An ad agency principal who is an example on how to use content marketing and social media to build awareness and new business opportunities for your agency.
I am a Bob Hoffman fan. I have read everything he has written, from his book The Ad Contrarian, to every ADWEEK and blog post article and now his new book, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising.
Bob is the CEO of Hoffman/Lewis advertising located in San Francisco and St. Louis. He has created marketing strategies and advertising for some of the world’s most successful companies: McDonald’s, Toyota, Shell, NBC, Pepsico, Bank of America, Nestle, AT&T, Chevrolet, Dole, Blue Cross, Seagrams, Fairmont Hotels, Pebble Beach and others.
I was first introduced to Bob Hoffman through a cbsnews.com article, “Hoffman/Lewis CEO Can’t Stop Cursing and Swearing on His Blog”
Hoffman/Lewis in San Francisco and St. Louis promises on its website to “get beyond the fleeting trends, false goals, and dreadful jargon of contemporary advertising.” But a look at the blog of its CEO, Bob Hoffman(pictured), shows that ‘getting beyond the jargon’ seems to mean dropping the F-bomb as much as possible. The blog is titled “The Ad Contrarian; Cranky opinions and advice from the CEO of a pretty big ad agency.”
Hoffman has acreated a large online following as one fan recently wrote, “Your no b.s., take-no-prisoners approach to our business is entertaining, informative, and spot-on…”
Bob’s blog puts a face to the Hoffman/Lewis agency. He comes across as being transparent and blatantly honest. He’s not going to appeal to everyone but those who find him appealing they become ardent fans. They know that Bob will tell it like it is and cut through all the agency B.S. He’s not afraid to tell his readers what he really thinks.
This was very smart of Bob. With a little bit of work, he gets an even greater return on the time he originally invested in writing these blog post articles. His new book is already a best seller within its category.
The Kindle version is a great buy. Only $2.99, You will also find it to be an excellent, entertaining read.
Hoffman’s take on the advertising industry is refreshing, insightful, amusing and discerning. With the advertising industry in such a state of flux and upheaval, he will keep you grounded. I highly recommend it.
Here’s some additional reviews:
“Bob Hoffman’s perspective is terrific because he continually digs into various heaping piles of advertising hype to discover nuggets of truth. And if he doesn’t find any, he’s not afraid to say how bad it stinks.”
“I just love the way Bob thinks and writes about our crazy business and even more crazy world. This is take no prisoners kind of stuff that is just superbly written always.”
“Bob is one of the smartest guys in the business. His thoughts are not obscured by fads, what’s au courant or quotidian bs. He is a straight-shooter. Honest, to the point and fact-based. Qualities sorely missing in the world today.”
“This book is an insightful, hilarious look at what’s wrong with advertising agencies, with marketing in general, and maybe even the world overall. But it isn’t just for people who work in ad agencies. It’s for anybody who ever saw an ad that sucked and wondered how it got that way. It’s for anybody who works in any kind of job involving generation of new ideas. And yes, it’s for anybody who enjoys “Mad Men.” Bob Hoffman is smarter than Don Draper. He’s funnier than Don Draper. And he’s better looking than… Okay, like I said, Bob Hoffman is definitely smarter and funnier than Don Draper.”
“A funny, enlightening, clear-eyed look at advertising and marketing. Pleasantly didactic and cheerfully challenging of the fables and fantasies that pass for advertising principles.”
Bob shares some insights on the process of writing and promoting his book that I think you will find helpful:
Social media can end the anxiety of creating a niche and differentiation for ad agency new business.
John Sonnhalter, CEO of Sonnhalter, a B2B ad agency located just outside of Cleveland, OH, shares an example of an agency that found a way to finally “draw a line in the sand” and openly declare his agency’s area of expertise for a particular market.
John was able to first ‘test the waters before jumping in’ by creating a ‘niche blog’ clearly targeted to a very specific audience.
Sonnhalter’s primary ability was knowing how to reach the professional tradesmen better than most. John was able to show that knowledge by creating a blog, Tradesmen Insights.
This was blog is different from most agency blogs. It had its own unique URL and stood alone, apart from the agency’s website. It didn’t include any of the agency’s branding. It was John’s personal blog instead of a team blog approach and allowed him to become the face of the agency.
Here are John’s first steps:
Selected a title and subtitle that clearly reflected his intended audience.
He wrote a bank of 50 post articles within a few weeks before adopting a more realistic writing schedule of one to two posts per week.
