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Advertising Agency New Business: A Personal Update

Peter · July 8, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Here is a quick update on my business life. I’ll be on a mini-vacation for a few days

I started to spin my advertising agency new business consultancy in late February by loading up my blog with keyword-rich “advertising agency new business / business development” content. Around 15,000 words or so in a bunch of evergreen posts. I supported that with tweets for both my posts and retweets of related content.

I continued the inbound marketing program and now have 184 posts.

These include some posts for my book, “Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide.”

I supplemented this blog activity with guest posts on the highly visited AdPulp and Agency Post blogs to start to build authority for peterlevitan.com. I am about to start a series on how clients find and choose advertising agencies for Advertising Week.

I built my agency directory on Pinterest using outsourced help from a great assistant in the Philippines via Odesk. Agencies now send me information on their new websites.

I wrote a couple of white papers on how Seattle and Portland agencies use (or overuse) social media on their websites. I sent Seattle Advertising and Digital Agencies and Their Love Of Social Media and a Portland version to Seattle and Portland agencies. Despite how brilliant the white papers are, I wasn’t surprised that I only got a 5% response (as in, thanks.) Why? I don’t think most agencies are sufficiently curious about virtually anything but their own navel. (I only write this because people tell me they enjoy my honesty.)

I built “The Good, Bad & Ugly”, a review of advertising agency websites and how agencies do or do not do a good job with their interent marketing programs. I gave the presentation in New York to a group of agency CEO’s. I’ve also presented this in Seattle and Portland.

I just ran a Portland Advertising Federation event about how advertising agencies could / should work with startups. I interviewed folks from Wieden+Kennedy, Nike+ Accelerator, Upstart Labs and Opal, a very smart startup that a Portland agency launched. I’ll put up a video of the event soon.

The net.. you may be wondering…

I’ve got agency clients in Portland, New York, Milan and hopefully Mexico (care of a recent discussion.) I’ve worked on agency positioning, agency Internet marketing, the whole enchilada advertising agency new business plan and RFP management. I have been helpful. Or, so they say.

So far so good.

Nerds.com

In the past couple of weeks a team from the USA (that’s me plus one more), Budapest, Scotland and soon Thailand launched a new business based on the power of Nerds (its now in alpha for testing purposes.) Nerds will be a website plus for nerds and the people interested in the nerd lifestyle. Here is a great stat… there are over 2.2 million monthly broad matches for the term “nerds” on Google. This is huge. The goal of the business is to “own” the idea of nerd and monetize it. I’d like to think of the business as becoming a Fab meets Betches Love This.

Cartoon / comics characters might play a large role. We are meeting with a LARGE animation company this week in California. Who knows.

This is my third internet start-up.

Stay way tuned.

Advertising Agencies, Business Development & Contact

Peter · May 28, 2013 · Leave a Comment

My friends at Agency Post just published my second guest post on ad agency websites and social media programs… “Agencies And The Art Of Contact.”

This time its about how agencies do or do not do a good job with their website’s Contact sections. Most don’t. Considering how important the idea of driving a client prospect to make contact is (do I really have to say this?) you would think that agencies think through how to build a very compelling Contact section. Most don’t.

If you want to take a quick look at over a thousand agency website Contact sections (and who wouldn’t?), visit my Pinterest agency directory.

5 Things Ad Agency CEO’S Need To Do

Peter · May 13, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Just 5 Things (To Start)

A few years ago, long after Google’s AdWords started to eat ad dollars, I asked a few ad agency CEO’s if they had ever placed an online Google ad. The unanimous answer was… no.

Two nights ago, I asked a similar group if they had ever used a CMS tool like WordPress. The answer… (OK, getting better) was about 30%. (Um, that might be a bit optimistic).

30% is good but not great. I think that this lack of CEO curiosity and hands-on experience is a significant problem. How can CEO’s talk social media, digital media and advertising disruption if they haven’t used the disrupting technology themselves?

So, what should these CEO’s do? Pick a rainy weekend day and play with the Internet.

