Search Results for: chatbots

The Idiocy Of Ad Agency Christmas Giving

Peter · December 2, 2023 · 4 Comments

Yes, Most Ad Agency Christmas Giving Is Ineffectual

OK. It’s 2023 and what a wonderful year it has been. yMucho agency leaders are thinking… huh, shouldn’t we do something cool for our clients? Like, deliver a bit of ad agency Christmas giving. But, um, no, do not do that. So in honor of my magical anti-gifting thought and advice, I offer MY annual Christmas gift rant (or better yet, a strategic approach to giving).

It is that time of year again.

It is the time that many an ad agency decides that it is a great time of year to add to the upcoming ad agency (and universal) Christmas giving clutter. OY – Am I being Grinch-like? You bet.

Does your ad agency send out Christmas cards or gifts or online trinkets (or other creative ideas) to clients — even prospects? I call this practice ~~stupid~~ silly. Strong words? Sure. but, why am I saying this?

Look, I have nothing against season’s greetings. But, after working at a couple of mega agencies (including my own) and watching dozens/hundreds of agencies send out very “creative” Christmas (Chanukah, Kwanza, etc.) cards and gifts during the late-December season, I have to say this is very ill-timed even highly-inefficient outreach.

Silly gifting is wasteful in three critical ways: [Read more…] about The Idiocy Of Ad Agency Christmas Giving

An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

Peter · May 22, 2022 · Leave a Comment

I started blogging in the early 2000s. I really cranked it up after I sold my advertising agency and became an advertising agency business development consultant. Below is a list of my blog posts. The subject matter of these hundreds of blog posts reflects my dedication to having an optimized search engine blog strategy. It worked.

My Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy.

I am going to keep this easy. I could ramble on but these are the core elements of my blog strategy.

Understand your objectives. Mine is to entice advertising agency leadership to contact me about helping them develop an unignorable business development program. This has worked for me every week.
Understand and meet the needs of your market. You are writing for them. Example: My evergreen list that is just for advertising execs… Top Advertising and Design Awards.
Use all available SEO tools to help you determine trending subject matter and keywords. There are a bunch of tools listed on my advertising agency resources list.
Study your direct competition. What are they writing about? What are their best keywords?
Be consistent. As you can see, I have written, on average, over one post per week. In 2013 alone (when I wanted to really drive Google love), I wrote 188 blog posts.
Have your very own voice. Write with gusto,
Amplify the reach/frequency of your blog posts: post em on LinkedIn; use them in your agency’s email newsletter; send them directly to clients and prospects (even try paper), and on…
Go mega amplification. I am going to use some of these very best Levitan blog posts to form the basis of my new book.

OK – Here You Go… Levitan’s 750 Plus Blog Post Archive

The Perfect Advertising Agency Pitch

Peter · January 21, 2022 · 2 Comments

How To Run A Perfect Advertising Agency Pitch

Avi Dan followed me as the guy running Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide’s business development program (and, I think did a better job than me as by the end of my tenure all I could think about was the growing Internet space). Avi just wrote the following article on LinkedIn about the subject of the good, bad, and ugly advertising agency pitch. I thought that I’d respond a bit to his thinking because I wrote the New York Times best-selling book on how to run the world’s most powerful, new business-delivering ad agency pitch.

From Avi’s bio… “Avi Dan is a columnist for Forbes, a former CEO and board member of 3 major agencies, and a highly regarded agency pitch consultant. By his own estimate, he has been involved in over 200 pitches in the past 30 years.”

From Avi…

Q&A With A Pitch Consultant: “Don’t Hire The Agency That Inspires You, Hire The Agency That Is Inspired BY YOU”

In 2019, the year right before Covid, a Morgan Stanley analyst had reported that a record $35 Billion of advertising spending was up for review. That was almost more money hanging in the balance than the amount under review during the previous two years, combined. With the economy picking up now, advertisers are, once again, rethinking their agency relationships. Ad Age had recently reported that one-third of all advertisers stated that, they plan to put their business into a pitch.

