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Stuff’s Happening

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Time Keeps On Ticking

Bomberos-21Some things on my plate. Just thought I’d share them to get out a quick personal update.

I am now into my 8th month of living in Mexico. This was a great decision and great timing!

I am in the process of writing a long(ish) blog post on lead generation -> lead nurturing -> pitching -> closing. All tailored to my advertising, digital, design, etc. agency readers.

I am writing my presentation on agency business development for my talk at the huge (fabulous, great, incredible — Thank You Donald) PPC Hero Conference in L.A. in April. This link, go to this conference, it is the largest PPC conference, gets you a nice discount.

I am getting ready to interview Peter Shankman on the gift of ADD / ADHD and its relationship to working in an advertising agency and knowing how to get the attention of B2C and B2B ‘consumers.’ This will become a guest post on HubSpot and then amplified across my social networks.

I was just interviewed by Paul Wicker for the AdStage podcast. I’ll let you know when it gets published.

I am toying with the idea of writing a new book. This one on why you will NEVER get to, or want to retire. It would be an update to my ‘traing wheels’ book Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide. Boomercide was my first book. It about how you can use suicide as a financial planning tool. I’m serious.

And….

I am working on my 3-year Mexican photo project GENTE.MX  I am in the process of photographing my town, San Miguel de Allende. Website up soon. Two images from the 300 – 500+ series are above and below.

SMA Street 4 stars 10.16-1

My Book’s Video On Ad Agency Pitching

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My Book On Ad Agency Pitching – And, The Use Of Video To Sell It

TheLevitanPitch_COVER_Small-202x300A good and smart advertising friend is in the process of marketing his new book, “Rise Up: How To build A Socially Conscious Business”. Writing books is a good thing. He asked for some ideas on book marketing since I’ve published four books – two non-fiction and two photo books  – with another on its way.

Here is one big book marketing idea… Create an informational sales video for your book and get it up on your book’s Amazon page and… your book’s sales landing page. I put my video below to give you an example. However, here are a few more points.

  • Write a book to help sell your agency. Pick a subject that deals with your target market’s ‘pain points.’ My pain point, targeted at YOU, is how to win more new business pitches.
  • Your book will make you look like an expert and isn’t that what your future client is looing for?
  • The book does not have to be looooooong. Just, super smart and helpful. Look at how short many of Seth Godin’s books are
  • Use smart interviews with industry leaders and influencers to create content and make friends. About one-third of book is loaded with highly useful interviews.
  • Market the book in your inbound and outbound marketing programs. You know how to do this.
  • Repurpose and leverage the book’s content on your Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blog pages.
  • Guest post on big industry websites to gain broad awareness and message reach.
  • Get your friends, like me, to help promote your book.
  • Use the book to get invited to speak at conferences. I am in April in L.A. speaking at Hannapin Marketing’s Hero Conference. It is the world’s largest PPC conference. My session is directed to digital marketing agencies: “Is PPC The Smartest Way To Sell Your Agency’s Services? Um, No.”
  • OK, one more link. here is my HubSpot presentation on why you should write a book …

My ad agency dedicated book, Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. (see above to purchase) just had its best sales month in January. I think that is because agency folks just like you thought hard over the holidays about how to grow your agency. As a FYI, in addition to books sales, I also get a large number of qualified leads for my consulting business at the start of the year. Looks like you guys have some pent up sales needs. Give ma a shout, I can help you get this whole process right.

OK, My Video

I asked Rebecca Armstrong, Managing director of Portland’s North agency to interview me. Easy!

 

2016 Winners and Losers

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My 2016 Winners and Losers

tomWell, 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.

Inbound Marketing Works

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Inbound Marketing Delivers Inbound New Business

inbound-marketing-graphicOK, not big news here: inbound marketing works. But, in the interest of sharing, I’d just like to say it works for me big time and how it does that.

A couple of weeks ago I sensed that the number of high-octane inbound inquiries was falling off. I usually get at least a couple of qualified new business leads from interested advertising agencies a week. Noting the decline, I did the following…

  • I increased the number of new blog posts. I make sure these are very SEO friendly.
  • I boosted a Facebook post on my ‘corporate’ Facebook page (note, not a page I update on a frequent basis, at least not as much as my blog). $50 helped me get this post on advertising agency search consultants read by 1,275 well-targeted advertising leaders.
  • I upped my use of Buffer to get high traffic past posts scheduled in increased frequency on LinkedIn and Twitter. I scheduled these at different times across the day and night since my business is global.
  • I increased posting relevant blog posts in advertising and industry-related LinkedIn Groups.

Did it work?

Yes. I now have four ‘hot’ leads – from the USA, South America, and Europe. Was this a direct result of my upping my inbound efforts? I can’t directly attribute all of the leads to this effort  since not all agencies ever remember how they heard of me*. However, I have seen a 300% increase in the type of leads I want.

This makes me happy.

So…. I will just do more. Why not? My increased efforts just cost me some time and $50 bucks.

*Interestingly, it is often a long-term / repeat exposure to my brand. They see me via SEO on Google, read the blog, see guest posts, read me on LinkedIn and have bought my book on pitching.

 

 

Chatbots and Your Advertising Agency

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Chatbots, Bots, Guest Posting and Your Advertising Agency

screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-11-05-24-amCheck out my article Why Bots Are the Next Big Frontier for Agencies that was posted this morning on HubSpot’s marketing blog. The article discusses my views on the power of Chatbots, the looming opportunity for advertising agencies to get on this bandwagon and my personal experience running ActiveBuddy, an early Chatbot company.

3 Takeaways

My article offers three big takeaways (I mean immediately actionable takeaways) for your ad agency and its new business program:

  1. Something new for you to talk about. Pay attention to AI and Chatbots. Savvy advertising agencies will jump on this bandwagon. It is real. Why? People like to talk to smart, friendly, uber programmed computers rather than tap out on the keyboard and phone. Oh, and Facebook loves chatbots.
  2. Your skill. Advertising agencies are good at writing or should be. Creating smart Chatbots is all about understanding human communications and writing scripts that recognize how interpersonal communications work. This is what a savvy advertising agency is good at. That savvy agency is also good at building brand to consumer conversations. Believe me, you’ve spent almost 10 years building static apps. Chatbots will unleash your inner conversational bot expertise. This is already in-house.
  3. Reach. I’m sure that you love your agency blog. But, guest posting on a mega website like HubSpot will drive way more incremental reach for your thought leadership, ideas and brand awareness. Why? Alexa tells me that HubSpot is the 529th highest ranked website. Get this, Ogilvy’s website is ranked at only 41,659 — after zillions of years of being in the ad business. Even a smart one at Ogilvy should think about guest posting if she’d like to reach more folks.

On the subject of reach… after only a couple of hours, my post was shared lots. See….

screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-10-54-01-amLast point. Here is the video ActiveBuddy made 14 years ago to launch our company. You’ll see that I thought bots were a big fucking idea then. I still do.