Why ad agencies should learn about Springpad

Springpad re-imagines how sharing and discovery should work.

If you are a regular reader of Fuel Lines, you know that I am a big fan of Edward Boches, Chief Innovation Officer (formerly Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer) at Mullen. Edward was among the few creatives to understand the importance of social media as an active practitioner. He has led his agency by example.

I’m honored to have Edward share a new social media platform through this guest post that will help your agency and your clients.… Continue reading

Nobody Reads Ad Agency Blogs

Why most agencies may be ready to ditch their blog and why they shouldn’t. 

Jack Marshall, a staff writer for Digiday wrote an article that is creating lots of buzz entitled, “Agencies Ditch Blogs.” He points to a study conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, that reveals that only 37% of Fortune 500 companies now maintain a blog. That is down from 50% that was reported in 2010.

Jack makes an assumption that this is  that this is probably true of advertising agencies:

“It seems there’s a similar trend among agencies.

… Continue reading

Lessons from AMCs ‘The Pitch’ on How to Motivate Your Ad Agency After A Loss

How to lose a pitch in front of millions of television views and the entire ad industry and still come out as the winner.

A good number of agencies depend upon the pitch as the primary way they win new business and grow. Some national attention and industry buzz has been brought upon the pitch process due to AMC’s new show simply called, ‘The Pitch,’  where two opposing ad agencies compete against each other for work for a nationally recognized brand.… Continue reading

12 LinkedIn Improvements for Ad Agency New Business

LinkedIn 277% More Effective for Lead Generation Than Facebook and Twitter.

In a study conducted by Hubspot, LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3 times higher (277%) than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).

200 million leads were generated on LinkedIn last year, according to their Advertising Chief, Jim Lister.

LinkedIn is an important social media platform for agency new business that helps you to:

  • Re-establish older connections with past colleagues and clients.

    • … Continue reading

Blair Enns: 12 Revolutionary Proclamations for Ad Agency New Business

How to win new business without pitching, reclaim control of client engagements and stop giving away your thinking for free. 

My friend, John Sharpe,  has spent nearly forty years in the ad agency business and the last twenty in business development exclusively. He is a personal friend and mentor with an impressive resume. So when John tells me that he has just read one of the most influential business development books in his lifetime, he had my attention.… Continue reading

Leo Burnett Still Wins Ad Agency New Business 40 Years After His Death

Leo Burnett is one of the most enduring ad industry legends. He broke all the rules. Even after 40 years since his death he is still winning new business for his agency.

“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.… Continue reading

Bob Hoffman's 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

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.… Continue reading

B-2-B Agency Gains New Business from a Narrow Niche and Social Media

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.

… Continue reading

It is time for ad agencies to pay attention to Pinterest

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.

… Continue reading

19 Tips for Building an SEO Strategy for Ad Agency New Business

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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.

… Continue reading