Your agency’s new business program must be sustainable at the times when your agency is at its busiest.
To often new business development is put on the back burner until existing business decreases and a downturn begins. That creates a roller coaster effect on your agency’s pipeline of prospects which impacts agency income and causes you to accept the wrong type of client, from the wrong pool of prospects who do not fit your agency’s strengths and core competencies.
Definition: con·sis·tent
adj = able to maintain a particular standard or repeat a particular task with minimal variation
To be consistent, any agency new business program must be “realistically” achievable within the culture and resources of the agency.
A lot of agency’s, when they start thinking about new business, are doing so when they are not busy. They should create a new business program that is sustainable when they are at their busiest.
7 tips to find time for ad agency new business, when you are at your busiest:
1. Have someone who is held accountable, who will also keep others accountable for the agency’s new business process. If “everyone” is responsible for your agency’s new business, in actuality no one is. But that doesn’t mean that others, particularly agency principals aren’t involved in the process.
2. Look for ways to simplify your new business processes. Your agency’s new business program should shut down or even slow down just because you have a couple of RFPs that have a short turn-around period or even if you have a significant new business pitch that week.
For all of your agency’s new business activities such as RFP responses, direct mail, phone calls, social media marketing, etc, always invoke the K.I.S.S. principle. It isn’t rocket science, so keep everything simple so that it is sustainable even during your agency’s peak periods.
3. Keep reporting to a minimum. I know of some agencies that overburden the person that is charged with new business with lots of detailed reporting on the persons daily or weekly activities. Don’t hold them accountable for the activities, hold them accountable for results. In the end that is what they are judged on anyway.
4. Keep meetings to a minimum. Don’t tie up your new business person(s) with meaningless meetings.
When I served as VP of new business for a regional ad agencies, we moved our new business staff to a quiet floor of the agency that no one else occupied. We didn’t get roped into the plurality of meetings that were being held throughout the day. This kept us out-of-site and out-of-mind so that we could stay focused on generating results for new business.
5. Create a support group. Involve junior level staff, interns and/or persons working remotely to carry out a lot of the “grunt” type new business work. There are many activities that don’t make financial sense for a new business executive to be doing on a daily basis. It isn’t smart business for their time to be used for some new business tasks.
6. Outsource services where it is appropriate. An example of a service that could be outsourced could be the agency’s prospective client database. A lot of agency’s tell me about their data base of prospects. But most of the time, this type of a database is just a bunch of names and contact information gathered from lots of different efforts and sources. But there usually no one that is maintaining and updating the data because of the tremendous amount of time that it takes.
A midsize ad agency, outsourced their own PR for new business, even though they had a PR department. They found that outsourcing the service provided more accountability and consistency. “You can be sure it’s no accident that some agencies get more ink and air time than others. It’s because they have an intentional, ongoing effort to get their names in the marketplace, and they have made PR a priority” - Don Beehler, PR Consultant.
7. Maintain focus. Part of the excitement and also frustration of working within the agency environment is that it face paced and constantly changing. But this kind of environment makes easy to get sidetracked and wastes lots of time. And it will happen particularly if your new business program lacks focus.
To have focus, it is imperative that you create a simple new business plan and ritualistically work it. It must be the person responsible for new business to keep it headed in the right direction. Strategic, not reactionary. Plan the work and work the plan. It is that simple.
This is a guest post from my friend Todd Knutson, CEO of The List, the most accurate online database of marketing and advertising decision makers in North America. Todd is also the author of a great new business blog, New Business Intel.
If your ad agency has or is considering writing a blog, deciding how to spread the word to acquire readers is important: If relevant corporate marketers aren’t reading it, the time you invest in writing may be in vain.
Common ways to promote your blog include:
Email marketing
Twitter
Links from your website
This post is a guide to using email as a blog promotional tool. Your most important decision is choosing between using an internal email list or purchasing a list. There are pros and cons of each: Your list – pros
You own it
It’s free
It has your clients and (some) prospects on it
Your list – cons
It may be out of date
It may not include all the prospects you should be pursing
It may be too small (you need at least 1500 good names to kick-start your blog (and more gets you there faster)
External list – pros
It’s the most effective way to increase the size of your list
The right llist will allow you to reach the corporate marketers that exactly fit your prospect profile: by the geography, industries, titles, company size(s), and media spend.
