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12 Advertising Agency Pitch Mistakes 

Peter · September 6, 2023 · 4 Comments

12 Advertising Agency Pitch Mistakes

Advertising Agency Pitch Mistakes Here are my 12 favorite advertising agency pitch mistakes. Delivered as a ‘must do’s’ cartoon series – see below.

Now that my new book How To Build A Kick-Ass Advertising Agency is on the market (and doing well, thank you – buy it) I thought I’d revisit a core message from my first advertising agency advice book.

The fact is that way too many agencies continue to make avoidable mistakes – especially in the world of Zoom-like meetings.

One of the biggest mistakes is that advertising agency leaders do not recognize the importance of interpersonal chemistry. The agency pitch consultants I interviewed for The Levitan Pitch book all told me that many agency selection decisions are made by the client determining that they LIKE the agency and its people. This is because way too many agencies are kinda look-a-like. OK, and sound alike. Work on YOU, INC.

Here they are… The 12 Advertising Agency Pitch Mistakes

I’ve purposely served the pitching mistakes up as advice, as things to do. Why? As you will see throughout my paperback and eBook, The Levitan Pitch. (especially in the interview section) many advertising agencies, pitch leaders, and team members, make these crazy mistakes. According to the 18 agency search consultants interviewed in the book, these pitch mistakes are made all the time. Agencies make them despite knowing that they will lower their batting average. This is quite baffling.

Here are five of my all-time favorites:

  1. The agency hasn’t worked at being distinctive. There might even be a fear of being “too” different. Strange, but true.
  2. The agency hasn’t done a good job of planning the flow of the presentation. They haven’t approached the pitch as theater.
  3. Agencies often leave their best presenters behind because it is someone else’s turn to go to the pitch. Huh!?
  4. The agency presents way too many strategic and creative ideas.
  5. The big one: the agency spends way too much time talking about themselves and not the client. Here is an example from the book:

“Agencies spend far too much time talking about themselves and not enough time addressing the problems of the client. Clients want to hear solutions to their problems, not how great the agency thinks it is. Best advice to agencies – focus on the client, demonstrate real understanding of their issues, unearth commercial as well as consumer insight, keep it simple, and make it memorable!”

C/O Brian Sparks, Managing Director: Agency Assessments International, UK and Ireland…

How did we all get to this not-so-special place? I think that some of the primary issues haven’t been addressed:

  • The speed at which agencies start to work as soon as they are invited to pith an account. Rarely do they stop and think through the entire process before all hell breaks loose.
  • Most agencies do not have a clear methodology for how they are going to run pitches. It is almost as if they are starting with a blank page every time they are invited to pitch for new business. I recommend a few things to do to manage the pitch including having a standard agency checklist. You can see one in my Pitch Playbook.
  • Worse, most agencies don’t even have a master business development plan.

To help resolve this dilemma, I offer my 12 deadliest advertising agency pitch mistakes as counter-intuitive must-dos illustrated by a series of cartoons from my friend Steve Klinetobe.

 

Mistake Poster

 

 

[Read more…] about 12 Advertising Agency Pitch Mistakes 

How To Win New Advertising Agency Business

Peter · September 6, 2023 · 2 Comments

How To Win New Advertising Agency Business

How To Win New Advertising Agency BusinessMy thoughts on how to win new advertising agency business from those wonderful clients that you want… was one of the first blog post messages I ran for my advertising agency business development consultancy. I started the consultancy in 2013 after I sold my Portland agency. Whoa: About 850 blog posts ago.

It was a great, useful blog post about, yes, how to win new advertising agency business and got the attention of my ad agency market. The idea is still useful.

“Wait a minute, who are you guys?”

That was the question we got from Harrah’s Las Vegas after they received our iTunes gift card. We told them who we were, thanked them again for their help and a relationship was born. Here’s how we got there.

