment. I would encourage you to simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. A bad start usually leads to a bad day.
Do the things that you dislike the most first and get them out-of-the-way. It provides me with an incentive to get to the tasks that I enjoy the most.
Stay focused on the process. I’ve learned to maintain a consistency through the ups and downs by paying attention to the processes that I’ve created for new business. This makes me less prone to distractions and knee-jerk reactions. I know that if I consistently work the new business program that I have in place the results will come.
Use simple reminders. I use reminders, either on a sticky-note, my computer DeskTop, pop-up alerts, to keep me on course throughout the day. I know what I want to achieve by the end of the day and I use a variety of tools to help keep me keep me on track.
Celebrate successes. New business is tough. Especially in this economy. Life in the trenches for new business is nonstop hard work and often goes unnoticed. For the well-being of your new business team, it is important to stop, take the time to celebrate each new business victory.

One of the primary reasons that I’m such a huge advocate of social media is that it can help your agency to be more consistent with its new business program: “Social Media ‘Teaches’ Ad Agencies to Promote Themselves the Right Way.”

What is your best tip for being consistent?

2 Comments | Agency Leadership, New Business Tips, Time Management | Tagged: Ad Agencies, business development, Consistency, new business director, new business program | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

The Top 14 List of Advertising Agency Networks for New Business

September 24, 2010

A network of advertising agencies can improve your agency’s new business through collaboration, strategic alliances and training.

Whenever I speak, I’m often asked to recommend an agency network. There were very few online sources that had collected this type information in one place, so I decided to compile my own list that I hope you find helpful. I’ve included a brief synopsis of information, along with web links, contact information and Twitter accounts for each.

Feel free to share others you would like to see included.

A strong agency network can:

Help with new business introductions and attract new business internationally
Provide new business training for agency staff
Enhance best practices
Provide peer groups
Improve agency operations
Create channels for outsourcing work
Assist in implementing research
Provide access to common media and research s
Arrange annual conferences, workshops and seminars
Provide access to the expertise and specialized capabilities of network partners
Arrange for group insurance plans, legal services, etc.
Create and share results of business and salary surveys

The Top 14 List of Advertising Agency Networks:

4 A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies)

Headquarters: New York, NY

Website: www.aaaa.org

Mission of AAAA: To improve and strengthen the advertising agency business in the United States by counseling members on operations and management, by providing the collective experience of the many to each, by fostering professional development, by encouraging the highest creative and business standards,and by attracting excellent people to the business.

Nancy Hill, President and Chief Executive Officer. For more information on membership, benefits or events, click here

Follow the 4As on Twitter: http://twitter.com/4As

AMR (Agency Management Roundtable)

Headquarters: Surprise, AZ

Website: www.agencyroundtable.com

Helping Agencies Grow to the Next Level

Agency Management Roundtable (AMR) is a management consulting business that specializes in helping owners of small- and medium-sized marketing communication companies (less than 30 employees) move up to their next performance level—and keep improving.

For additional information you may contact Dave Wood, email

Visit AMR’s Blog

AMIN (Advertising and Marketing International Network)

Headquarters: Viola, KS

www.aminworldwide.com

AMIN is a global alliance of independently owned advertising agencies. The alliance spans the globe, with member networks in North America, Europe and Asia.

For additional information contact, Janna Sperry Sundby, Membership Manager, AMIN Worldwide: jsundby@aminworldwide.com

The AMIN Network Blog

Follow AMIN on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AminEurope

ComVort Group

Multi-national clients demand and expect a full breadth of services from their global agencies. The ComVort Group is the only marketing communication organization that offers capillary services on a global scale.

Headquarters: Barcelona

Website: www.comvort.com

Our agencies leverage the ComVort network’s unique structure – as well as their own extraordinary commitment toward their clients – to create custom-tailored solutions that helps our clients succeeds.

If you want to get more general information about the ComVort Group, in English, Spanish and German you can contact ComVort’s Global COO | Brando Brandstäter

ICOM

Headquarters: Rollinsville, CO

Website: www.icomagencies.com

ICOM is one of the world’s largest networks of independent advertising and marketing communications agencies.