The right list will be high-quality (i.e. clean), with a low (5%) bounce rate
Certain list companies will completely update their email list multiple times per year, and/or will offer to correct or replace those emails that bounce.
External list – cons
There are few, if any, opt-in lists for corporate marketers
You’ll get what you pay for: low price usually equates to not being able to effectively target as described above, or you’ll have a high bounce rate.
The opt-in question is tricky: to my knowledge, highly targeted, opt-in lists of relevant corporate marketers just aren’t available. Our clients tell us they’ve purchased them from many different companies and they’re universally terrible. We’ve tried it internally and experienced the same thing. I think the reason is fairly simple: the corporate marketers you want to reach just don’t opt-in very often. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in relevant content.
Your next decision is to choose an email provider from the many available services. I recommend you look for one with as many of the following features as you can get:
Easily manages opt-out requests
Tracks soft and hard bounces
Tracks opens
Manages out of office replies
Creates browser-friendly, text-friendly, and HTML-friendly format
Allows you to test different subject lines to see which one(s) work the best, with follow-up emails going to non-opens of the first message
Allows you to easily manage days, times, time zones for each send
Has good analytics / reports so you can effectively measure your performance over time
Promoting your blog well makes the effort it takes to write all the more worthwhile, and email is a great way to do so.
Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions – Todd
Ad agency new business can be a grind. It’s always good to recharge your batteries by some personal time away. But just because you are taking some much needed time off doesn’t mean your agency’s new business has to suffer. Utilizing social media with a few select tools and tactics can keep your new business pipeline full even when you are away.
I’m writing this post on the last day of a vacation trip to Key West. My wife and I have enjoyed some amazing sunsets, incredible art, beautiful landscapes and excellent cuisine. The entire time, I’ve been able to stay connected and while I’m personally coasting and relaxing, my new business program remains in place and continues to generate leads that I’m able to easily respond to by checking-in online a few minutes out of my day.
You need to look at social media a savior not a nemesis, an asset rather than a liability and time saver rather than time killer.
Social media will allow your agency’s new business program to continue running along while you are unwinding on the beach. It also easily maintains a consistency for your new business efforts when your agency is at its busiest times.
My blog provides content that is optimized for search to a very specific target audience. It is also repurposed through my RSS feeds, eNewsletter and over 38,000 Twitter followers.
Facebook allows you to connect on a more personal level. Family, friends and followers stay connected no matter where you are. Some of the vacation photos we’ve shared via my Facebook account: http://tinyurl.com/2c4lu4b
Locate others, receive great tips through location-based tools such as Foursquare.
An eNewsletter, which can be created in minutes by repackaging and repurposing your content, also enhances your return from your time investment. An example: Fuel Lines
I would add a few more but my wife is telling me that she’s ready for brunch … so while I’m away, here are some previous social media | new business articles that may be of interest and a help to you:
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.
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
A great resource for content marketing, social media marketing and agency new business is Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorite authors.
Hemingway, is among the most famous American novelists, short-story writers and essayists, who won both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. No doubt he would have easily adapted to write for Web and word limiting platforms such as Twitter.
Hemingway pioneered a new style of writing, simple clear, direct and unadorned. His style is very helpful for content marketing and writing for social media.
Content marketing is a means of achieving a position of thought leader and lead generation. Creating relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined target audience – with the objective of generating agency new business.
Social media didn’t create content marketing, but it’s an incredible tool for getting it easily circulated to a large audience.
The two combined can greatly increase inbound lead generation and networking opportunities. But I’ve found that a lot of agency principal’s struggle with generating content and writing for the Web.
People read online differently than they do in print. Most people tend to have short attention spans and are constantly scanning rather than reading word-for-word. They are more comfortable and accustom writing for print. Hemingway can help.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was 18 years old when he walked into the newsroom of The Kansas City Star and began his writing career. He was given a copy of “The Star Copy Style’” sheet, a single, galley-sized page, which contained the 110 rules governing Star prose.
Hemingway would always remember the style sheet and its core admonition: “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.”
