There is a paradigm shift for how new business is being acquired for small to mid-size ad agencies.
Innovation and creativity are important elements for any small to midsize ad agency. They are also critical for ad agency new business. They can set your agency apart from the pack.
Creativity Online provides excellent innovative examples to spark some creative ideas of your own. Just be sure that you use some of your agency’s creative moxie for business development.
Ad Age and Creativity’s fifth annual list of the most inspiring and innovative thinkers and doers from among advertising, marketing, designers, directors, entrepreneurs, and others who have made the largest impact upon all creative cultures. Be sure to check out : Ashton Kutcher, Mike Hughes, Linus Karlsson and Paul Malmstrom along with Ty Montague, Ian Tait.
There are three services that are essential to “jump-start” you agency’s ability to generate inbound leads for new business using social media.
Most ad agencies are participating in social media, meaning they have a blog, Facebook Fan page, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, but they haven’t connected the dots to generate qualified leads for their new business pipeline. It is primary for agencies to have a focused strategy and a clear objective for using social media specifically for new business.
Ad agencies can’t wait six months to start generating leads.They need to new business now.
To accelerate the time it takes for your online new business activities to begin producing, there are three services that I recommend:
To begin a successful agency new business program one of the first steps is to identify your best target audience and build a data base of company information that would include a contact database.
Many ad agencies and marketing services companies expect their new business director to build their own marketing and sales database. A number of ad agencies that I talk with attempt to maintain their own database of prospects. For a short list that is doable but if your list is large it is impossible to maintain unless you have someone totally dedicated to keeping it updated on a regular basis.
I recommend using a database service company. Most charge an annual fee to subscribe but the cost is usually worth the price because of the internal time saved along with updated information on thousands of companies, agencies and businesses.
My recommendation is The List, the service that I currently use and the service I recommend for my clients. It provided the “seed list” of email addresses for the FUEL LINESemail newsletter. If I need information on a company not in their data base, I can make a request and The List will research and get the data for me.
It’s worth your time to review theirfree trial and explore how many of your targeted prospects they have in their data base.
Questions to help determine if The List is the right new business database service for your agency:
How many “qualified” companies are listed that are viable prospects for your agency?
How many (marketing) contacts do they have at the companies that matter to me? Be sure they have them in the quantity you need to justify the expense for their.
What contact information is provided? Beyond the usual address and phone numbers do they have sufficient numbers of email addresses which would be a great resource for your agency’s eNewsletter.
SocialOomph.com is a service that provides free and paid productivity enhancement services to fuel your agency’s new business through social media. It is not only a great tool for your agency but also one that will greatly help with your clients social media efforts.
Content marketing is a key component for using social media for ad agency new business. Content is written for SEO so that it will be found by your best prospects who elevate you to a position as a thought leader. SocialOomph will help to repurpose you content through multiple social media channels. It is a huge time saver.
Out of the hundreds of tools that have been developed to enhance Twitter’s usefulness for marketing SocialOomphis the one that has been the most helpful for me.
These are some of the SocialOomphfeatures that I like and use:
Manage multiple accounts from one dashboard (your agency’s as well as clients Twitter accounts)
Manage an unlimited number of blogs
Upload your agency’s blog posts and URLs from an Excel spread sheet, in bulk to Social Oomph
Pre-set the date/time range for each post in minutes
Automatically shorten post URLs through Bit.ly and track clicks
Automate – follow those who follow you in Twitter
Automate – unfollow those who don’t follow you in Twitter
Purge and filter your Twitter account’s DM box
Small monthly fee that is month-to-month, cancelable at any time (more than pays for itself for the time that it saves)
Junior level people/interns can be easily trained to use this tool on behalf of the agency and clients
You can also schedule your agency blog posts to Facebook, just keep the repurpose level to only a few per day
Basecampis an online project management tool that focuses on communication and collaboration. It is the best tool that I’ve used for creating consistent new business programs for my clients. Many agencies enjoy it so well they in-turn use it for their clients. Basecamp expedites the new business process, provides an accountability system and moves projects forward. All communications, files, presentations, resources, meeting notes, etc. are all in one place. Milestones and To-Do lists easily created, assigned and tracked.
“Basecamp is so simple you (or your clients) can’t do anything wrong. Basecamp is addictively easy-to-use.” — Robert Hof, BusinessWeek
First rule of new business: make a list of the rules. Second rule of new business: break every rule on the list.