Peter: One-third? Crazy. This really can only mean one of two things. Either advertising agencies are doing a shit job or clients have no clue what they really want from their agency. A smart client should be able to get smart thinking and service out of their own — current — agency. I have been an agency owner and a client. Good clients know how to manage their agencies. Well, most. It is absurd that one-third should think they have a failing relationship. Too high.

Q: Why do you think there are so many reviews lately?

A: If those numbers tell you anything, it’s that, advertisers aren’t happy with their agencies, even the good ones. For example, Wieden had lost KFC and Droga5 had recently lost IHOP. Marketing is much more complex these days, and very few agencies are capable of evolving fast enough to keep up with the needs of their client. What’s surprising isn’t that so much is in review, but, that it didn’t happen sooner.

Peter: Avi says… “very few agencies are capable of evolving fast enough.” OK, possibly true for many. But not Droga5 and Wieden. These best-of-class agencies are just too good, big and well-managed. So, I’ll point to clients as a failure point. By the way, how can anyone be expected to dramatically increase pancake and waffle sales during a pandemic?

Q: How are pitches different now?

A: The briefs for pitches that we see coming through to us now, are more transformational. Clients are deep into the digital transformation, and so is the consumer and the media. Technology, cloud services, eCommerce, data, and virtual CX are becoming critical issues for the enterprise.

Peter: The marketing world has been way about the idea of digital transformational since I left Saatchi in 1995 to put major newspapers online (and invent website advertising – yes, I did that) or in 2000 when my company Activebuddy invented interactive chatbots including SmarterChild and commercial bots for clients like Radiohead. Is Avi saying that the zillions of agency people that live and breath digital do not understand transformation? Could they be worse at it than a marketing director at IHOP? Side note. I have been a consultant in a few advertising agency pitches lately and every agency talks transformation or related subjects. How could they not?

Q: You are very critical of the pitch process. Why? [Read more…] about The Perfect Advertising Agency Pitch

2016 Winners and Losers

Peter · December 22, 2016 · Leave a Comment

My 2016 Winners and Losers

Well, not just mine. Here is a video from L2 and its CEO Scott Galloway on his 2016 predictions. Galloway is one of the more entertaining folks out there and his take on what is working and not in marketing and the digital space is always worth a watch. He is well viewed so if you haven’t yet, you’d better because I suspect your smartest clients watch him. A key takeaway? Your agency needs to understand the world of messaging.

The massive world of messaging has been one of my big winners too. Especially messaging plus chatbots – a perfect new marketing space for agencies and their inherent skills. Here are a bunch of articles on the subject.

A Loser?

Advertising, PR, digital, content, experiential agencies that sit on their business development haunches and hope that their telephone or email chimes with incoming clients. No, just sitting on your ass and playing the ‘word-of-mouth-referal-game’ won’t win new clients. I wrote about the need for relentless sales ENERGY right here: Your Advertising Agency must Kick Ass in 2017.

A Winner — Vaynerchuck

But, but, wait, wait, there’s more. Below is one of this year’s smartest keynote addresses. In this case… from the effervescent Gary Vaynerchuck of online wine and Vayner Media fame. This talk (rant) is his 2016 Inbound keynote care of HubSpot. I love HubSpot. They publish my stuff. By the way, I tell all of my agency clients to guest post for broad awareness, message reach, and fame. Here are some of mine…. I walk my talk.

This keynote is long. Break it up into thirds and watch it hard. I don’t care who you are. You will get more than one inspiring moment. Gary walks the talk too. Vayner Media just might be the fastest growing agency today. Why? They do not sit on their ass waiting for the phone to ring.

Your Advertising Agency Must Kick Ass In 2017

Peter · December 21, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Dear Advertising Agency: Kick Ass In 2017

As you will see below, times are tough and getting tougher for advertising agency business development. Clients are confused; are (massive understatement coming…) a bit uneducated in all of the new advertising options; worried about their budgets; worried about ROI; worried about data overload; find it hard to work with a range of specialists from PPC to video to mobile to chatbots and on.