At the core of the style sheet that greatly influenced Hemingway’s writings are these four simple rules for writing well:
Use short sentences. Don’t waste time and words, get straight to the point. Perhaps his finest demonstration of short sentence skill was when he was challenged to tell an entire story in only 6 words: For sale: baby shoes, never used. Just write the truest sentence that you know.
Use short opening first paragraphs.
Use vigorous English. “Vigorous English is muscular, forceful, it comes from passion, focus and intention” – David Garfinkel
Be positive, not negative. Say what something is rather than what it isn’t. For example, instead of saying “inexpensive,” say “economical.”
“Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing,” Hemingway said in 1940. “I’ve never forgotten them. No man with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the thing he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides with them.”
I’ve printed out, read and re-read often the Kansas City Star Style Sheet. I hope that it will be a helpful resource too you.
Here are some memorable Hemingway quotes on writing:
All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
The shortest answer is doing the thing.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Develop a built-in bullshit detector.
A quote from Hemingway that every agency should adhere to for new business, “Never mistake motion for action”.
Herschell Gordon Lewis, a copywriting trainer, at American Writers & Artists teaches The Four Great Laws of Copywriting. These are excellent Web writing tips for agencies too generate great content that produces inbound leads for agency new business through social media channels.
The First Great Law gives direction: Reach and influence, at the lowest logical cost, the most people who can and will respond. You can’t target everyone.
The Second Great Law is a caution for sanity: In this Age of Skepticism, cleverness for the sake of cleverness may well be a liability rather than an asset.
The Third Great Law is an equation: E2 = 0. This equation means, when you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. Don’t expect your readers to “go fish” for what might be of interest to them.
The Fourth Great Law (and the most violated) is the payoff: Tell the reader/viewer/listener what to do. The whole point of salesmanship is lost if we don’t tell our targets what to do.
Out of a a group of 46 ad agencies, Kleber & Associates blog, Marketing Home Products, was selected as Fuel Lines’s Blog of the Month for May capturing 44% of the votes casts.
“Marketing Home Products is what I do. This blog covers marketing strategies, brand development and communication tactics and smart business practices as they relate to the home and building channel.
My company, Kleber & Associates, works closely with clients helping them to build brands that build a better home.” Steve Kleber, founder, owner and president of Kleber & Associates Marketing & Communications, Atlanta, GA
Ad agencies all need an integrated social media strategy if they are ever going to see the payoff from their participation in social media. An agency blog should be the central component. The place you can drive targeted online traffic through SEO, Twitter, email newsletters, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The blog becomes the “gateway” to your agency and the“face” of your agency. As important as it was to have an agency website, it is now equally important to have an agency blog.
But … having a blog isn’t something you check off your list of social media “to do list.” Nor is it a place to lead with agency capabilities and credentials. It must be of benefit to your audience.
Here is a collection of agency blogging resources:
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.
If you want to EXPAND your agency, NARROW your FOCUS.
Most small to mid-size ad agencies seem to be suffering from ADHD. They have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when it comes to new business. There may be lots of hyperactivity but most of that activity is unfocused.
In turbulent times … the natural response is to try and “be everything to everybody.” To appeal to more clients seems like common sense, but it’s exactly the wrong growth strategy. If you try and appeal to everyone, you will appeal to no one. The more profitable agencies by far will be the ones who have a strong FOCUS.
There are clear advantages for agencies that have and can maintain FOCUS when it comes to their new business program. Here’s my top 10 list:
Acquire new business with the least amount of wasted agency energy and resources
A broader — not narrower — geographical market area
A stronger win ratio for new business, because your agency is playing to its strengths
A clear differentiation from its your competitors
Become an expert and a recognized leader in your field
Develop a well-defined set of criteria for identifying the clients who want your agency for what it does best
More easily build awareness among the best prospects for your agency
A stronger win ratio in new business, because the agency is playing to its strengths
Fewer competitors, because there will be fewer agencies who do what you do
Better margins, because specialists command premium pricing
How to keep your agency FOCUSED on new business:
First, have someone who is responsible for new business. If everyone is charged with new business no one is responsible.
Secondly, for a new business program to be successful, it has to be consistent. The measure for whether it is maintainable should be … what can is sustainable when our agency is at its busiest?
