Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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7 New Advertising Agency Resources

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My holiday gift this year is to send you off with 7 new advertising agency resources. Some of these tools should help you grow your agency by fine-tuning its marketing programs and making you look smart.

Yes, that is David Ogilvy. His Madmen resources included a typewriter, pencil and paper and brilliant ideas. It was a bit less complicated then. Oh, except for coming up with brilliant ideas. Y’all still need those.

If you dig these new resources, head over the master advertising agency resource list for a bazillion more.

Speed Is Good.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

BROWSEO. We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.

What Are People Searching For?

AnswerThePublic. This is a free visual tool that shows you what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for at Google.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not on Google’s search universe. A look at the top 2019 Google searches may or may not make you a fan of humanity.

Amazon Best Sellers. Here is a list just for you if you want to see what the world is buying.

Social Mention.  Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go. This is what they say (better than I could): Social Mention is a simple, useful tool for monitoring and tracking social media. It helps you see who’s making references to you or your company — or to any topic, for that matter. It aggregates user-generated content from across different social networks, letting you search and analyze it all in one place.

OK. One More Advertising Agency Resource.

That’s me if you want to grow your bottom line in 2020.

Gary Vaynerchuk Loves You And Your Ad Agency

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Contrary to (some) popular belief, Gary Vaynerchuk actually loves you and your advertising agency. He wants to help you grow. Here is my take on today’s Gary Vaynerchuk plus a rather inspiring B2B marketing video.

FYI: One of my best-read blog posts is “Gary Vaynerchuk Is Full Of Shit.” It is a response to his early damning of the advertising industry. Take a read. By the way, it has been read over 5,000 times. Why? Well, putting “Gary Vaynerchuk’ and “Full Of Shit” in your headline gets Google’s attention and speaks to my audience.

My original sense of Gary being full of shit stemmed from Gary’s 2015’s “Do you know the problem with Marketing?” episode of the Ad Age Digital Crash Course:

Here’s the ‘shit’ part. In the video, GaryVee pontificates in ‘Gary Speak’ about how advertising agencies don’t care about selling products (only about winning awards); that emotion does not sell (tell that to Apple’s “Think Different”); that ‘traditional’ advertising is inefficient (like much of digital isn’t); that creatives might want to consider shooting 10 spots for $300K each vs. one for $3 million (this is a new idea??? what world is he living in?) and that maybe we should think about testing advertising before we run it (hmm… that’s a new one).

I love self-promotion. And I get railing at the old ways of doing business to further one’s cause. But, please, cut the way too obvious crap and don’t be insulting.

Gary Vaynerchuk Is Not Full Of Shit – He Wants To Love You (And Your Ad Agency)

OK, that was Gary in 2015 when he was building Vaynermedia and needed some service differentiation. Let’s cut to 2019.  He recently spoke to a meeting of the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts. Watch the speech and Q&A below. Gary has both mellowed and has a lot of insight to deliver – to any B2B marketer. Just like your advertising agency.

A couple of Gary’s key points:

Buy underpriced attention for your agency marketing. This includes hammering underutilized LinkedIn. Hammer. Post like 40X a day.

Create longer content, like Gary’s videos, and cut them up for distribution. Amplify everything.

Don’t go out and hire a “social media expert” to run your program. YOU spend the 50 hours to learn it before you can ever judge the value of the freelancer/expert. I remember asking advertising agency CEO’s at Advertising Week if they ever placed a Google ad. The answer was no. I was like, are you kidding me? Do you even know WTF is going on?

Gary was asked how he finds the time to get things done. His answer – you probably waste three hours a day on really stupid shit. That 1-hour meeting should be 15 minutes.

If you run a local advertising agency, let’s say in Raleigh Durham, create a local show. Do a podcast, a local newsletter, a blog… just become known locally for your agency voice.

Big One: Romance your clients. Ever say thank you? Call up a client one year later to discuss that great project you did 12 months earlier? Send an unexpected gift? Call back a prospect that has fallen off your A-List? Find a good reason to say, Howdy.

The GaryVee Video…

 

Seven Powerful Ideas To Help You Attract That Desirable Advertising Agency Client

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Imagine that you are a desirable advertising agency client. The desirable (to me) client = has a decent budget; respects marketing and what my agency could do for them; has a famous name and are nice people (If I got three out of four of these attributes I was usually happy. My client Nike got all four.)

Now imagine how many incoming sales messages a client like this gets every month from the aspiring advertising agency universe? I’m talking about direct sales messages.

To find out, I asked Lee McKnight, Vice President Sales at RSW/US. RSW/US has consistently provided a research-oriented perspective on the advertising agency business development marketplace.

