Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Look at the hashtag numbers. It’s mind-blowing.
What is your takeaway? What’s the learning for your clients? Just sayin. (Um, by the way, who the heck is running the Democrat’s social media program?)
Yes, just 4 worst bad sales habits.
After a few years of digging deep into the business development plans and the daily habits of a range of advertising, PR, design and digital agencies, a few common bad habits rear their heads all too often. Here are what I think are the 4 primary bad habits that can be avoided with sound planning and an ongoing system that yields agency-wide ‘sales consciousness.’
Over 60% of agencies do not have a detailed market-ready business development plan. This plan must be objectives driven and reflect the changes in market behaviors – how marketers think and the evolving world of marketing tools – that are going on in B2B marketing.
When I say objectives, I mean the business development plan must be a part of a sound business plan. I tell my agency clients that they must start with a business plan – even if it is one page long. One concise page can be a good thing. Admission: I could never get my agency’s plan on one page.
Back to sales. Here are some lean and mean bullet points:
“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”
We all know this one.
Our unwavering desire to please our clients means that they most often come first. OK, I get it. But, the fact is that running a healthy profitable agency with positive skilled employees has to come before client service. If you don’t have a well-run agency that is financially secure, the idea of paying attention to client needs will be a doomed effort. Your company comes first because the client hired your wonderfulness in the first place.
In my opinion, the only way that you can get to well-run is to have a very positive cash flow and ROI. You’ll get there two ways. 1. Build a service package (agency management, pricing and costs) that helps to make your P&L sing. 2. Run a very smart 24/7 new business program that gets the right clients (you must clearly define right for your agency) in the door. As you know, older clients will walk out the back door. So keeping your front door top of mind is rather important.
First, a point. We call it business development. But, it is sales. And getting it right inside of your company that lives in one of the most competitive service categories is critical. Just imagine a category where your competition are all expert marketers and have super articulate glib management that usually dresses real well. That’s your sales universe.
Yikes, I’ll repeat the obvious: Business development can be daunting. It is a team sport.
It is essential that everyone at the agency understands that growth is a primary objective and that they play a role in agency sales. They will be asked to help with marketing programs, RFP’s and pitches. They need to be aware of any opportunity that floats by via friends, ex-clients and reading the press. It is all about instilling a culture of sales- consciousness. Much of this will come from agency management’s focus on new business efforts, talking to the agency about what is going on in and outside the agency and by acting as a positive role model.
One of the first things agencies say to me is that they have not had a positive business development director experience. Having been Saatchi’s business development director, running two internet firms and my own agency that had sales staff, I have a few thoughts on why this happens.
First of all, reread the first 3 bad habits. If you do not have a sales plan, an agency with the will and time to execute, and an agency that recognizes that growth is critical and is to a certain degree, everyone’s job, virtually any good sales person will fail.
I have a couple of important blog posts on the business development function and how to help make them successful. Here you go:
Is Your Agency Business Development Director Doomed?
As you might expect, the answer is no.
How To Aim Your Agency Business Development Director.
This is the blog post with a sample contract.
Read my best-read blog posts – they are all about advertising agency sales. I’ve designed them to help you win. And, hey, while you are at it, why not call me? You might have nothing to lose except one or two nasty habits.
This blog post is the latest installment of my growing Advertising Agency Resources list. I’ll get to the Top 11 essential marketing podcasts below. But, first, a bit of my personal podcasting history. I’ve been hot – then cold – then hot on this subject.
I was early into the podcasting arena starting a series of podcasts for my Oregon agency Ralston360 (it eventually became Citrus) the mid-2000’s. I fell in love with podcasting because a producing a weekly audio podcast series was relatively easy and being early into podcasting made our agency look like we were ahead of the curve. Sometimes I get ahead of the market – I think we were in the case of podcasting. It was one of my ‘shiny pennies’.
Our audio content included 1:1 interviews and episodes based on our thought leadership white papers. I liked that the podcasts could be delivered via RSS and it got my agency on the global iTunes platform. It also gave the agency something fairly new to talk about to our clients and prospects – looking like you have your agency’s finger on the digital pulse is a very good thing.
Here’s a review on how we promoted our podcasting skills from a 2006 article on our program from BuzzSonic.
Podcasting FAQ Via the Virtual iPod
Here’s a clever idea. Marketing and design specialists Ralston360 have come up with a great angle to market their services, a streaming video that explains all the basics of podcasting all wrapped up in a ‘virtual ipod’.
