Peter Levitan & Co.

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Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

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Is It Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

advertising agency blogI’ve updated my 2017 blog post about the power of the advertising agency blog and the question of should y’all continue to go for it or kill it. To blog or not?

I think that this is a big question that should be reviewed every year. Another question. Would anyone miss your blog?

To help answer these, I am going to discuss the pros and cons of advertising agency blogging. The kind of content creation that has been considered an integral element in an agency’s business development program. Blogging has been a key element of an agency’s Attraction Strategy.

Me

I have been consistently blogging since the early 2000’s. I started blogging as the CEO of my Oregon agency Citrus (I covered both advertising issues and the late 2000 recession’s effect on marketing).

The advertising agency business development blog you are currently reading has over 650 blog posts and acts as the core of my inbound marketing program. Good news for me, it fills my new client pipeline. Blogging has been very good to me.

But, but… my opinion about blogging, well at least for low volume advertising agency blogs, is that they are losing their power to attract a targeted audience, as in client leads. I see a few reasons for this.

  • There are zillions of blogs and blog posts every day. There has been a dramatic increase in the last five years.
  • There are hundreds (thousands?) of advertising agency blog posts and insights posted every week.
  • Most agencies write about the same subjects over and over.
  • Many agencies do not use online SEO tools to determine what blog post subjects will attract the most readership. I great way to do this is to look at what works for your most successful competitors.
  • Most agency blogs are boring.
  • Many client prospects are moving to podcasts and videos for their marketing information.

OK, Back To You. Should You Maintain Your Advertising Agency Blog? Or, Get Real And Just Kill It.

I look at a lot of advertising agency websites and their blogs. Many of the blogs are informative and brand building. However, way too many are just me-too blogs that actually deliver very little benefit to the agency.

The benefits should, stress should include the generation of incoming new client interest, showing that the agency Thinks Different (in a world of thousands of agency and advertising services options), help sell the agency as being on top of the advertising market, reinforces current client perceptions, demonstrates that the agency get content marketing, and demonstrates some personality and chutzpah. I call the chutzpah part… being Unignorable.

Start Here: Some Huge Blog Stats

The world really does not need another blog. As Steven Pressfield says in the title of his must-read book: “Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It”. [Read more…] about Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

The Best Marketing Podcast

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Could There Be The Best Marketing Podcast?

It seems that everyone has their favorite or best marketing podcast.

Maybe you have or want one.

I know from talking to my advertising agency clients that many agency leaders are thinking about developing and publishing their own podcast – if they are not already out there already. However, getting to the best, like all things marketing, requires some strategy and superfine execution.

Before I get to the best, here is one podcast stat from The New York Times (3/2019).

Past reports from The Infinite Dial showed a creeping increase in podcasts from year to year. That has changed in 2019, when there was a dramatic jump. Compared with 2018 figures, the number of people who have listened to at least one podcast in their lives increased by 20 million, and an additional 14 million people described themselves as weekly listeners.

This stat is both good and bad news. Good news that podcasting has become a part of everyday life. Yet, bad news since it appears someday’s that EVERBODY has a podcast.

Frankly, like many things marketing, get it right or do not bother.

What Is The Best Marketing Podcast? Marketing School.

Of course, there isn’t a best. But, since I listen to multiple podcasts across a range of subjects, I am beginning to develop a sense of what works and does not from the perspective of a core podcast format. As an FYI, I did my first podcast in 2006 and even spoke at Boston University’s very early stage, as in 13 years ago, Podcasting 201 and Beyond.

Today

Today, as it relates to marketing company podcasts for folks like you, I think you should take a hard look at and listen to Marketing School with Neil Patel and Eric Siu. Even if you are not a marketer, well, actually, who isn’t in some way in 2019, check out what Eric and Neil do. [Read more…] about The Best Marketing Podcast

Does B2B Social Media Still Work?

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Does B2B social media marketing still work for advertising agencies?

I’ll get to that answer in a minute.

Background: I have been thinking of writing a book on the why, how, when and when to move overseas. Thinking about this is a result of my being asked every week about the how and why I moved from Portland, OR to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 2016. My book would be crammed with facts by country, the personal side of living overseas (with many interviews with digital nomads and expats) and associated benfits and costs.

I mentioned this new idea to my wife and she asked me… why not a blog? It has an ongoing life and gets written in manageable chunks vs. a static book. Plus a blog can be monetized. Publishing books in 2019 is a pain in the ass – for both traditional publishers and self-published authors (I know, I’ve published four books).

Of course, like so many business endeavors, the rubber hits the road when one starts to figure out how to market the blog or book. That is how I got to starting to think about how to grow an audience.

Me

This blog has gotten between 75 and 60 thousand visitors a year. I’m happy – these are strong numbers for a focussed blog about advertising agency business development.

I know that growth has come from a small set of factors.

