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Guest Post For Fun & Profit

Peter · August 4, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Yes Kids, Go Guest Post For Fun & Profit

Just in case, this is what guest posting is (C/O TrackMaven):

Guest posting is creating content and publishing it on another person’s website. Blogs are a very popular platform for guest posting. This is a great way to build an online reputation and for a company to get its name out there. By posting on another person’s blog, not only will a company’s followers see its content, but anyone who follows the host blogger will see the company’s content as well, thus reaching an audience that might be unaware of your brand.

I did the guest post thing last week on Agency Post, Business2Community and the Portland Ad Fed websites.

Agency Post On Procurement

My blog post, You can’t Avoid Procurement, But You Can Learn How To Sell Them, appears on the fast growing ad agency blog Agency Post, which was recently bought by HubSpot. As I say,

Few words strike more fear and loathing in the hearts of agency management than “procurement.” This P-word gets its rap from being viewed as an impediment to an advertising agency’s ability to sell its strategic and brand-building creative expertise. Instead, agencies have to sell on price.

However, the role of procurement isn’t that simple.

It has its own ying and yang.

The major point I make is that clients of all sizes and shapes (regardless if they have a procurement department or not) are interested in getting the most bang from their ad agency buck. Yes, its that ROI thing again. I suggest that agencies have a compensation plan and a POV on agency-client financial management (“we care and pay attention to details”) that they can share with prospective clients.

Get ahead of the issue and… look much smarter than the other agencies.

Business2Community On Meeting Management

On the well-read and high Page Rank website Business2Community (Page Rank = 6) I wrote about meeting management in How To run A Smart Meeting. We waste hours and cash on poorly run meetings. it is brain numbing. As I say,

Effective meetings deliver three key benefits:

  1. Effective meetings focus on and achieve meeting objectives.

  2. Well-managed meetings take up a minimum amount of time.

  3. Participants leave the meeting feeling that a sensible process has been followed and that their time has been used effectively.

This post was easy to do as it is a slight rewrite from my soon to be published book: The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. I did the same for the Agency Post guest post. Repurposing, with thoughtful adjustments for the new platform,  is a good thing if you want to reach new audiences.

Portland Ad Fed On Guest Posting

For the brand new Portland Ad Fed website I wrote about the value of guest posting. The article Go Forth And Guest Post discusses why I, and you, should guest post. Get over the thinking that guest posting’s primary benefit is getting a link back to your site to make Google love you (Google makes too many algorithm revisions to count on this). Just love the fact that YOU are building awareness by having your pearls of wisdom on other people’s well-read website. As I say, yes again,

I admit it. I am a habitual guest blogger.

I do this for a few reasons. One is simple ego-boosting. But the most important is awareness growth for my agency consultancy. It works because I can get way past my current blog, Twitter and LinkedIn readership to introduce myself and my thinking to a much larger advertising audience. I trade articles for audience.

Matt Cutts On Guest Blogging

increase-search-rankings-guest-postingMatt is in charge of spam at Google. He is one of the most read people on the subject of SEO in the industry. In the article,  The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO, he discuses why guest posting is and isn’t a good thing. Bottom line, it is a good thing if your posts are high quality and you are seeking marketing awareness. It is bad for the industry when posters act like poseurs. Read on,

It seems like most people are getting the spirit of what I was trying to say, but I’ll add a bit more context. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

I’m also not talking about multi-author blogs. High-quality multi-author blogs like Boing Boing have been around since the beginning of the web, and they can be compelling, wonderful, and useful.

I just want to highlight that a bunch of low-quality or spam sites have latched on to “guest blogging” as their link-building strategy, and we see a lot more spammy attempts to do guest blogging. Because of that, I’d recommend skepticism (or at least caution) when someone reaches out and offers you a guest blog article.

My advice: go guest post for fun, pleasure and fame.

Marijuana Advertising

Peter · August 3, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Marijuana Advertising = New Client Category

It’s a brave new world. Leafly, a cool new marijuana information website and app, just ran a $200,000 full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times. Here is Leafly itself on their ad, Leafly Places Nation’s First Consumer Cannabis Advertisement in The New York Times. Keep your eye on this category. It’s blowing up.

By the way, Did Leafly get it right?

leafly print ad  (2)This is the New York  Times ad. Does it work? Yes and no.

Yes, because Leafly had the cajones to run the ad. It puts them on the map and the ad delivers a leadership position via the ad placement in our leading national newspaper. Their message is New York centric as it congratulates New York on its Compassionate Care Act.

The ad fails because its casting is amateurish. The use of two (too) cute twenty-something New Yorkers just doesn’t’ work. The guy with MS, OK, I might believe that. But, identifying Molly, an athletic runner, as a person who needs, needs, pot to cure her pain, is ridiculous. What a missed opportunity to show what is really going on in the world of medical marijuana… it works for women like Molly’s mom too.

I have to fault Leafly for acting a bit like a too well-funded 2000 Internet boom start-up. Remember those silly days when twenty-something start-up CEO’s tossed millions at Super Bowl ads? Remember the Pets.com sock puppet?

 

Free, Smart, Ad Agency Insights (Yes, Free)

Peter · August 2, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Allow me to repeat myself: Free, Smart, Ad Agency Insights (Yes, Free)

FreeIn the interest in continuing to walk my own talk, this post is about asking people to sign up for my newsletter below. Everyone who does this painless act receives my informative white paper:

How To Grow Your Advertising Agency.

The detailed white paper includes 35 easy to implement recommendations from 30 years of advertising agency experience at Saatchi & Saatchi and owning my own profitable agency and founding two groundbreaking Internet startups where I was a client… I know what I am talking about when it comes to running a profitable agency.

Frankly, why wouldn’t you want to read this? Even if only to satisfy your curiosity*.

*Another thing I know: Only the curious will survive and grow in today’s advertising marketplace.

 

A Winning Ad Agency Pitch Video

Peter · July 31, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Yikes, there are more truths about ad agency new business pitching in this video than I’d like to admit. Well, um, OK, I admit it.

 

Please Sign Up For My Newsletter

Peter · July 31, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Ask And Ye Shall Receive.

Going direct and actively “asking” a prospect to do something is one of the most important and effective pieces of business development advice that I deliver to my agency clients. So, why not do it myself.

If you sign up below by just typing in your email address, you get a very valuable white paper (I know this from reader feedback) and get to be close to me, digitally that is, every week.

The newsletter is simple, easy to read (its a synopsis of the week’s posts) and its very non-spamy.

Go ahead, it won’t hurt.

Thanks.

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