There’s also a free 14 page whitepaper, ‘Podcasting-the Pod Has Landed’ (in PDF format) on the website (in exchange for your email, natch!) which explains a bit more. They also have another free download, ‘To Blog or Not to Blog’ which kind of speaks for itself but is worth a look for newbies if you’re thinking of starting your own.
We promoted our podcast skill set via a website that featured an interactive iPod that you could scroll to get to various ‘how to’ sections. That’s the scrollable iPod to the left. It was one of the agency’s coolest and best promotional efforts and got us lots of attention. Here is a link to the podcasting white paper on SlideShare mentioned above. Remember, this was written over ten years ago.
Podcasting has seen a recent surge. Much of it, unlike the olden days, is now slickly produced by large media companies like NPR. Here are a couple of resources that help to explain the current positive interest in podcasting. That said, take a look at the Six Degrees of Separation podcast below. There is at least one major agency cranking these out on a very consistent basis.
TechCrunch’s article “The Future Of Podcasting” is a smart article on where podcasting is going and why. As you can see from their chart, podcasting is rising after a fall from grace (remember my shiny penny dates) in the mid-2000’s.
Additionally, PEW Research center published its Podcasting factsheet in 2015 that shows the growth of podcasting.
In the fall of 2014, the medium of podcasting achieved a milestone moment. The podcast Serial – which reinvestigated the 1999 murder of Maryland high school student Hae Min Lee – became the fastest podcast to reach 5 million streams or downloads in iTunes history. Although the success of Serial – a spinoff of WBEZ’s This American Life – clearly represented a new peak in the popularity of podcasts, Pew Research Center data show that the medium has, in fact, been steadily growing its audience over the past two years.
Read the factsheet here.
Finally…the list of the top 11 advertising related podcasts. Like most of you, I listen in my car or at the health club. I was a major listener when I lived in New York and had a lovely hour-long commute. My Portland commute is now only ten minutes. This has severely reduced the amount of time I listen. I wonder if the use of podcasting is higher where people spend more time in their cars = Los Angeles and even Montana or on the subway.
Build A Better Agency. Drew Mclellan’s series is dedicated to the art of advertising agency management and new business. Listen up.
Tim Ferris. I became a Tim Ferris addict after reading his brilliantly titled best seller, “The Four Hour Work Week.” Tim combines a very active and curious mind, an effervescent talent for self-promotion in the best sense and a very long list of talented friends to interview. I find at least 75% of his podcasts (and blog posts) to fall in the zone of high mental stimulation. Of course, one of his recent interviews is with Seth Godin.
Duct Tape Marketing. Another serious and broad look at the tools and techniques marketers are employing today.
Foundr Magazine. Nathan Chan interviews some of the most successful founders in the world to find out what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. Go for the osmosis.
TED Radio Hour. If you don’t have the time to watch TED Talks, then listen to them via their podcast.
Six Pixels Of Separation. A secret… Leverage the power of social media to grow your agency. One of the most active advertising agency leaders using social media is Canada’s Mitch Joel (CEO of WPP’s Mirum) and his Six Pixels Of Separation podcast which, as of today, get this, has 508 podcasts. Clearly a record and what should be an inspiration to any agency CEO who values the marketing power of looking smart and building fame for his agency. Oh, you’ll see just one of the reasons why I love this podcast by clicking on the link.
Sound Opinions. Now that we’ve killed the record / CD store, it seems like it is more difficult (as in time consuming) to know what’s going on in music. I get my fix from MBEZ’s Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis. Listen to this and have something other than Steph Curry to talk about at those client dinners.
Freakonomics Radio. The Freakonomics team explores “the hidden side of everything”. From the economy, headline news to pop culture. A great example is the “Economics of Sleep” show.
#ASKGARYVEE. Best-selling books, one of the fastest growing advertising agencies, and a renowned wine business. Gary is the energizer bunny of agency CEO’s. Listen to this show about how to accelerate business growth. Your clients are probably listening to him.
Smart Passive Income. This podcast series from Pat Flynn will do two things for you. 1. It will make you much smarter about the universe of digital strategies and tactics (even how to do a podcast series). But, more importantly, 2. It will help you figure out how to make money by building your own online business. Pat made over $171,000 last month – not working for the MAN and he will tell you how. A way to get past advertising.