If you want to shake up your thinking regarding agency new business and following conventional wisdom, Alex Bogusky, the highly respected creative director for Crispin and Porter Advertising, shares his perspective.
He was one of the featured speakers at Mirren’s annual new business conference in New York. He urged attendees to ‘defy convention’.
“I hate conventional wisdom,” Bogusky said, “conventional wisdom is learning from your mistakes. What about learning from your successes? That’s where I’ve focused [my energies]. Like, this works, we better get down and study on this.”
Crispin Porter Bogusky’s success in new business came from breaking with conventional wisdom. He says that cheating is breaking the rules and (when it comes to new business) “If You’re Not Cheating, You’re Not Doing It Right”.
Alex joined Crispin and Porter Advertising in 1989 as an art director. He became the creative director five years later, a partner in 1997, and co-chairman in 2008.
Under Alex’s direction, Crispin Porter + Bogusky has grown to 900 + employees, with offices in Miami, Boulder, Los Angeles, London and Sweden. CP+B has become one of the world’s most awarded agencies, and is the only agency to have won the Cannes International Advertising Festival Grand Prix in all five categories: Promotion, Media, Cyber, Titanium and Film.
Alex was inducted into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame in 2008, and in 2009 he received an honorary PhD from the University of Colorado. He was also named Creative Director of the Decade in Adweek magazine’s Best of 2000s report.
FUEL LINES was started to help small-to midsize ad agencies, interactive agencies and PR firms with their new business practices. New Business tips, tools, tactics and trends that help give them a differentiating strategy, a competitive advantage, a higher-profile reputation, and an improved ability to attract and win the kind of clients they really want.
Following the writing of my 500th post and closing in on my third anniversary for FUEL LINES, I ask for your input on how I can make this blog more useful to you?
Here are some areas you might like to comment on that I might improve upon:
Topics – are there topics (specific or general) you’d like covered in the coming months? What are the main new business issues that your agency is facing this year?
Types of Posts - reader questions, tutorials, case studies, short tips, guest posts, tool reviews…. have your say about what you’d like most/least
Posting Frequency – too many posts, not enough, just right?
Design – before initiating a redesign – your comments and ideas would be helpful at this point
Blog Features – what would make your reader experience better?
Community – do you feel you connect well with other readers? Are there features that you’d like added to help connect more?
Services and Tools – what could I offer you to help you improve your agency’s new business?
What Frustrates You about FUEL LINES? What is Best about it?
Other Ideas and Feedback – anything goes, big or little.
The ‘Rules’ – Any feedback, suggestions or ideas that you have are welcome. I make a commitment to you to read anything you have to say.
All that I ask in return is that you be honest, courteous and constructive with your feedback.
FUEL LINES is a project that I pour a lot of time and effort into – as a result sometimes criticism can be a little difficult to hear – however I think it’s vital to take it all on board if this is to continue to be a valuable resource for agencies wanting to improve acquiring new business.
So it’s over to you. Feel free to either leave your feedback in comments below or to share them privately with me via my Contact Page. Your input is very much appreciated.
Advertising and PR agencies have lost 65,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of the pre-recession total. Moody’s Analytics estimates our industrywill lose even more within five years.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls it “the worst financial crisis in modern history.” His predecessor, Alan Greenspan, says it was “the most virulent global financial crisis ever.” The resulting recession was longer and deeper than any the U.S. has suffered since World War II.
On hopefully the heels of The Great Recession, my good friend, David Deal sent me the new sixth annual Razorfish Outlook Report 2010, it suggests the economic recession is subsiding.
“For this year’s report, we examined the data differently to acknowledge the new realities the Great Recession presented our clients and us,” said Jeremy Lockhorn, VP of emerging media. “We analyzed how our clients adapted to the challenging environment, what media proved effective, what didn’t deliver as expected, and how this information can be used to direct successful strategy moving forward.”
The report explores the effect last year’s down economy had on media consumption and client spending. The report predicts mobile and social media marketing will become key parts of clients’ media budgets. Among the findings:
Contrary to popular belief, not every brand shifted its advertising focus to direct response as a result of reduced consumer spending. In fact, 60% of clients who did switch the approach of their ads actually moved to a more brand-focused message.
Social media, which has exploded in popularity over the past few years, still only garners 4% of average client media spend. However, much of the cost of social media comes in the form of labor, not ad space – an important distinction when analyzing and planning media budgets.
