Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Agency Websites

How Do Clients Find Your Advertising Agency?

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How Do Clients Find Your Advertising Agency?

Let’s start with some defining and extremely important questions that you should be asking at least twice a year. OK, every month. In this case, I am aiming these questions at your advertising agency website.

  • How do potential clients find you? What was the path?
  • When they found your website, what did they look at?
  • What percentage of your visitors contacted you?
  • What percentage made some other actions like signing up for a newsletter or downloading a white paper?
  • Are you happy? Are the right clients making contact? Need to make adjustments? What’s your success metric?

Let’s break these down a bit.

How do potential clients find you?

First, let’s get referrals out of the way. Advertising agency business development research has indicated that referrals can account for over 80% of agency new client inquiries. While I love referrals and have written about the importance of having a documented active referral strategy, there is no question that referrals have become the default new business attractor because most agencies are not doing a stellar in or outbound sales job. Referrals then must drive the majority of leads. Not that there is anything wrong with referrals. They work. But, they can be a bit random.

The easiest way to determine how prospects found you is to ask them. Of course, many people will have forgotten their first intro to your world. They simply forgot or they used multiple ways in including a search, your LinkedIn page, that conference you spoke at, your tennis buddy, etc. But always ask this question – quickly before you get lost in sales speak.

Second, in respect to your website, use your Google or WordPress analytics to see where they came from. On Wednesday, 30 April, my individual visitors came to me via Google 116; direct 47 (where a user probably entered the URL); LinkedIn 5 and Bing 1 and other 9.

These numbers suggest that my content-oriented inbound sales strategy is working. Most people find me on Google because I have dedicated the past five years to writing over six hundred blog posts on the specific subject of advertising agency new business.

What did they look at? Did you help them get to the good stuff? Do you have a funneling plan?

Using Google and WordPress analytics, I know exactly what people are looking at on this website. Obviously, since my blog is so focused on one subject, my visitors are looking at my posts about ad agency business development. I mix this up occasionally by promoting edgier posts, like Gary Vaynerchuck Is Full Of Shit. But, the bottom line is that I am slavish to one subject. Frankly, most agencies have some trouble with being this focused and keyword conscious. It would also help if they had a focused positioning. Here are some thoughts on that rather important goal.

The typical advertising and communications agency website has a defining Home Page; an About page; Our Work; News or a Blog and a contact page. Is there a flow you want the visitor to take? A place you want them to end up? Are you funneling them towards an action? If they get lost or bail, are you tracking your exit pages?

If you are a B2B marketer, and that folks, is what an ad agency business development program is, you need to funnel the visitor to your contact page. Or, at least, have them ask for something like that brilliant white paper on a subject that supports your agency positioning and sales proposition. I build my mailing list via an offer of this paper: “22 Ways To Run A Highly Profitable Agency”. I admit that it comes to you via an ugly home page pop up. But, again, hey, it works.

What percentage contacted you and what’s your success metric?

Do the basic math. How well do you convert your visitors into sales prospects? Frankly, when I look at the number of visitors I get every day, I could get worried that I am not converting as many as I should. However, here is what I know:

First, I give a lot of information and insights away for free. Many agencies tell me that they often get all they can eat just by reading my stuff. This drives good vibes.

Second, I know that my sales cycle takes a long time. Many of my clients tell me that they have been reading my stuff for over a year. It takes most advertising agencies a long time to admit that they need business development advice.

Third, I am meeting my personal sales goals. Sure, I could dial up my website. But, it works. I am a lone ranger consultant. Given your agency’s overhead, you should be way focused on delivering a website experience that drives a high volume of the right leads.

What is your success metric? Without a metric, you will never know that your website is working.

So, give me a shout. Maybe its time for you to get some outside expert advice.

 

Does Search Engine Optimization Work?

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Guess What… Search Engine Optimization Does Work

The chart above is from WordPress analytics on the source of my incoming traffic. Yup, Search Engine Optimization works. Just look at all the traffic I get from search engines. And, note how many searches come from just Google. In one month… 2,538!

When I ask agencies that contact me how they found me… the answer is always via a search engine (OK, sometimes because they read my book on pitching – know what, go up top and buy it.)

The Drill

So, here’s the drill. I’ve been blogging on one subject, ad / advertising agency business development for five or so years. I’ve got over 600 super well targeted and keyword optimized blog posts. I support these with amplified mentions, emails to over 2,000 subscribers, posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. As you can see, Google wins hands down.