Third, to be consistent, the person charged with new business is empowered to set and maintains FOCUS for the entire agency. There will be constant readjustments needed to keep your agency headed in the right direction and pointed toward your best prospective client audience.
“As a general rule ad agencies try to be all things to all clients for fear of losing potential business. We were no different. But narrowing our focus on a particular target audience gives us a much better focus for new business and has led to more opportunities than we could have imagined.”
The chief benefit to your agency from using social networking is “getting new business leads.” Creating a community of followers through Twitter and a regularly updated stream of content on a blog builds engagement, can boost your agency’s presence on Google and ultimately bring in more prospective clients.
Don’t just take my word for it.
Inbound online marketing platform HubSpot’s The State of Inbound Marketing reportthat inbound marketing can double average monthly leads for small and medium-sized businesses. It can also generate leads for less money inbound marketing bring leads for less money.
“This report is designed to help businesses and marketers understand the current usage and results of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and its products.
Inbound marketing is becoming widely accepted because it complements the way buyers make purchasing decisions today — using the Internet and related media to learn about the products and services that best meet their needs.” – Hubspot
Three key takeaways from this report:
Businesses are generating real customers with social media and blogs. The use of social media and company blogs as marketing tools gets your company better brand exposure, but it also generates leads that result in real customer acquisition. 41% of companies who use Twitter for marketing have acquired a customer from a Twitter generated lead. 41% of companies using LinkedIn for marketing have acquired a customer from that lead generation source. 43% of companies using Facebook have acquired a customer and 46% of those using company blogs have acquired a customer from a blog generated lead.
Inbound Marketing channels continue to deliver dramatically lower cost per lead than Outbound Channels do. Respondents who spend more than 50% of their lead generation budget on inbound marketing channels report a significantly lower cost per sales lead than those who spend 50% or more their budgets on outbound marketing channels.
Inbound marketing budgets are increasing while outbound marketing budgets are decreasing. As a percentage of the overall lead generation budget, inbound marketing expanded slightly from 2009 to 2010 and outbound marketing contracted. The net effect is that the gap widened from inbound marketing having a 9% greater share of the overall marketing budget in 2009 to a 15% greatershare in 2010.
An additional report highlight that I thought was interesting: Customer acquisition through blogs is directly related to frequency of posts.
The report concludes that, “Traditional outbound marketing techniques – including direct mail, print advertising and telemarketing – are becoming less effective. Buyers are not only finding ways to tune these messages out, but more importantly they now have the capability to evaluate the products and services they need on their own.
Social media benefits the bottom line for small to mid-size ad agencies - new business.
Almost my entire advertising career has been in new business. When I waded into social media, it was from a new business perspective. How best to use to social media to generate new business.
I am a believer, an unapologetic social media enthusiast. Not only is social media having a tremendous impact upon the advertising industry, it greatly impacts ad agency new business. I view it as a positive impact. Almost a new business person’s dream.
To help spread my enthusiasm and enlist principals and those charged with their agency’s new business, I’ve found it necessary to share the “multiplicity” of benefits social media can provide to convince them to make the time to participate.
Below are my top 10 benefits of social media for ad agency new business:
From an agency new business perspective, social media “teaches” ad agencies to do new business the way they should have been doing all along. To be successful with social media you are compelled to lead prospective client engagement with benefits and value rather than agency capabilities and credentials.
Social media is the best branding tool I’ve ever used for agencies. To be able to build awareness, create appeal, generate traffic, you must be able to identify your agency’s target audience more narrowly than ever before. You can’t just be a brand agency, you must take it a step further such as Locomotion Creative has done through Blue Collar Branding.
The personal and professional enrichment provided through social media is worth it all. Social media can provide you with and help you maintain FOCUS. Through that focus you can maintain a ritual to stay up on the latest trends, keep ahead of your clients and provide them with genuine leadership.
Social media greatly improves your communication skills. “You don’t know what you know till you write it down.” My blog has helped me be a better communicator, even Twitter helps me to be more concise, exercise my vocabulary and improve my editing skills to write a message with 140 characters or less.
Social media is not a fad, it is my prediction that it will be the central hub for all of our advertising and marketing. The rich feedback from audiences is incredible, timely and affordable. The engagement with your prospective client audience will help you to hone your agency’s appeal and create the messaging the best resonates with them.