He also rapidly grew his Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers from among his target group.
He leveraged a database of previously collected email addresses from his target group to share content through an eNewsletter that he sent every other week.
By paying attention to his blog’s analytics, John polished the appeal for his blog. He simply wrote more content in the areas his readership liked the best, the post articles that produced the most traffic.
Following a number of new business successes, driven by his social media effort, John was then willing to merge this narrower focus into the branding and positioning of his agency.
John Sonnhalter:
“We call our specialty B2T marketing. Business-To-Tradesman. We know the manufacturers that sell to tradesmen. We know their businesses. Their distribution channels. And the media they use to deliver their messages.”
We are in the B-to-B space, and typically, our clients are slower adopters of new technologies and trends. If you think back to 2008, there weren’t many agencies, big or small, that was participating in social media.
Our agency went through a re-branding process three years ago. Social media became an important part of this effort by allowing us to become focused on a specific audience, manufacturers who were trying to reach professional tradesmen. It also helped us sharpen our point of differentiation and appeal.
I can’t tell you how hard it was over the past few years to turn down opportunities because they were outside of our specialty. But it’s beginning to pay off!
Social media became a great way to generate new business opportunities.
It’s been almost three years later and here’s where we stand:
2011 was our biggest year for new business wins in several years thanks primarily to our social presence.
Our Blog, Tradesmen Insights, is the center of our promotions. We’re almost to 500 posts and we generate more page views on it than we do on our website.
We’re now recognized as an “Industry Expert” in the field of marketing within our space.
We get requests to do interviews, guest posts and take part in industry-related workshops and seminars.
Most our agency’s new business leads now come from social media.
When someone inquires, now it’s because they have followed our blog and like what they are hearing.
We don’t participate in any RFQs from these leads because they have already qualified us as experts.
Social media not only has been a good way to generate new business through thought leadership, it also helps us with current client relationships. It’s difficult to aid a client in the use of social media if you haven’t used it effectively for yourself.
Bottom line is that if your agency isn’t on board with a social program you will be missing many opportunities. We’re all trying to set ourselves apart. Social media, especially a blog, will help you do that.
An infographic can be a great way for small to midsize ad agencies to communicate their unique position in the marketplace.
Infographics is derived from two words: ‘information’ and ‘graphics’, and stands for the graphical representation of data and information.
Why infographics for ad agency new business?
Visually create a positioning for your agency - “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Gain a positioning of expertise within a particular industry or discipline.
If you include an “embed code” for your infographic, it can help your agency’s website or blog site gain rankings for a particular niche. l
Infographics are easily shared and become viral that will also increase online traffic and build awareness for your agency.
Voltier Digital agency located in Delray Beach, FL, is a content marketing agency that has been creating lots of buzz for themselves through the use of Infographics. One of their newest inforgraphics was recently highlighted in this Mashable article, Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC] building a great deal of exposure for the agency.
“At Voltier Digital, we aim to stay on top of new inbound marketing tactics. Infographics have become super hot over the past 24 months and we are excited to share our experience and to give you a little direction on how to execute world-class infographics for your brand.”
Voltier Digital shares some helpful tips on how to create your own infographic in 7 simple steps:
It is absolutely essential that every ad agency have a plan for their new business development initiatives.
I recently spoke to a group of ad agency owners. I was amazed to learn that none of them had a written new business plan. That’s inconceivable to me. If you have no plan you can’t measure what you’re doing, there’s no real strategy behind your new business activities, no focus or direction.
“He who fails to plan, is planning to fail” - Winston Churchill
If you want to build a consistent pipeline for lead generation and new business opportunities for your agency you must have a game plan in place.
Here are my 10 tips for creating a game plan for your agency’s new business:
It might be a helpful exercise to create a SWOT analysis of your agency: it’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Set realistic new business goals. I can’t tell you how often I hear “our goal is to take the agency to the next level,” but they have no clue what that level is or what it looks like. In my opinion new business goals should be obtainable.
If your goal is to double your RFP responses or double your pitches, you also must have the processes in place to handle the additional workload if those things are to come to fruition.
Identify your top category and audience you are going to target. You must have an identifiable target.
Know who is your primary competition and create a strong point of differentiation from them.
Follow the KISS method. Keep everything simple as possible including the plan. A one page plan can easily suffice.
Outline the new business plan through specific strategies: Public Relations, Social Media, Direct Mail, Digital, etc.
