Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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HubSpot, Inbound Marketing & Pinterest

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Only a small fraction of advertising agencies have taped into the power of Pinterest marketing to increase the reach of their business development efforts. More should. To help the advertising world (magnanimous, yes?) I’ve written about the power of Pinterest as an advertising agency business development tool in the past.

HubSpot & Inbound Marketing & Pinterest

HubSpot hubspot on PinterestI was on the HubSpot site today looking for a blog post (Three Ways Foundering Agencies Find Growth) from Agency Post’s Jami Oetting that quoted me – I’ve been getting traffic off the mention –  and I stumbled on HubSpot’s Pinterest site. Its a big deep one. The HubSpot folks, who are clearly dedicated to the power of inbound marketing, do an excellent job of using Pinterest for the distribution of information and as a branding device. I suggest that you take a look at how they are using the site to support their business development program.

The fast, easy to use, visual nature of the site really helps to search for and find some of the tons of social media content that the HubSpot team produces. I think that Pinterest makes it much easier to find what you are looking for and also helps to stumble on the unexpected. Here are some of my favorites:

WonderfulWebinars (especially those of Dan Zarrella and Rand Fishkin)

Marketing Data

Promotion for their INBOUND Conference (including a promotional video that includes Cyndi Lauper)

And…. a review of some smart marketing campaigns (some great charts that you could steal)

The use of Pinterest for business is booming. There are some good ideas here. If your at all flummoxed about Pinterest, give me a shout. Note: This is my Pinterest-based advertising agency directory — are you in it?

A Critical Ad Agency New Business Mistake

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MistakenThrough my agency consultancy, I have been able to look under the hood of lots of advertising, digital and video agencies. One of the most apparent mistakes that some, not all, just some, are making is to not step back and take a hard look at their current assets.

Here’s one mistake.

Online and mobile video marketing is booming. By now we should all know the power of YouTube as a business development tool (well, maybe I should write about this more) and the astonishing growth of video marketing across all of our screens – especially on mobile devices. With all of this activity and daily press, I cannot understand why advertising agencies are not using video marketing in greater numbers as a business development tool. Agency clients are looking for video solutions but most agencies are not leading with their video skill set.

The mistake isn’t that the agencies aren’t using video. The BIG mistake is that they are perfectly positioned to produce quality video but don’t. Huh? Well, if you are a full-service agency then you know how to make videos because you have been producing commercials, and telling short-form stories, for eons. Yet, most of these TV savvy agencies haven’t used video to tell their agency stories on their websites, build compelling YouTube channels, emailed out videos or used new tools like Vine. This is a crazy and a serious missed opportunity.

Here is just one video factoid: Forrester Research reported…

85% of people choose to watch a video about a company online rather than read the rest of the website.

Here is a great example of how to promote your agency using video from London Advertising. Note that their video is up front and way center. It’s the first thing that London wants you to see. It is one of the agency’s primary new business tools.

There is more on online video and that some agencies get it right here.

Does Your Advertising Agency Know Google’s Matt Cutts?

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matt cuttsChances are, and this is the interesting part, if you work in advertising or digital design or mobile marketing there is a good chance that you do not know who Google’s Matt Cutts is. You should because he is one of the most powerful people in global marketing and advertising.

Matt is the head of the webspam team at Goggle. That means that he controls some of the more important methods that Google uses to rank web pages. He and his team can make or break your SEO plans and strategies via updates like Panda and Penguin to Google’s search algorithms (here is some history from SEOMOZ.)  Is this really that important? Is it important that your agency is listed high in a Google search for your keywords (i.e., “advertising agency Atlanta” or “storytelling social media agency”)?

Sorry for this Duh but I want to make a point… Is the SEO work you are doing for your clients well rewarded and wouldn’t be if they were served up on page 4? While I understand that you may leave SEO up to an expert, I think that it’s wise to actually have some understanding about the Google team that decides how Google ranks web pages.

Here is a video from Matt on what is coming up. Yes it is way esoteric. But so are many of the elements of digital marketing.

If you’d like a quick take on Matt’s video pointers, visit The Short Cutts for, well, short cuts.

Since early 2009 Google’s Matt Cutts has recorded a superhuman number of videos to help struggling site owners understand their site in search. While the videos are great, sometimes the guy just needs to get to the point. With that in mind we’ve done the hard work and watched every Matt Cutts video to pull out simple, concise versions of his answers: The Short Cutts!

I may not be a SEO specialist but I have been building websites that rank high and drive organic traffic for 18 years. If you need some high level strategic insights into how to integrate your business development strategy with smart SEO…. well, give me a shout.

 

I’m Off To Visit With The Dalai Lama In Portland

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WOW!

(Up date from after 7 hours with His Holiness… this dude is the DUDE. One of the greatest laughers ever. Maybe my coolest – natural high – experiences ever. I Tweeted a great Vine video. Check it out… @peterlevitan) (Sorry, for some reason beyond my sentient being I can’t seem to embed it)

Dalai

2 Pieces Of Advice For Ad Agency CEO’s

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The big idea is that your agency should be making things — for yourselves (and your clients.) It is simply too easy and you have the brains, talent and energy. What’s more, you will walk the design talk. One idea is futuristic and the other is simply something you should be doing anyway.

Here are two ideas.

1. Learn 3D Printing

Buy a 3D printer, experiment and be much smarter and on the ball than all the other agencies in your town.

printer-3My suggestion is buy the the soon to be released Form 1 from Formlabs. As Formlabs says,Form 1 is…”An end-to-end package. Printer, software, and post-processing kit that just works. Right out of the box.” Check out their video.

$3,300 puts you right in the middle of the 3D printer explosion. And, its so damned beautiful. Put it on that expensive front desk that really does zero for your agency’s street cred. Go here if you need to geek out on this big idea.

Make Some Tee Shirts

It’s summer. Need I say more?

I have a few more ideas. Most are about how you can make more money. Now, that’s a cool thing for an advertising agency to make.