Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
I’ve written about the potential of chatbots as an advertising agency revenue and new business source. Read about it here on HubSpot and here on my blog.
If you have any reason to think that chatbots are NOT going to be a major part of the digital world & your marketing, listen to the leaders of Facebook, Microsoft and Google on what they are up to.
Check out my article
My article offers three big takeaways (I mean immediately actionable takeaways) for your ad agency and its new business program:
On the subject of reach… after only a couple of hours, my post was shared lots. See….
Last point. Here is the video ActiveBuddy made 14 years ago to launch our company. You’ll see that I thought bots were a big fucking idea then. I still do.
This might be the most important advertising agency business development blog post you will ever read. It is all about timing. And, it discusses an oh so simple solution.
Why? Because if there is any one thing that advertising agencies of all sizes do not do when it comes to business development it’s… a paucity of planning and follow-through.
Note: My research with agency clients indicates that only 40% of agencies use and are slavish to their business development calendar.
I don’t care if you are small or huge. Failure to run your plan, once you have one (and, yes, this is a whole notha story), could be your primary failure. You know it and I do. We even have an oft and way over-used metaphor to describe the issue… the cobbler who does not have the time to make shoes for his own children. I am tired of hearing this parable and so should you. It is a shitty poor and very lame excuse.
You want clients like Nike and Audi and that huge healthcare client and that global e-commerce website job, right? Well, do you think that these marketers sit around and talk about how they do not have the time to plan and run their sales program? That they are too busy working with their current customers to go find new ones?
Look, I get it. I ran business development at the world’s largest agency and at my own digital and advertising agency companies. Hey, I even do sales right here at my consulting company. Sales requires dedication and on-going activity. It is time-consuming. It takes you away from servicing your current clients. It can be a real pain. But, if you do not do it with a high degree of consistency, you will fail and will go under. You certainly won’t make enough moolah to buy that Porsche 911 or the Cadillac of mini-vans for your kids.
[Read more…] about Advertising Agency Business Development Timing
I’ve written about the need for creating ad agency differentiation if an agency wants to excite and win new clients…
(I know, I know, you know that I know that you know how important having an agency positioning that stands out is.)
There are many reasons for this. One of the most expressed fears is that (and I know that this is going to sound insane)… is that agencies do not want to sound too different for fear of losing the opportunity to pitch LOTS of clients. The belief is that being a ‘general’ agency, even a general digital or PR agency, will beget more opportunities to pitch for a broad range of clients. These agencies are playing a losing numbers game. Having a clear, yes narrower, refined, brand positioning will win in the end.
Give clients an opportunity to view your agency as being special and unmistakenly desirable. Think different and look different.
I was recently asked by a large agency network to give a brief presentation on what are key ways to differentiate an agency. I came up with nine paths to being Unignorable: Positioning; Attitude; Ego Mania; Specialization; AHA!; Carpe Diem; Humor; Awards; Your Website.
Each one of these paths represents an opportunity to help your agency stand out from the other 3,999 agencies seeking the clients you deserve and… Be Different.
Hope yo enjoy the presentation and take away a couple of paths to specialness.
It took me awhile to fully understand the value of winning an advertising agency award in the in the context of business development. Yes, I know, I should have figured this out a lot earlier. Especially, when you consider that I ran business development at Saatchi & Saatchi in the days when they won everything and later, when I ran my own agency.
While it is fun for the agency staff to win awards (well, the right awards), the true value in winning those shiny objects is in helping clients recognize your brilliance. To put it mildly, clients – as in your prospective clients – are not experts at selecting agencies and this fact is exacerbated by the fact that many agencies, once they make the final cut, kinda look and sound alike. In this environment, awards represent extremely valuable third-party endorsement.
EFFIES prove your strategic chops. Clios and ADDY’s prove creativity. In the media space, MediaPost just announced their Agency of the Year awards. Considering how critical media planning is in today’s fractured media environment, media awards can be leveraged to prove your agency’s media prowess.
Ok, so you want to incorporate award-winning into your business development plan. Good idea. I know that some of the major agencies approach awards with a very strategic business development perspective. This is a big subject. For now, here are the basics that should help you enter the right award categories.
The Who: What clients do you want to excite? What are their interests, needs, and fears? What do they value – pure creativity, strategy, agency fame (as in hiring an agency because they look real cool)?
The What: There is a big difference between winning a creative award (subjective) and a strategy award (ROI). Some clients need proof that you are creative and some need to know that you know how to deliver on the client’s objectives.
The Where: Sure, winning a Clio is nice. But, most agencies are simply not going to win the big ones. This isn’t because they don’t deserve to. It is because these awards are really set up to honor the bigger agencies – with big award budgets. That’s just how it is – award shows are not about the awards, they are profit centers for the award entities. So, I suggest that some of the better local awards can make a great deal of sense. In this case, base these on where you clients are going to come from. A great example of a powerful local award program is The Rosey Awards from the Portland Ad Fed. In this case, your agency has a good chance to beat Portland’s Wieden & Kennedy powerhouse.
Last point. Be very strategic about how you enter. Study past award shows to see if you can figure out how and why other agencies have won. Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, my first agency, figured out a smart system for EFFIE entries. We studied winning agency applications. Our system helped us become a major winner.
MediaPost is accepting submissions for its annual ‘Agency of the Year’ awards. If you would like to nominate an organization, please contact joe@mediapost.com by the end of October. We recognize the following categories:
Media Agency, Digital Agency, Social Agency, Search Agency, Programmatic Agency, Mobile Agency, Creative Agency, Holding Company, Client, Supplier, Executive.