Marketing

The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

May 31, 2022 By Peter 36 Comments

Advertising Agency Resource List – Updated Often

My Advertising Agency Resource List is curated often to help advertising, digital, design, and PR agencies easily find the inspiration and industry resources that will help y’all build killer agencies and careers.

If I were you, I’d grab a glass of Larkmead Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 (LOL only $150 or a nice craft beer – a bit less expensive) and check out all of these links. I guarantee that at least one of these websites and/or tools will help you or your team grow your agency.

Dig growth and sharing? Therefore my friends, go ahead and share this page with your friends, family, and staff.

A kudo from David Ogilvy: “I wish I had this advertising resource list when I was in the ad biz. All I had was my brain.”

OK, one more. This here Peter Levitan blog has over 800 posts dedicated to helping your marketing communications company grow. I hope that my insights on the art and science of agency business development, growth, and management help you to make more bucks. Speaking of resources and advice, take me up on my Corleone offer.

A Couple Of Quickies:

Website Speed Is Good. A slow website drives down SEO. Check out your website.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

BROWSEO.We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.

And, To help Your Thought Leadership Program: What Are People Searching For?

AnswerThePublic. This is a free visual tool that shows you what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for at Google.

Exploding Topics. Yes, just like it sounds.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not on Google’s search universe. A look at the top 2019 Google searches may or may not make you a fan of humanity.

Social Mention. Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go.

OK – The Advertising Agency Resource List…

Here are the topics covered:

Advertising Agency News Sites
Ad Agency Directories
Top Advertising Blogs
Favorite Social Media Tools
Video Marketing Tools & Information
Creative Inspiration & Idea Generation
Creative Space & Time
Online Advertising Education
Online Legal Resources
Life After Advertising & How To Make $$$
Top Twitter Tools
Top Advertising And Design Awards
Marketing & Advertising Podcast
Marketing Tool Generators

Advertising Agency News Resources

The Ratti Report. Your agency needs fresh business development leads, right? So check out this website for a daily list of business development opportunities. News you can use to buy that new Tesla Roadster.
Advertising Age. Ad Age delivers the latest news from the world of advertising and marketing agencies.
Ad Asia Online. AdAsia Online focuses on automation, advertising technology, and creative technology,
AdNews. Australia’s advertising, marketing, and media industries news resource.
Adweek. Adweek covers media news, including print, technology, plus.
branding in asia. Need to know what’s up in the Asian marketing and advertising world? Sure you do. Check out this comprehensive resource for creative work, news, interviews, and insights. Read it and you just might take the next non-stop to Singapore.
Business Insider. Business Insider’s daily take on the ad industry.
Campaign Asia. Campaign Asia reports on advertising and emerging media in the Asia Pacific region.
Campaign Magazine. Ad industry news from the UK’s advertising industry “bible”.
Communication Arts. Print publication offering competitions, forums, feature articles, job bank, graphic design resources and online shopping.
Creative. The magazine of promotion and marketing.
Digiday. Digiday creates content, services, and community that foster change in media and marketing.
Direct Marketing News. Provides news, feature articles, columns, and special reports on direct marketing.
The Drum. The alternative to Campaign. Delivers lots of news and views.
MediaPost. Comprehensive advertising and media industry coverage.
TechCrunch. Keep up (or try to keep up) with the fast-paced world of startups and VCs.

Ad Agency Directories

Free Google Marketing Tools (2022)

May 8, 2022 By Peter Leave a Comment

Must Use Google Marketing Tools For Your Advertising Agency

I love free. I love it when you can head over to a list of free Google marketing tools that will help you market your advertising agency. These tools and dozens more can be seen and loved on my Big Advertising Agency Resources List page.

Google Marketing Tools To Help Build Agency Insights

Google Scholar: Want to look smart? Google Scholar searches through thousands of research-oriented articles and emerging studies. It aims your search at articles, new ideas, books, abstracts, and court opinions. Results are from academics, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This is a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not in Google’s search universe. It is also a great tool to help you find the right (hot) subjects for your next blog post.

Google Alerts. Stay ahead of your client, a prospective client (as in category, brand, and people), and industry news by creating a list of Google Alerts. Frankly, this should be a primary business development tool. You want XYZ account, right. Then create an alert for any XYZ news.

Google Marketing Tools To Help Your Agency Improve Its Business Development Programs & Platforms

Google Online Marketing. Learn from the leader.

Google Analytics. You want to track your website right?

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at y’all on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

Free Google Marketing Tools For Advertising Itself

Advertising works. While your agency has a bunch of advertising options, clearly Google Ads should be considered. Usually, agencies will by relevant keywords like: “Dallas advertising agency” or “medical marketing ad agency”… but, there are some other options like buying an ad on “Trudy Hardy” — go ahead and see what I mean.