  • I started in 2012 when there were significantly fewer blogs in general and a smaller set of advertising agency consultants.
  • I have strong SEO skills that have helped me to live on page one for the right Google searches.
  • I did a lot of guest posting from 2014 to 2016. This got my name and URL out there.

However, like many of my marketing friends and agency clients, I am seeing a reduction in traffic. I believe that this is a result of market shifts:

  • Competition for B2B eyeballs is much stronger.
  • Organic reach is tanking. Google is less friendly (for many reasons).
  • Mobile viewership continues to grow (smaller screens do not help me get shares and convert – this might be an arguable point).

Spend Money

Many of the agencies that thought that all they had to do is to spend the time writing brilliant blogs posts to build audience are not getting the traction they had hoped for.

The solution… you must market your social media programs. Even $100 a month marketing budget can help your company’s social media program reach its prospects. Passive is way too passive in today’s competitive social universe.

But… writing blog posts and managing LinkedIn and  Instagram and even more costs money and time itself.

My solution is at the bottom.

Daunting Social Media Facts

Here are some facts about social media platforms in 2019 that might cause a marketer to really think hard about the competition for eyeballs.  Simply put, given the growth in all social media platforms, can your blog and other social media efforts ever deliver the audience you seek? I come to this question via both my personal journey and watching dozens of advertising agencies fail at driving interest via social media.

  • Blogs: There are over 500 million blogs. WordPress alone estimates that there are 60 million WordPress blogs.
  • LinkedIn’s monthly active user base is over 260 million (Apptopia).
  • Instagram: Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users. More than 500 million use the platform every day (Statista).
  • Facebook: Over 2 billion active users (Statista).
  • YouTube: Total number of YouTube monthly viewers worldwide – 149 million (Statista).
  • Twitter: From the Washington Post – “Twitter claimed 321 million monthly users, down 9 million, or more than 2 percent from the same time last year.”

Repeated Point Coming

(!) The solution… you must market your social media programs. Even $100 a month marketing budget can help your company’s social media program reach its prospects. Passive is way too passive in today’s competitive universe.

(!) Something else to consider – really grow your account based marketing program. Go beyond social media marketing to doing more direct marketing to your list to make sure your sales message is delivered.

Oh, try this: Talk to me.

 

11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

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11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools (Updated From 2014).

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-hand-tools-kit-isolated-image26271476NOTE: I first wrote this 11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools blog post at the very end of 2014 and a few minutes ago the website checker app Checkbot pointed out that this post has a couple of dead links. (4.5 years later and it is interesting to see what tools have survivied). So, I thought that I’d repost and make things work. I suspect a reason for the broken links is that some of these tools are history. Here is what I found.

Back to 2014 – it is still worth the read… Blog post Consistency, actually the lack of it, is one of the most pressing issues that reduces the effectiveness of most advertising agency new business programs. So… Here are some ad agency business development tools that I recommend to keep your agency’s new business and content development program on track. (Tweet this.)

These tools (and there is a big world of tools out there these days) will help your efficiency and, more importantly, make you look like a subject matter expert because you are on that ball. Even better, as you use these tools for your own business development efforts, you will be gaining social media expertise that will dazzle your client prospects.

Clients (the ones you do not have yet) need your help according to this research from  Ascend2.

When Will the Social Struggles Stop eMarketer

Almost half of the clients surveyed have significant social media obstacles to overcome. You can help them by helping yourself.

This list of 11 tools is my first set of recommended online social media management tools. There will be more coming. [Read more…] about 11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

You And Your Blog Posts Are Getting Older

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I’ve been thinking lately about the dates on my blog posts. Like when is a blog post perceived as too old? Is there a point when y’all start to think that the posts are getting too gray?

Quick Background

I launched my advertising agency business development blog in 2013.

I now have over 650 blog posts on ad agency biz dev, agency management, presenting and pitching, how to keep clients and, for many, how to sell the agency you built.

The best read are – we are talking thousands of reads – right here:

How To Build An Advertising New Business Program 

How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part One 

8 Tips For How To Sell Your Agency

The Worst Advertising Agency presentation – Ever 

So, When Is Old Too Old?

The Issues & Opportunities Of Managing Past Blog Posts…

Some of my most important, as in insightful/informational/designed to help your agency, blog posts are over two years old. I wonder how much an ageing blog date impacts a visitor’s sense of relevance.

I have been thinking about writing some CSS code to only keep dates on recent posts, like let’s say posts no older than a year. And dumping the dates on older posts.

Many of my best, as in most informative, blog posts are now well down the loooong list. I can easily change the date of an individual blog post in WordPress’ Settings / General / Date Format. If I do this date-delete, I need to make sure that the post sounds ‘recent’ and does not reference something too far in the past.

This is just something I am wrestling with. It isn’t hard to fix. But, like everything when you are busy… It takes a bit of time.

Good News

This is the kind of stuff I think about so when you hire me to help grow your agency, I’ve thought this through. Good news because many of you should be thinking about getting older.

I know you want to talk to me… go ahead, go here.