Marketing

ABM As In Account-Based Marketing Fails

Peter · April 21, 2023 · Leave a Comment

Account-Based Marketing Anti-Failure

I help my advertising and marketing agency clients build effective ABM – Account-Based Marketing programs. I’ve seen some failures over the years and want to share my thoughts on failure over the next few newsletters. Here is a quick list:

You cannot build your best prospect list because you haven’t accessed the right information and data. As a result, your target list is too broad and undefined.
You do not personalize your outreach content.
Your marketing and sales teams are not aligned.
You do not give your ABM programs the time to become effective. This isn’t usually an overnight/one-time hit tactic. As in, your sales cycles might be too short for pure ABM, and worse you are way too impatient.
You do not have an efficient, smart, hard-to-resist thought leadership program. Plus, you might not be sending unignorable content out into the world. Be not boring.
You haven’t allocated the right budget for your Account-Based Marketing efforts. There are staff, design, and marketing costs. Plan well.

ABM works if you have a solid plan. Full stop.

More ABM Insights

I will riff on these fails. soon.

A Series On The Marketing Solopreneur: #1 Dan Koe

Peter · March 6, 2023 · Leave a Comment

I am doing a series on the world of the solopreneur that offers two things.

1) Insights from a serious thinker/doer that will help you grow your business. I am talking solopreneur.

2) An alternative career path roadmap. No working for the “man”. Even if that man/woman/person is you, as in someone that runs a marketing agency.

Definition…According to Merriam-Webster, a solopreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise without the help of a partner.”

#1 solopreneur is the design guru Dan Koe. He delivers courses +

Dan offers courses on writing, productization, and a Modern Mastery system. These range from $150 to $999. He makes a lot of money. I am considering the book course even though I am now completing my fourth book and am outlining my fifth. Never too late to tap into someone else’s experience. Factoid… Dan has 75K followers on LinkedIn. 295K Twitter followers. 223K YouTube subs. 1.2 million Instagram peeps. Yikes!

From Dan’s website – a very cool website by the way:

Hey, I’m Dan.

I’m a brand advisor for 6-7 figure creators and influencers.

I’m the guy they come to when they want to go from starving artist to a highly-paid and authentic creator. No fancy sales funnels and pushy marketing in this household.

I help them systemize their workflow, marketing, and content so they can work for 2 hours a day, charge more, and sell their products & services without manual effort.

As a freelancer turned consultant turned creator, I’ve developed effective systems with time, skin in the game, and experience with 4000+ students and clients.

Four Things For You To Do

Sign up for future newsletters to scope out even more interesting and way active solopreneur thinker/doers.
Pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Tell Dan you love him. -> LinkedIn
Go here to read my series of 850+ blog posts.

SmarterChild Beat ChatGPT by 22 Years

Peter · January 25, 2023 · Leave a Comment

As BuzzFeed Said About SmarterChild… (way before ChatGPT)

From BuzzFeed 2013: “50 Things That Look Just Like Your Childhood” – “A chat with an online robot”

Did you play with SmarterChild? I was one of the founders and CEO. Was nice to be part of the Internet’s childhood.Who knew then that ChatGPT was coming?

Here is a start-up video … 2000… (Microsoft eventually bought us – ActiveBuddy. And, now they own a chunk of ChatGPT) Yes, that’s me.

A New Kick-Ass Email Tool

Peter · October 13, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Here’s a new subject line email tool that will increase opens.

I got an email today from one of my favorite email newsletters – Josh Spector’s For The Interested. The email pointed me to omnisend’s email subject line tester

The omnisend promise: Boost your email open rates: analyze and improve your subject lines before sending your next campaign.

I used the tool to create this blog post’s subject line. It scored high.

You can see more tools and resources right There’s more! Here in my advertising, marketing agency resources list.

WTF Takeaways From Ad Age Small Agency Conference

Peter · August 10, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Ad Age Small Agency Conference: Stating The Obvious… Way Too Often

Here are some smart, yet painful, takeaways from The Ad Age Small Agency Conference. I am not surprised at what the speakers say. But also a bit horrified. I mean, what you are about to hear are what I would consider no-brainers for how to run an advertising agency.

No Brainers… That is my What The Fuck. Am I being too dramatic? I don’t think so.

The issue is that these expert takeaways and advice should be ingrained in all advertising, digital design, and PR agencies. Clearly these takeaways are not. But, YMMV. I include some thoughts and links to “helpful’ thinking. Mine.

Not Speaking Client Language. From Mirren:

Brent Hodgin, Mirren’s Managing Director, is focused on language. As in client language.

“Clients are focused on growth and revenue and most agencies are focusing on brand reputation and positioning,” Hodgins said. “And that is a gap.” Awareness “in and of itself is not an end benefit,” he said, because you can grow awareness and still not move one product off the shelf.” He added: “When you don’t use the language of your client … it’s like you are an outsider trying to be an insider.”

The Levitan take. Hey, agencies are selling services to a prospective client that wants stuff. Figure out what stuff they want (gee like more sales and customers and the right analytics + KPIs) and talk their language. Do the upfront research.

Get past typical agency “branding” talk to talking about “sales”. Like ROI.

Some “CLIENT” language from my pitch book:

Here is a quote from an interview I did with Ian Beavis who has been EVP Automotive at Nielsen and ex auto CMO (Kia, Mitsubishi.) He has been pitched by dozens of agencies (and ran the Toyota account at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, as well)

Levitan: A final question. Agencies have a hard time creating a competitive agency brand positioning. Any insights and advice you can give to the agency world on how to be distinctive in this highly competitive category?

Beavis: You rarely hear of an agency being a business solution provider, as it just doesn’t sound cool or creative. A good agency solves a client’s business issues and is a partner. Very few qualify and even fewer truly embrace this challenge.

Clients want agencies that understand business objectives and business results. They want to hear that you get it. That’s it, folks. This WTF is about not doing the research to learn what that prospective client wants.