Revenues: (US) $2.4 billion
Members: 70+ agencies based in 50+ countries
Coverage: 95% of the world’s markets
Clients: 2000+
Offices: 87

Curious about membership? Have some more questions? Click here for the contact page

in’ agencies

Headquarters: London

Website: www.in-advertising.com

in’ agencies work for more than 1500 brands on a domestic, regional, multi-domestic or global basis.

10 out of the 20 most famous brands, as named by Interbrands, work with one or more IN agencies. Many brands use a local IN agency for their domestic business, and other agencies from the IN network for work abroad.

For contact information: click here

INBA

Headquarters: Farmington, CT

Website: www.inba.com

INBA is a global network of independently owned, mid-size, marketing communications firms. INBA is represented by 23 members and affiliates in 25 countries.

INBA is international. But not global. That may sound like a contradiction, but we think it’s a distinction. We’re located in key markets around the world. That makes us international. But, unlike mammoth global agencies, we aren’t mirror images of each other. Each of our member agencies has its own personality and capabilities. Each is steeped in the culture and business practices of its home country.

For additional information contact: Peggy Thompson

Intermark Agency Network (IAN)

Website: www.intermarketnetwork.com

A different concept in agency networks.

IAN (Intermarket Agency Network) is a forum for leaders of noncompetitive marketing agencies to openly exchange knowledge in a collaborative setting. A nationwide association of carefully selected agencies, its members meet twice annually to freely discuss important issues like new business, financials, HR, creativity, growth and much more. No topic is off limits.

For details about joining IAN, contact Ed Kleban, Executive Director, at ekleban@juicecoms.com

MAGNET Global Network

Headquarters: Pittsburg, PA

Website: www.magnetglobal.org

MAGNET is a collaborative network of the world’s top marketing and advertising agencies. MAGNET and its member agencies represent more than 800 clients worldwide with total annual billings of more than $1.6 billion USD.

For additional information, contact Cheri Gmiter, Executive Director

Follow MAGNET on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MagnetGlobalNet

Second Wind Network

Headquarters: Wyomissing, PA

Website: www.secondwindonline.com

Second Wind is a powerful information resource designed with one thing in mind – helping smaller and midsize advertising agencies, design firms and related businesses to be better.

Second Wind was founded by former agency owner and entrepreneur Anthony P. Mikes. Mr. Mikes owned and operated design studios and agencies for twenty-five years before launching Second Wind in 1988.

Follow Second Wind on Twitter: http://twitter.com/secondwindbuzz

TAAN

Headquarters: Boston, MA

Website: www.taan.org

We are one of the world’s oldest, largest and most successful networks of carefully selected independent advertising agencies. Today there are TAAN member agencies operating on every continent, in more than 47 markets worldwide.

TAAN is an association of carefully selected, highly talented, independently operated marketing communications agencies in the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia/Pacific. Each TAAN agency is well-recognized in its home market and represents leading marketers in its area.

The TAAN network is built with the concept that shared knowledge and intelligence creates powerful insight in addressing the goals of agencies and marketers throughout the world.

For additional information you may contact TAAN President, Peter Gerritsen

Follow TAAN on Twitter at twitter.com/TAANnews

T-CAAN

Headquarters: Toronto, ON

Website: www.tcaan.ca

T-CAAN is the oldest and largest network of independent Canadian agencies and has developed strong working relationships with similar groups in the U.S.A., U.K., Japan, Jamaica, Europe and Hong Kong.

Every agency within the T-CAAN network operates as a branch-office, providing fast, top-quality and dependable service for all member agencies. Assistance can vary from the provision of backup services and field assistance to the exchange of creative ideas, research data, or financial information. The objective is to make each member stronger through the free flow of information and resources.

For additional information you can contact the Executive Director (Alice Zaharchuk) by e-mail at marketingmonkey@sympatico.ca

thenetworkone

Headquarters: London, England

Website: www.thenetworkone.com

We provide the major advantages of belonging to an international agency network, at a price every agency can afford. Membership benefits include: access a custom-built international network on-demand; an insurance policy, don’t lose pitches because you can help the client in other countries; a proactive opportunity to target new international prospects and receive partnership requests from other member agencies.

