How to Build A Platform for Ad Agency New Business

Michael Hyatt Platform for ad agency new business

If you’re serious about taking your agency to the next level, “you can’t succeed without a platform.”

Most agencies were late getting into social media. Then they literally “jumped in” with little to show for their time and effort. It takes more than a completed check-list for having an agency blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to have any kind of success.

The “typical” agency blog has:

  • No plan
  • No objective
  • No target audience
  • No integration
  • No consistency
  • No value (self promotional)
  • No traffic

Could this be why “nobody reads agency blogs?”

There are many benefits if you build an online platform the right way: 

  • Provides a better focus for new business
  • 24/7 top-of-mind awareness without interruption tactics, such as cold calling
  • Allows an agency to be more narrowly niched without the risk
  • Pre-qualifies prospects
  • Networking on steroids and increase in referrals
  • Win business without having to pitch
  • Eliminates the dating process
  • Consistent new business pipeline that is sustainable when the agency is at its busiest
  • A greater market area, with the potential for national and international new business opportunities
  • A positioning of expertise that allows charging higher premiums and working with fewer clients that are a better match

I am a fan of Michael Hyatt, former Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the seventh largest trade book publishing company in the U.S.  When I speak at agency events about social media marketing, he is my primary example of a CEO doing social media right.

I highly recommend Michael’s new book to every agency principal, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. It is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller. He provides exceptional detail on how to build a successful online presence using social media. You will save a lot of time, energy and frustration by reading Platform.

With the advent of social media, EVERYONE NOW HAS ACCESS to a virtual microphone and everyone is connected to everyone else.

As a result, today’s platforms are built of:

  • Contacts
  • Customers
  • Prospects
  • Followers
  • Fans

In other words, a platform is your tribe. People who share your passion and want to hear from like-minded people. – Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt has built his own successful platform and has done it with the strategies and tips he shares in this very practical book. This is a step-by-step guide every agency owner should use. Building your own personal platform will allow you to:

  1. Raise visibility and awareness among your best prospects that can be easily maintained 24/7.
  2. Break through the glut of communications and be heard.
  3. Establish an appealing position of expertise.
  4. Create a prospective client network that can extend as far as their willingness to travel.
  5. Develop you own ‘continuing education’ program because of a narrower focus for new business.
  6. Build personal relationships. Most agency new business comes from networks and referrals. This takes it to a new level.
  7. More qualified new business opportunities with less cost.

I wouldn’t recommend this book if Michael didn’t practice what he preaches. He was an early adopter of social media. Over the past eight years he has managed to generate:

  • 300,000+ unique monthly visitors
  • 123,000+ Twitter followers
  • 92,000+ monthly podcast listeners
  • 70,000+ newsletter subscribers
  • 17,000+ Facebook fans

Platform will help eliminate wasted time, energy and resources by providing tried and true tactics that will bring results faster.

The following video is Michael Hyatt’s overview of Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World

Platform by Michael Hyatt from Michael Hyatt on Vimeo.

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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.

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