“The Burnett agency has accomplished something that has eluded so many other businesses: It has managed to keep the spirit and drive of its founder alive and well almost two decades after the founder himself passed on.“ Rita Koselka of Forbes

To celebrate Leo Burnett Worldwide’s 75th anniversary, Lobo, an animation and design studio, produced this animated spot. It is based on a speech given by Mr. Burnett announcing his retirement and leaving his staff with enduring principles for creating the fifth largest ad agency in the world.

The original film of Mr. Burnett’s speech is still required viewing for all new Burnett employees as part of their induction.

“We chose to create a short film that looked straight from the 50s/60s, the modern age of cartoons, from the graphic style to the slightly worn, flickering picture quality, to the jazzy soundtrack. The main character is a cartoon version of Mr. Burnett himself, who goes through the situations described in the speech, teaching a lesson not only to the advertising world but to every creative activity.” Lobo

Leo Burnett “When to take my name off the door” from Lobo on Vimeo.

Time Magazine included Leo Burnett as one of the most influential people of the 20th century creating some of America’s most memorable ads and advertising icons such as the Jolly Green Giant, Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna, The Marlboro Man, and Tony the Tiger.  His Chicago-based ad agency became the 10th largest agency in the world and was one of the few not headquartered in New York City.

“Almost 40 years after the founder’s death, rival agencies complain that Burnett’s can still swing a pitch by showing a 50-year-old film of the master himself explaining his advertising philosophy” adbrands.net

Burnett revolutionized the advertising industry by developing a creative approach called, ‘The Chicago School of Advertising” as described by American National Business Hall of Fame:

“Leo Burnett had the rare distinction of leaving behind a new approach to the creative side of the advertising business. Burnett had developed a creative approach that many termed ‘The Chicago School of Advertising” It stressed finding the inherent drama in the product and writing the ad out of the drama, rather than using mere cleverness.

Burnett felt that Chicago was the Midwest — the heart and soul of the nation. In addition, he felt that the down to earth, wide-eyed perspective of Midwesterners facilitated their ability to create ads that appealed to the majority of Americans. Thus using his rare ability to see and use the dramatic in products and the acceptable perspective of Midwesterners, Burnett’s philosophy and style spread throughout the advertising industry.”

When television became mainstream in the 1950s, Burnett’s agency boomed because of this visual philosophy. Burnett said that television, “is the strongest drug we’ve ever had to dish out.” 

When Burnett started his business in August 1935 he had one account and a staff of eight. The agency’s only client was a Minnesota canning company which had been a client at his old firm.

Burnett’s widow, Naomi, credited Leo’s hiring of Richard Heath as the turning point for the agency. Heath was responsible for new business. He promoted the agency and created opportunities for bigger accounts such as Campbell Soup, Kellogg, Pillsbury and Proctor & Gamble. As brilliant an ad man as Leo Burnett was, he still needed someone to sell the agency and create new business opportunities.

Here are a few of Leo Burnett’s memorable quotes:

• Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
• When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.
• A good ad which is not run never produces sales.
• Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.
• I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.
• I have learned that you can’t have good advertising without a good client, that you can’t keep a good client without good advertising, and no client will ever buy better advertising than he understands or has an appetite for.
• I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.
• Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.
• What helps people, helps business.

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. Bob 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.”

Bob has a created 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 puts a face to the Hoffman/Lewis agency and because he is so transparent and blatantly honest … he is not appealing to everyone. But to those who are  drawn to him, find him a ‘straight-shooter’, a person who will cut through all the agency B.S. and tell you what he really thinks.  

Even though Bob likes to berate social media, he has used it wisely to build awareness for his agency. Bob has recently experimented with self-publishing, taking some of the best of his blog post articles and repurposing them in an eBook, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising: The strange world of advertising in 101 delicious bite-size pieces.

This is very smart of Bob. With just a little bit of work, he gets an even greater return on the time he has invested in generating content for his blog and extending the life and circulation of these articles through an easily created eBook.

Available in a Kindle version, it is not only a great buy at $2.99, but also an excellent, entertaining read.

Bob’s take on the advertising industry is refreshing, insightful, amusing and discerning. He keeps us grounded when our industry is in a state of flux and upheaval. I highly recommend this book. 