The major part of our activity will continue to be the introduction of new business to independent agencies.

For questions you may contact Julian Boulding, President julian.boulding@thenetworkone.com. For membership info, click here

TheNetworkOne Blog

Worldwide Partners

Headquarters: Denver, CO

Website: www.worldwidepartners.com

Founded in 1938 the Worldwide Partners network now the world’s largest owner-operated agency network: $3.4 billion in billings, 93 agencies, 55 countries across Asia, EMEA, Latin America and North America.

Our mission is clear: We’ll give you more leverage, resources, out reach and firepower than you have as a stand-alone shop without giving up ownership. Whether you have international business or not, we can help you with virtually every aspect of your business.

For additional information contact, Al Moffatt, WPI’s President and CEO, alm@worldwidepartners.com

Missing Opportunities:

I found that most of these groups are missing a prime opportunity in utilizing social media to enhance communications and collaboration within their “ready-made network” of agency members. But hopefully they’ll soon see the what a valuable communication’s channel they are failing to tap into.

Click here to view a list of Independent International Advertising, Direct Marketing, Media Buying, and Public Relations Networks

If you feel that any other agency association/network should be added to this list, please add them through the comments below.

24 Comments | Agency Leadership, Agency Networks, New Business Trends | Tagged: 4A's, AAAA, Advertising Agency Networks, Agency Roundtable, AMIN Worldwide, Blogs I Recommend, ComVort, ICOM, in-advertising, INBA, Intermark Agency Network (IAN), MAGNET Global, Michael Gass, Peter Gerritsen, Second Wind Network, SoDA, T-CAAN, TAAN, thenetworkone, Tony Mikes, Worldwide Partners | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Agencies: 10 Tips That Separates the Best From the Rest

September 23, 2010

The agencies that win the most new business have a differentiating position from their competitors.

“Most managers invest their time and energy in trying to make their firms better, when in fact they should be also be working to make their firms different” – From Positioning for Professionals

I had the privilege to attend a Tim Williams seminar, “What Separates the Best from the Rest,” when I was the new business director for a regional advertising agency. Since that time I have read everything he has written.

Tim understands and can articulate agency positioning for new business better than anyone. He has a new book that was recently released that I personally recommend to you, Positioning for Professionals: How Professional Knowledge Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success.

10 quick tips from Positioning for Professionals:

Bigness is no longer a competitive advantage
Its better to be a profit leader than a market share leader
There is no competitive advantage in doing what others do
There is no such thing as full service
Most professional service brands are not overpriced, they are just underexclusive
Most firms are engaged in fighting turf wars, instead of finding new turf
No customer is going to buy a vague brand
For a brand to be in the middle of the road = death
“Boxed in?”, no box means no strategy
The main difference between mediocre firms and great ones is not just vision, but execution

I thought you might also enjoy a perusing through some of the book’s best parts, an expansion on these 10 tips:

Tim Williams leads Ignition (www.ignitiongroup.com), a consultancy devoted to helping marketing communications firms create and capture more value. He is author another book that I highly recommend, “Take a Stand for Your Brand: Building a Great Agency Brand from the Inside Out” ranked by Amazon as one of the top ten books on brand building.

2 Comments | Agency Leadership, Best Practices, New Business Trends, Positioning | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, differentiation, Ignition Group, Michael Gass, positioning, Tim Williams | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Ad Age: A List of the Worst Agency Websites for IPhones and IPads

September 20, 2010

Attention Agencies: You provide a sweet target for your competition if you don’t practice what you preach and aren’t doing for yourself what you recommend for clients.

The McKinney agency, Durham, NC, recently created some positive press for themselves while creating a firestorm around some of the biggest advertising agencies websites.

Advertising Age, provided with McKinney’s review of agency’s websites, recently published the article, The World’s Worst Agency Websites (For IPhones and IPads).

David Teicher, for Advertising Age writes, “McKinney Art Director Nick Jones stumbled upon an unfortunate, albeit not surprising, byproduct of that: Some of the biggest agency websites are built on Adobe’s Flash and thus entirely inaccessible from iPhones and iPads.

