Agency of the Future

How To Use LinkedIn And Account Based Marketing

Peter · March 22, 2021 · Leave a Comment

How To Write About LinkedIn And Account Based Marketing In Five Minutes

If you have perused my Big Advertising Agency Resources List, then you’ve learned of a range of resources designed to help grow your advertising agency. Today I am offering a new resource that helped me quickly write this blog post about LinkedIn and Account Based Marketing.

AI-Writer is, you guessed it, an AI tool to help you write the zillions of content pieces that will help you to keep up with the never-ending barrage of other people’s content. Type in a subject, or even the title of a competitor’s well-read blog post and voila…. you have an instant blog post/content piece that you can publish just like this one below about LinkedIn and Account Based Marketing.

AI-Writer To The Rescue

As with marketing itself, it is essential to remember that Account Based Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It has to adapt to the needs and profile of each customer through individual interviews, programmatic ABM, targeted approaches, and much more. Approaches for different account levels should be aligned in such a way that they range from strategic ABM to true-to-scale ABCM to programmatic ABCM, with the degree of personalization varying at each level. ^{Sources: 8}

LinkedIn is a great place to start your ABM efforts, as LinkedIn users are prepared to discuss and grow their businesses. An account-based marketing strategy from LinkedIn can be executed with many of the native tools that LinkedIn offers. ABM on LinkedIn starts with the ability to search and find specific, relevant accounts. ^{Sources: 1}

This function only works with a limited amount of data. LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you conduct account-based marketing campaigns on LinkedIn by selecting and evaluating target accounts. It provides a detailed overview of the willingness to buy of your target accounts. This information is integrated with company profile information to evaluate opportunities and prioritize them for the next targeting strategies. ^{Sources: 9}

LinkedIn for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has proven to be an effective method for marketers to generate high-quality leads and sales. Over 41% consider account-based marketing to be the top B2B priority for sales. Instead of casting a wide net, ABM is a focused approach aimed at the people you want to turn into customers. ^{Sources: 6}

After identifying at least 300 accounts on LinkedIn, you can start targeting segments with paid advertising. LinkedIn allows marketers to import target lists from their platforms into paid advertising and take steps to match the information you provide with the actual accounts on the platform. ^{Sources: 0}

Ads work best for B2B companies that want to target specific companies and individuals within those companies. Since the LinkedIn audience consists of business people, it makes sense to use the platform to reach out to company-specific decision-makers. ^{Sources: 2}

You will also want to use LinkedIn messaging ads if you expect to have a big impact. We recommend that you use InMail ads for special offers and send them to users who are already connected with your company. ^{Sources: 2} [Read more…] about How To Use LinkedIn And Account Based Marketing

The Advertising Agency Website Walrus Style

Peter · December 3, 2020 · 1 Comment

An EY Podcast Just Asked Me “What Is Missing From The Advertising Industry Today.” I Said Creativity. Ya Know, Ideas That Grab Attention And Move People. I See This Missing Link Also Running Rampant In The Advertising Agency Website Ocean. Then I Found Walrus.

I am feeling ranty these days. And, have this particular rant that I often repeat to my agency clients… GET UNIGNORABLE. The amount of sameness in the world of the advertising agency website world is numbing. This is a bad thing since prospective clients do most of their agency selection before they ever pick up the phone.

Welcome To The Walrus Advertising Agency Website.

Since New York’s award-winning agency (important awards) walks the creative talk and is in fact unignorable… I’ll just go fast here.

So, what works for Walrus?

What you first read when you look them up – as in their Google snippet = “World famous creative shop located in Union Square New York City. Where clients go to get rich, ideas go to get famous, and bivalves go to get devoured.” Different + benefit-driven and what other agency mentions clams?
The Home Page has a talking Walrus. Cute. It works as a branding element and a very fast way to get you to ask, WTF?
Need more info? The social-style information links on the bottom of the page take you to the Walrus Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Medium accounts, and an email thingy. Walrus does not need the endless number of website pages to tell you who they are.
Walrus is all about the work. Human, funny and, oh so not data-crazed, yadda yadda sameness… the advertising you see for brands that most other agencies world kill for is smart. Did I say funny? Like Walrus’ ads get a viewer to stop and watch, listen absorb. These ‘ads’ will also get the attention of the right clients. It’s kinda good for agencies to know what type of clients they want.

The Unignorable Walrus Thing.

The Walrus vibe is cool and interesting and, repeating myself, gets the attention of the right client. I am thinking that this means a client looking for strategic / creative brains.