Google Ads. Yes, your advertising agency can run ads for itself.

And…

The Peter Levitan Story. A very helpful blog. If I do say so myself.

11 B2B Email Marketing Statistics (2022)

April 19, 2022 By Peter 2 Comments

Yup 11 B2B Email Marketing Statistics – A Sweet List Just For Your Advertising Agency Business Development Program

I just got off a long business development planning call with an advertising agency in Canada. We spent a good deal of time discussing the value of building and running an advertising agency email newsletter. I have written about email newsletters before but just built a set of statistics that supports my email advice that your agency should think hard about getting that newsletter out there (if you have a newsletter, good for you), Bottom line = email marketing should be a key element of your business development program.

My email marketing statistics list is below. But, just for the hell of it, here are a couple of earlier email marketing blog posts. Worth a read.

My 11 B2B Email Marketing Statistics (2022)

81% of B2B marketers use email marketing newsletters for biz dev. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
B2B marketers send email marketing newsletters every 25 days. (SuperOffice, 2020)
31% of B2B marketers use email to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
89% of all B2B email campaigns are sent from a company name. (SuperOffice, 2020)
85% of marketers say they work with email marketing platforms. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
The highest email click-through rate goes to the consulting services companies at 25%. (Constant Contact, 2021)
Marketers who segment their campaigns see as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
Over 80% of marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing. (Litmus, 2020)
YIKES!!!! You better be good at email marketing – 306 billion to be exact. And this number is expected to reach 361 billion by the end of 2024. (Constant Contact 2022)

And Now – B2B Email Marketing Guidance

How To Create A Tactile Brand Experience

March 31, 2022 By Peter Leave a Comment

Yikes, What Is Tactile Brand Marketing? And What’s In It For My Advertising Agency? Hmm… Maybe It’s Making Sure You Are Unignorable.

One of my core marketing mantras is that advertising agencies need to become unignorable. Unignorable means not being ignored. This sounds obvious but most advertising agency marketing is, unfortunately, ignorable. One, one, of the many ideas that I share with my advertising agency clients, is the idea of using tactile brand marketing. Well, I usually call it direct marketing (just like in the old days when you got something in the mail — paper-based mail that is).

In fact, I just got off a call with a Northeast agency where I pointed to one of my favorite paper-based tactile brand marketing tools — The UK Newspaper Club. Hey, I have written about the value of what the Newspaper Club offers in this blog post – Really, An Advertising Agency Newspaper? Peter, You Must Be Kidding.

And Then Just Like That, I Got A Well-Done Lead Gen Email From PFL About, Yup, Tactile Brand Marketing.

It is worth reading the email below because it does a really good job of selling in the PFL pitch story. The email is short (thank you!!), concise, and drives you to a 1-minute sales video. A video that actually sells. Here is the email. And, go ahead and watch the video – and consider adding a tactile approach to your marketing. Think direct mail – like a zine, newspaper, or box – and how it breaks through the clutter of digital marketing. And, then do that fast & sweet & effective sales video.

Oh, before I show you the email and the video – maybe you want more ideas about becoming unignorable? You should. And, you should contact me. The Don did…

Ok, ta-da, the email…

The Idiocy Of Ad Agency Christmas Giving

October 28, 2021 By Peter 4 Comments

Yes, Ad Agency Christmas Giving Is Ineffectual – A Nice Thought From Peter. Ja?

OK. It’s 2021 and what a wonderful two years it has been. As we step outside we, that’s you ad agency leaders, are thinking… huh, shouldn’t we do something cool for our clients? Like, deliver a bit of ad agency Christmas giving. But, um, no, do not do that. So in honor of my magical anti-gifting thought and advice, I offer MY annual Christmas rant (or better yet, a strategic approach to giving).

It is that time of year again.

It is the time that many an ad agency decides that it is a great time of year to add to the upcoming ad agency Christmas giving clutter. Am I being Grinch-like? You bet.

Does your ad agency send out Christmas cards or gifts or online trinkets to clients — even prospects? I call this practice ~~stupid~~ silly. Strong words? Sure. but, why am I saying this?

Look, I have nothing against season’s greetings. But, after working at a couple of agencies (including my own) and watching dozens/hundreds of agencies send out very “creative” Christmas (Chanukah, Kwanza, etc.) cards and gifts during the late-December season, I have to say this is very ill-timed even highly-inefficient outreach. It is wasteful in three critical ways: [Read more…] about The Idiocy Of Ad Agency Christmas Giving