Now, it’s probably no coincidence that Mr. Jones just happened to discover, and call attention to, this industry-wide failing, concurrent with McKinney’s own new site launch, which is built, according to Nick, so that you can “Swipe it on your iPad or click it in Internet Explorer.”

But the point remains: How can any agency expect to build out an emerging media practice and secure business in the growing mobile and tablet market, if their own mobile sites are unusable?

McKinney’s tactic unleveled the playing field in their favor creating a positive buzz, differentiating themselves from their competitors and generating significant traffic for their newly launched website: www.mckinney.com. From a new business perspective, they deserve kudos!

I’m sure the agencies that made McKinney’s list are already underway making the necessary changes to their sites.

Here are 10 full service and even digital agencies to make the list:

Reaching out to bloggers like myself on behalf of your agency:

I get invitations to review lots of agency stuff daily and I can’t respond to them all. Many of these emails are way to long for me to even consider reading.

Stephanie Sumner, VP/Director of Business Development for McKinney, did a splendid job in the way she reached out to me by email. She didn’t ask me for anything, but provided just enough information that would peak my interest.Her note was personal, concise copy with links to the relevant info. She made it easy for me to review and respond.

It takes more work to be brief but when you are the one inundated with emails it is much appreciated. Stephanie did the work on my behalf.

Kudos also to Mckinney’s art director, Nick Jones. Way-to-go in creating new business opportunities for your agency.

Additional articles regarding ad agency promotion:

14 Comments | Agency Leadership, New Business Tactics, Promotion | Tagged: Avertising Age, business development, David Teicher, McKinney, Michael Gass, Nick Jones, Stephanie Sumner | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

7 Benefits from the Right Positioning for Ad Agency New Business

September 20, 2010

The FOUNDATION of an ad agency’s new business program is its positioning.

When you have the right positioning its like fishing for a specific fish, with a particular bait. You know where the fish are, what bait is appealing to them, the right equipment to use and you have developed the expertise to catch the real trophies.

“By appealing to everyone, brands end up appealing to no one. Standing for everything is the same as standing for nothing.” Tim Williams, author of, Positioning for Professionals

So, the starting point for a successful agency’s new business program needs to be positioning. But it is also the place where most agencies fail.

“The common failing among agencies seeking new business is the inability, or unwillingness, to name what they stand for,” Bob Lundin, Agency search consultancy Jones Lundin Beals

I hope these 7 benefits for having the right positioning, will spur you to more narrowly focus and define the uniqueness of your agency for new business.

The right positioning provides:

A clearer direction for how the agency should spend its time, money and resources. It is amazing how these things fall into place so easily once the agency’s rudder has been set by the right positioning.
A broader market area for your agency. A strong positioning, particularly coupled with social media can greatly expand your market area affordably. The Russo Group, Lafayette, LA, now generates over 90% of their new business outside of their market.
A specific target audience. Through positioning you can have a well-defined criteria for identifying who are your agency’s best prospects that are reflective of its strengths and expertise.
A smaller group of competitors. There will be fewer agencies that do what your agency does. You’ll be able to identify a smaller group of competitors that you can use to greater enhance your agency’s point of differentiation.
A greater winning percentage for new business. Your agency can become the 800 pound gorilla, the agency with the moxie but only by having the right positioning. An agency that specialized in marketing academic medical centers, refuses to do speck creative, wins a greater amount of their pitches and those accounts are profitable from day one!
Improved profitability. First, you can command premium pricing because your agency is viewed as a specialist not a generalist. Secondly, your agency will know its playing field better than most and is not spending excessive time trying to get up to speed with every new account.
Greater appeal. Instead of always chasing business, it’s possible to have business start chasing you. When prospective clients know what your agency stands for, they’ll seek you out.

Additional articles that may be of interest to you:

Leave a Comment » | Agency Branding, Agency Leadership, Best Practices, New Business Trends, Positioning | Tagged: Blogs I Recommend, Bob Lundin, Jones Lundin Beals, Michael Gass, positioning, Tim Williams | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Resources for Successfully Pitching for Ad Agency New Business

September 17, 2010

If you want to win pitches for new business I would encourage you to be a constant student of public speaking.