This report also highlights other media trends, which are currently not getting as much attention as mobile and social, but will still have an impact in 2010, this year’s Razorfish Outlook Report can be viewed in its entirety online at http://razorfishoutlook.razorfish.com
Quick Ad Agency TwtPoll: Is your agency’s business up, down or about the same from 2009? Click Here
Your agency’s blog can become the “gateway” to introduce your agency to your best prospective clients. But you’ll need to implement some “best practices” to generate serious blog traffic.
Over three years of writing blog posts and assisting agencies in creating and writing for their blogs, here are some blogging tips that I hope you will find helpful. Keep in mind that I’m providing these from a new business perspective to generate inbound leads from your agency’s best target audience
Post titles: Choose a key phrase that you can dominate in Google by using it consistently in your post titles. It may seem to quickly become mundane but after doing this for some 3 years I can tell you that it works.
Posts need to be scan-able: Your audience will primarily be searching for resources. They will peruse through hundreds of articles and post. They tend to scan post titles and copy instead of reading word-for-word. Break up long paragraphs, highlight quotes, Bold key phrases, and words, use numbered list and bullet points, etc.
Two kinds of post: original content and resourced content. Most of your posts are going to be resources you’ve found. Your agency blog becomes a repository of information for your audience of prospective clients. A one-stop-shop about trends, research, industry news, conferences and seminars, tips, tactics and tools to help meet your audience meet their marketing, advertising challenges.
Share what you learn: Every new tool or bit of knowledge you gain, share it with your audience. Make it specific to them and their needs. But always write from a position of expertise not as a newbie.
Always lead with the benefit: Provide the “take-away” the “benefit” at the very beginning of each post. This is similar to the inverted pyramid style of writing used by newspaper reporters.
Make your post pleasing to the eye: Include a good graphic image or photo in every post.
Do the work for your audience: Make content easy to find through a category index, additional post titles and links at the end of a post that would also be of interest. Highlight popular posts and your signature posts that provide your unique point-of-view and philosophy. Provide links to additional networked links that are also good resources for your audience.
Find the original source: When researching information, find and provide links and credit to the original source of the information you share. It provides more credibility to your writing.
Engage your audience: Ask for their feedback, their points of view, additional resources, etc.
Summarize post content: Especially with resource posts, summarize your content into bulleted or numbered lists, pull out the key nuggets from your sources, provide a Readers Digest version of the content by again doing the grunt work on behalf of your readers.
Make your post of value. Don’t waste your audiences time, having them clicking through to your blogs content if it is going to enrich and benefit them in some way. In other words, don’t write just to write. Make sure its the kind of content that you would want to take the time to read. I am excited every time I find a nugget of information that I know will be of help to my audience.
Share your networks: Through your posts, introduce your audience to others that are part of your network that they should also get to know and how to connect with them. Utilize guests posts, interviews, podcasts, etc.
These tips should get you started. Please feel free to share YOUR best blog writing tips.
Here are some additional resources for creating an agency blog for new business:
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:
Digital marketing is thriving during the recession. Clients are switching agencies based on digital marketing knowledge. Traditional agencies need to be competent at digital marketing now.
Forrester’s recent projections of interactive marketing spend through 2014 show social media increasing at an average of 34% year over year.
A national survey provides insight into what marketers want from their agencies. The Agency of the Future Survey, sponsored by Sapient. Though this survey was conducted just over a year ago, it is a perceptual look back as well as a look forward and still has relevance for agencies today.
The survey polled more than 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketing professionals, all of whom are either directly or indirectly responsible for managing digital marketing budget allocation across multiple channels.
Based on the survey results, Sapient, created aTop 10 Wish List for Agencies of the Future:
A greater knowledge of digital space
More use of “pull interactions”
Leverage virtual communities
Agency executives using the technology they are recommending
Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing
Social media savvy
Agencies that understand consumer behavior
Demonstrate strategic thinking
Branding and creative capabilities
Ability to measure success
Tim Williams, author of Take A Stand For Your Brand, encourages agency execs to assure their personal relevance in the marketing communications industry. He writes,
“Increasingly clients are turning to agencies not only for help but for thought leadership in digital marketing, and only the most progressive agencies are in a position to deliver it. Agency principals recognize the urgency and importance of the shift to digital, but are personally unprepared for the change.”
Tim suggests a solution to the problem: Create a self-study program that provides a fast track understanding of digital marketing and adapting your agency to the new digital landscape.
He says, “Think about the digitally-talented people you know and you’ll realize most of them are self-taught. They took an interest in digital and learned it on their own. You can do the same, especially because everything you need to know about digital is online, and most of it is free at sites ranging from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to ClickZ.”
