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Peter · July 31, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Ask And Ye Shall Receive.

Going direct and actively “asking” a prospect to do something is one of the most important and effective pieces of business development advice that I deliver to my agency clients. So, why not do it myself.

If you sign up below by just typing in your email address, you get a very valuable white paper (I know this from reader feedback) and get to be close to me, digitally that is, every week.

The newsletter is simple, easy to read (its a synopsis of the week’s posts) and its very non-spamy.

Go ahead, it won’t hurt.

Thanks.

Advertising Agency Pitch Book Update

Peter · July 9, 2014 · 1 Comment

A Quick Update On My Advertising Pitch Book

People are banging down my door to get their copies of my book on pitching. LOL-Not. Well, they might be when it gets published (later this summer) and the word gets out. Again, a bit of LOL.

The book will be about 60,000 words, has a few deep interviews with experts (search consultants, the 4A’s, the ANA, an IP lawyer and more) and has a list of pitch mistakes garnered from a range of USA and beyond agency search consultants and… Because I really like to point out mistakes, the book has a series of 12 cartoons that highlight what I think are the most egregious mistakes agencies make when pitching. These are mistakes that all agencies make at some point. I try to make these errors go away by telling you that if you want to loose your pitch, then go ahead and make them.

Don’t Be Distinctive

Here is a sneak preview. One of my favorite cartoons is above. This one is about the advertising agency’s fear of sounding too different. Too distinctive. Too bold. You know, “What if we sound too assertive, have ideas that scare the client, take a too strong position, are wrong…” This thinking leads to sameness. The sameness that My friend Steve Klinetobe and his The Cartoon Agency (check them out) illustrates in his 12 cartoon series.

These cartoons will be in the book and will be animated for the web to increase their virality (is this a word?)

Pass Along Help Please

One of the things that I talk about with my agency clients is that they should ask their clients, ex-clients, suppliers, partners, family and friends to refer the agency when appropriate. You know, just ask politely.

So in the interest of asking: Please pass this post on to your friends and ask them to sign up for my weekly newsletter below so that they hear about the book before it is sold out. Uh, yeah, another LOL. But one that I want to happen.

Advertising Agency New Business & Inbound Marketing

Peter · July 2, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Along with positioning and outbound marketing, I help my advertising agency clients plan and execute their social media based inbound marketing programs. These programs are designed to attract the clients that they want to their messaging and get the email lights to fire up. Allow me to state the obvious:

Inbound marketing is marketing a company through blogs, podcasts, video, eBooks, newsletters, white papers, SEO, social media marketing and other forms of content marketing. Inbound marketing is essentially an attraction strategy based on strategic scheduled content marketing that helps clients find you. The inbound program should attract the right traffic to your messaging (as in on your website), convert this traffic to leads and help you convert these leads into meetings.

Inbound marketing ~~can become~~ is complex and very time consuming. It is imperative that you do not overreach. Trying to do too much, more than your agency staff can and will handle, will result in visible inconsistency. The web is littered with way too many agency-ignored, virtually empty advertising agency blogs, Twitter feeds and corporate LinkedIn sites. Plan accordingly. Looking empty is… lame.

There is a valuable secondary benefit to doing inbound marketing. It is important to note that agency clients are looking for agencies that have a deep understanding of how to do inbound, social and content marketing. Therefore, your inbound marketing program will serve as proof of your expertise. Walking the talk is a good thing. Looking empty is… lame.

Does inbound marketing work to win new business? Like, is it worth the effort?

At the end of the day is all of this blogging, Tweeting and LinkedIn action worth the time?

Yes if you have a plan with clear objectives and target clients and categories.

I have concentrated on inbound marketing to drive interest in my agency business development consultancy for the past year. Search engine marketing coupled with a sound social media program works. I have lots of happy clients (who find me) and I am making a very good living after selling my advertising agency. Yes, there is a life after advertising agency ownership.

Yesterday, I repurposed a one year-old blog post — Advertising Agency New Business and Cold Calling. – by putting it up on LinkedIn’s self publishing channel under the new title, Dump Cold Calling. Go Warm Calling. This activity delivered 607 views on my blog as of 1700. FYI, my best blog day netted 2,052 views (I put a quick screen grab of my blog stats below.)

My blog’s subject on my 2,052 day was about the art of pitching. I am rather happy about this one because pitching, how to pitch so that you greatly improve your batting average, is the subject of my soon to be published book: The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

So, yes, all the effort, if well planned and executed does work.

Sign Up:

Give me a shout and we can discuss how to use social media (and… outbound marketing too) to grow your leads. Or, just sign up below, get a detailed business-building white paper and I’ll let you know when the book is out.

Magazines & Advertising Agencies Are Doing Marijuana

Peter · June 20, 2014 · 2 Comments

A friend recently gave me two copies of Northwest Leaf, the Pacific Northwest’s leading medical marijuana magazine. Get this: four-year-old Northwest Leaf ‘s May 2014 issue is 104 pages of jam-packed original content and … an unbelievable amount of marijuana industry advertising. Its monthly circulation is 30,000. Check out the issue here.

Should Magazines Be Doing Marijuana?

Should they? Well, you are some of the last people that I have tell that the print publication industry’s circulation and advertising are in steep decline. The FIPP World Magazine Trends 2013-14 chart (sorry about the fuzziness) shows what the future has in store for the print industry. Clearly no big news here.

The big(ist) news for me is that that the marijuana industry is driving the fast-paced growth of a local publication in a state where one of its major daily newspapers shut down a couple of years ago. There is so much interest in this new advertising category that the publisher of Northwest Leaf will be launching Oregon Leaf in July. How many print publishers are launching new publications in these digital times? Not too many.

Should Advertising Agencies Be Doing Marijuana?

Best Read Advertising Blog Posts

Peter · May 27, 2014 · 2 Comments

In the interest of sharing, here is a list of my best read / performing blog posts during the past few months. All of these posts are found via a search engine optimized blog; my email newsletter list (sign up for it below); Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook; my Pinterest agency directory website; guest posts; Reddit and a test I did using Outbrain (nice traffic but not well targeted.)

The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation post went somewhat viral across social media with a special thanks to Facebook. I suspect that the story resonated with the Saatchi & Saatchi and M&C Saatchi universes because it discusses a looser pitch for Adidas I did with Maurice and Charles Saatchi. It is an entertaining, if sad story.

How To Name Your Agency is clearly a hot topic for new and existing agencies. The majority of the other posts address my main topic: agency new business. Thank you SEO Gods.

Next: I am interested in seeing how the brand new 34 Advertising Agency Search Consultants post does in the coming weeks.

The links are hot. Go on and visit some of my best read posts.

Title		Views
The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever		7,301
Hi.		5,239
How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part One		3,782
Insights		2,926
How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program		2,150
I Grow Advertising & Design Agencies		2,007
I can help.		1,665
It’s Me.		1,656
Home page / Archives		1,654
How To Position An Advertising Agency – Part I		1,117
How To Write An Ad Agency Business Plan		1,056
Talking As An Ad Agency Business Development Tool		965
#3240 (loading title)		894
13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business		718
35 Ways To Start & Grow An Ad Agency		607
How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part Two		596
How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients		587
How To Position An Advertising Agency – Part II		496
Advertising Agencies: “Do Not Pitch”		422
Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling		419
Which Social Media Strategy Is Best For Advertising Agency New Business?		417
Finally, A Fcking Ad Agency Blog Worth Reading		408