Insights

Be The Smart Local Advertising Agency

Peter · April 23, 2022 · Leave a Comment

**How A Local Advertising Agency Can Own Its City**

I was the senior partner at Citrus, a full-service & very digital local advertising agency with offices in Portland and Bend Oregon, and San Francisco. In addition to having national clients like Nike and Harrah’s, we wanted to be a strong brand and resource in each of our local communities.

For Portland, we created the event series Meet The Makers, a small but powerful speaker series where we brought in execs from companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. Our audience included current clients, prospects, the ad press, and, importantly, local influencers.

In San Francisco, we ran and distributed an agency-produced video series to break into that crowded agency market.

Your Local Advertising Agency Can Own Its City

I have worked with many smaller agencies that wanted to make some noise in their city. The primary objectives are awareness and high-quality branding. As in, how to be unignorable in one’s hometown or region to be famous for future clients and HR staffing needs. In this case, local could mean London or Boise.

Some Smart Ownership Ideas + A Really Big One

Advertising agencies are well-placed for city ownership. Agencies are creative, work at the local level (even if they have national clients as well), are community leaders, and know how to market themselves online as well as physically.

For example…

A city newsletter – On the simplest level, an agency can offer a city-oriented newsletter – a What’s Up / What’s Going On approach from the cool agency people. If done right, it will get read. YMMV but it could include an event schedule and even point to some great local stores and even point to local marketing programs – how that Italian restaurant markets itself on TikTok.
Speaking of TikTok, maybe your agency can ‘own’ the ‘your city’ TikTok channel. Or, be like Gary Vaynerchuck and use SMS. man, I get at least two messages from him a day.
Run an event(s) as citrus did. Or participate big time in an existing event. I don’t mean going to that Chamber meeting, not a bad idea, but more impactful high-interest events.
A cool idea (yes, if I say so myself) — Lease an empty storefront for a week and give away free marketing advice to local merchants, brands, and even wannabe entrepreneurs. Maybe team up with a local publication. Everyone wins.

Here’s one more very interesting – very community-building idea. I’ve got more but you’ll have to call me to hear about those ideas.

A Really Really! Smart Local Marketing Idea…

11 B2B Email Marketing Statistics (2022)

Peter · April 19, 2022 · 4 Comments

Yup 11 B2B Email Marketing Statistics – A Sweet List Just For Your Advertising Agency Business Development Program

I just got off a long business development planning call with an advertising agency in Canada. We spent a good deal of time discussing the value of building and running an advertising agency email newsletter. I have written about email newsletters before but just built a set of statistics that supports my email advice that your agency should think hard about getting that newsletter out there (if you have a newsletter, good for you), Bottom line = email marketing should be a key element of your business development program.

My email marketing statistics list is below. But, just for the hell of it, here are a couple of earlier email marketing blog posts. Worth a read.

My 11 B2B Email Marketing Statistics (2022)

81% of B2B marketers use email marketing newsletters for biz dev. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
B2B marketers send email marketing newsletters every 25 days. (SuperOffice, 2020)
31% of B2B marketers use email to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
89% of all B2B email campaigns are sent from a company name. (SuperOffice, 2020)
85% of marketers say they work with email marketing platforms. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
The highest email click-through rate goes to the consulting services companies at 25%. (Constant Contact, 2021)
Marketers who segment their campaigns see as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
Over 80% of marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing. (Litmus, 2020)
YIKES!!!! You better be good at email marketing – 306 billion to be exact. And this number is expected to reach 361 billion by the end of 2024. (Constant Contact 2022)

And Now – B2B Email Marketing Guidance

The 9 Best Consumer Insight Definitions

Peter · March 31, 2022 · Leave a Comment

What Is a Consumer Insight? Some Definitions.

Importantly, Why the Use of Insights Is Critical to Advertising Agency New Business.

Whatever you want to call it… a consumer insight, marketing insight, brand insight or research insight, the idea of developing Ah-Ha insights is a primary driver of brand and revenue growth. The Ah-Ha element is critical to creating a powerful consumer insight. This is true for advertising agency B2B new business gains as well. Opening a conversation with a prospective new client with an Ah-Ha insight will get their attention, will quickly begin to help them realize that you understand their market, create a marketing opportunity and that, yup, you are smart.

Appearing smart at the start of a new business conversation delivers the Holy Grail of prospective clients’ needs – BIG word coming… confidence.

I will be writing in the coming about the wonderful world of insights and – importantly – the tools to get you there. However, I thought that it might make a bit of sense to provide a quick list of various definitions of just want a consumer insight is. As I move forward, I’ll give you examples of insights that have driven business growth (like the MAN). I’ll highlight how I think and actually know how a consumer insight can help an advertising agency win new business. Even win the pitch in the first minute.

9 Consumer Insight Definitions

Oxford Dictionary

“The capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing.”

Merriam Webster

1: The power or act of seeing into a situation: PENETRATION

2: The act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively

McKinsey

“Insights into consumers and how they think can help companies spark innovation, uncover the most promising (though not always most intuitive) sources of growth, and develop or maintain successful products and brands.