Social Media Marketing. Michael Stelzner’s podcast is designed to deliver the latest news and perspectives on social media. There is a very good chance your clients listen, so you better too. Need an up to date Facebook strategy? Listen to this show.
This post is just one more element of my Big Advertising Agency Resource List. Let me know if I am missing anything.
There, I’ve said it twice. Why? Because if you are an agency owner or partner or business development director or creative director and you have no clue how to charge for your advertising agency’s services, you are way screwed my friend.
As an agency owner and CEO, I participated in all large pricing surveys. Why wouldn’t I? Throwing darts at the wall of agency fees is not a good plan. It won’t help you win new accounts and will undoubtedly not help you become more profitable. Most of the RFP’s you deal with demand that you get your pricing right. Also, I’ve occasionally used these numbers with existing clients to show them that my agency’s fees were in line with the world of competitive agencies.
This industry-wide survey will immediately become a “best of” because it comes from our friends at HubSpot and the results will represent a huge number of agency respondents. Here is the link to the Agency Pricing & Financials Survey and here is what HubSpot is saying…
How do you determine the price for your services and track the profitability of your agency?
Some might call it an art, but that might be because many agency leaders are forced to get creative with their approach. They have very little industry data and best practices to tell them how to price their services, what metrics to track, and how to improve their business practices.
In addition, profitability in agencies has become a more difficult thing to achieve. Margins are shrinking, and clients can ask for more for less because of the number of competitors.
Taking this survey will help all of you agency leaders better understand what pricing models to use.
The survey takes ten minutes. You’ve got ten minutes to get into your competitor’s heads, right?
I know from working with a wide range of advertising and digital agencies that Twitter can work very hard for B2B ad agency new business marketing.
However, trying to run a 24/7 Twitter program that uses best practices to achieve an agency’s goals can be daunting. Marketing communications companies that do not have dedicated staff to run a demanding social media program can get a bit overwhelmed. Good news, there are tools that can make using Twitter as an inbound and outbound platform much easier.
In addition to watching how the smartest agencies use Twitter, I base the following list on my own success in having well over 2,000 direct links per year from Twitter to my very narrowly defined website. In addition (thinking like a networker) I have had many valuable inter-Twitter direct communications in the past 12 months.
I divide this list into Twitter tools that make creating and posting Tweets much easier and tools that help me use Twitter as a marketing platform — including using Twitter as competitive and direct marketing platform.
While we are all worshiping the Gods of inbound, actually using Twitter as an outbound advertising platform is worth the effort and cost. I know for a fact that, Twitter ads work. Go forth and test them.
Social Media Examiner. A primer on some of your advertising / Follower builder options.
Twitter Advertising. See if Twitter ‘s advertising website whets your outbound appetite.
Bit.ly. With a 140 character limit, you have to shorten any URL’s posted to Twitter. Bit.ly does a bit more cool stuff. But shortening alone means you need to have this built into your browser.
Buffer. Buffer is my number one easy to use scheduling system, it is connected to my WordPress blog to automatically send my blog post URL’s and a snippt to Twitter (and LikedIn and Facebook). Importantly because I need to save time, it also allows me to schedule a set of Tweets into the future.
Canva. According to the Gods of social media, having a graphic will increase your clicks and retweets by something like over 1 million. or, some crazy number like that. Canva is a very easy to use web-based graphics tool that edits images and can even be used by your CEO.
Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media dashboard that allows you to work on and monitor Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, WordPress from one place. It goes deeper so head over if you are looking for a ‘total’ solution.
HubSpot. HubSpot is a very big boy. Its inbound software will help your agency attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. And, you can use it to woo new clients with your supreme inbound marketing expertise. As in, using HubSpot will make your agency a social media expert that actually has tools it can resell.
Klear. Klear (formerly Twtrland) delivers social monitoring
Social Quant. Social Quant says, “Social Quant increases the size and quality of your Twitter account rapidly.” OK, how can you beat that? Try the 14-day trial and then splurge and pay them $50 bucks per month.
Twitonomy. Use Twitter as a competitive wrench. As Twitonomy says, “Get detailed and visual analytics on anyone’s tweets, retweets, replies, mentions, hashtags… Browse, search, filter and get insights on the people you follow and those who follow you.” Damn, go forth and use your competitor’s data against them, um, for you!
Use “@” if you want to get someone’s attention. As in @peterlevitan.
Just one more element of my Big Advertising Agency Resource List. Let me know if I am missing anything.
More and more resources are coming every weeek. Stay tuned.