Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
I just came across this SlideShare presentation from Kevin Duncan which is based on his new book The Diagrams Book.
Its a great guide for agency new business (and even existing) client pitches. Clients like things like triangles.
[slideshare id=15986606&doc=diagramsbookforslideshare-130114072259-phpapp02]
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 becomeis 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
[Read more…] about Magazines & Advertising Agencies Are Doing Marijuana
“Few Digital Marketers” Feel That Digital Has Delivered As A Branding VehicleWha? I mean, what’s left to say? From Millward Brown — and their survey of 300 digital marketing decision-makers….
“Digital held promise for brand marketers, but for all its promise, it has never delivered as a branding vehicle.”
Exactly half of the respondents either somewhat agreed (19%) or strongly agreed (31%) with that statement, with only 28% disagreeing to some extent. (The rest were neutral on the topic.)”
OK, I’ll say something. Maybe these survey respondents, um, “digital marketing decision-makers” need to get a new advertising / digital agency cause digital does B R A N D I N G … and other nice things like delivering lots of information, making friends, building mailing lists, putting brands in pockets, promoting and on.
Hey, its 2014 which is about 20 years since I ran my first banner ad (20!) yet a “few digital marketers” still don’t get “digital?’
Go get ’em agency folks.
The scary Barbie and Ken slide on the left is a visual from the webinar “Agency Search Consultant Trends, Predictions and Recommendations for Agencies” hosted by Dave Currie, CMO of The List Inc. with Russel Wholwerth and Gerry Preece of The External View Consulting Group.
The image acts as a visualization of the high number of advertising agency options that clients are confronted with when they search for an ad agency. Breaking out from the thousands of other agencies is critical to your agency’s growth. Watch this webinar if you want to break out from the pack.
The webinar covers the search process in great detail and I can guarantee that every agency executive from large to small agencies will learn how to improve their agency’s new business batting average.
I recently interviewed Russel and Gerry for my book on pitching and can find no better, highly practical expert insights on the agency search process and how agencies can run smarter pitches. Many thanks to The List Inc. for posting this webinar. I highly recommend The List Inc.’s database and information services for agency new business. I used it when I owned my agency and now recommend it to all of my agency clients.
A quick piece of advice: make sure that your agency is listed in The List Inc. and External View databases. Invisible, wall-flower agencies don’t get asked to the dance.
You can see a full set of the slides on this page of The List Inc. website.