Establish benchmarks for the things you can measure. Have a review, update, make changes and refocus your efforts once a month.
Use a program such as Basecamp, an excellent, inexpensive online tool to help implement your plan. Set milestone dates, create an actionable To-Do List for keeping track of who is doing, what, when, etc.
The person charged with new business should be empowered to implement the plan as if this was one of your agency’s client accounts. The new business person must be like a rudder of a ship to keep the process moving in the same direction, no matter how the wind is blowing.
Additional agency new business articles that may be of interest:
ADWEEK and the Mullen agency create excellent awareness for themselves through the Super Bowl and their use of social media.
ADWEEK’s video generated over 60,000 views in 1.5 days. There were over 47,000 Tweets that used #brandbowl hashtag and over 18,000 people who visited their site during game night. Not bad exposure for Mullen.
In case you missed them, this Adweek.com video provides the ‘Readers Digest’ version of the 2011 Superbowl Ads, a quick look through all 61 adds in 2 minutes.
For another recap of the Super Bowl Ads, check out Brand Bowl 2011, created by Mullen, a Boston-based advertising and social media agency, and Radian6, a leader in social media measurement and engagement.
Brand Bowl was built to gauge public reaction to the brands advertising during the Super Bowl. By monitoring Twitter, we can measure people’s opinions and rank the brands accordingly. The brand with the top “Brand Bowl score” on Sunday night will be the winner of Brand Bowl 2011, and is allowed to date the head cheerleader.
Which ad was voted #1? Check out the overall winning ad and the runner’s up by clicking on this link: Brand Bowl 2011
Park Howell, president of Park&Co, a full service agency that specializes in environmental marketing, provides a successful promotional campaign example for how he built awareness for his agency … by promoting its competition.
Arizona is trying to heal the P.R. black eye and business boycott created by its strict illegal immigration bill SB1070. Among other issues, the state is also battling a historic state deficit, lack of investment in education and nearly 10 percent unemployment. As one solution, Park and his agency launched a ‘Buy Local Advertising Campaign.’
“I was honored earlier this year by being named Ad Person of the Year, by the American Advertising Federation of Metro Phoenix. I thought with the recognition came some modicum of accountability for our industry.
So as we close 2010, our agency wanted to take one last stand for the local advertising industry and encourage all of you Arizona companies that are spending your dollars in other markets with other agencies and production companies, to at least consider including local creative companies on your bid list for 2011. And seriously consider the impact your spending can have on your neighbors right here at home, versus spreading your important dollars abroad.” Park Howell
With the philosophy that “a rising tide lifts all boats”, Park&Co is encouraging AZ companies in need of an advertising agency, to give a first look to Arizona ad agencies and also reminding them that for every $100 spend for goods and services at a locally owned business, $73 remained in the AZ economy.
From Park & Co’s Extra Cut Blog:
You buy your lettuce locally. Why not your marketing?
“You buy local produce, seek out locally owned stores, and drink local wines. So why go to other markets like L.A. for your advertising? Phoenix agencies offer a wealth of talent, from brand strategy and development to internationally award-winning creative, as well as innovative interactive campaigns and Hollywood-caliber film and video production. And you don’t have to look far …
… So, if you want to buy your maple syrup out of state, that’s fine by us. But if its business-building brand strategy and creative you’re looking for, we encourage you to shop locally by visiting parkandco.com/azagencies. And no worries if you pick another local firm over us. Just tell them Park&Co sent you.”
Park&Co have enlisted support and generated buzz for the campaign through its blog, social media network, email and with print. Check out their campaign through the following links:
Results thus far: Park shared with me that the response to their campaign was 95% positive and within the first couple of weeks of the campaign’s launch his agency had received an opportunity to pitch for new business, a direct result of the Buy Local campaign. By the 4th week of the campaign they had secured 5 new business calls, 3 of them in one day.
Concise and helpful information for prospective clients regarding the trends that will impact consumer behavior in 2011 and positioning as an advertising leader for JWT.
JWT has released its sixth annual year-end forecast of key trends that will drive or significantly impact consumer behaviour in the year ahead. The result of quantitative, qualitative and desk research conducted throughout the year and pulling from the input of more than 50 trend-scouts around the world. JWT is a believer in scoping out trends through its JWT Intelligence unit.
In their sixth annual year-end forecast of trends for the near future, technology is the overriding theme, driving many of our trends and at the center of others. The economy also continues to be a common thread. As a companion to their 88-page report, JWT created a 2-minute teaser video that gives a quick rundown of the top 10 trends for 2011.