About 10+ years ago, my Portland ad agency Citrus needed a more distinctive brand positioning. As I suspect you know, finding a new brand position for an advertising agency, especially a “full-service” agency like ours, isn’t easy. While full-service is a highly relevant service offer that many clients seek, it isn’t a particularly distinctive sales proposition in a world with thousands of similar ad agencies. The fact is, full-service sounds rather platitudinous.

There are probably 2,000 advertising agencies called full-service.

Here is how we broke out.

To refresh our brand (and get more notice) we initiated a strategic branding process. We employed the account panning skills of Lynette Xanders, one of the Northwest’s best strategists. Lynette helped us gain a better understanding of the agency’s existing positioning, insights into how our staff perceived the current and future agency, an examination of relevant industry shifts, and a deeper view of our goals and dreams. We added in a competitive review to advance our understanding of what clients need and want from an agency.

Next – We Used A Survey As A How To Win New Advertising Agency Business Sales Tool

Our next step was to create an online survey to show a set of alternative positioning statements to marketing decision-makers – our clients and target companies. We wanted to get past our own internal navel-gazing.

We took the branding exercise and added a new business spin.

We used our new business database to select a list of A-level client prospects and used the positioning research as an introduction to Citrus. The program had 6 low-cost elements.

  1. A list of 5 positioning statements were listed in an agency research section on our website. In addition to the survey, this helped us to drive the responders to our larger agency story.
  2. A Survey Monkey online survey.
  3. An email list compiled from our The List Inc. database. Now WINMO.
  4. Three-stage email outreach.The offer of winning a $50 iTunes gift card twas added as an incentive.
  5. The prospect group’s response rate was surprisingly high at about 30%. Sometimes if you ask nicely people will want to respond.

Winning Harrah’s

One of the respondents from our outreach list (wanna-be client types) was a corporate marketing manager at Harrah’s (now Caesars Entertainment.) After the manager answered the survey we sent her a nice note and the gift card. Her response was, “Wait a minute. Who are you guys?”

This question led to more emails, phone calls, and a trip to Las Vegas. The meeting resulted in our working on Harrah’s national Las Vegas Meeting’s By Harrah’s program that sells thousands of room nights per year for Harrah’s 8 Las Vegas casinos. Our work included a new website, a direct marketing program, and a print advertising campaign.

This was a rather decent result from sending out a couple of emails, asking for some help, and the delivery of an iTunes gift card. Remember iTunes?

Oh, in addition to a new client, our research also netted a new agency brand positioning.

The Message – If you want to know How To Win New Advertising Agency Business – please be different. Or as I call it… be Unignorable.

Oh… I have written lots about advertising agency brand positions. Here.

How To Build An Active Website Contact Page in 2023

Peter · August 10, 2023 · 1 Comment

contact pagePlease Ask For Contact – Look Hard At Your Website’s Contact Page

You’ve built your advertising or marketing or digital agency. You work on your client’s business. You want more clients. You have a website that you hope your lead generation programs drive people to.

Then people go to the website and you hope they get so interested (and in some cases excited) that they go to your contact page and… you sound so lame and passive. Like you say virtually nothing that would make them really want to make contact. Harsh? Yup. True for the majority of advertising / digital agency websites (and, hey, the marketing world in general).

Here are some examples of what NYC and Cleveland agencies say on their Contact page. Would these “words” make you want to make contact?

  • To send our team a message, please use the form below.
  • Contact us using the form below and one of our team members will reach out as soon as possible.
  • Get in touch.
  • We’d love to hear from you and show you more of our work!
  • Just fill out the form and one of us will get back to you as soon as we can.
  • If you want to reach out to us, feel free to do so by email:

    These Contact Page “Words” Are So Freakin Passive… Being Passive Sucks

    Driving contact from the website visitor is where the rubber meets the road – isn’t this the reason y’all have a website?

    My tour of agency websites shows a wide range of contact pages. Most are too weak. Some (most) just provide an email contact. Some contact pages go for it by providing reasons to make contact. These contact pages are much more assertive than just having a passive contact email form.