Additional “digital” related articles that may be of interest:
Having your own iPhone app for your website or blog will become a common way to promote and extend your agency’s brand. I found that actually creating that application and getting it into the App Store can be a lengthy and expensive process.
I’ve discovered a very inexpensive tool that will allow you to create an iPhone app for your agency’s blog easily.
I recently tried out a new product called AppMakr, which is designed to make creating your own iPhone app simple and inexpensive. In literally 20 minutes I was able to create an iPhone app for Fuel Lines from my existing RSS feeds and then submit it to the iTunes App Store for approval at a cost of $49.
$199 for AppMakr to publish your app — which means you don’t have to have your own Apple Developer Account (AppMakr gets credit in the app’s opening splash screen)
or $499 if you want to use your own Apple Developer Account, but still have AppMakr take care of the provisioning and management features.
I was so impressed that I sent a note to AppMakr and asked if I could extend their special introductory offer to readers of Fuel Lines ($49) and soon received this reply back from Scott Suhy,
“Michael, we talked about it and agreed to provide you with a $100 discount promo code for your readers. The coupon code is “MICHAELGASS” and it’s good through 1/31. We’d love to see the article when you write it!”
Please note that I do not receive any benefits from this offer whatsoever. Just glad the company was willing to provide an introductory for Fuel Lines’s readers. If you do create an agency iPhone app, please send the link to me and I’ll share it.
As Apps continue to rise in popularity having one for your agency is an important demonstration to prospective clients that you are walking the walk.
2010 will be the year that smartphones go mainstream and iPhone is leading the way.
While the economy is still in a state of recession, the smarthpone market continues to go up, with a total of 39.9 million smartphones shipped during the third calendar quarter of the year. A 28% increase over last year.
These are some iPhone App stats that will of interest:
all the iPods and iPhones sold as of December you reach a total number of 214 million and change
1 Billion iPhone Apps downloaded
100 million apps are downloaded from the Apple app store each month
the average apps downloaded per device is 50
iPhone’s App Store hits 1.5 billion downloads in first year
top apps can make $400 to $5,000 per day on ads
average number of apps sold per device is nearly twice as high as songs at 53
Domino’s claims to have sold over $1 million worth of pizza through their app
The advertising industry will see more change over the next five years than the previous fifty years.
Seth Godin invited more than 70 experts from various disciplines to share their views of the future in a single page for an eBook that he wanted to share electronically. What Matters Now, will inspire you to make some changes in 2010, and to keep focused on what matters.
“Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth the effort.” Seth Godin
Please feel free to download a copy and share it with your colleagues.
It is imperative for agencies to stay on top of new communication devices and their impact upon our industry and clients. That said, you can simply follow Apple. They’ve set the standard and everyone else is playing catchup.
Apple has transformed the way we listen to (and purchase) music with the iPod and iTunes. It also changed the way we use our cellphones with the iPhone. Will it also transform how we read newspapers, magazines and books?
The New York Times’ executive editor, Bill Keller, may have inadvertently confirmed the existence of the oft-rumored Apple Tablet in a private speech earlier this month. During the speech, Keller made a reference to the Times’ strategy for mobile devices. “We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices,” Keller said. “I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.”
Amazon has recently announced that they are working on a Kindle app for Mac that will allow customers without a Kindle device to be able to purchase ebooks, magazine and newspaper subscriptions. The Apple Tablet could be the perfect match for the Kindle experience.
Below are some additional mockups of what the Apple Tablet might look like.
There are a number of questions that have been raised about Google Wave. Will it replace email? Twitter? How will it impact businesses? Advertising agencies?
E-mail is the most popular way people communicate online, yet it was invented 40 years ago! Google says it developed Wave to answer the question, “What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?”
Everyone uses email, instant messaging and live chatrooms online now, but Google Wave will be able to tie those forms of communications together plus utilize established social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
Google Wave has the potential to be another revolutionary communications tool that greatly impacts the advertising industry, content marketing and ad agency new business.
On September 30th, Google will start sending out about 100,000 invites for the next version of Google Wave. Ad agencies will need to be prepared to get up to speed with it quickly. This will be one of those products that you have to experience first hand to understand it and use your marketing mind to explore its potential for your agency and clients. .
