Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
I don’t have much to say to add to this commercial. Just watch it.
But I do want to point out that my very socially conscious friend Russ Stoddard, who runs Oliver Russell, one of the more serious purpose-driven marketing firms, pointed out that he thinks that charitable donations are up in the world of Covid-19. This message is inside of our Advertising Stories podcast. After you watch the Thai TV commercial, listen to the podcast. One of my best.
The big question… Should an advertising agency create and publish a podcast – now, in 2020? Read this before you launch your new advertising agency podcast. I’ll try to get to the heart of the decision – using me as an example. Here are my first eleven episodes. I did these in a bit more than three weeks.
My first podcast series was launched in 2006. I was a bit early. Ya think? But, the podcast did support my advertising agency’s brand and helped us to market the agency. After all, it showed the world of prospective clients that we were ahead of the curve.
The podcast was The 360 View, the agency, at that time, Ralston360 (‘360’ = very 2006). I interviewed a range of people including an AOL exec; Rob Walsh the podcasting genius from Podcast 411 (now of Libsyn); a Saatchi & Saatchi president; a major agency search consultant and an ADWEEK editor on what was coming in digital marketing. I also included me just talking about marketing. The show was professionally produced. I’ll be adding a couple of the old audio shows to my new series. Nice to take a look back to what people were thinking in 2006.
Oh, I added the copy from a 2006 show on podcasting, the white paper version, at the bottom of this blog post. I admit it, a good history lesson.
Another podcast history lesson is for you to listen to my two 2006 interviews with podcasting world leader Rob Walch – now of the major podcasting publisher Libsyn. These interviews are informative and have insights that are relevant 24 years later.
Advertising Stories, my new podcast series launched three weeks ago. Go here to see what Advertising Stories will be talking about.
It is 2020 @home-style… No more “professional” production as I am recording myself by myself from my home office in my Mexican house. I am currently getting listed on all of the podcasting platforms (that takes up to two weeks) and I am recording a bunch of early series episodes so I launch with some bulk.
More on what it is and the launch later. However, my personal activity does bring up the question:
Should advertising agencies podcast? Which brings me to this…
I apologize for saying this. It sure seems to me that a lot of advertising agencies are on their back foot. They are in de-accelerate mode. That means it is a great time to accelerate your business development program. There is a gap. Take advantage. Fill it. Juice it up.
This post is about how the advertising agency Little Bird Marketing kicks ass.
But wait, there’s more. Over a couple of blog posts, I am going to highlight three firms in the advertising agency business development space that are making it happen. Strangely, it just so happens that they tapped me to participate in their acceleration mode.
One of my first advertising agency business development clients was my NOW wonderful friend Priscilla McKinney of Missouri’s Little Bird Marketing.
Things I like about Little Bird and Priscilla:
This is a proactive company. They do good work; are well-known in their markets; their website is an active sales tool that is designed to capture leads (not what one usually sees); they are on top of inbound marketing (mucho blog posts and thought leadership).
Priscilla is very active on LinkedIn (and 3,700 Followers on Twitter). You will see lots of posts and videos plus a high volume, awareness-generating podcast. The Ponderings From The Perch podcast is designed to promote and sell the agency by also promoting people like me. For example, I am sharing my podcast interview here. Quid pro quo. Plus… Priscilla is the kind of nice, smart, caring person that clients want to work with. Believe me, this additional ’emotional’ hook works.
Below is a brief sample from Little Bird. It is a mini-podcast audio moment promotion that they want me to put on my website to reach you to support them (they also gave me the lead graphic at the top of this podcast). Smart. Click on the image b e l o w before you go listen to the full podcast.
Now… Listen to the full podcast interview here. Note that I am pointing you back to the Little Bird website. That’s what they want to happen. By the way, I was ON that day. It is a brilliant interview about my take on the state of today’s advertising agency and how agencies need to intelligently accelerate their business development program – now.
I launched a new advertising podcast = Advertising Stories (you can listen to it everywhere). So, why not create a quick advertising agency podcast guide based on my research? Here you go.
FYI: My last podcast series which, I did for my own Portland Oregon agency, faded away in 2008. Ya think I was too early for the podcast market?
Advertising Stories is designed to be entertaining and filled with teachable moments. The keyword is entertaining. Entertaining for you advertising and marketing folks – and, frankly, anyone that just likes a good story from the good old days (or today).
Oh, if you do not get my email newsletter – sign up on the left and you will automatically know when I launch my podcast.
There are 213,000 results for the Google search “Podcast Guide” so I am not going into big detail here. I’ll just point you to some of my thinking and the resources I’ve found. [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Podcast Guide
Do you have an advertising agency podcast? Yes? Cool. If not, Google might give you a new reason to consider having one.
You know that Google wants to eat your advertising agency’s lunch. How? By moving their considerable power to a no click environment. That means in an ever-increasing search universe, many searchers, your Google target market, are getting all the information they need from the Google home page or directly from a Google service. Ever search for flights on Google? Chances are the first thing you did was to go to Google’s own flight search.
Now Google wants to get on the podcast wagon. They’ll deliver podcast information directly in search results. Like, why search beyond Google on podcast platforms for podcasts. What do I mean? Here is some copy from Google itself.
“Starting today, when you’re searching for a podcast about a topic on Google – such as “podcasts about Awkwafina” or “Instant Pot recipe podcasts” – we’ll show you playable episodes in Search results alongside web pages, news, images and videos. We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s understanding of what’s being talked about on a podcast, so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form.”
And from SEO-Hacker:
With podcasts becoming present in Google search results, this makes promoting podcasts much easier, while making them more accessible to a wider audience thanks to the increased searchability. The increased convenience helps make the listening experience more efficient while making more users discover new podcasts without having to browse and search through hosting platforms.
I’ll keep it simple:
Google will highlight information about individual podcasts in related searches. Example: Do you want to own an advertising-related podcast about “Instagram video advertising”? Google will find you.
Google will also transcribe some podcasts into text. Yikes!
This can be good stuff for your advertising agency podcast.
Beat the agency down the street to podcast subject ownership.