    I am a strong believer that the contact section should be warm and welcoming. Businesslike but friendly. Contact should be an invitation and a metaphorical fist bump.

    Bland does not work for me. I need some online hospitality. This is a place to show some personality. Even humor. Even empathy. Try to get past the passive voice. Ask for the order. Gently. Not too Glengarry Glenn Ross.

    A quick idea (if you don’t want to read more)… Instead of bland text, why not deliver a 20-second video on why the visitor should talk with you?

    An Active Contact Page Drives Action

    Given people’s general inertia, go ahead and tell the visitor to make contact. Consider how to give them a good reason to act. Maybe make an offer to capture attention and a reaction. This isn’t a brand-new idea—SaaS companies do this all the time because it works.

    Here is what I say on my Contact page:

    Three reasons to contact me. I deliver the most creative approach to an advertising agency’s positioning and lead generation.I am the most experienced agency business development coach. Read the “My Story” page. I stole the idea from Austin Kleon. My goal is to make your advertising agency unignorable. Unignorable drives awareness and action. Think of the alternative.

    ++ I deliver an offer…

    Take me up on my free Corleone Godfather offer. This is an offer you can’t—or rather, shouldn’t—refuse. Let’s talk for thirty minutes—just 0.50 on the timesheet—to discuss your agency’s issues and opportunities and how I will help you build a more powerful advertising agency business development plan.

    Does my Godfather offer work? Yes.

    Does my Gandhi testimonial video at the bottom of the contact page help? Yup, I got Gandhi to give me that fist bump.

    Chicago’s Orbit Media website development firm goes a bit further than most agencies. They address the fact that the client might not be immediately ready for them. They have this interactive dialogue-building offer on the Contact page – it keeps the “conversation” going:

    Work with Orbit Ready to start a project? Fill out the form and Chris or Stephanie, our Web Strategists, will be in touch with you as soon as possible.Have a project but not quite ready to contact us? See if Orbit is a fit for you.

    Last BIG Point.

    Do not ask for too much personal information. You do not need the prospect’s date of birth.

[Read more…] about How To Build An Active Website Contact Page in 2023

The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

Peter · August 2, 2023 · 49 Comments

Advertising Agency Resource List – Updated Often

advertising agency resourceMy 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.

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. Go here: Corleone offer. 

A Short But Sweet List of The Best AI Directories For Marketers

We are all a bit (understatement) overwhelmed with the barrage of new AI tools. To help sort this overload, here is a list of what I think are today’s easiest-to-use AI directories for marketers. Note, this is a short list.

Futurepedia – From Google Bard: “This directory is one of the largest and most comprehensive, with over 3,000 AI tools and resources listed. It’s a great place to find AI tools for a variety of tasks, including machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.” Just today… 18 new tools. Yikes.

Zain Kahn’s Superhuman – The world’s biggest AI newsletter with 350k+ readers.

iLib – AI websites listed by popularity.

Product Hunt – As they say: “Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day. It’s a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.”

Crunchbase – A comprehensive list of AI startups. Wowzer, this is a hot venture universe. Go find your new marketing agency client here.

GPTE – Just in case you need MORE!

AI Tools (April 2023)

Yikes. There are new AI tools designed for marketers every day. OK, OK. But, here are a few of my current favorites (I stress current):

ChatGPT. Obviously, you know about this. Here is a nice prompts mini-list for marketers:

chatgpt marketing prompts

Jasper and Copy.ai are AI content generators that utilize AI to generate high-quality content for various purposes. Jasper has been in the market for longer and is more feature-filled, while Copy.ai offers templates, a chatbot, and team features.

MarketMuse is a content optimization tool that utilizes NLP and machine learning algorithms to improve the quality and relevance of your content for better SEO and audience engagement.