Recently I wrote an article that received a lot of attention, “Steve Jobs: 10 Presentation Tactics for Ad Agency New Business.”

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

This week my resource is a bit dated but can be just as helpful. I’d like to go back in time to the 1930′s, “Monroe’s motivated sequence,” is a technique for organizing persuasive speeches that is still in use today. It was developed by Alan H. Monroe at Purdue University.

Monroe’s helpful technique for organizing speeches consists of the following five steps:

Attention. Get the attention of your audience that they have a PROBLEM using a detailed story, shocking example, dramatic statistic, quotations, etc.
Need. Concisely EXPLAIN the problem, that it is significant, won’t go away by itself and convince your audience that there needs is a need for action. Use examples, statistics, research, etc.
Satisfy. You need to let them know that you have the SOLUTION. Provide specific solutions that can be implemented to solve the problem.
Visualization. Tell the audience what will happen your solution is IMPLEMENTED or what happens if it does not take place. Be visual and detailed.
Action. Tell the audience what action they can take personally to solve the problem.

Additional presentation resources that you may find helpful:

5 Comments | Agency Leadership, Best Practices, Pitches | Tagged: Alan H. Monroe, Blogs I Recommend, Michael Gass, Monroe's Motivated Sequence, Pitches, presentations, Purdue, Steve Jobs | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

Enviromedia Social Marketing: Voted Best Agency Blog of the Month

September 15, 2010

Another Texas advertising agency’s blog, Enviromedia Social Marketing in Austin, has been voted Fuel Lines’ Blog of the Month for August, by 29% of the votes cast. EnviroMedia formed in 1997 as the nation’s first full-service marketing firm focused solely on environmental and public health issues.

We’re considered champions of authentic green marketing and are leaders in behavior-changing social marketing campaigns that improve the environment and public health – Enviromedia Social Marketing

Called “The Green Detectives” in The Washington Times, agency principals Kevin Tuerff and Valerie Davis are thought leaders in authentic environmental marketing and sustainability issues. Both are columnists for EnvironmentalLeader.com. and regularly speak to groups across the country about public health and environmental issues.

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.

Enviromedia Social Marketing 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 September’s 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:

1 Comment | Agency Blogs | Tagged: advertising agencies, Blog, Enviromedia Social Marketing, Kevin Tuerff, Michael Gass, Valerie Davis | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

The Top 10 List of Articles for Fueling Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

September 8, 2010

How to use social media as a channel for ad agency new business continues to be a hot topic with most agencies.

The articles below created the most appeal and traffic from readers for this past quarter. Evidence that agencies still are very interested in social media and how to monetize it for themselves and for their clients.

Information that helps with agency presentations has also generated interest. An article on Steve Job’s presentation tactics led to 2,300 page views within an hour of being posted.

So, just in case you missed any, ranked in order of their appeal, are the top 10 articles for fueling ad agency new business through social media:

Note: Popular articles/posts are usually of interest to your audience. This type of post is by far one of the easiest to write and typically will generate a lot of traffic to your agency’s blog site. Use you blog’s analytics to pull the top trending posts for the month, quarter or year.

This will provide you with an even greater return on the time investment in writing each post and help them to have a long shelf life.

1 Comment | Agency Leadership, Fuel for Thought, New Business Trends, Social Media | Tagged: advertising agencies, business development, Michael Gass, new business, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

31 Examples of Agencies Active in Social Media

September 7, 2010

Review and decide which of these 31 agency blogs best understands and utilizes the popularity of social media.

The following 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 agency blog of the year.