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 share insights for the process of writing and promoting his book:

• 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising
• My Overnight Social Media Success
• First Comes The Sale. Then Comes The Social.
• Festival of Shameless Self-Promotion
• Just in Time for the Holidays – Contrar-A-Thon
• Comparing Apples and Amazons

Click Here to review on Amazon.

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.

John Sonnhalter

Check out our agency blog, Tradesmen Insights: Marketing to the professional tradesmen in Construction, Industrial and MRO markets

Have questions? Click here to send me an Email. I also invite you to connect with me on Twitter and Facebook.

Pinterest has great potential for ad agencies: storyboards, branding strategies, concept ideas, campaign ideas, design ideas, even organizing agency pitches.

Time Magazine named Pinterest one of the top 50 websites for 2011. It is one of the hottest new social media sites with enduring specialties that qualifies it as the next ‘Twitter.’  Its value through venture financing has soared from $40 million to over $200 million in only a few months.

Pinterest (pronounced to rhyme with interest) is a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections. The mission statement of Pinterest is to connect everyone in the world through shared tastes and the “things” they find interesting. Wikipedia

A site like Pinterest helps provide a place for discovery, saving and sharing. 

Pinterest is like a giant scrapbook of ideas. When you find things of interest, this new platform allows you to upload those images as Pins and place them on customized , themed Boards and organize and share them on any topic that you choose. Others can follow your Boards and add comments. You can also allow them to post to your boards.

A ‘Pinterest Picture’ is worth 1000 words.

People tend to be “eye-minded”. I think this is one of the primary reasons this site has become so popular.

Studies by educational researchers suggest that approximately 83% of human learning occurs visually.

There is a soothing quality in using Pinterest.

Once you spend some time understanding how it works you’ll find it fun and very addictive. I’ve personally spent hours on it.

Here is a listing of my boards, which include some that are business related and some that are personal:

• Advertising
• Advertising Agencies’ Offices
• Books Worth Reading
• Home Decor
• Home Office
• Horses
• Houseboats
• My Travels
• Photography

Pinterest is still far behind site visitors comparative to Facebook, but it is making up for it in the amount of time spent on the site. An incredible 88.3 minutes was spent in November, according to comScore. This number is third only to Facebook (394 minutes) and Tumblr (141.7 minutes) and is also twice the amount of time that the average user spends on Twitter and 10 times the time spent on Google +.

Here are a some ideas on how to use Pinterest for your agency:

• Showcase your agency’s brand in a unique way
• Great potential for internal use with your agency’s creative teams – storyboards, branding strategies, concept ideas, campaign ideas, design ideas, even organizing agency pitches
• Enhance visual thinking and planning
• It has important potential for your clients’ social media marketing mix
• A great way to keep tabs on what is hot
• Potential for greater SEO (you can embed Pinterest to your agency’s website or blog)
• Organize areas of focus of the agency – keep up and share what is hot within your agency niche or industry focus
• Interact with your audience by testing campaign ideas and concepts

To help you get started I recommend Rob Lammie’s a Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network

Please email me if you need an invitation to Pinterest or would like to submit your agency’s photo to the Advertising Agencies’ Offices Board.

A business development person without leads is like a fish out of water. Neither can survive very long. Yet …

Only 30% of B2B marketers know the names of decision makers in the companies they are targeting. The RAIN Group

It is imperative that you know who your prospects are or you are wasting time, energy and valuable agency resources. Here are a few things you should know:

• Your agency’s best target market (industry, geography, size, etc.).
• Specific names of companies that are the best targets for your agency.
• Titles of decision makers in your target industries.
• The names of specific decision makers among your target companies along with their basic contact information and any social media accounts they use.

To be successful in new business development you must first name  your prospects. Then its important to qualify them. Unqualified prospective client meetings are as bad as no meetings at all. It is a waste of agency time and resources.

There are 3 steps in qualifying a lead or prospect:

1. Find the companies that need your agency’s service.
2. Establishing that the prospect has a large enough budget to pay for your agency’s services.
3. Make sure that the company contact person has the authority to select an agency partner.