Headquartered in New York, JWT is a true global network with more than 200 offices in over 90 countries. They employ some 10,000 marketing professionals.
JWT consistently ranks among the top agency networks in the world and continues its dominant presence in the industry by staying on the leading edge—from producing the first-ever TV commercial in 1939 to developing award-winning branded content for brands such as Freixenet, Ford and HSBC.
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.
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:
The starting point for any ad agency new business program is positioning. It is a fundamental prerequisite for small and midsize agencies. But it is also the place where most agencies where most fail. Positioning is everything.
“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
Brand coach Josh says, “If you can’t say why your [agency] brand is both different and compelling in a few words, don’t fix your statement, fix your [agency] company.”
Can you define your agency’s positioning in a simple statement? I can’t begin to tell you how many agencies I know struggle with this.
Advertising agencies and other marketing firms must do for themselves what they do for their clients – this SlideShare presentation, Agency Brand Thyself, provides an excellent overview of agency positioning based on the work of Ignition’s Tim Williams as outlined in his book “Take a Stand for Your Brand: Building a Great Agency Brand from the Inside Out.”
Advertising agencies need positioning because prospective clients have lots of choices—and if you don’t stand out, you are going to struggle with new business.
10 Things a Clear Positioning Provides for Your Ad Agency:
An increase in your agency’s relevance
A direction for how your agency spends its time, money and resources
An understanding on the types of persons to hire
A better new business win ratio
A strong appeal to a select group of prospects
Prospects that line up with your agency’s core strengths, what you do best
A broader market area
Fewer competitors, because there will be fewer firms who do what you do
Have prospects seek out your agency
Better margins, because well-focused agencies command premium pricing
The mix of social media and email marketing can greatly accelerate your social media presence and in turn generate inbound leads for your agency’s new business.
An email newsletter is one of the two most important sources for information and advice for small and medium businesses, according to a study entitled, “Optimizing Email Newsletters for Small/Medium Businesses” released byBredin Business Information, Inc. (BBI).
According to the study of over 380 executives …
Email newsletters remain highly relevant. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said that even in the age of Facebook and Twitter, email newsletters are as, or more, important than ever. Ninety-seven percent rate them an important or very important source of business management advice, more than print and broadcast media, major company websites and social networks.
Readers spend time with email newsletters. Fifty-eight percent spend more than a minute reading an email newsletter in their inbox, and 73% spend more than a minute reading (or watching) content that they click through to from the newsletter.
Readers prefer frequent email newsletters. Forty-two percent prefer weekly delivery, 27% monthly and 12% daily. Only 5% prefer a quarterly delivery schedule.
Readers want “how-to” information in their email newsletters. On a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (important), how-to content rated 3.6, slightly ahead of case studies, perspective pieces, product information and offers, and company news.
Readers want information on their industry and a quick and easy read. Roughly 80% of respondents rated those as important or very important newsletter criteria.
SMBs use email newsletters themselves – after having a website (70%), an email newsletter is the second most popular online marketing tactic (63%).
The rise in popularity of social media only enhances email newsletters. The two can work powerfully together to generate inbound leads for your agency’s new business pipeline as you share content and engage in conversations.
Here are a couple of tips to mix email marketing and social media:
1. Repurpose content. The content for your newsletter can come from your blog. Don’t assume that just because you’ve written it that everyone has read it. People are busy. Your audience will read your content in a variety of ways. Your helpful posts will be found by keyword search or through an RSS reader. It may be seen through your Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts.
I recommend choosing your newer, highest ranking posts to use for your email newsletter. Include a snippet of teaser copy and a link-back to the full article on your blog site. Give your recipients 4 or 5 of these choice articles to choose from in each newsletter. It will take literally 15 minutes at most to create the newsletter. Anybody can be easily trained to put it together and allows for it to be consistently created and sent, even when your agency is at its busiest.
This link provides a good example of an agency’s email newsletter that derives content from its blog, Big Fuel
2. Use your email list to “jump-start” your social media presence. Your blog should be the gate-way to your agency. This is the place where you want to generate a consistent flow of targeted traffic. The use of your email list to send your email newsletter will provide you with a spike in your blog’s traffic, as you introduce those on your list to your rich, helpful content.
Your list will also accelerate your followers on other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your social media presence will also help to grow opt-ins for your email list.
Additional tips:
Send your email newsletter twice a month. Set the send-dates in advance.