Generating customer insights through qualitative research. Qualitative research helps bring customers to life. It illuminates their needs, their decision-making processes, and their reactions to companies and brands.”

How To Create A Tactile Brand Experience

Peter · March 31, 2022 · 2 Comments

Yikes, What Is Tactile Brand Marketing? And What’s In It For My Advertising Agency? Hmm… Maybe It’s Making Sure You Are Unignorable.

One of my core marketing mantras is that advertising agencies need to become unignorable. Unignorable means not being ignored. This sounds obvious but most advertising agency marketing is, unfortunately, ignorable. One, one, of the many ideas that I share with my advertising agency clients, is the idea of using tactile brand marketing. Well, I usually call it direct marketing (just like in the old days when you got something in the mail — paper-based mail that is).

In fact, I just got off a call with a Northeast agency where I pointed to one of my favorite paper-based tactile brand marketing tools — The UK Newspaper Club. Hey, I have written about the value of what the Newspaper Club offers in this blog post – Really, An Advertising Agency Newspaper? Peter, You Must Be Kidding.

And Then Just Like That, I Got A Well-Done Lead Gen Email From PFL About, Yup, Tactile Brand Marketing.

It is worth reading the email below because it does a really good job of selling in the PFL pitch story. The email is short (thank you!!), concise, and drives you to a 1-minute sales video. A video that actually sells. Here is the email. And, go ahead and watch the video – and consider adding a tactile approach to your marketing. Think direct mail – like a zine, newspaper, or box – and how it breaks through the clutter of digital marketing. And, then do that fast & sweet & effective sales video.

Oh, before I show you the email and the video – maybe you want more ideas about becoming unignorable? You should. And, you should contact me. The Don did…

Ok, ta-da, the email…

Campaign UK On Advertising Agency New Business

Peter · March 11, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Thanks… Campaign UK On Advertising Agency New Business Trends

My brain perked up when I saw that Campaign UK was doing a podcast interview show about advertising agency new business, i.e., today’s business development environment and the good, bad and ugly of the client + agency search process.

Campaign’s podcast “Agency New-Business Trends & Super Bowl Ads” enlisted Greg Paull, principal of R3 Worldwide (…a global consultancy that offers marketers access to the expertise and services required to establish and administer effective multi-national agency engagements.) And Tracey Barber, global chief marketing officer of Havas Creative Group. They were joined by Campaign’s media editor Arvin Hickman to discuss agency new business trends. The Super Bowl discussion – meh.

I’ve taken bits of the interview, edited for brevity, and popped in my thoughts. Remember other than working closely with agencies on their business development plans, I wrote, just in case you missed it, The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

More Pitches But Smaller and Smaller Accounts:

Greg: There were 58% more pitches this year, but only 9% more revenue. And I think that just sends the message to agencies that it’s becoming a fight for smaller and smaller pieces of an individual business. That’s a challenge for our agency’s work.

Marketers are increasingly looking at project-based assignments and that’s always a challenge for agencies that are quite used to this traditional AOR structure. So, they’re having to pivot a little bit in order to be able to cope with the way clients want to buy their services.

Peter’s Take: Nothing new or surprising here. The client-to-agency relationship pivot started to happen way back in the late 1990’s when we began to see the shift from the 15% media commission to fee based payments. One of my mega clients fired Saatchi one day within moments of a new marketing director parachuting in. He was both an asshole (the client’s mega airline was growing faster that its competitors and we had just won two EFFIE’s for strategic brilliance and he fired us at the ceremony’s dinner table). He then gave the $60 million business to Ogilvy because they were going to charge ½ of our the AOR commission.

OK, enough bitching. Yes, clients are wanting project-based relationships. It is then up to agency managment to leverage that project into more work. Easier said than done but if you give that assignment to a junior account manager or producer, worse untrained folks, I am not sure how you effectively grow that client. A Duh coming: growing an existing account is way more efficient than running after advertising agency new business from strangers.

More Projects Less AOR

Arvin: Can I just ask in terms of that trend of it becoming a bit more project-based? Are you noticing that a bit more on the Creative side versus the Media side or is that across the board?

Greg: Yeah. It’s been more on Creative than Media. And in fact, if you looked at the top 10 wins for last year, nine of them were global for Media. Only four of them are global for Creative, and that’s been a system trend that… Creative tends to be more piecemeal, clients are always looking for the best creativity they can and as a result, they’re more and more looking at project-based work.

Peter: Even if you are a ‘creative’ agency, make sure that the client loves your media and strategic planning. Make it an integral element of your deliverable even if you have to team up with a media specialist. ‘Creative’ is way too subjective.

Plus: It is easier to fire an artist than a scientist.

Just Say No To That Pitch

Arvin: Now one agency that many would argue isn’t having this whole dissatisfaction problem would be Havas Creative. Tracy had a lot of new business wins in the past year. What was the recipe for your success do you think? [Read more…] about Campaign UK On Advertising Agency New Business