People want to work with people that they know, like and trust and social media provides the opportunity to build relationships in the most efficient way possible. The ROI from your “time investment” is rich. Posts that I have written 3 years ago still produce traffic and engagement from prospects.
Combining social with your agency’s niche, your agency’s point of differentiation, can become an appealing and powerful positioning. Holland + Holland advertising, through their blog She-conomy, has been invited to two national pitches in the past year as a result of their differentiating positioning. That had not happened before in their 25 year history.
Social media levels the playing field. Small to mid-size agencies can afford tighten up their positioning, hone their appeal and affordably compete for accounts that were once reserved for only the larger agencies. Social plus your niche can propel your agency to the head of the pack.
Your agency’s market can greatly increase through social media. Prior to using social media for new business, The Russo Group, Lafayette, LA, 94% of their new business came from within their market. Since implementing social media, 94% of their new business has been generated outside their market and extended new business opportunities from coast to coast.
Social media provides small to mid-size agencies their opportunity of a lifetime. There are no experts in social. Many agencies are trying to figure out how to monetize it. Don’t understand it yet. Aren’t using it for themselves. This is an opportunity for your agency to get ahead of the pack. Your niche plus social can take you to the head of the line.
Lead generation techniques that include direct mail and cold calls are becoming less effective as new communication channels and technology have greatly altered prospective client behavior.
Prospects are using the Internet and related media to learn about agencies that best meet their needs. Your primary focus now should be on pulling them, through relevant, resourceful content, toward your agency’s services. Why?
Prospective Clients Control Engagement
80 to 90% of business transactions now begin from online search.
A recent CMO Council survey revealed that 80% of those surveyed said that they found their vendors, not the other way around.
Less than 10% of recent buyers were contacted cold by the solution provider.
59% engaged with peers who addressed the challenge
48% followed industry conversations on topic
44% conducted anonymous research of a select group of vendors
41% followed discussions to learn more about topic
37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions/feedback
More than 20% connected directly with potential solution providers via social networking channels
The Need to Connect Through Content
Almost 95% of recent purchasers said the solution provider they chose “provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.” Publishing the right content and making sure it gets found in the right places is a vital component for your new business strategy.
Agencies should use inbound marketing tools such as:
Agency blogs
Search engine opitmization
Social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
Social bookmarking sites
Your agency’s website (online brochure)
Forums and peer groups
Comments on other blogs and online articles
eNewsletters
Article marketing
Surveys
White papers
Slideshare: uploaded PowerPoint and Keynote presentations
Podcasts and Webinars
Videos
Analytics
Engagement is Expected
93% of the Internet users active in social media say they expect a company to have a social media presence and to be able to actively engage with that company.
The Forrester Research report Social Media Playtime is Over clearly shows that dabbling or experimenting is not enough. You have to deliver genuinely interesting and valuable content that meets the needs of your audience and actively engages them.
Our recent study of the top 100 companies in the small, medium and large categories revealed that only a very small percentage are actively engaging their audience. The playing field is wide open and this is a strategy that can reap big rewards. Social Media Strategy, Expansion Internet Marketing + PR
A Window of Opportunity
Prospective clients are actively using social media in the agency selection process. Agencies need to implement a social media strategy along with their other new business tactics. Time is of the essence. Because of the fact that few agencies understand this, even less are doing it. Small to midsize agencies in particular, have a window of opportunity to gain market share.
Your niche + social can put your agency at the head of the line for new business.
If want to know what irks CMOs the most about ad agencies the recently released Gerson Lehrman Group, GLG Councils Report —“Closing the CMO / Agency Gap: How Agencies Can Win Business and Build Stronger Client Relationships,” provides some excellent insight.
This report is based on a survey of more than 80 senior marketing executives. It analyzes the disconnect between client expectations and the performance of marketing services agencies.
This study was designed to help agencies better understand how marketing executives view their agency relationships and how they make decisions on engaging an agency.
The relationship between agencies and their corporate clients is more important now than ever before and needs fixing. As Founder of The CMO Club, I constantly hear from CMOs in the club about their challenges and concerns, particularly regarding the gaps in their agency relationships.
Right now, there is a considerable gap between the service CMOs receive from marketing services agencies, and the service they expect and need from them.
