Ad Agencies: Don’t Do Any Marketing!
I saw this Adweak Tweet (scroll down) and it got me to thinkin about how much ad agency marketing is directed to prospective clients. Lots!
Man, client CMO’s / marketing departments / CEO’s must be soooo tired of incoming marketing materials from ad agencies. An endless barrage of ‘we are wonderful’, ‘we have this idea’, ‘we did this fantastic work’, ‘we won this award’, ‘we know your category’, ‘we wrote this white paper on: new ad technologies; social marketing; how to use Snapchat; demographics; your issues; your competitors and on and on.
Soooo, I kinda agree with Adweak’s sentiment. BUT…
BUT, so what? Like get way over it. Keep on marketing your ad agency. Or, just roll over and let your agency -hmmm, die.
What to do?
Don’t stop marketing your agency because Adweak is kinda right. Frankly, if you’d like to see your agency die, then don’t market it. Then you won’t have to worry about interrupting any prospective clients cause you’ll lose the ones you have and won’t have done the marketing to replace them.
Here are some thoughts:
- Marketing an ad agency requires a strategic marketing plan with clear objectives, target categories and accounts, Creative Briefs and production timetables. Hmmm, just like what you do for your clients..
- Don’t have a start and stop new business program. New business marketing must be consistent. Yes, 24/7 which you can now do thanks to Google and social media and some great tools – for you.
- You have to add frequency to reach. You will have to hit your prospects numerous times (with attention to not over doing it.)
- Your program should include the goal of looking and sounding different. Differentiation is welcomed.
- Sound smarter that the agency down the street. Deliver must-read agency thinking.
- Break out: Do things that stand out. White papers, the RIGHT white papers, should stimulate interest in your agency. But, also think about how you deliver these.
- Let me repeat that. Break out. Make looking and sounding different a major objective. Fame does not come to the meak.
- Forget Adweak. Do a cool, smart, hard to ignore infographic. This will get shared across the client organization. Getting shared is fun. (Um… while you are at it, share this blog post, please.)
OK, don’t forget Adweak. They have 12,600 Followers in the narrow world of advertising.
Adweak uses Twitter. Everyone uses Twitter. Your mother uses Twitter. Sooooo, many Tweets. Too many, right? Why not just give up because everyone is barraged! Get over it. Or, take the RIGHT message from Adweak anddo what Adweak does:
Deliver on topic, high-interest, smart, strategic, uber-targeted communications that get noticed by your highly targeted and well understood audience. I bet you could even write a white paper that will get noticed by that CMO who is “tired of getting white papers.”
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