Insights

13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business

March 30, 2021 By Peter 4 Comments

I misnamed this 2013 blog post. “13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business.” It should have been named “You are driving marketing directors and potential future clients insane. Here is how to do outbound (ABM) marketing that grabs attention.” Y’all have to get past sending so much ignorable advertising agency new business development messaging.

Talk with any CMO or marketing director or company owner and they will tell you that they receive buckets of incoming business development messages and content from advertising and digital agencies – every week.

The barrage of often ignorable incoming includes these delivery systems: [Read more…] about 13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business

The Ultimate Advertising Agency List

March 23, 2021 By Peter 3 Comments

How Do Clients Find Your Advertising Agency? Think List.

I just reread this post about the advertising agency list world and I laughed when I realized that I had left out a couple of ways that clients find advertising agencies. First, leverage your network. That means tell your friends, clients, aunt Helen and etc. that you are great and want new clients that are into growing their business.

Beyond just lists (see below) both of these highly-searched websites require that you have a master plan for how to leverage their unique platforms. The platforms? Google and LinkedIn. Passive marketing does not work for either.

OK, back to the original post. There are multiple ways that a prospective client will find an advertising agency. These range from very aggressive agency outreach to highly intelligent outreach (yup, two different approaches) to your inbound program to your agency reputation to being on the radar of search consultants to simply getting found on the day that new client wakes up and says, “How can I find my new advertising agency” and locates an advertising agency list.

While you should have a very intelligent account-based marketing business development program, you must be available when a client searches via an advertising agency list.

There is an extra benefit of my list. Use the list to find your competitors and their best marketing practices. These lists will help you find the winners.

The List Of Advertising Agency Lists

Here is a quick look at the advertising lists you should be on. Some will be easy, some will require a bit of work. But, you need to be able to be found.

Wikipedia’s List of Advertising Agencies. This list is not just the big boys. An example, Tombras group from Knoxville is on the list.

AdAge’s A-List. Look, there must be some way that AdAge finds these agencies. Maybe you should think about letting the editors know that you are alive.

AdForum. Hey, this is what they say and I’d imagine that clients pay attention… “AdForum’s Global Directory of Advertising Agencies is the advertising industry’s premier resource for learning about agencies in the USA, Europe, Asia, Oceana, and MENA. Our interactive map identifies agencies according to region and core competencies – ranging from digital marketing and social media
strategies to mobile app development, brand engagement, and product design.”

AgencyList. Why not be here? You have to dig this fact… “Agency List has 1st page Google exposure in over 45 major cities.” [Read more…] about The Ultimate Advertising Agency List

How To Use LinkedIn And Account Based Marketing

March 22, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

How To Write About LinkedIn And Account Based Marketing In Five Minutes

If you have perused my Big Advertising Agency Resources List, then you’ve learned of a range of resources designed to help grow your advertising agency. Today I am offering a new resource that helped me quickly write this blog post about LinkedIn and Account Based Marketing.

AI-Writer is, you guessed it, an AI tool to help you write the zillions of content pieces that will help you to keep up with the never-ending barrage of other people’s content. Type in a subject, or even the title of a competitor’s well-read blog post and voila…. you have an instant blog post/content piece that you can publish just like this one below about LinkedIn and Account Based Marketing.

AI-Writer To The Rescue

As with marketing itself, it is essential to remember that Account Based Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It has to adapt to the needs and profile of each customer through individual interviews, programmatic ABM, targeted approaches, and much more. Approaches for different account levels should be aligned in such a way that they range from strategic ABM to true-to-scale ABCM to programmatic ABCM, with the degree of personalization varying at each level. ^{Sources: 8}

LinkedIn is a great place to start your ABM efforts, as LinkedIn users are prepared to discuss and grow their businesses. An account-based marketing strategy from LinkedIn can be executed with many of the native tools that LinkedIn offers. ABM on LinkedIn starts with the ability to search and find specific, relevant accounts. ^{Sources: 1}

This function only works with a limited amount of data. LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you conduct account-based marketing campaigns on LinkedIn by selecting and evaluating target accounts. It provides a detailed overview of the willingness to buy of your target accounts. This information is integrated with company profile information to evaluate opportunities and prioritize them for the next targeting strategies. ^{Sources: 9}

LinkedIn for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has proven to be an effective method for marketers to generate high-quality leads and sales. Over 41% consider account-based marketing to be the top B2B priority for sales. Instead of casting a wide net, ABM is a focused approach aimed at the people you want to turn into customers. ^{Sources: 6}

After identifying at least 300 accounts on LinkedIn, you can start targeting segments with paid advertising. LinkedIn allows marketers to import target lists from their platforms into paid advertising and take steps to match the information you provide with the actual accounts on the platform. ^{Sources: 0}