Pete Krainik, Founder of The CMO Club and Member of the GLG Councils
Insight: What about their current ad agency irks CMOs the most?
More than half (51%) of the respondents reported that agencies did not have sufficient industry knowledge and clients felt their agencies had not conducted sufficient research.
Insight: Research on a prospective client’s market AND business strategy is critical.
79% of respondents said they decided against hiring an agency because of issues related to the agency’s understanding of their business, market, or how they could add value to that business.
91% of respondents listed the above three factors as the most important components for making a decision about engaging a particular agency.
Insight: CMOs want agencies that do their homework, even once business is won.
49% of respondents expected a marketing agency to invest at least 20 hours of research into their industry, business strategy, and product prior to a pitch.
88% of respondents stated that agency understanding of their industries and business was either “critically important” or “very important.”
52% of respondents reported the most frustrating aspect of their agency relationships was a “lack of industry or street knowledge” or “not sufficient diligence in campaign” development. When asked what frustrated them most about their experiences with agencies, they report, “agencies not willing to do their homework – proposing cookie-cutter solutions,” and that agencies need to have a “[g]ood understanding of the technology and positioning.”
Insight: Agencies get passed over by marketing executives for three primary reasons:
Marketing executives strongly indicated they were either not convinced of the value of what the agencies were offering (34%)
They were concerned the vendors did not have sufficient market insight (26%).
The third ranked reason agencies were not chosen, “not understanding needs” (19%).
Insight: Gap between client expectations and agency services
Clients are dissatisfied with the level of business and market knowledge that agencies possess, both during the pitch process and throughout the relationship. A significant gap exists between what marketing executives expect and what agencies offer. The gap is caused primarily by inadequate research on client strategy and market.
Developing and demonstrating this knowledge is key for agencies that want to secure new business and maintain a strong existing relationship with their clients. Social media provides a great opportunity to both develop and demonstrate your agency’s knowledge to targeted prospective clients.
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:
Out of a a group of 18 ad agencies blogs, CS2 Livewas selected as Fuel Lines’s Blog of the Month for March capturing 42% of the votes casts. Engaging Trends, Pixel Farm Interactive, Minneapolis, MN came in second with 30% of the votes.
CS2 Live is the blog of CS2 Advertising, a full service ad agency located in Memphis, TN.
The CS2Live blog will be included for Fuel Lines’s Blog of the Year.
Submit an agency blog for April’s blog of the month.
Ad agencies need an integrated social media strategy if they are ever going to see the payoff from their participation in social media. An agency blog should be the central component. The place you can drive targeted online traffic through SEO, Twitter, email newsletters, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The blog becomes the “gateway” to your agency and the“face” of your agency. As important as it was to have an agency website, it is now equally important to have an agency blog.
But … having a blog isn’t something you check off your list of social media “to do list.” Nor is it a place to lead with agency capabilities and credentials. It must be of benefit to your audience.
Here is a collection of agency blogging resources:
With almost 500 post on this blog, I thought it would be good to publish this top 50 post list. I’ve assembled the “best of” FUEL LINES agency new business articles based upon analytics of site visitors and their comments.
A lot of people who led new business programs in the past don’t know how to do it now.
The job of ad agency new business directors is becoming very difficult and complex. A significant paradigm shift is taking place that impacts how ad agencies acquire new business and the knowledge and skills new business rainmakers need to make it happen:
According to a recent CMO survey, 80% of decision makers say they found the vendor, not the other way around.
Client reviews in recent years have generally become more complicated, given the expanding marketing needs of clients.
Agencies generally are having to reinvent themselves for the digital age and how they market that to prospective clients and consultants has changed.
A lot more of new business begins with the RFP-driven processes
The initial new business engagement is often with procurement executives
Ever changing targets and turnover. Over 50% of client relationships lasting less than two years and the average CMO tenure 27 months
SEO is now a critical part of new business strategy. According to Marketing Sherpa, 80-90% of business to business transactions begin with a search on the web.
Having a working knowledge of social media isn’t even an option any longer. Social media is now mainstream and greatly affects the way agencies promote themselves.
“It’s just such a hard position to fill,” said Michael Zuna, New York managing director at Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi, “The Mad Men-rainmaker days — that doesn’t happen anymore. It’s a tough job.”