The email should come from you rather than the agency. It is much more personal.
Use a blog post title for the email newsletter’s subject line.
Best days to send, usually are Tuesday and Wednesdays. You can always test other days/times once you have a benchmark established.
Compare your blog’s analytics to your email analytics whenever your email newsletter has been sent. Also compare analytics of previous email newsletters to improve your open and click through rates.
Remember that the fuel for this engine will be new content. You’ll need to be consistent in creating it.
Infographics: A great way to connect with prospective clients for new business.
Infographics (information graphics) are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. They are mostly image-based with little text. Infographics is a good way to illustrate social media to clients as author Erik Qualman did with Social Media ROI: Socialnomics.
Jesse Thomas continues to do a masterful job in social media data visualization. He is the CEO and Founder of JESS3, a young creative interactive agency. Jess creative this infographic video that positions him as a “thought leader” to prospective clients, “The State of the Internet.”
The Manhattan based agency, Big Fuel, has pulled together a very helpful collection of 85 social media infographics that should be a great resource and spark some fresh ideas to illustrate social media for our clients.
Big Fuel also provides some great examples of infographic videos that they have created for new business:
According to Jupiter Research: companies that run contests or sweepstakes have twice as many fans on their sponsored social network pages as those who don’t.
Social media provides agencies with many avenues for new business lead generation. One particular strategy, creating contests to engage an audience, quickly build online traffic and generate leads, is now even more feasible for agencies thanks to easy-to-use platforms that have recently emerged.
These new platforms allow you to simply create, automate, and execute powerful online contests at little-to-no cost. Here are a few online contest platforms that you may want to explore:
ContestMachine: Promotions Made Easy
ContestMachine is an inexpensive solution for contest campaigns for small to midsize ad agencies. They offer a packages that range from free to $99 per month with no long term contracts. ContestMachine takes care of the details, from collecting entries to notifying winners.
Strutta – The Contest Platform
Strutta it easy for publishers, marketers and agencies to create online contests and promotions at a fraction of the cost of custom development. The make it easy for users to engage with your promotion and share via popular social media and communications tools (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
They offer a Trial (Free), Basic ($499) and Pro version ($2499), and to create custom contest campaigns in minutes. The Strutta platform enables a wide range of promotional activities, including online contests, product testing, awards programs, and more.
Wildfire
Wildfire, another contest tool that can easily build & launch social media marketing campaigns within minutes. You can easily integrate branded interactive campaigns like sweepstakes, contests and give-aways with the viral features of the social web to create engaging campaigns that spread like virally, thus the name Wildfire.
Every campaign you build & launch on our platform offers a lead generation component or can be linked to one through another format.
They have the Basic package $5 per campaign, their Standard package, $25 per campaign and their Premium package, $250 per campaign. The also offer subscription plans as well. I liked that they have no contracts, no on-going fees and no credit card is needed for sign up.
Some additional contest ideas and tips:
You can promote your contest to hundreds of Web sites that list free contests
Send out a press releases about your contest
Ask for as much information as you can from contest subscribers. It would be important to get their social media information as well (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
Ask participants to your contest if they would opt-in to receive your agency’s eNewsletter
Use your agency’s services as the give away as prizes
Offer prizes that are relevant to your target audience
You may want to offer more than one prize and include some runner-up prizes
Provide enough information about the prizes, to generate interest and participation
Keep your contest simple and make it easy for people to participate
Be sure and include a specific time period for the length of the contest
Tell visitors how winners will be determined
Search online for other contests to get more ideas
Get your clients and prospective clients onboard by creating a contest for your agency that you can demonstrate success and that your agency uses the tools it recommends its clients use
Additional articles regarding ad agency promotion:
I received a call today from a Fuel Lines reader who was excited to hear a Marketplace radio interview with ad agency president, Stephanie Holland, the program entitled, “No advertising love for single women”. The radio program Marketplace, is heard by an audience of more than 9.1 million unique listeners in the course of a week, on 486 public radio stations nationwide.
An increasing number of women are single — getting married later, not at all, or single later in life. So why aren’t more advertisements directed their way? Ashley Milne-Tyte reports
The interview further positions Stephanie as a “thought leader” for marketing to women. For the first time in their 25 year history,Holland + Holland has been invited to participate in two national pitches in 2009. Their president is now frequently called upon to speak across the country and author guest columns and posts. Her blog, She-conomy, has been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and she was recently named to Forbes Thirty Women Entrepreneurs To Follow on Twitter.