Photo credit: marciookabe

Having a search engine optimization strategy, or SEO, is important to support lead generation for ad agency new business.

Most agency business development directors have a marketing strategy and are becoming competent with an inbound lead generation strategy that has as its centerpiece – content marketing. Understanding search engines is an important part to content marketing and blogging. Therefore, it is important for business development directors to become familiar with how search engines work and keep up with what is going on.

Recent changes to Google’s search engine ranking algorithms are already having an impact. Google’s own site, www.blogger.com, has seen a 20% drop in search traffic. 

How do you become more knowledgeable, reduce the impact of these inevitable changes and create an SEO strategy for new business? 

1. By understanding Google’s bottom line. It is important that you be natural and authentic so you will be less likely affected by Google’s ongoing improvements to its algorithms.

Over 90 % of all Internet users are using search engines and they are the main sources of online traffic. The primary search engine is Google. Google’s goal is, they want their users to find specifically what they are looking for because if they don’t, they will be looking for alternatives.

“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want,”  Google’s cofounder and CEO, Larry Page

2. You can also decrease the impact of these inevitable changes, as Google strives to get better, by focusing your content marketing efforts on the basic elements of SEO. These are the key elements of SEO that also will be less likely affected by Google’s changes.

Here are some basic blog SEO tips to help get you started:

• Start with a benchmark. Know what your current page rank is and continue to monitor it with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.
• Your blog’s theme/template can help or hurt your SEO, so review and choose carefully. Most designers are more concerned with good design and less concerned about SEO. The navigation structure of your blog’s template plays a critical role in how it is indexed and crawled by the search engines. Use a navigation structure that enables every page reached within three clicks.
• Check your blog’s referer log regularly to track where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they are using to find your site.
• Find your ‘niche’ key words. Choosing the most popular search terms will make it nearly impossible to get to the top spot in search. Instead use niche key words that are relevant to your target audience. Place these keywords throughout your blog site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Note: the title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords. You can use Google keyword tool to find keywords relevant to your blog.  Just be sure not to overdo by stuffing key words, a Black Hat SEO technique that search engines do not approve and will get your site penalized.
• You should make it standard to build internal links back to your archives when creating new content. I invite readers to check other articles that might be of interest, at the bottom of almost every post article that I write. Also remember to always link back to sources cited in your post articles as it is bad etiquette not to do so. You will build quality ‘back-links’ by creating link-worthy content.
• Choose a meaningful title and add a descriptor statement that is included in the metadata and under the description title. Mine is “Fueling ad agency new business through social media.”
• Pick the right domain name. Try to pick a domain name that says something about your blog site’s content.
• The single most important thing you can do is to consistently provide high-quality content on your blog. Google has become good at weeding out poor quality web pages.
• Add URL to Google. Improve your site’s visibility in Google search results. It’s free. To get started, simply add and verify your site and you’ll start to see information right away.
• Be sure and send a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. A site map is a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site and makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
• Make your URLs more search-engine friendly by naming them with clear keywords.
• Be sure to include the alternative text descriptions for all photos, images and videos. Spiders can only search text, not text in your images. Start with your image names: adding an “ALT” tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image on your site.
• Take the time to include blog post tags. Tags are one or two words that briefly describe what your article is all about. I also include any person, entity or publication mentioned in a post. Search engines use tags to index and find your posts faster.
• SEO and social media marketing have become intrinsically intertwined so be sure you are utilizing social media. You should grow your social media community and using social media platforms and tools to ‘push-out’ new content and pull-in website traffic.
• Your content should be fresh. Updating your content regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic. The more recent Google update, dubbed the “Freshness” update, designed to rank newer content higher in search results.
• Google has started adding Google+ brand pages in search results and some predict that Google will make it harder to do SEO without Google + . I would recommend that you get started by setting up your Google + account and take part.

It would be helpful for you to know how Google finds web pages matching a search query and determines the order of the results.