According to a press release by Reardon Smith Whittaker (RSW), nearly 85% of agencies continue to hire new-business development personnel internally hoping that “this hire will be the right hire.” Yet the vast majority in that position are gone within 18 months.
Why is new business talent becoming harder to find?
Agency leaders say that the job has become difficult to cast and searches for new business talent is taking much longer.
There are fewer persons that aspire to the job. It is often considered to be a “cul-de-sac” agency position.
The turnover rate is very high.
Expectations for new business is often outlandish.
The current talent pool seems to be very shallow.
With all of the difficulties in finding new business talent, it is still an important position for agencies to fill and deserves priority attention.
Why is it critical for agencies to fill this position? Primarily because of their notorious inability to sell themselves. Agencies desperately need an expert/specialist in the mechanics of new client acquisition, someone who has the sole focus and capabilities to bring “life-giving” new business to the agency.
A good resource for locating agency new business talent that I would highly recommend is Talent Zoo. A number of agencies that I’ve worked with have utilized their services. You can also follow them on Twitter @talentzoojobs
Writing for the Web is definitely different than writing for print.
Many who are accustom to writing for print have a difficult time writing for Web. In order to write effectively online you must understand how people read on the web.
Nielsen Norman Group ’s research found that 79 percent of their test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.
On the Web, users are engaged and want to go places and get things done. The Web is an active medium.
Web content must be brief and get to the point quickly, because users are likely to be on a specific mission.
The Web is perfect for narrow,just-in-time learning of information nuggets.
People arrive at a website with a goal in mind, and they are ruthless in pursuing their own interest and in rejecting whatever the site is trying to push.
In print, you can spice up linear narrative with anecdotes and individual examples that support a storytelling approach to exposition. On the Web, such content often feels like filler; it slows down users and stands in the way of their getting to the point.
If you’re smart, you’ll write accordingly: make your content actionable and focused on user needs.
For your agency’s blog to be effective, your text must be scannable. Nielsen offers these 6 tips:
highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
bulleted lists
one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
Nielsen’s research also found that users detested “marketese”; the promotional writing style with boastful claims. I’ve often said that the moment you start to sell on your agency’s blog is when you will lose your audience.
You need to understand how people read on the web and learn to write for them effectively. Go to Jakob Nielsen’s web site and read this paper. If you look at the top blogs, you’ll find they follow Nielsen’s style guidelines remarkably well.
Helpful resources:How Users Read on the Web and detailed reading behavior in eyetracking studies (please note that this is an older study but provides very helpful and relevant information)
Here are some additional resources for creating an agency blog for new business:
The title of this post is the best description of what its like to lead new business for ad agencies. Agencies are great at focusing on their clients and giving their all to do excellent creative work and provide attentive creative services. But when it comes to the agencies own new business, most suck at it! Agencies are their own worst clients.
There are the four basic cornerstones to make your agency’s new business program focused and effective:
Someone must be responsible. There must be the “herder” the person that keeps the process moving. If everyone is charged with new business, no one is in charge. A lot of people should have new business responsibilities but creating and maintaining a new business program should fall to one person. Preferably it should be the only “agency hat” they need to wear.
It must be consistent. One of the common problems among agencies is that they tend to be very inconsistent in their new business efforts. Currently most are focused on new business because of the economy. But just let there be a little bit of success and busyness with new accounts and agencies put their new business practices on the back-burner, when they should be kicking their new business activities into an even higher gear.
Keep it simple. When agencies have time on their hands, they can come up with some elaborate new business ideas, creative collateral materials to promote the agency, etc. But the efforts are sustainable when the agency gets busy and they are quickly dumped. The most effective new business programs that I have seen are effective because they are consistent, and they are consistent because they are simple to maintain, as when the agency is at its busiest. That’s why I would advocate a series of simple mailers over a more elaborate creative piece, know what a struggle it will be to get through the creative process when the agency is busy.
Choose a target audience. This will not deter your agency from still obtaining “other” type of clients through your personal networks and referrals within your local market, but it will go a very long way to creating awareness, appeal, differentiation and focus for your agency’s new business program. It makes new business so much easier when you do.
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 