This was your typical small, full service advertising agency that used the same agency speak to describe how they were unique …
Excellent creative that is strategically based with a staff that has great chemistry and is fun to work with.
Sound familiar? Then Stephanie and her agency created a more narrow and unique positioning created through as part of their social media strategy for new business. The results have been revolutionary.
Stephanie also serves the agency as creative director. Not knowing of any other creative directors in their market, she conducted some research and discovered that 97 percent of all creative directors in the country are male, only 3 percent are female.
The real jewel that was unearthed was to learn that 85 percent of all brand purchases are made by women. Women had bought more product from Home Depot and Lowes than did men, more consumer electronics, more NFL and NBA apparel than men, they even purchased more hamburgers than did men! Women have become the purchasing agent for the family.
Social media allows this agency to hang their hat on a unique and appealing position that has in turn created a national interest for this small ad agency.
Social media has also allowed Stephanie and her agency to compete in a much larger arena without geographical limitations. Their agency’s positioning gives companies a reason to seek them out.
Ad Agency Principals Should “Speak” for New Business.
Having the opportunity to speak in front of a highly targeted, interested group of prospects is a very effective form of lead generation. Even if you are speaking for free, the opportunity oftentimes outweighs a fee when it comes to the potential for new business and establishing you and your agency as thought leaders.
Here are some 10 personal tips to generate speaking opportunities:
1. I would suggest that you use a blog to get started.
Your blog can become a great tool to open doors to speak. It provides a the platform to hone your subject matter, draw interest and appeal from your best agency prospects.
People want to work with people that they know, trust and like. Your blog can become the face of your agency, the gateway for new business. It can also be a springboard for speaking opportunities.
2. Create a Speaking Page
Michael Gass speaks on topics related to leadership, business development, and social media. He has been speaking publicly for more than 25 years and has keynoted more than 100 events.
A few suggestions on what to include on your blog’s Speakers Page
Clearly define your expertise and your niche
Provide a description of topics and presentations you can speak on
Create your “speakers bio”
Speaking engagements. List events where you will be speaking, no matter how small (I would also suggest adding your speaking engagements to your blog’s side bar)
Provide testimonials. I’ve discovered that LinkedIn is an excellent way to generate testimonials
Be sure and provide your contact information
Educate and you won’t have to sell
3. Shoot Video
Video is easily shot, embedded and/or linked through your blog. An agency principal that didn’t have any video footage of prior speaking engagements and decided to create it in-house. Even brought in a change of wardrobe and shot video for 3 different presentations.
4. Record Audio
You can also record video through a number of different programs to upload or link to your blog. Someone recently introduced me to a program that easily records interviews called wetoku. You can also use a service as simple as FreeConferenceCall.com.
Click here to listen to my experience using social media from an ad agency new business perspective, BlogTalkRadio interview
5. About Page
I would suggest creating an About Page for your blog that would provide a fuller profile of your experience beyond your speakers bio.
6. Research Sponsorship Opportunities
An ad agency that specializes in marketing for academic medical centers learned that it was better to spend money for a conference sponsorship, attended by a large number of their prospects, than to send a group of its staff members as attendees. For almost the same amount of money, the conference sponsorship package included:
1 keynote and 2 breakout session speaking opportunities
2 conference admissions
All attendee’s contact information
Promotion of the agency in conference materials
Booth space
Ability to freely hand out agency promotional materials
The agency discovered this was much cheaper and more more productive for their new business objectives. The agency provided its best “thought leader” for the conference that built instant credibility with attendees.
In addition to these tips …
7. Make the Most of Your Presentation Time
Success breeds success
It goes without saying, you need to make a good presentation. Here are a few presentation tips to think about:
Focus on your audience. Don’t sell. Help them, entertain them, inform them and inspire them.
Prepare and rehearse your presentation.
Make eye contact and be engaging. Use listening notes. Facilitate questions. Make your session interactive with your audience.
Get a look at the presentation room as soon after you arrive as possible. It always helps to be aware of your surroundings and adjust your presentation accordingly. Set-up your equipment as early as possible before your presentation time.
Have a back-up plan if you have technical issues. I always upload a copy of my presentation to an online source, have downloaded it also to a thumb-drive, make sure I have all my adapters, pluggins, etc. If at all possible spend time in other conference sessions. Be part of the conference community.
Provide enlightening personal stories and illustrations.
If you use PowerPoint or Keynote, don’t read the slides! Instead use them illustrate your points. Nice photos/graphics.
