How To Build A Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development Program – Part Two

This Is part two of an interview about becoming a smarter advertising agency… Part One is right here.

WARNING: This is a long blog post about how to build a better, smarter advertising agency. Actually, this is Part One of an even longer post. It is a looong post for a couple of reasons.

1. This is a transcript of a 40-minute interview on advertising agency business development that I did with the super savvy Drew McLellen and his must / should listen to advertising podcast, “Build A Better Agency“.
2. Google loves loong blog posts. So, having an interview transcribed into text is a very good SEO tactic. I’ve done this before with some of the interviews I did for my book on pitching. Having text allows me (us) to have an audio and text for a blog post which can then be marketed across social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It is a very smart idea to extend the reach of any thought leadership you do. So easy too.
3. Some people would rather read an interview than listen to it so here it is.
4. I want to use Drew as an example of how to do and market a podcast. To date, he has done 49 interview podcasts. Podcasting provides 4 basic but sweet benefits. 1) It is a great way to look and sound like an expert by interviewing other experts; 2) podcasts are relatively easy to do; 3) interviewing people helps you make friends (imagine having an agency podcast in your agency’s specialized category where you interview potential clients); 4) it is all about marketing yourself or your company.

The Full Service Agency Issue

Drew:         What about the idea of every agency that presents itself refers to itself as a full-service agency regardless of if they have 3 employees or 300 employees. What’s your take on that?

Peter:         Most agencies were full service once upon a time. Then we started to see a move into direct marketing, which has been happening for years as we seek ‘proof’, but I’d say about 10 or 15 years ago, direct marketing started to look really attractive as digital marketing started to happen because analytics … all of a sudden we could really track everything.

There was a move into that. In fact, at one point I renamed Ralston Group, the agency I bought, Ralston360. The 360 moniker, which I think became way overused, was really about understanding the full spectrum of marketing. The problem, unfortunately, with full service, while most clients need it, it just doesn’t provide enough of a niche basis for them to be able to position you differently than the other agencies.

That said, the reality today is that most of the digital agencies I know are being asked to do a full-service work, but they’re at least, at the start, able to position themselves in a niche.

I like full-service. The problem unfortunately is, while the clients probably want that, what they don’t get out of that is any differentiation between you and the next guy. I don’t like those words, full service.

Drew:         We go into the field and do some research with CMO’s and sort of different attitudes they have about agencies and how they work with agencies and everything every year. Last year, we sort of explored the idea of the words full service. What we heard from the folks who participated in the research was they don’t believe it. When they look at an agency of 20 people and they know how complicated marketing has gotten, especially on the digital side, they sort of say, “I don’t think so.”

Peter:         Yeah, I mean to an intelligent marketer, I agree completely. Really, nobody’s figured out mobile marketing yet. How could you conceivably say that you understand the full spectrum because there are elements that are changing so fast that there are very few agencies that actually can lay claim. Now that said, I’ve seen agencies that just say we’re a mobile agency and they’re doing very very well.

Drew:         Right.

Peter:         There are a lot of factors here. It’s just really understanding where your internal skillset fits into the spectrum.

Get This Right: Positioning & Fame

[Read more…] about More: How To Build A Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development Program