How does Google find web pages matching your query, and decides the order of search results? Check out this helpful summary of Google Basics. Another helpful resource is Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to help Google find, index, and rank your site. Here’s also a handy, downloadable Search Engine Optimization Startet Guide. Look up unfamiliar SEO terms using the  Search Engine Marketing Glossary

This is an excellent guide for WordPress bloggers: Must See SEO Guide for All WordPress Bloggers

Additional articles that might be of interest:

• 8 SEO Writing Tips to Help Prospects Find Your Ad Agency
• Ten Toughest Content Marketing Challenges for Ad Agency New Business
• The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing for Ad Agency New Business
• Report: Inbound Marketing Channels More Cost-Effective for Ad Agency New Business
• 10 Idea Starters to Keep Fresh Content Churning
• 2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical to Ad Agency New Business
• Study: 69% of Businesses Increased New Business Leads Through Blogging

Photo credit: marclookabe

www.funphotobox.com

How new business is being acquired for ad agencies is currently undergoing a paradigm shift; instead of pursuing clients, it’s now more important for your prospective clients to find your agency. 

I’m sure that you are well aware of the changing marketing landscape and the need to make fundamental changes to the traditional methods for business development.

1. Data Explosion - 90% of the world’s data was created in just the past two years. Content marketing has become a key element in building awareness for agencies.
2. Social Media Eruption - social media is now mainstream and is as a key engagement channel for prospects.
3. Channel and Device Boom - The growing number of new marketing channels and devices, such as smart phones and tablets, are quickly becoming a priority for reaching prospective clients.
4. Expanding Markets - Small to midsize agencies have a new window of opportunity to reach a larger market than ever before through new media. There are even international opportunities for agencies.
5. New business Professionals Struggle - Those who were once good at acquiring new business are finding it to be more complex and changing rapidly. Many are struggling. The interruption type tactics, which were successful in the past, are becoming less and less effective.

Unconventional times call for unconventional methods for ad agency new business.

For those charged with developing a new business program for a small to midsize ad agency, PR firm or digital shop, the following resources are for you. I’ve pulled together a list of the “best of” FUEL LINES agency new business articles based upon analytics of site visitors and their comments. These articles include some of the latest trends, tactics and tips for business development as well as articles that hopefully will give you inspiration.

The Top 10 New Business Articles of 2011:

#1 Steve Jobs: 10 Presentation Tactics for Ad Agency New  Business

#2 Steve Jobs’s 10 Best Quotes for Advertising Agencies

#3 Forbes: 20 Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns

#4 Top 10 Benefits of Social Media for Ad Agency New Business

#5 The Top 14 List of Advertising Agency Networks for New Business

#6 New Roper Study: 9 in 10 CMOs See Value in Content Marketing

#7 2011 Forecast: 100 Global Trends That Will Drive Consumer Behavior

#8 28 Stimulating Digital and Social Media Marketing Quotes

#9 16 of the Top Quotes from Fast Company’s The Future of Advertising

#10 The 10-20-30 Rule for Keynote Presentations for Ad Agency New  Business

Here are some additional new business resources by category:

• Agency Blogs
• Agency Branding
• Agency Leadership
• Agency Networks
• Agency Search Consultants
• Best Practices
• Content Marketing
• Digital
• Metrics
• New Business Tactics
• New Business Talents
• New Business Tips
• New Business Tools
• New Business Trends
• Pitches
• Positioning
• Promotion
• Public Relations
• Recession
• Research
• SEO
• Social Media
• Speaking
• Special Events
• Time Management

Content marketing is the wave of the future for ad agency new business, but to have success you will need to make advance preparations to consistently deliver quality content.  

I’ve recently written my 650th blog post article. I have a sense of jubilation mainly because I had been battling one of the most serious bouts of “writers block” since starting my blog. I had dealt with this dreaded writers malady in the past but I have never had this much trouble overcoming it.

Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some “blocked” writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers. Wikepedia

If you are discovering just how difficult it is to write and create quality content, you aren’t alone. Here’s a collection of notable quotes on the challenges of writing:

• “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Red Smith
• “I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.” Steven Wright
• “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” Gene Fowler
• “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” James Michener
• “Every writer I know has trouble writing.” Joseph Heller
• “When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.” Enrique Jardiel Poncela
• “I do not like to write – I like to have written.” Gloria Steinem
• “Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s good only when it’s over.” Hunter S. Thompson
• “Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.” Anonymous
• “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is nothing mystical about writing, it is simply hard work. It begins with deciding on the purpose of your writing and who you are writing for. What is the benefit to your readers? What is the benefit to you?  It’s also about making a serious time commitment and then grunting the work out until you get it done.