Bring plenty of business cards. Provide your contact info at the end of any slide or video presentations.
8. Use Social Tools
In addition to your blog, use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to help promote the event at which you are speaking. This will be a huge help to the event organizers, will make them even more appreciative for your participation and will be a benefit to you by the positive referrals. Often event organizers will also provide you with a discount for your readers.
Also use social media, prior to the event, to meet and engage with those who will be attending.
9. Don’t Forget to Follow-up
Taking the time to follow-up with attendees is an important part of process of gaining additional speaking and new business opportunities. Providing a personal email to those you collected business cards from and providing a link to your presentation in SlideShare would be helpful tactic to use as a follow-up. A personal handwritten note would also be a nice follow-up.
10. Enroll in a Speakers Bureau
Jaci Russo, The Russo Group, recently shared that enrolling in a speakers bureau has generated a good number of additional speaking opportunities for her, in addition to her blog, writings, interviews and referrals.
The Mullen advertising agency, and Radian6, a leader in social media measurement, created BrandBowl2010, a Twitter/Super Bowl experience that combined tweeting, ad reviews and a host of metrics to let viewers generate and view real time ratings of the TV commercials that ran on the big game.
“According to the 63,000+ Twitter users whose comments were captured in BrandBowl2010, Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55was the least effective brand.
The results were determined from a total of 98,656 Tweets collected at BrandBowl2010. The site provided an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that takes into consideration both volume of tweets and sentiment (positive or negative).” Brandbowl 2010
A great idea for ad agency new business …
Mullen offered the last place finisher in BrandBowl2010 — Budweiser Select55 — free creative services to help them make a better Super Bowl commercial next year and they are serious with their offer.
Additional articles regarding ad agency promotion:
I’m in Indianapolis this week to conduct a social media | new business workshop for a new client. The atmosphere here is exciting. The Colts are beloved in this city. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about them and the Super Bowl, from our Southwest pilot, the hotel shuttle driver and registration agents, all are ecstatic over their pro team. Indianapolis schools will even start 1 hour later on Monday to accommodate children, teachers and bus drivers who will be up late Sunday night watching the game.
The ADBOWL capitalizes on the Superbowl of Advertising.
You’ve probably heard of ADBOWL, but you may not know that the idea originated at a midsize ad agency’s Super Bowl party in Albuquerque, NM. Ten years later, growing in size every year, the idea has paid great dividends to the agency generating national television, press coverage and positioning it as an industry leader.
For a decade McKee Wallwork Cleveland has capitalized on this event that has brought national attention to their Albuquerque, NM advertising agency with the ADBOWL.
Steve McKee, President of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, shared with me how the idea for ADBOWL came about and what it has done to build awareness for his agency:
“ADBOWL started as a lark. Ten years ago, we thought it would be fun to have a Super Bowl commercials party at the agency, so we did. We handed out little paper ballots on which attendees rated the spots. Pretty humble beginnings.
The next year we put it online and thought we would promote it within the industry. We approached ADWEEK and they thought it was a fun idea, so they gave us some free ad space to spread the word.
One thing then led to another, and in subsequent years things have taken off. ADBOWL has done wonders for the agency on many levels:
First,it gets us lots of free press, which is great for the “I’ve heard of you” factor. It’s gotten us in every major newspaper and trade magazine, on network affiliates all over the country, and even on national TV (a few times). It’s a great door-opener.
Second, it reinforces our desired positioning as an advertising industry leader. We are the expert “color commentators” on the year’s biggest day of advertising.
And third, it has offered us amazing opportunities to learn (by doing) new media. For example, we worked with Sprint to pioneer text-based voting that is now used far and wide, including on American Idol.
In the first years it was a pretty complex thing to execute–we really didn’t know what we were getting into. But as technology has evolved we’ve gotten it down to a science. We try to make incremental improvements each year but keep the user experience very simple and fun.”
Steve McKee recently wrote a book, When Growth Stalls that was made available in March of last year. Steve has been generating sales using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The book provides additional promotion for the agency and further position it as an industry leader.
Encourage your staff to be creative in ways to promote your agency. If you have examples of creative promotions to share, please include in the comment section of this post.
Additional articles regarding ad agency promotion:
In a recent poll ad people are ranked the as the worlds 2nd least trust worthy professionals.
Carton Donofrio Partners, a small Baltimore advertising agency has created a ambitious campaign that bring advertisers, agencies and the media together to stop advertising madness. The campaign is also providing a unique way to build some national buzz and awareness for the agency.