What can your agency learn from this?

  • Be single-minded. Find your competitive agency positioning and blog accordingly.
  • Use the right keywords that your audience wants to read.
  • Blog often.
  • Have long posts. Yes, its ok to have short ones like this. But, Google likes loooong posts.
  • Work to get people to link to you.

You know this stuff. So, just do it. If you want incoming, you have to work at it.

But…

I know, you are very busy. And, you only have 17 blog posts. And, your best writers don’t want to blog. And, you worry about being too dedicated to one subject. Then, I advise my clients to do a range of other tactics.

One is to guest blog on much busier sites.

Does Your Ad Agency Get Its Marketing Right?

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Getting It Right 

Here’s a look at some agencies that get their business development marketing right care of a request from Todd Foutz of Virgina’s NDP agency.He asked me if I could point to advertising agencies that looked like they had their business development act together. This post attempts to answer Todd’s question via some smart examples and asks you… “Does your ad agency get its marketing right?”

I told Todd that I could take a good look at and report on what is visible to the world, but could not comment on marketing that is not visible – read that as being 1:1 agency to client prospect direct marketing.

A quick bit of biz dev history.

When I returned from Saatchi & Saatchi London to New York, I was tasked with running business development across our North American offices. Early on, I happened to meet with Jon Bond of the hot agency Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners. KB had some small accounts like BMW, Citi and Victoria’s Secret. I asked him what the agency did for new business marketing. He said, “I never know what works so, we do everything.” I got it. But, that was in 1994 before time chewing digital marketing and its tracking capabilities. Today’s advertising agency cannot do everything. There is simply too much everything. So, I’ll lead with one point: focus. Work on doing just one or two marketing programs right. If they don’t work (after you’ve given them time), adjust or move on.

Not Visible

As you might expect, I cannot see agency to client direct communications (except for what my clients do and I’ll keep that confidential). It is unfortunate that I can’t see what everyone is doing since direct contact should be a key element of any agency’s outbound marketing and it would be very cool to be able to have a look.

That said, this is what I do know:

I’ve discussed that there are three primary ways that agencies drive leads. These include the all-mighty referral (an unmanaged default for way too many agencies), inbound searches (i.e. SEO and content marketing) and via direct outbound.

Outbound, which used to be called sales (OK, still is), has been revved up in recent years via the “new” idea of Account-Based Marketing. This means that an agency utilizes a very strategic managed approach to capture the attention of a prospective client.

Most agencies do direct outreach (possibly too much, too often or much worse, very poorly done). As I am sure you know, there is a great deal of client marketing research that supports the fact that all sorts of agencies hammer prospective clients all day long. It is a barrage that makes it difficult for most agencies to get noticed. To this point,  Atlanta’s digital agency Cardinal has a very smart / strategic video on their website where they show one of their clients talking about how many times they get hit up by Cardinal’s competitive agencies – and are not interested in switching.

So, to hammer my point… outbound marketing is critical to agency success. However, poorly delivered outbound does not work, full stop. Super compelling well-targeted insights will break through the clutter to get the attention of the clients you want.

Good news for agencies: most of their agency competitors do not have a clue about how to look and sound trully attractive.

Bad news: these unattractive agencies that hammer clients without any productive, interesting sales pitch or all-important relevant insights help ruin communications for the agencies that actually have their marketing shit together.

Some Agency Biz Dev Research [Read more…] about Does Your Ad Agency Get Its Marketing Right?

A Marketing Email Program With Personality

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Yup, Your Marketing Email Program Can Have Personality

Me-Too is bad. Different is good. Boring is bad. Personality is good. Here are some ideas about building a marketing email program that works harder by delivering some cool personality. For your readers and for your advertising agency.

 

How many marketing or information emails do you get? I get a lot. To be clear, I am talking about both direct marketing emails (the unsolicited kind) and email newsletters that I have subscribed to. In both cases, I am a hell of a lot more interested if the email has some personality. Most don’t. This brings me to The Hustle.

Hustle On Brothers and Sisters

Below is the copy of a “Thank You For Subscribing” email that I got from the HUSTLE. As the Hustlers say:

Your smart, good looking friend that sends you an email each morning with all the tech and business news you need to know for the day.