Cast your VOTE by Clicking Here

These are the ad agency blogs submitted for the month of August:

5 to 9 Branding, Cameron Christopher Thomas Advertising, Denver, CO
6 AM – Richard Edelman, Chicago, IL
BBH Labs, NYC and London
Bill’s B2 Blog, Mintz & Hoke Communications Group, Avon, CT
Content to Commerce, Big Fuel, Manhattan, NY
Digitally Approved, Fanscape Inc., Los Angeles, CA
Energy Efficiency Marketing, Kelliher Samets Volk, Burlington, VT
Enviromedia Social Marketing, Austin, TX
Fifth Gear Analytics, Sigma Marketing Group, Rochester, NY
From Bogota With Love, Zemoga, New York, NY
Healthy Conversations, Trajectory, Morristown, NJ
Hill Holiday blog, Boston, MA
Ideas & Innovation, Mullen, Boston, MA
L&S Unscripted, Lawrence & Schiller, Sioux Falls, SD
Marketing OC Blog, MarketingOC, Orange, CA
Marketing Premium Food, Stephan & Brady, Madison, WI
MediaCom Beyond Advertising, MediaCom, London, UK
New FoundNation, The Communications Group, Little Rock, AR
Off the Shelf, Barkley, Kansas City, MO
Oh no, not another agency blog, Brokaw Inc., Cleveland, OH
Overdrive eMarketing Blog, Overdrive Interactive, Boston, MA
Priority Integrated Marketing Blog, Priority Integrated Marketing, Minneapolis, MN
Scatter/Gather, Razorfish, Seattle, WA
Smart Marketing with Larry Weintraub, Fanscape, Inc., Los Angeles, CA
Spring Blog, Spring Advertising, Vancouver, BC, Canada
The Green Detectives, Enviromedia, Austin, TX
Turn Up Your Volume, The Heavyweights, Indianapolis, IN
Under the Iconic Influence, Preston Kelly, Minneapolis, MN
We make it all better., Copeland, Victoria,BC, Canada
We Think. We Can. Blog, Murdoch Marketing, Holland, MI
Welt’s Weekly Smack Down!,Welt Branding, Cincinnati, OH

Fuel Lines Agency Blog of the Month for July: “Sq1 War Room,“ Square One Agency, Dallas, TX

If you would like to submitted your agency’s blog for next month’s vote, send me an email and include:

In your email’s subject line – Blog of the Month
Blog title:
URL:
Agency Name:
City/State:

Some additional agency blogging resources:

1 Comment | Agency Blogs | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogs, Michael Gass, pr firms, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

5 Steps to Improve Your Ad Agency’s Blog for New Business

September 7, 2010

Tim Volk, President of Kelliher Samets Vok

An agency blog that is a repository of helpful content can effectively attract a large number of prospective clients.

Here are 5 simple steps and suggestions to improve your agency’s blog as a major tool for fueling new business leads:

1. Creating

Each new blog post is a new opportunity for you to be found online by your best prospects. Some quick suggestions:

Write to a specific target audience and provide answers to their advertising/marketing challenges.
Write consistently: is important to creating regular readership. Write at least 3 to 5 posts per week.
Post should average 350 to 450 words and be pleasantly scannable to the eye. Break up long paragraphs, use bullet/numbered list when possible. Highlight key words and thoughts.
Write in the inverted pyramid style, lead with your conclusion. People read differently online than they do for print. They tend to scan much more.
Identify and consistently use key words in your post title. You want to be able to dominate these words in Google search.
Let your reading fuel your writing.
Write 1 original post to every 4 to 5 resource posts. You’ll never be considered a thought leader without original content but you wont generate much traffic if all of your content is just your original thought. A balance of both needs to be provided through your blog.
Write with an “evergreen” style that will have a long shelf-life and provide a great return on your time investment.
Provide the “Readers Digest” version for your writers. Do the work on behalf of your readers and pull out the nuggets in simple language that is concise and easy to read.

2. Optimizing

Carefully think through your blog’s heading. A “heading” is a stand-alone phrase that describes your blogs content that appear below it. I usually advise clients to create a blog descriptor statement for the header that lets a reader and search engines know the purpose and intent of the content. Mine is “Fueling ad agency new business through social media.”
Be sure you own your domain. A person that still has “wordpress or blogspot” in their domain wont be able to change blogging platforms without losing traffic.
Be sure your site is indexed with Google. If your pages are not indexed, then Google is not crawling them.
Build quality inbound links.There are lots of online business directories where you can just submit your URL, agency’s name and a description of your services. There are also many social media sites where you can simply build links to your site. Writing guest articles and posts and optimized our press releases can build links. The best way however, is to produce valued content and create a blog that is a repository of helpful information for your target audience.