I am not alone in preaching that advertising, digital PR, you name it agencies, need to get a bit specialist to make it in 2021. I talk about ad agency positionings here. I also say that trying to be known as a ‘creative’ agency isn’t easy. Creativity is very subjective. That said, the right client for Walrus will find them and will dig the creativity and want some of that. It is called mating. Mating requires a bit of unignorability.

OK, OK, I Know You Want To Know How Walrus’ Mate.

I had to find out. So, I went to How Stuff Works. Here you go…

The remaining females congregate on the ice pack and prepare to be entertained by the males in the water. One or two males generally perform for each congregation of roughly 23 females — presenting a series of vocalizations both above and below water. Here, the males’ pharyngeal muscles (near the throat) come in handy both as flotation devices and as amplifiers. The males simply inflate the pouches to remain upright in the water and begin to serenade.

If you woulld like to see another unignorable advertising agency website (from 2011), check out how BooneOakly used YouTube.

Oh, did this work? 1,372,449 views so far.

A New Business Plan For An Advertising Agency

Peter · October 15, 2020 · Leave a Comment

An Advertising Agency Business Plan Thought Starter.

Ten years ago I was the owner and CEO of Citrus, a Portland and Bend Oregon advertising and digital agency. Just so you get the picture, our clients included AOR work for Nike; the Montana Lottery; Harrah’s; Providence Health & Services (5 states), and lots more. As you will see below, I knew that we needed to change our approach to the business. We needed a new advertising agency business plan. A radical shift from what was starting to look like a way too traditional advertising agency business model. My team and I looked at different approaches and ultimately, I determined that I (that means me) did not want to make the required revisions. At that point, I decided to craft the agency for sale. I wrote about how I sold the agency in my 57-page PDF, “How To Sell An Advertising Agency.” Links to it are on this page.

2020. Is It Time For You To Invent A New Business Plan?

I talk to lots of advertising agencies. Many are looking very hard at how to reinvent their agency. This is driven by ongoing factors like waves of recessions; clients asking for more and more for less money; lower profits; unhappy and overworked staff and, of course, the results of the pandemic. I talked yesterday with a New York agency buddy that is shutting down his office, asking his landlord for rent concessions, and will go full-time virtual. He is not alone. Again, in many cases, the need for a new business plan is being forced on agency leaders. Being forced is OK. Not changing is not OK.

Back to my past as one model for the future.

10/12/10: Twas Time For A New Business Plan

Before I sold my Portland agency, I spent some time thinking through what a new, an evolutionary, a smarter, competitive, and higher profit advertising agency business plan might look like. Simply put, how could we make more money? This is what I was thinking a few years ago.

I think that my thought process at that time might help you think hard about your agency’s business plan.

A bit of background. Citrus was a successful Northwest agency. We had offices in Portland and Bend, Oregon. Our clients included Nike (we were an AOR agency for major league baseball and college sports); Oregon State Football, Harrah’s Las Vegas; Wildhorse (a large Oregon casino); the Montana Lottery; LegalZoom; a couple of major west coast banks and Providence Health and Services (a multi-state hospital and healthcare company) and a range of leisure accounts.

Background

I bought the majority share of Oregon’s full-service advertising agency Ralston Group in 2002. I had just left being CEO of ActiveBuddy, a serious natural language company that proceeded Siri and Alexa. It was time for me to get out of New York and get some fresh air. Over the course of the next 8 years, we bought Portland’s Citrus, renamed the agency, and grew our account base across the USA.

However, by 2008, after the horrible recession, clients driving down profits, the increase of workload from digital and social media, the increasing cost of running a marketing company (ala healthcare costs), I decided that we had to either reinvent the agency or I’d move on.

The Birth Of “Portland”

Ok, what should we do? I needed to reinvent the agency via a new advertising agency business plan to be more competitive; leaner; more nimble; lower cost; and NEW. As in, new and improved to get the attention of more of the high-profit clients we wanted.

Here is the document, the 2010 think-piece that I used to help guide me. I hope you find it, um, maybe inspiring.

My 2010 Plan – A New Agency Model: Food-For-Thought For Your Agency

Citrus needs to change.

The agency industry (especially full-service agencies) knows it must explore new business models. The old 15% commission + 16.5% mark-up is so long gone. Plus, we know that finding a way for clients to pay up for “big ideas” is difficult.

Within this context, clients are confronted by fast-paced changes, are skittish and are understaffed. Media options have grown exponentially, clients are asking for program metrics, they need smart digital solutions, can’t figure out how to manage integration and do not fully understand social marketing. They still want big ideas but want all of this for less. All of this is compounded by the view that “agencies” are costly and inefficient. Many prospects don’t even want to take our calls.