I urge you to go through the entire sign-up process to see how these guys use personality to stand out and make love to you (don’t worry, it is easy.)

The full email.

 

 

email marketing

Want More Of Not Boring? AKA A Marketing Email Program With Personality…

The HUSTLE doesn’t stop at just sending you your daily email. They want you to refer friends.  Below, again, is what their website page looks like after you’ve subscribed. The copy is below the image.

A question, do you add a refer your friends’ message to your agency emails? You should. Note how the Hustle even promotes/incites/entices you to tell your friends… That’s what we call asking for referrals.

OK, before I leave you, my point is that even a simple email system can have personality.

Be not bland my friends. Be active. 

The above website referral page copy:

I used to read the news, but let’s be honest: that crap is dry and you only read it because you feel kinda like you should if you want to be a “good” adult. If you want a quick, blah-blah-blah sounding scoop on big world news today, your robot pal Alexa or the New York Times app can do that for you in a jiffy. But for a daily news email that’s funnier, punnier, less political, more relevant, and 200% guaranteed to make you sound more interesting at dinner parties and/or during Tinder dates, you HAVE to get on board with The Hustle. Like, now. Sign up today and tell me I’m right tomorrow.

Hey, want to hear more about advertising agency email marketing? From someone who started an email program in 1996 – yes, 1996. And, used it to get clients like Nike, Nabisco, and Radiohead.

Don’t be shy…

The Best Advertising Agency Website

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The Best Advertising Agency Website… Sells

SIMPLEI’ve been talking to an increasing number of advertising agencies about how to rebuild their agency website to be a more effective sales tool – to be a best advertising agency website. The operative word here is – sales. It is critical that agencies think very hard about how to funnel a visitor from ‘just visiting’ to making direct contact.

Your website is most likely the first time a prospective client will spend the time to get to know your advertising, design, PR or digital agency. It could also be the last time they see you, and worse, you might never know that they even took a look.

Getting your website right is critical to growing your business. Not setting it up to sell could be one of your worst business development mistakes.

Here are some general thoughts about how to turn agency websites into sales tools. I know that this is timely because most agencies, even ones that just launched a new website last week, are always thinking about their next website. I’d bet that you are too.

The Optimal Agency Website

8 Seconds…

Prospective clients give an agency website about 8 seconds to hook ‘em. That means 8 seconds to describe the agency and give the prospect a good reason to read on. 8 seconds! You know what I’m talking about… you probably give most sites you visit just 8 seconds to tell you why you should stick around.

Once you’ve hopefully sparked interest, clients look hard at agency websites for a clear understanding of what you can do for them (your skills); who you have worked for (proof); past work (more proof), agency thinking (brains); who runs the shop and agency personality (chemistry).

Once you’ve satisfied a potential client’s information needs, you will need to corral them into making contact. After looking at hundreds of advertising agency websites over the years, I can tell you (no surprise) that the great majority do not employ the basics of site visitor conversion. Most agency websites do little more than offer a very basic contact page to, hopefully, help the client make contact.

Sorry, it isn’t that simple.

Some Website Food for Thought

You have limited time to capture the attention and interest of a visitor. How do you do that? Here are some ideas.

Simple Works Hard

I am a fan of simple, fast read design. It’s hard to argue with the power of simplicity. As support, here are some words from the master of keep things simple.

“That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs

Here is an example of an agency that not only preached simplicity; it used super clean and direct design to support its very own brand proposition.

m&c sattchiSee how M&C Saatchi tells (well, once told) prospects what they will get from the agency as soon as the visitor hits the home page. M&C Saatchi delivers its message in about 1.5 seconds. Given the main message, could you imagine the agency having a complicated design to express this thought?

Maurice called the delivery of simplicity: One-Word Equity. This was their pitch from a few years ago. And, there can be no argument that his direct statement still works in today’s over-stimulated ADHD world.

 

OK, One More Uber Simple Website…

 playgroundJust to hammer the KISS point, I am including the home page of Playground. It took me 1 second to know what Playground is.

While I am not sure that saying “We are a digital creative agency” is a standout agency pitch, it is, without question, direct and therefore stronger than the front door of most agency websites.

What I Like: Website Elements

Once you have stopped the website visitor with your direct home page message (something compelling via copy or a video), you’ll have the time to tell them your agency story and supply key information.

Services

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