3. Promoting

Make sure your content can be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, Linked, as well as social bookmarking sites such as Digg, dell.icio.us and StumbleUpon with Share buttons.
Jumpstart traffic by repurposing your blog’s content through an email newsletter that is sent every-other-week. This is an easy way thing to do. Since you already have the content and can create an email template that is reused, it will take literally minutes to prepare the newsletter and send.
Build a sizable Twitter following that is targeted using TweetAdder and repurpose your blog content to your Twitter account using a program such as Social Oomph.
Write guest post, invite others to guest post for your blog.
Comment on other blog post and online articles, sites such as Ad Age, ADWEEK, etc. Select that sites that are frequented by your target audience.
Write content for search-ability.
Publish new blog content to your other social media accounts such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Conduct your own primary research using your blog generate links and traffic through press releases using PRWeb or PRNewswire.
Be proactive in facilitating speaking opportunities by creating a Speakers Page for your blog, list the topics and titles that you can speak to. You can also provide links to your past speaking engagements through YouTube, post photos through your Flickr Photostream.
Pull blog content together, expand SEO opportunities, creating Slideshare Presentations, Whitepapers, etc.

4. Converting

All of this activity isn’t worth the time investment if it doesn’t turn visitors into leads.

Place your RSS Subscription Feed button above the fold, near the top of you blog’s homepage. Visitors who subscribe will automatically receive updates every time you publish a new post either through an RSS Reader or through their email Inbox. I would suggest setting up an RSS feed through Feedburner.
Also place a subscription for your email newsletter within your blog’s sidebar to create Opt-Ins from site visitors.

5. Measuring

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Fortunately you can measure a lot online and continually hone your program.

Review your blog site’s analytics daily to see what posts are generating the most traffic, what search terms are being used, where traffic is coming from, who is linking to you, links readers clicked on, page views, etc.
Utilize your email newsletter analytics to improve open and click-through rates. Test the day of the week your email newsletter is sent, time-of-day and subject line copy.
Create a first-step call-to-action for your readers to know how to initially engage you. This could be something similar to my New Business | Social Media Workshop. Make it something simple and of value that doesn’t take a lot of consideration but does separate to qualified prospects from those that just want to glean what they can from you for free.
Use tools this suite of tools to analyze your marketing efforts:

Some additional agency blogging resources:

5 Comments | Agency Blogs, Best Practices, Creating Content, New Business Trends, Social Media | Tagged: advertising agencies, blogging, content marketing, Kelliher Samets Vok, lead generation, new business development, Social Media, Tim Volk | Permalink
Posted by Michael Gass

7 Tips for Using Twitter for Ad Agency New Business

September 1, 2010

Used in the right way, Twitter can be one of the best social media tools to be used to generate traffic and leads for your agency’s new business.

For the past 3 years Twitter has been the leading traffic generator to my Fuel Lines blog. It definitely needs to be part of your agency’s overall social media marketing strategy.

The following are seven of my personal tips to help make Twitter more effective for your agency’s new business:

Don’t be afraid to use Twitter differently from the way it was originally intended to be used. Twitter is more of a broadcast tool that most would admit and current research validates. Treat it as a broadcast tool through reach and frequency of your content marketing efforts and generating the best return on your time investment by repurposing your content through tools such as Social Oomph.
Build a targeted Twitter following. Research Twitter lists such as Mashable’s Twitter List Directory, third-party programs such as TweetAdder.
In addition your own blog’s content, be sure to supplement your Twitter posts with resources from others that are of help to your target audience.
Pay-it-forward. As others are so kind to publicize your content, also help to promote theirs.
In addition to Twitter being a broadcasting tool, it must be utilized as a networking tool for you to have success. Content helps build awareness but it is up to you to turn awareness into relationships. The efficiency of these kinds of online networks should be all that is need to motivate you to participate. People want to work with other people that they know, like and trust.
Use third-party Twitter tools like CoTweet and HootSuite to minimize your time and maximize the effectiveness of your Twittering.
What you learn to do for your agency can be used for your clients. There are a multiplicity of benefits from your involvement.