Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Lot’s of updates for LinkedIn (smart upgrade = good news), Facebook, Tumblr., and Foursquare… remember them?
Social media news and new developments making social media marketing easier. (LinkedIn Contact, Facebook mobile app update, Twitter app update, Foursquare update)
Read more from the source: socialmediaexaminer.com
A high school teacher friend asked me to help her with a study plan about how an advertising agency manages the advertising agency new business pitch process. She is asking her students to run their own sales pitch for an imaginary client. I thought, what the heck, I’ll share some of my thinking with you.
Why me? Well, I did write the definitive book on ad agency new business pitching which included a detailed look at the advertising agency pitch process. What to do and what not to do and how doing the what not to do will cost your agency money, time, staff pain, and heartbreak. Somehow this teacher found my book. I guess Google works.
Before I start, I have to say that the current way many clients select an agency, as in having multiple agencies pitch against each other, is too time-consuming and costly for both the client and the agencies. I’ve seen large pitches drag on for weeks and months. One would think that a savvy client should be able to look hard at the agency’s expertise, past work, case histories, culture plus a couple of conversations to make a decision. Of course, pricing is also a factor, especially if the pitch is partially run by the client’s procurement department. A department focussed on costs – not necessarily an assessment of agency skill-sets.
OK, nuff said about the inefficiency of many pitches.
There is no such thing as a ‘standard’ pitch. Some clients are large and others small. Some large theoretically sophisticated clients have no process, and some small clients are super organized. Here is a look at what is often the process.
Some clients are looking for the whole enchilada (an agency that will do everything from branding to social media) and some clients are just looking for one specific need – often a project. For example, a new name, and logo. Some clients want to work with category experts (as in needing a healthcare specialist) and some are looking for a great ‘creative’ agency.
Here is my master list on getting found and contacted:
You get a referral from a happy current or past client. Hopefully, your agency has a referral strategy to help make this happen.
You get a referral from a friend or family member. For example, my nephew was once the publisher of Men’s Vogue – he introduced me to someone who became a great client. Maybe your mother plays bridge with the mother of New Balance’s marketing director.
Word of mouth (WOM). People have heard of you inside the general marketing universe. Somehow, you’ve gotten people talking.
Your agency has won a prestigious marketing award. The right third-party recognition is a good thing. No, do not enter every ward show.
The press writes about you, your agency or asks for your expert opinion. I have a friend at Adweek who occasionally asks for a quote. This has been a good thing for my brand awareness.
You know how to use social media to get the good word out and make connections. That means you use one or just a couple of blogging, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok; Facebook, you podcast: or utilize whatever the latest social media platform that makes sense for your audience.
You advertise your services. Yes, imagine an agency that actually uses advertising.
You wrote a well-targeted advertising or marketing book that gains industry fame – like my: The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.
You are an expert and the specific categories that you rule (tactical or business categories) know about you.
You speak at the right conference, were in that smart podcast or write for trade publications. I used to write for HubSpot and ‘borrowed’ their enormous audience.
You know how to do what is often called Account Based Marketing. This means that you have created a list of the type of clients that your agency ‘should have’ and you contact them directly. Intelligently and gently. Often you will send them hard to resist, I call it unignorable, insights.
A professional advertising agency search consultant put you on the prospective client’s list. This is a very good thing. It should not be an accident that the consultant knows about you.
[Read more…] about The Advertising Agency New Business Pitch
Remember elevators? You know, those things we rode multiple times a day to get to and from an office or hotel room? The fleeting elevator ride spawned the idea that we need a way to describe ourselves or our company in 30 seconds or less – what we call an elevator pitch. This 30 second or less exercise is very useful since in our very attention-deficit world, our world where so many of us do the same thing and can sound very much alike (“hi, we are a creative advertising agency”, yada…). You get the idea.
One of my ad agency clients asked me to help her quickly and succinctly describe herself for her appearance on an upcoming online seminar. By coincidence, I received an invite to a SharpSpring event and noted how a bunch of advertising agency and marketing thinker and influencer types described themselves. I noted their self-descriptions as food for thought. Food for elevator pitch thought. Just for the hell of it, here are ways that very successful marketing thinkers describe themselves.