Here are some tips that I would suggest to make content creation easier:

1. Know your audience: One of the first things you MUST do is to identify who your audience is. Then you must focus your content toward their marketing challenges and needs. Use your analytics for instant feed back to know what content is appealing and what isn’t. Your audience will become the guide for your writing.
2. Keep your objective top-of-mind: You are writing with a purpose. Use content marketing to generate new business opportunities for the agency by building awareness, lead generation, referrals and positioning as a thought leader. If you don’t have a clear objective you will be wasting your time.
3. Commit to create original content: Many agencies are trying to take the easy way out by only curating the content of others. There is a place for curating content, but note that original content is in great demand. You will get the best return of your time investment if you are the one that is creating the content that others are curating. That’s where the gold is.
4. Develop a process for delivering content consistently: Small to midsize agencies should develop a content marketing team, but be sure to name the team leader. If everyone is responsible then no one is. A designated person should be responsible for setting up and managing the editorial calendar and edits as well as managing the content delivery process. I’m hearing from many agencies that have recently created a position of Content Director who oversees the creation of content on behalf of the agency as well as agency clients. I think this is a smart move. Agencies can also hire a freelancer to oversee and manage the process remotely.

Here are some additional articles to help with your agency’s content creation:

• 10 Idea Starters to Keep Fresh Content Churning
• 2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical to Ad Agency New Business
• 10 Ways to Create An Ad Agency Blog That is Reader-Centric
• 6 Simple Steps for Using Content Marketing to Attract Ad Agency New Business
• 6 Writing Tips to Make Your Ad Agency’s Blog Effective for New Business
• 21 Blog Post Writing Tips for Ad Agency New Business
• The Four Great Laws of Copywriting for Ad Agency New Business

If you want to have a productive new business program, you must decide what you are not going to do.

Most everyone has a “To-Do List.”  But it can be helpful to periodically create a “Not To-Do List.” Simply make an assessment of all of the non-productive things you are currently doing that need to be eliminated.

“Deciding what not to do can be crucial to getting things done.”

Here are some things that I have found helpful creating my own Not-To-Do List:

1. Review the previous year’s calendar of activities and evaluate which of your activities produced the best results for new business and which didn’t. I’d suggest making a list of your activities and create a ranking system.
2. Create a list of agency activities you are involved in that have nothing to do with new business.
3. Evaluate your current To Do List. Ask yourself this question, “Are these tasks going to produce the best results for my time  and energy and help in my position of generating new business opportunities for the agency?” Make note of tasks that you deem to be less productive.
4. You should then have enough information to begin to add to your “Not To-Do List.”

It would be important to review and discuss your Not To-Do List with the agency principal(s). Everyone has a limited amount of time and energy and hopefully your boss will see the value in making the most of your time.  For instance, it may not be the best use of your time to be involved in meetings that are not directly related to the agency’s new business.

 Items on my “Not-To Do List” for the new year:

• Don’t make my own travel arrangements. I waste far to much important time doing this on my own.
• Don’t obligate myself to review the blogs of other bloggers. I constantly get requests from others to review and provide input on their site. While I was happy to do this in the beginning there are just to more requests than I can handle. Plus its a part of my services that clients are paying for.
• Don’t read and respond to emails throughout the day. I strive to keep my Inbox clean. I’ve had the habit of reading and responding as emails are received but it has become a huge disruption to my focus. I hope to be responding to emails at set periods where I can respond to these in blocks of time.
• Don’t accept “pick my brain” phone calls. Almost daily I’m getting requests for these type calls. I’m reserving my time for paying clients instead of giving my services away for free.
• Don’t schedule appointments with vendors wanting to pitch their products. Most of these type pitches are for products and services that are totally unrelated to my audience. If it is related I have vendors to email a “brief” overview.
• Don’t accept writing invitations for guest posts on other blogs. Creating content for my own blog is difficult enough without adding to additional writing assignments to it and most of these requests are from blogs that are not specifically related to my audience.
• Don’t personally respond to every blogger wanting to submit a guest post – automate responses. I have created email templates to auto respond to these type requests.
• Don’t accept all phone calls from unrecognized numbers. Its by far better to let these calls go to voice mail and review.
• Don’t repeat the same instructions over and over – create tutorials. I want to do a better job of creating video and written tutorials to help clients and others with specific instructions on using various tools that I help clients with such as TweetAdder, SocialOomph, WordPress.com, etc. There are specific ways these tools need to be used for new business. I also provide the same kind of instruction for things such as how to write a blog post or how to embed video into a WordPress blog and need to be better at taking the time to create tutorials for these tasks as well. I will ultimately save lots of time.
• Don’t watch TV programs during the week.I’ve read more books this past year than ever and I want to increase my reading and view less television. Reading fuels my writing.
• Don’t skip breakfast. I’m not much of a breakfast eater and tend to skip it. But I know its important and plan to do better.