Pictory and Synthesia are AI video generators that create high-quality videos without prior experience in video editing or design. Synthesia offers over 60 languages and various templates, a screen recorder, a media library, and more.

A Couple More 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

[Read more…] about The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

Top Advertising And Design Awards

Peter · June 19, 2023 · 7 Comments

A Lovely List Of The Top Advertising Awards

top advertising and design awardsPut yourself in a marketing client’s shoes. They want to find and select a new advertising, digital or design firm. How to do that? They ask friends; take hours searching the Internet; maybe your agency got its account-based marketing down and the client now knows about the agency; the client hires an agency search consultant or… maybe they look at the top advertising and design awards to find an agency that a third party loves. A third party that gave the agency an award and big kisses. In a world of over 4 trillion ad and digital agencies, a client needs some help.

This list provides a list of the top advertising and design awards plus: deep thoughts on why you should even bother doing the advertising award game. This game is costly and time-consuming.

Across my global and regional advertising career, I’ve won big creative awards like the One Show, EFFIES and regional ad awards. There is a system to winning… Here are my views on advertising awards objectives and strategies. It is mindblowing how many advertising agencies do not know how to enter an award show — to win.

Note: This advertising awards list gets updated. Let me know if I am missing an award.

advertising agency awardsNote #2: I write about advertising awards and other agency and personal branding strategies to make you and your agency more famous in my new book. How To Build A Kick-Ass Advertising Agency

Another note: This is obvious but is worth mentioning. Even if you do not want to send out an award entry, these websites will point you to a great place to steal ‘winning’ ideas.

Advertising Awards Are Good… But, Maybe Start Here: Why Enter Award Shows? Do You Have A Strategy?

Winning the right advertising awards is good for business and agency and client morale. Just make sure you know why you are entering. Too many agencies don’t approach the award process with a plan or objectives beyond the search for ego fulfillment. This can make the whole effort a bit too C R A Z Y. But, you know that. Or, do you? Go here to hear an advertising award judge on his less-than-optimal experience reading agency entries.

I have a memory about the power of awards from my first day at Saatchi & Saatchi London way back in the 1990s. I walked through the creative floor and noticed a tall glass case randomly stuffed with lots of creative trophies. This haphazard display delivered two messages: 1) Saatchi wins lots of awards and 2) they don’t take these too seriously. Of course, the second point was bull shit. Saatchi was always about looking like a winner and the award case proved that point in a cheeky manner. It worked better than the usual and obvious shelf of awards that sit behind the ad agency receptionist’s head.

I have always had mixed feelings about advertising awards. On one hand, they are, like winning an Academy Award, i.e. ridiculous. No one ad, digital program or actor is the “best.” On the other hand (the one with the wallet), they are way expensive. As an agency owner, I often cringed when a creative director came to me with his handout asking us to spend hundreds on award entries.

However money aside, advertising awards have some very big advantages for agencies, clients, and creative-class workers:

The awards celebrate creativity itself. Creative strategies, art, copy and the media platforms that deliver the work.

They help our most talented people get noticed.

They help smart well-designed agencies get noticed by occasionally confused clients who need second party confirmation when selecting an agency. To me, this is a very important point and one that makes writing those increasingly expensive entry checks worth the cost. Awards should be a big part of an agency’s business development program – not just an ego stroker.

To put all of this go-for-it into context, I wrote about the Portland agency Pollinate a few years back that has done very well (!) by hammering Advertising Age’s Small Agency awards show. The blog post, “How To Win The Ad Age Small Agency Award? Twice?” is a demonstration of the value of entering and winning an award that has meaning for prospective clients because it is delivered via an industry-leading publication. Check it out.

Last point before the list. Award judges have told me that around 30% of agencies do not know how to create an entry that is designed to win. Poor copy, poor strategy, even typos. Many agencies rush through the process at the very last minute. Do you? Do you have an annual award plan? Who is in charge?

My Favorite Advertising & Marketing Awards

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