To further compound the issues, a sea of agency industry sameness and lack of clear brand and service differentiation confronts us. It is very difficult for small full-service agencies to stand out from the crowd. Defining a unique and focused agency brand for a non-specialist agency isn’t easy.

Citrus shares these issues and at present does not have a clear and compelling brand story. We have our “Move” positioning but we need to express this beyond just words.

There must be a new way.

An idea…Move To Small + Smart.

In my mind, a Small + Smart Citrus is the smartest customized agency in the world.

Sir Martin Sorrell And Ad Age

Peter · April 19, 2020 · 1 Comment

Sir Martin Sorrell And Ad Age On The Coronavirus Advertising Market

Yikes. So much to listen to and watch. A couple of days ago I watched an Ad Age interview by Senior Editor Jeanine Poggi and Sir Martin Sorrell. Sorrell was an early player at Saatchi & Saatchi, the founder of WPP and now runs S4 Capital. S4 is his new “agency” The strapline = “A Communications Business For The New Marketing Age”.

Need to hear from a smarter dude…. FAHGETABOUTIT.

Let’s start with a quote. Read on past this. But, start here. Do you ask clients to spend more during a “recession”? from Sir Martin:

Well listen, the traditional agency response is spend, spend, spend, you know?

They quote statistics. I think my former colleagues are quoting a statistic, 84% of consumers will be watching carefully or will appreciate those companies that behave well during… Well look, everybody’s going to behave well. Everybody right-mindedly will behave well. But it’s going to be a good thing to spend, spend, spend.

That’s nonsense.

The Ad Age interview is a 45-minute video and you can see it at the bottom. I had the key bits transcribed and include what I think are the important points from the perspective of an industry leader – in today’s ad market. Read on, especially about the critical to most agencies – question…

“What should you say to clients about their coronavirus advertising budget?”

Here you go. Note that I edited the interview for brevity and clarity.

Sir Martin Sorrell On The 2020 Market

Martin Sorrell:

Generally, it will be very difficult in Q2. I think we’ll see a recovery from lower levels in Q3, and then into Q4 it’ll get better. As we go into 2021 I think things will get better. There are things that will knock us off course, but I think generally…

On Digital

Martin Sorrell:

And S4 is a purely digital business. We’re totally focused on that holy trinity of first-party data, digital lab recognizing content, and programmatic, and we’re in the sweet spot.

I mean what we are seeing at the moment, even with the cuts in advertising budgets, shifts in money into digital.

And the digital platforms, the six big ones, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba and TicTok, are in my view going to get stronger and stronger. They may have some problems around small businesses because that’s the part of the economy that’s going to be hardest hit by these in the liquidity issues. But once we get through Q2 and Q3, those platforms are going to be even stronger in the future, driven by data as well.

I mean, the first-party data is going to become more important, and third party cookies have been nixed or will be nixed over the next two years by Google.

On Advertising Spending Now – Do It? Or, Nonsense?

Jeanine Poggi:

And I have a question from Toby Jarvis on Facebook: How are you persuading your clients to continue advertising, especially since people are watching TV and online more than ever? And I want to add to that question, should advertisers keep advertising during this time? Should marketers still be advertising right now?

Martin Sorrell:

Well listen, the traditional agency response is spend, spend, spend, you know?

They quote statistics. I think my former colleagues are quoting a statistic, 84% of consumers will be watching carefully or will appreciate those companies that behave well during… Well look, everybody’s going to behave well. Everybody right-mindedly will behave well. But it’s going to be a good thing to spend, spend, spend.

That’s nonsense.

When companies are facing existential crises in Q2, when they are not sure that they will have enough money to survive, it’s ridiculous, and I would put it as strongly as that, to say “spend, spend, spend.” That’s nonsense.

It’s right to say that, for example, the tech companies who have budgets that were built around say sporting events around Tokyo 2020, or Euro 2020, or the Premier League… they should divert that spending to doing good to the purpose-driven campaigns.

On Altruistic Advertising

Martin Sorrell:

But those campaigns should be of highly practical altruistic purpose. They should be focused on equipment, on vaccine development, on therapy development, on supporting those on the front line in the NHS in the UK, or doctors or nurses, or whatever to be. It shouldn’t be self-serving.

And I think to suggest that spend, spend, spending is the answer, is really ridiculous. So the answer to this question, I think, is that you have to encourage clients to deploy their resources more effectively in the way that I outlined.