Oh, and if you are an advertising, digital, PR, SEO, PPC, experiential and on and on agency… you have like (massive understatement coming…) 4,000 agency competitors ranging from multinationals to single really smart dudes (as The Donald says) who are working from their bed in New Jersey.

Daunting?

Sounds daunting, right?

Sure, sales is daunting. But, the only people that will win new business in 2017 are the people that kill it. Sleeping through your business development program (or lack thereof) is, well, sleepy. From a sales perspective, given how tough business development has become, being sleepy is not gonna work. Your agency will fail.

The only advertising, digital, PR, SEO, PPC, experiential agencies that will grow in 2017 are the ones that realize that EXECUTION rules. Having a business development / sales plan is nice (and most agencies do not have one.) But, having that plan and not kicking ass with it, as in executing, is a losing proposition.

It’s Tough Out There

eMarketer’s advertising agency new business article, “Agencies Face Tougher New Business Environment” was in my inbox last week. The article references RSW/US’s (always smart) industry research. In this case, RSW/US reports that…

“In an October 2016 survey of ad agency professionals by business development group RSW/US, 43% of respondents said that obtaining new business had gotten either “harder” or “a lot harder” this year.”

Surprised? I’m not. Sales isn’t easy.

OK, So It Has Gotten Harder

What is your advertising agency going to do about it? Here are some of my thoughts and advice from working with dozens of agencies on their sales plans.

But first, back to my rant. Everything I am about to say is smart and actionable. However, if you do not actually do it, as in run it, 24/7 you will fail.

The 2017 Advertising Agency New Business Sucess List

This is the must do list. Once you agree to this list, the hard part is doing it. Yes, I am repeating myself. The single biggest issue confronting advertising agency sales is not running the plan. And. I do know all of your excuses for not running your plan with any consistency.

Can the excuses.

Have a business plan that outlines how your agency is going to make money.

Build your agency to deliver on the promises in your business plan.

Do not be one of the 17% of agencies that actually admits that they “Can’t make the investment in a new business program.” WHAT 17%? Are you kidding me? I bet that 17% is probably more like 30%. If 30% of advertising agencies do not invest then you must.

Have a business development plan that is based on what the market needs.

Make sure you treat your business development program with the same care and attention you deliver to a client. Put sales on your daily production list.

Know exactly who you want as a client. Have a set of criteria that makes sense for your agency.

Position your agency for success. What does that mean? It means that you cannot be everything to everyone. Know if you are a skill set specialist; a client category specialist; a regional or global specialist; a demographic specialist. “Specialist”… get it? If you want to “break through to prospects” (see the RSW/US research), give them a single-minded sales proposition.

Build brand messaging that clearly supports and amplifies your positioning.

Tell the market that you are the leader. Be bold.

Please… have a website that is more than a brochure; that does not look like your competitor’s WordPress site; that is designed to sell; that creates some agency to client chemistry and then asks for the clnet to make contact. Make them an offer they cannot refuse.

Have an inbound marketing strategy. An attraction strategy. One that makes sure that you can be found by that client that wants to meet you.

Go outbound to talk directly to the prospective clients that you have on your master list. Use the tools that will get their attention. I mean everything from direct mail 9yes, paper) to facebook ads to email to Instagram. Whatever makes sense for the category you are pursuing.

Be a thought leader. I mean an INSIGHT leader. Have things to say that cannot be ignored.

Busy? Use design, copy, sales, research or whatever outsourcing to help you run the plan.

Be an unignorable agency.

Write RFP’s that follow instructions to a ‘T’ then find a way to kick some ass to stand out.

OK, Last Point

You have a business plan. You’ve run a smart sales program. You got that RFP. You nailed it. You’ve been invited to pitch the business. Now, do not look and sound like every other agency.

Pitch smarter than the other agencies. Buy my book. Win more pitches.