Here are some additional features of Google Wave:
Wave participants can share and edit documents at the same time and use waves to track and complete projects without ever having to set foot in the same office
Participants can also have faster conversations than they can by waiting for e-mailed replies
Waves will come with a handy robot called Rosy, which can translate your typing, into 40 different languages, allowing you to communicate in real time with almost anyone around the world
It includes a smarter spell checker as well as a link checker
The ability to drag and drop files, photos, videos, etc. even from your desk-top
There isn’t much of a question that the Wave will be a great project management tool and create greater efficiencies in internal and external communications
Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process
A playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when
It is embeddable, and can push wave content to a blog or website
You can turn a Wave into your own eBay
Allows for collaboration on a Google map to plan events
Wave participants can rate and review items – then it will show you a tally of the results
Google Wave will be left an open source project to encourage the development of improved extensions from third parties which will greatly accelerate its usefulness for a wide variety of applications
Will Google Wave have an impact on ad agencies? It’s too soon to say, but it certainly has the potential to be the next big wave to further transform communications and user generated content.
I am very interested in Google Wave’s potential as a tool for ad agency new business and managing an agency’s new business program. I look forward to sharing my evaluations from a new business prospective soon.
Google last night invited 100,000 people to become the first users of its latest internet tool which aims to rival email, Twitter and Facebook.
Google Wave allows a limitless number of internet users anywhere in the world to have instant conversations and share files.
The service combines aspects of email, instant messaging, social networking and web chat and is aimed at friends catching up with one another and business partners sharing documents.
Among suggested uses for Google Wave are organising trips, laboratory record-keeping and journalism. Users can join a wave – a group of web users – to have a discussion or share photos or documents.
Everyone in the wave can see what other users are typing and any document placed into the wave can be accessed by all the users at the same time.
In what sounds like a recipe for chaos, colleagues can work on the same document at the same time, seeing every change being made to the document as it is made.
Among suggested uses for Google Wave are organising trips, laboratory record-keeping and journalism.
Todd Knutson, CEO of The List, recently highlighted an agency that actually practiced what it preached, An Ad Agency that was advertising its services, even offering a discount during the recession. It worked!
Advertising Agency Advertises
When asked by a reporter from the National Post, Ron Telpner, chairman and CEO Brainstorm, a Toronto-based agency, (read interview here), Why did you choose to advertise your services? It’s not a move that many agencies would take — at least not so publicly.
The primary motivation was to “walk the talk”: to remove the inherent hypocrisy of an agency that would recommend advertising to its clients as a strategy while not having enough belief in the power of advertising to use it for themselves.
The recession provided a unique opportunity to make this point more poignantly. And as an agency that’s offered fully integrated services from inception, we also wanted to ensure that the market was aware of our full range of services, including digital.
It started with the development of our new website (www.brainstormgroup.com),which offers a more “shopper friendly” interface for potential clients, with less about the agency’s philosophy and more about the goods. One of the campaign objectives was to increase visits to the new site, and it attracted 1,600 new visitors the day the ad ran. (Click Here to read the entire interview, “We’re Walking the Talk”)
Bob Hoffman, CEO Hoffman/Lewis advertising in San Francisco and St. Louis and author of The Ad Contrarian blog provides a excellent example of an agency’s blog that has potential as a great tool for new business.
I was first introduced to Bob through the not so flattering AdAge article above. What the author viewed as a negative I saw as positive, particularly for an opportunity to generate new business for Bob’s agency.
Social media is suppose to be transparent, but Bob is beyond transparent. You either love him or despise him but you certainly wont forget him.
He wont appeal to everyone but to those he does appeal to, it will be a strong a appeal.
If I were a prospective client I would be drawn to Bob as a straight shooter when it comes to the advertising industry. Someone who will cut through all of the BS and tell me like it really is. He’ll speak in a language that I will understand and not agency speak. I would feel he would be a person that I could trust.
All Bob needs to do to turn his blog into a new business lead generation pipeline is focus and write to his agency’s best target audience, not to those of us within the ad industry. We all have a natural tendency to want to work with people that we know, like and trust. The Ad Contrarian gives us a rare personal look at an agency CEO who writes what he thinks and will even emphasize his thoughts with a few expletives. Okay, maybe lots of expletives. I’m sure that Bob’s partners would want him to tone it down, but from a new business perspective I think Bob’s blog is pure gold.
A McGraw-Hill Research study from 1980 to 1985 found that those businesses which chose to maintain or raise their level of advertising expenditures during the 1981 and 1982 recession had significantly higher sales after the economy recovered. Specifically, companies that advertised aggressively during the recession had sales 256% higher than those that did not continue to advertise.
