Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Insights

Why Are Aren’t Advertising Agencies Using Pinterest?

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Pinterest just added Guided Search. It makes it easier to find pins and boards on the desktop and in the mobile world.

Pinterest is huge and they wanted to make it easier to find what their users are looking for (I’ll come back to why this matters to agencies in a second.) According to Mashable:

Part of what made the expanded search necessary is the total number of pins on the platform. Silbermann (Ben, the CEO) says that Pinterest users have created 750 million boards, and pinned more than 30 billion items. Those numbers have grown 50% in the last six months alone, he says.

OK, zillions of people search Pinterest. Some are your future clients. If so, why are two of the leading results for the term “advertising agencies” advertising agency new business consultants – Michael Gass and me? Shouldn’t it be advertising agencies or the huge networks like WPP or Publicis leading the way? What if a client thinks of using Pinterest to do an agency search? Hint: some are.

Take a look below. And, while you are at it, here is a link to my set of Pinterest posts.

Pinterest Works

Where Am I?

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Look, if you have your act together, you will eventually sell your advertising or design agency and get to work from San Miguel de Allende (I just had drinks from this bar.) Dig?

This is not an impossible dream, it just takes some planning. Don’t be a me-too agency. Me-too has no value. Zip. So, you 50+ agency owners, give me a shout.

wow photo

Kill It On Twitter And Linkedin

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Twitter and LinkedIn form, along with this blog, the backbone of my inbound marketing program. Easily, 90% of my qualified leads (2-3 per week on average) come from my social media marketing. The other 10% come from speaking engagements and networking / referrals.

Kill It On LinkedIn

I just found the LinkedIn marketing expert Stephanie Sammons via her podcast interview on Social Media Examiner. In the podcast she discusses the marketing benefits of the fairly new LinkedIn publishing platform with the host Michael Stelzner. You can now publish on this platform to reach LinkedIn’s zillions of members. Cool right? Listen to the podcast and then check out Stephanie’s blog Build Online Influence. I could say more but, like me, you are probably ADHD so just do these two things.

Note: I am going to be publishing an in-depth overview of how advertising agencies should be using LinkedIn soon. Stay tuned or sign up for my weekly newsletter below to make sure you see it.

Kill It On Twitter

There are lots of tools to help you get the most out of Twitter. Just Google “Twitter tools” and you’ll see bushels.

StephSammons s profile Twitonomy

One of my favorites is Twitonomy. When you listen to the Social Media Examiner podcast, Michael will start with a quick overview of this great tool. To give you a very clear, visual look at its value, I did an analysis of Stephanie’s Twitter feed and include the full page to the left. Wow, this tool goes deep. Learn about it, play with it and then start to use it to help manage your Twitter expertise. I do and I recommend it to all of my advertising agency clients.

Now, go a bit south on this page and sign up for my newsletter…. thanks.

Presentation Toolkit Must Have

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Here is an oh so simple presentation tool that will cost you all of $30 or less. Keep this with your laptop to projector cable in a handy presentation toolkit and don’t leave home without either of these.

41m21qlrvuL._AA160_If you are going to present off of a laptop and don’t want to be tethered to the machine – you know, having to walk back to or reach across the table to advance the slides or play the video – then get yourself a wireless remote clicker thing. You will look way smoother.

Sounds obvious? Then cool. You have one? Even cooler. Now, all you have to do is to remember to bring it to the presentation.

Advertising Websites Only Get 8 Seconds

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Let’s start this post with an admission… I don’t have informational graphics on every page of my site (some, but not a lot.) But.. stay tuned cause I have ten cartoons coming from my friend Steve and his The Cartoon Agency  that will support my new book’s discussion of the top ten pitch-killing mistakes that even super smart advertising agencies (that’s you amigos) make when they pitch.

8 Seconds, Only

One of the most important discussions I have with my advertising agency clients is about gauging the marketing power of their websites. I start the talk by telling them that I know that critiquing their website is like discussing their kid’s soccer moves. That said, the agencies are paying me to be honest, so I am.

I begin the review process by telling them that their visitors only give them 7 seconds of examination before they stay to learn more or  move on. Agencies… you better hook ’em in 7 seconds. I just found out that I am wrong. According to the smart Neil Patel its 8 seconds (more on him later):

goldfish

“How long do you think your attention span is? Maybe a minute or even two, right? Sadly, your attention span is 8 seconds. That’s one second shorter than that of a goldfish.”

What does that mean for your advertising agency websites? It means that you better pay lots of attention to attention deficit clients that may be looking at ten, twenty or more agency websites before they land on a few to contact. 8 seconds. Keep this in mind and make getting to a point an objective when you build or rebuild your websites. If you want to see how some agencies get this job done, or not, take a look at my set of San Francisco agencies and how they handle their 8 seconds.

Here is how Neil helps us visualize visualization by using his “This Is Your Brain On Visualization” infographic. There is a lot of information here for you and your clients.

Back To Niel Patel

I dig Neil because he provides great insights and is a serial self-promoter worth watching. His stuff works works. His Quicksprout website has a page rank of 5 and he has 1110,000+ Twitter Followers. From Neil’s bio:

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

Yeah, this is a bit crazy for a 29 year-old. But, he is surly working it. Check out his outrageously unrelenting promotions. Yes, a bit too many popups and forms for most advertising agency websites, but these is a lot of benchmark sales learning in there.

Last point. He walks his talk. See his visual bio.