The tech companies up until now have held their budgets in our experience, some actually… Amazon hits a new high on the stock exchange, Netflix, it’s a new high. We are seeing budgets being expanded with those companies that have been positively affected. Obviously, travel and tourism would be the other end of the spectrum, but the tech companies have diverted money from those sporting events that I mentioned, for example, to doing good and purpose campaigns. We’re also starting to see some postponement, I think, by tech companies from half one into half two, because they count spend all that money, all those budgets, and they’re seeing some pressure on their own advertising revenues as the SMBs come under pressure. I think we’ll see that in the platform results as we get into them in Q2, as they report on Q1 and talk about Q2 and beyond. We’ll see the SMBs are being put under extreme pressure.

On What’s Next? TV? Nah.

Martin Sorrell:

So I think what we’re saying to clients is, “Understand that you may have to cut. But, move money into digital because that’s more effective.”

I think we’re seeing a heavy increase in streaming, not just at Netflix, but at the competitors like a Disney+, you see the Disney+ subscription figures, which are huge. Must be one of the most successful new product launches for a long period of time.

All these streaming devices will put pressure on linear TV, along with the switch to digital. And I think that’s the… Not used to be the $64,000 question, as to what is going to happen to linear TV. I think we see continued compression there, and not quite as high.

I remember I did a session at CES with Bill Konigsberg of Horizon, who runs the most successful independent media agency in America. It’s number three in the market after Publicist and Omnicom.

I remember him saying at CES that he thought some of the dayparts would be down by 45%, and that was before C-19.

I think there will be continued pressure on linear TV, and again, is it going to be as bad as what happened to newspapers and magazines? No. It will be better than that, but I think there will be continued pressure of some significant degree.

On The Big Digital Shift

Martin Sorrell:

So there is this change that we’re seeing, and just to amplify a little bit, as we come out of this, as we come into Q4 and 2021, three things are going to happen.

Consumers are going to switch even faster to digital.

They will learn to educate their kids, buy online, communicate with one another on social on video, whatever it happens to be, during C-19.

And we’re going to see media owners switch to digital even faster as well.

The Ad Age Interview

Got 45 minutes? Here you go. Oh, LOL, tell me what the “Maltese Falcon” looking thing is on Sorrel’s left.

So, what are you telling your clients to spend? And, on what?

The Advertising Agency Of The Future

Peter · February 22, 2020 · 1 Comment

What Does The Advertising Agency Of The Future Look Like? How About Your Agency?

The advertising agency of the future needs some serious planning and agility. No surprise here. But, what is surprising to me is the lack of attention paid to how to craft an advertising agency for the future.

Just for the hell of it. I’ll start with the good old days.

My first job in advertising was at Dancer Fitzgerald & Sample. Back in the 1980’s DFS was New York’s largest advertising agency. We were sweetly based in the iconic Chrysler Building. At that time, we did not spend lots of gray matter on thinking about the future of the advertising agency business because we were making a 15% commission on media and 16.5% on production. We had a sweet client list that included General Mills, P&G, RJR Nabisco, Sara Lee, Northwest Airlines (I ran the account and our annual profits were $6 million on $9 million in revenues), HP and Toyota. As you might expect, we were not too concerned about reinvention. All this client and revenue firepower helped Saatchi & Saatchi love and buy Dancer in 1986.

Today advertising is a radically different business and ad agencies need to be thinking about how to be positioned for a future where multi-year AOR clients; 15% media commissions; three primary media types (TV, print, radio); a positive global network effect and loyalty are attributes of the past.

Not to get too down, but today the advertising world is about project work, crazy price consciousness, competition from all sides (large consultancies, in-house agencies and your ex-Creative Director who does just fine as a freelancer).

Bummed Out?

Look, for many agencies, it is kinda fucked up out there. As the famous Chinese curse says,

“May you live in interesting times”.

But, but, there are still agencies that grow and make bucks. You can too.

So, in preparation for this blog post – yes, it is ultimately about how to position your agency for the future – I read a bunch of articles on “the advertising agency of the future.” Not too surprising, this is a hot topic.

Interesting (as in ‘Uh Oh’) the first page of Google has articles on your future from traditional agency killers like Deloitte, Accenture, Adobe, CMO.com (an Adobe site).

The agency industry perspective is not on Google’s page one. It isn’t until page two that Inc., AdAge, The Drum and the ANA get to chime in.

I stopped trying to find an actual advertising agency perspective delivered via this search term by the time I got to page four. Do the big guys (even WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, etc.) not want to discuss the future?

Some Findings On The Future on Advertising

Here are some of the highlights from my research. I’m listing these in random order. I’ll have my personal thoughts a bit later. [Read more…] about The Advertising Agency Of The Future