BusinessWeek‘s online Business Exchange now has posted a synopsis and links to over 192 news articles and 202 blog items on the subject of “Advertising In A Recession.” This topic is part of Business Exchange idea, suggested by Jessica Sibley. I’ve added an additional six “advertising in a recession” articles of my own for a total of 400.
I’m often asked what is the very first step in developing a new business program for a small-to midsize ad agency? To have an efficient and effective new business program you must first …
… identify your agency’s point of difference and select a target audience.
Once this decision is made all other decisions are easy. But for the agencies that refuse to declare what they stand for and who they are trying to reach, they will constantly struggle because they try to be everything to everybody.
Trying to appeal to everyone appeals to no one.
Agencies without a declared expertise and target are generalists not specialist which means:
No premium pricing for agency services
Lack of client respect
Limited to acquiring new business because of location, personal networks and referrals
Difficultly in attracting the right kind of creative and strategic talent
Little if any regional awareness
Chasing new business instead of having new business pursuing the agency
Not able to attract the right type of client that best fits the agency’s core competencies
Acquiring new business is more speculative and expensive
If you’ve been a reader of FUEL LINES for awhile you know that I advocate that …
… agencies need to practice what they preach. They need to use the tools that they recommend their clients by using them to promote their agency.
I recommend using social media for your new business program. The primary reason why I love social media is that it “forces” small-to midsize agencies to do the things they should have been doing all along to acquire new business.
How to use social media for agency new business?
Once this initial decision is made I recommend that agencies develop a blog as the central online platform for their new business program.
For your agency’s blog to be effective you must:
Identify your niche and your best target audience.
Be transparent. The success of your audience must be more important than your own. But it goes without saying if you can help your audience with their success you will be successful.
Always lead with benefits rather than agency’s capabilities. It’s all about your audience. The moment you try to “sell” your agency’s services will be the moment you lose your audience.
Become positioned as marketing leader rather than a marketing partner. Clients want leadership not partnership.
Articulate and better communicate what you know. Agencies are often poor communicators. Don’t believe me? Ask any of them what they do. They can’ succinctly say without a prolonged discussion.
10 tips for the development of an agency blog for new business:
Do not incorporate your blog into your agency’s website. Allow it room to breathe, grow and germinate as you interact with your online audience. You will be amazed at the rich input your audience will provide as to their challenges, needs and the messages that appeal and motivate.
Blog posts should written by the agency’s principals. Prospective clients always want to know about the agency principals. How much will they be involved with their client’s accounts. Plus the agency principals are the least like staff changes within an agency. Social media is personal and you are the face of your agency. Therefore agency principals should lead the way.
Keep the design simple. Utilize WordPress, TypePad, Blogger blog platforms. Remember that it’s content that is king. If you want to slooowww down the process involve your creative and digital staff!
Own your domain name. If you ever want to change platforms you can easily do so without losing traffic if you own your domain name.
Before you start to write learn to listen. Identify and read other online resources that would important to your target audience. Read blogs of competitors. Subscribe to blog RSS feeds with Google Reader or the feed reader of your choice to strategize and organize your online reading.
Write out a creative brief for your blog. This will provide direction for the tonality of your blog and keep you reminded to write to the benefit of a particular target audience.
Outline your blog. I outlined a book and have used that outline for my blog. I will be able to reuse most of my blog content for the book, ebook, whitepapers, etc. Having an outline has been a tremendous time saver.
Keep a list of blog post ideas. I’ve been writing blog posts for a year now and have well over 200+ posts published and 45 blog post drafts. I keep a Word document on my laptop’s desktop with a running list of ideas. I have over 100 potential blog post ideas.
Set a goal for the number of posts to write per week. I saw a dramatic change in my blog traffic and audience interaction after I reached the first 50 posts. I encourage agency’s to get to fifty within the first sixty days. It establishes a habit for writing and helps them to find their voice. Beyond this initial phase I encourage agency’s to keep fresh content on their blog by making it a goal to posts at least five times per week.
Reuse your blog content. With over 200 posts I have lots of material to utilize through other new media tools. I’ve already mentioned that your content can be reused for books, ebooks and white papers but you can also use them for your agency’s newsletter, article marketing, microblogs like Twitter, etc.
I know that you are thinking, that is just great, something else for me to do. Please understand, using social media tools is like networking on steroids. You will be able to network with more people in one hour online than you could do within a week offline and the results will be far superior to the time you’ve invested. Prospective clients will actually call on you and when they do, the conversation is much further down the road. They’ll be ready for business.
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 
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