Go Forth And Tweet

Open a Twitter account, create a simple profile (look at mine for example @peterlevitan) and seriously post for a couple of weeks. Find out what is involved in creating this real-time marketing tool. It isn’t that difficult and you can even use a publishing system like Buffer or a RSS reader like Feedly.com to automatically Tweet about websites that you find. It couldn’t be easier. Use key words and hash tags to drive views (these are those #’s that can look like #advertising for example if you want to actually target Twitter users that follow advertising.) If after a couple of weeks you love it, sense that you might want to participate in your agency’s Twitter feed then work on your Twitter plan. If you just wanted to see what Twitter felt like, then close your account and now your can truthfully tell people that you really get Twitter.

Blog On

Ask your blog meister to show you how to create blog posts using your CMS system. CMS stands for content management system, but you already knew that. You’d be surprised how easy posting is. The hard part is doing it with consistency and having an actual agency blog strategy that results in a blog that drives agency business. This process should help you gain insight into the strategic opportunities that an agency blog offers. Ask yourself if your agency blog is targeting prospective clients, your industry, your staff or…. well, given how much time blogging takes, figure just who is the target audience after all?

Place A Google Ad

Ask virtually anyone in the agency to take you through the process of creating and targeting a Google AdWords text ad. Google AdWords was the major source of Google’s $42.5 billion in 2012 ad revenues. You really should understand all about this advertising channel. The only way to really get a handle on it is to place an ad. A suggestion. Pick a prospective client and target them. See what happens.

Try Facebook Or LinkedIn

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have very easy to use self-serve advertising tools. Within minutes you could create and place a targeted an ad for your agency that links back to your Facebook, LinkedIn or agency website. You’ll see what works by using their analytical tools. The dry cleaner down the block does this. You can too – believe me.

Go Geek

Speaking of analytics, I’ll assume that your agency website uses an analytical tool like Google Analytics. There is a lot of learning residing in your traffic data. Take a look who is visiting your website, where they are coming from, if they are using a computer or mobile device (this can be surprising), what keywords they used to find you, how much time they are spending on the website and so much more. Its strangely addictive and very revealing and you’ll be on your way to becoming an SEO genius.

There are more things that you, and I mean you, could be doing. But, just start here and you’ll sound brilliant at lunch with your colleagues or next agency network meeting.

By the way, I can help you figure out your social media strategy. Well, what I mean is help you create a plan that uses social media to actually drive agency new business. Talk to me.

OK, OK… Here Is Oner More

Guest blog on high traffic websites to get your agency and yourself out there much fur=ther than you could on your advertising agency blog.

I did and it got me: more new agency clients; speaking gigs; fame and cash. Here is a post on why guest blogging is for you (even if you use a ghost writer).

The Advertising Resource List…

Hey, go here to see lots of online resources you can use to grow your business and personal brand right here…

3 Ways for Floundering Advertising Agencies to Find Growth

Peter · May 3, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Hubspot’s article “3 Ways for Floundering Agencies to Find Growth” is mighty fine take on how agencies need to act if they want to grow care of a guest post by Agency Post’s Jamie Oetting.

Jamie highlights three areas for agency concentration.

Find A Focus. Being everything to everyone (an agency malaise) is as far as being single-minded (a point pitched to agency clients) as possible.

Invest In Education. Training your employees is a very good thing. It, well, educates them (and you agency manager too) and should make them more loyal.

Acquire More New Business Strategically. Having a new business plan and systematic approach is critical to keeping the agency shark swimming forward. Or, else. Oh, and I’m quoted inside.

Summly, Nick D’Aloisio, Bloomberg, Charlie Rose and Yahoo! (And Advertising)

Peter · March 31, 2013 · Leave a Comment

The press take on Nick D’Aloisio and his sale of the news app Summly to Yahoo! for a reported $30,000,000 made big news because he is 17. He has much more going for him than just his age.

Watch this really inspiring interview with Nick on Charlie Rose. One of Nick’s main points is that he built Summly, which has been pulled off the iTunes store while its moved into Yahoo! land, as a tool to summerize the news (and soon more) for the small screen. Nick zeroed in on the insight that people under 25 are mobile-phone centric. They use their phones as their first screen, not the second and he built Summly for his kinsmen. The idea of phone-as-first-screen is a wonderful disrupter.

And, yes, there is more Nick… Here he is on Bloomberg. This interview is a bit more entertainment oriented.

While you are here, go here to see what I do.