These are the additions to my Not To-Do List for the new year. Have a Not To-Do List of your own? Feel free to share it in the comment section below.

Additional articles that may be of interest:

• 10 Tips For Creating a Game Plan For Ad Agency New Business
• When it comes to new business Ad Agencies are ADHD
• Ad Agencies: Three Things a New Business Director Needs for Success
• 10 Advantages When Ad Agencies Focus New Business Efforts on Their “Sweet Spot”
• 3 Quick Tips for Developing a Consistent Program for Ad Agency New Business

Photo Credit: mbiebusch

Keeping up with mobile technology and how it impacts consumer behavior is important because it inevitably effects how ad agencies will be reaching prospects in the near future. 

“Most marketers are still struggling to figure out how to truly capitalize on the opportunities represented by long-form video and — more recently — social content. Now, a new imperative is clear, especially for those spending heavily on TV. Content and experiences that move seamlessly from one screen to another are an absolute must.”  Jeremy Lockhorn, VP Emerging Media, Razorfish

Consumers’ use of emerging media driven by new technologies is moving at such a lightning pace that it’s difficult for agencies and the brands they represent to keep up. There is also the tendency for marketers to “over-focus” on things like television, mobile and social media as stand alone mediums rather than fully comprehending consumer behavior and creating a multiscreen strategy.

Emerging  media and new technology also impacts business development for ad agencies. There is a need to understand how prospects are using new technology such as mobile and web-enabled devices. Plus there is a paradigm shift in business development for agencies from outbound new business tactics to inbound marketing.  Agencies will need to be able to effectively reach prospective clients through a multiscreen new business strategy.

To better understand the impact of new technology and its rapidly evolving use of consumers here in the U.S., digital agency giant, Razorfish, partnered with Yahoo Mobile to conduct a study of mobile habits.

Here are some of the highlights from this study:

• 80% of respondents are mobile multitasking while watching TV.
• 70% of respondents who multitask do so at least once a week, with nearly half (49%) reporting everyday multitasking.
• 60% check their phones at least “once or twice” during the course of a TV show, and 15% stay on the mobile Web for the full duration of the show.
• The top 5 categories for multitasking: 1. Reality 2. News 3. Comedy 4. Sports 5. Food
• 94% of multitaskers engage in some kind of mobile communication. In order — They are text, talking, email, social networking and IM.
• 60% of multitaskers are accessing additional content of some type.
• 44% is unrelated to what’s on TV versus only 38% related to TV.
• Survey respondents were more likely to state that they frequently engaged in multitasking during TV ad breaks.
• 36% of multitaskers use their connected devices for looking up information on a commercial they just saw.

Click on the following link to read Jeremy’s article and additional information regarding the Razorfish and Yahoo Mobile Study: ”Forget Mobile – Think Multiscreen”

Additional articles that may be of interest:

• 20 Top Inbound Marketing Resources for the Paradigm Shift in Ad Agency New Business
• Study: 69% of Businesses Increased New Business Leads Through Blogging
• IBM Study: The 4 key challenges that CMOs everywhere are confronting
• 8 Reasons Why This Is Such An Exciting Time for the Smaller Ad Agencies

Photo Credit: mbiebusch