“Advertising simply isn’t working as well as it could because the social contract, the implicit agreement advertisers and consumers have established to support a productive exchange, has been violated,” said David Smith, executive creative director at Carton Donofrio Partners. “The average person’s exposed to over 5,000 ads per day. Advertising professionals are now the second least trusted professionals in the world after politicians.”
The Carton Donofrio Partners launched a campaign”www.StopTheAdness.org.” By taking a stand against intrusive advertising practices and positioning itself as an agent for change is a very appealing new business strategy.
Their campaign interactive Website allows them to start conversations with consumers and with the marketers who are trying to reach them and provide ways to easily make the campaign viral. This is a very effective way for arton Donofrio Partners to gain insightful feedback and also share their inspiring point of view, which I’m sure will generate an appeal for this agency’s services.
The goal of this campaign is to improve advertising and features ways for visitors to participate and interact:
Sign the Pledge and get everyone you know who makes or approves advertising to sign it, as well.
Opt in for reports and updates from us on how to stop the adness and make advertising better.
Give a shout-out to brands and agencies that are doing it right by uploading their advertising on the Wall of Fame.
Expose those who are contributing to the adness by uploading their work on the Wall of Shame.
Give us more examples of adness you’d like to stop in the Join the Conversation forum.
Click on one of our examples of adness above, and tell us what you think should be done to make it better.
The site also showcases videos demonstrating “adness.” These videos show how bad advertising:
Bombards consumers’ personal space
Serves inappropriate material to the wrong audience at the wrong time.
Additional ad agency promotional articles that may be of interest:
Many agencies trying to impress with a lot of flash they forget that prospective clients need a quick way to be given ” just the facts” about your agency.
I’m amazed at how many agencies make it difficult to get past the hype and provide necessary, evaluative information. Some agency websites don’t even include their location. If a prospective client wants to make contact they are instructed to make a request through info@. Why make finding info about your agency so difficult?
Make it easy for a prospect to obtain the facts about your agency. Provide a link to easily download and print an Agency Fact Sheet from your agency’s website. And while we are on the subject, make it easy for them to make contact, not with the info@ but with a person, preferably the person charged with overseeing your agency’s new business.
For ad agency new business, why no try doing the opposite of what you’ve been doing in the past.
“The Opposite Episode” of Seinfeld, George comes to the realization that he should try to do the opposite of everything, so he does, his luck changes and everything begins to go his way including getting a girlfriend, a job with the Yankees and moving out of his parents’ house.
Almost my entire career in advertising has been spent in business development. Working with a lot of advertising agencies through the years, I’ve found they all have common problems when it comes to new business:
The overwhelming majority have no target audience
No point of differentiation
Don’t use the marketing tools they recommend their clients use
Have no new business strategy beyond personal networks and referrals
Inconsistent new business practices
Are their own worst client
Use the same descriptive language that other agencies use to describe themselves: Great creative, strategic, outside-the-box thinkers, fun to work with, proprietary process
Poor at promoting themselves
Are always in a mode of redesigning their Websites
Stay in a perpetual state of rebranding themselves
When business is good, new business practices are usually shelved and only pushed when more business is needed which causes a roller coaster effect. Turning the lead generation pipeline on and off like a faucet. This creates a a major problem because it generally takes months of consistent effort to generate leads from the agency’s new business pipeline.
How do you correct these problems? Do the opposite:
Choose the best target audience for your agency. You can’t be everything to everybody.
Create an appealing point of differentiation.
Use the social media marketing tools you recommend to clients.Be an active participant.
Have a written social media strategy for new business success.
Be consistent in implementing your new business strategy. Keep processes simple and gauge them by what it would take to maintain when your agency is at its busiest.
Allow your agency to become your best client.
Social media can help your agency redefine itself with a language that resonates with your prospective audience.
Practicing what you preach, using the tools recommending to clients and learn to promote your agency the right way. Don’t throw away your marketing mind when it comes to your own agency.
Allow your agency’s Website to become the agency brochure. This will be the place to show your work, present your credentials and capabilities. In social though, always lead with benefits.
Social media is the best tool I have ever used for agency branding. By incorporating all of the above.
I started my agency new business consultancy just prior to social media becoming mainstream. I soon discovered that social media can actually teach agencies how to do new business, the way they should have been doing new business all along.
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MICHAEL GASS
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 