Ads work best for B2B companies that want to target specific companies and individuals within those companies. Since the LinkedIn audience consists of business people, it makes sense to use the platform to reach out to company-specific decision-makers. ^{Sources: 2}

You will also want to use LinkedIn messaging ads if you expect to have a big impact. We recommend that you use InMail ads for special offers and send them to users who are already connected with your company. ^{Sources: 2} [Read more…] about How To Use LinkedIn And Account Based Marketing

The Smart Zoom Presentation

March 2, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

How To Build A Smart Zoom Presentation

OK, it’s 12 or so months in Covidlandia and we have all been to many a Zoom presentation in the 1:1 and group space. How many of these virtual presentations would you say could be called a ‘smart Zoom presentation’? I’ll optimistically say 60%.

Now, if that 60% figure relates to a Zoom sales presentation for your company’s business development program, then you are kinda screwed. A 60% success rate (or more painfully, a 40% failure rate) for important sales presentations should not ever cut it.

The Virtual Sales Presentation – Presentation

I built this smart Zoom presentation for one of my advertising agency clients that was dwelling in the lower 40% and we knew we needed to rectify their Zoom situation – fast. So, here is my audio and visual The Virtual Sales Presentation. I use 18 minutes to discuss the art and science of how to build a smart Zoom presentation that captures the viewer’s attention; keeps them focussed (not easy); help you to manage your virtual agency branding; learn how an agency won a dating app client in Zoomlandia and also gets into how the brain works in the Zoom presentation environment. As you might suspect, it isn’t just like meeting face-to-face in a conference room.

The Biggest Advertising Agency New Business Secret

February 28, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

The Biggest, Most Important Advertising Agency New Business Secret.

It’s Sales Stupid.

Back in 1992, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist said, “It’s the economy, stupid” to make sure the Clinton campaign remembered what was critically important to the American electorate. So, taking my cue from James, I offer that “It’s sales stupid” is the biggest, most important advertising agency new business secret.

An advertising, design, PR agency new business program, marketing materials, presentations (even daily conversations with existing clients), and new business pitches are all about sales. Sounds obvious, right? The problem is that ‘sales’ can be a dirty word at some ‘creative’ agencies. If you think that I am overstating this, take a look at a few agency websites, and ask yourself if they are designed to be high-octane sales experiences that drive leads or just well-designed agency brochures. I think that the Contact page is a number one offender. Contact copy like, “Give us a call” is simply not a romantic way to begin a relationship.

An Advertising Agency New Business Secret

A discussion of how to use the science of salesmanship in an agency presentation could fill a book. I’ll be brief and hit what I think are the most effective techniques we can learn from the masters of salesmanship. Allow me a brief detour first.

I left advertising in 1995 to put a group of New Jersey newspapers online for Advance Internet (the digital newspaper arm of the Newhouse Media Group – you know them as the owner of Condé Nast). In addition to inventing New Jersey Online’s digital newspaper editorial persona, we also had to build an early online sales program that included the design of new advertising units and a sales pitch for this new Internet platform. To help me, Advance brought in Jim Hagaman from the Miami Herald. Jim was easily one of the savviest media salespeople I had ever met.

Within a few days, I had gone from thinking that I knew how to sell (i.e. running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi), to jettisoning much that I had learned, to watching a master actually make sales in the nascent Internet marketplace. Much of what you see below came from Jim.

One of his more interesting sales insights came when I said that we needed to go pitch New Jersey Online to New York advertising agencies. He said, whoa boy. In his experience, agencies always mucked up the sale. They wanted to put their own stamp on the sales message, usually got the details wrong, and always slowed down the process. He said that we were going directly to the clients to explain the benefits of digital media. As I eventually witnessed, he was right.

Actually, here is one more super insightful story that will introduce my next point, which I admit might be a “duh” for some of you.

You have to understand your client’s mindset, needs, pain points, rationale, and emotional motivations before you can ever craft an effective sales pitch.

I learned this lesson at my first agency pitch for New Jersey Online. I figured I’d start with my very own ex, the New York office of Saatchi & Saatchi. I knew the agency inside and out and had worked with their Executive Media Director Allen Banks for years. My pitch included a 1996 hockey puck graph of projected Internet usage and a discussion of digital advertising that touted our newfound ability to track how website visitors viewed and interacted with online advertising. Was Allen smiling? No. His reaction?

“Are you f*cking kidding me? We have made a fortune not really knowing how, when and for how long consumers have been looking at our ads. I manage hundreds of millions in advertising media placement. Knowing how much of it doesn’t work will kill our golden goose.”

My point in telling you this story is that I didn’t think through Allen’s motivations before I delivered my early online advertising sales pitch. By the way, he was right. The Internet sure seems like it killed some parts of the golden advertising goose.