Hype-free digital marketing and customer service strategist.
Recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama.
Leading authority on positioning and reinventing in the creative and digital space.
Internationally recognized speaker & contributor to Ad Age’s Small Agency Diary.
Ranked one of LinkedIn’s Top Ten Voices in Marketing for four years in a row.
Works with 250+ agencies every year. Latest bestseller – Sell With Authority.
NYT bestselling author of nine books and counting.
Named among the 30 best young tech entrepreneurs under 30 by Business Week.
Host of the smart agency master class podcast. The number one digital marketing agency owner podcast.
Content marketing guru featured in NYT, Mashable and search engine land.
Agency business expert keynote speaker author and virtual event trainer.
Author of 19 international bestsellers, and one of the most popular bloggers in the world.
Digital marketing pioneer, Wall Street Journal bestselling author and tiny house owner.
Bestselling author and host of award-winning YouTube series.
6 Years Later: My 2021 take on my 2015 ADWEAK take
I thought that I’d update my 2015 (yes, 2015) blog post about the wonderfully endearing but way too insightful and painful ADWEAK take on the advertising industry. I’m re-upping my extremely positive perspective on ADWEAK because they have begun to up their use of LinkedIn so I see them daily.
And, because they talk about themselves like this – like humans:
What began as a fun parody Twitter account has become a full-blown creative studio. @Adweak has grown organically to over 75k followers with an average of over 3 million impressions a month. But snarky tweets don’t pay the bills. Our real job is working with brands and agencies on a wide variety of creative projects. You name it, we’ve done it. We have a shit-ton of experience with agencies (TBWA\Chiat Day, BBDO, Deutsch, DDB and more) and brands (PlayStation, HBO, Dr. Pepper, Energizer and the list goes on).
We’re good, we’re fast and we’re not A-holes.
Hey, most advertising agencies have little to no attitude & point of difference. They kinda all use the same lingo and would never say ‘shit‘ or ‘A-hole’ in their descriptor copy. There is little attempt to break out of the crowd. I am talking about having a strong and competitive positioning; established expertise and a smart messaging system that makes them unignorable.
Too bad. But, wait, there’s more. Here are some of the painful but all-too-true ADWEAK posts that blast out to their 81,000 Twitter followers. To put that number in perspective, 20-year-old Digitas North America has 66,000 Twitter followers.
Current favs… cause they are all too spot on.
BREAKING: VMLY&R Considers Adding More Letters To Name
BREAKING: After Several Rounds Of Presentations, New Business Client Informs Agencies They’re Going To Hold Off Making Decision Until Early Next Year
BREAKING: Agency Forced To Revise Schedule To One Day For Creative Development, Three Weeks For Client Approvals
BREAKING: Charmin Toilet Paper Challenges Agency To Make Them A “Lifestyle” Brand (LOL< I actually think that Charmin is a daily lifestyle brand…)
OK, I’ll stop. But first. If you are a client looking for different and unignorable, give these guys a shout: adweakeditor@gmail.com
ADWEAK joined Twitter in 2008 as @adweak. In case you are speed reading this is not… Adweek, the advertising news magazine [Read more…] about Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK
The Shoemaker’s Children Go BarefootI hear a lot of excuses from large, medium, and small advertising agencies about why they are not running a long-term, 24-7, active business development program. These agencies often chuckle – a wary chuckle, before mentioning the cobbler’s shoe excuse.
You know what I’m talking about. The excuse is that the agency is so focused on its day-to-day clients that they neglect their own biz dev, or better expressed, their own sales program. These agencies act like the way too busy shoemaker whose children go barefoot. “Yup, I’m like really busy making shoes for my customers. Just don’t have the time to take care of the kids.”
Of course. This is insanity. Many agencies touch failure because one of their large, cash-cow clients leaves, and the agency does not have the active pipeline that will deliver the next big account. Insanity. I have never seen an agency in my long-term experience that did not eventually lose a major account.
Let’s get really simple. This is what every advertising and digital and PR agency has to do. Period. Give me a shout and I can help you create and run the plan that will make these actions happen fast. As in, make those shoes for your kids.
Caveat: Is this radically new information? No. But, this is the blueprint. If you do not do this, then go barefoot.