Marketers Are Inundated – The Insane Math

Inundated is the best word I can use to describe the life of an average prospective marketing communications client. Here are a couple of stats from Lee:

The desirable client gets from 5 to 15 advertising agency emails per month.

Incoming telephone calls average 2 to 5 a month. Phone contacts are lower because, according to Lee, “Most agencies are afraid to pick up the phone, even when they have a new business director, the tendency is to rely on LinkedIn and email.”

So, you are Ms. Client trying to get her 10 hour day moving along – it is not hard to imagine that you might get 20 (or more) incoming advertising agency sales messages a month.

But, but there is more. This client also gets vendor and media contacts. Yikes.

The of-course question is: How can you get a prospect’s attention and then interest in hearing what you have to say?

Breaking Through The Clutter

Here are my top seven clutter busters:

  1. Make sure you have something to offer the prospect. This might sound like it does not need to be said. But, too often agencies just roll the dice without any forethought about why the client might ever be interested. “HI HI, we are here” is not an effective sales pitch.
  2. Create sales personas for the client types you want to reach and entice. Who are they / what do they need / what are there pain points / what do they look like / what might be job issues?
  3. Have a sales plan that includes an account-based marketing schedule and a sales messaging progression.
  4. Create a set of insights that must be read. Figure out more than one platform for your thinking. Get efficient. Amplify your messaging. That uber desirable advertising agency client – the ones you want – need to learn about how to grow their sales. Help them.
  5. Attack specific categories so you can use and reuse ‘expert-oriented’ sales messages that can be easily tailored to multiple clients. Why recreate the wheel for every client? But, do not be too universal – you want to speak directly to that prospect.
  6. Learn how to do warm vs. cold sales calls. Read this: Advertising Agency Business Development and Cold Calling.
  7. Think hard about how to look and sound different. How can you and your insights and messages and outbound tools be unignorable? You know, how can you break through the clutter? Sameness does not work.

I busted through sales clutter for Saatchi & Saatchi and my own advertising agency. I got the attention of that allusive advertising agency client.

Let’s talk about growing your business. You are in a hurry, right?

Contact me and take me up on my free Vito Corleone offer. 

The Advertising Agency CEO and Marketing Data Analytics

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I recently had a couple of conversations about the increasing use of marketing data analytics in advertising, design and, of course, digital marketing.

A Big DUH!

The conversations led me to a DUH! A Duh! I am sure you are living through.

Data rules marketing these days (good or bad) given where we are in 2019 marketing. But, these conversations also delivered agency warning signs – and an opportunity.

The opportunity? Agency CEO’s and managers better learn how to use and discuss marketing and advertising data analytics with their current and future clients. I mean, really be able to sound smart.

I’ll tell you how below. But first, some marketing data analysis related insights from people who talk with clients all day long.

1. The Association of National Advertisers

Michael Donahue of The Association of National Advertisers pointed out that every size agency must make the use of advertising data analytics an integral part of their work. Period.

2. Ad Age

Lindsey Slaby in my recent post, “Ad Age Small Agency Podcast”, said the following — followed by my thoughts:

Lindsey: So we need to have the people at the top of some of those agencies that understand what data and analytics really means. It’s not putting one person in a corner to go work on this. Right? So I think that consultancies have really learned, and they’ve always played a part in looking more at the business in terms of revenue and bottom-line profitability, and they get in there and they have access to that information, and now they’re simply saying, “Well, now that we know all this about your consumer, which is so important, and the data, and what they’re listening, and what they’re talking to, and what they want from us, we would like to connect that to the actual advertising and create a benefit station.” And that makes sense to me.

PL Thoughts: The main point here is that in many agencies, especially in ‘creative/full-service’ agencies, management and staff do not fully understand a client’s complicated/complex sales spectrum. Much of today’s sales process is rooted in understanding, processing and leveraging consumer and market data. Unfortunately, in many agencies, data management has been relegated to a back-room function. Because of this, we have a bunch of agency leadership that simply is not schooled in data management and therefore in understanding the entire sales funnel.

Consultancies get this and deliver on the deliverable that they, and their MBA-fueled staff, are schooled in sales-oriented, high ROI solutions.

Agencies that rest on the singular idea that they deliver cool creative and a barrage of content ideas is not a very strong, stand-alone concept.

The Solution: Go To Columbia, Wharton Or Columbia

I am sure that sitting in the corner office, or even out in the sea of open office desks is not where you will get an in-depth understanding of data analytics. I think that this is a subject for proactive agency management. I know that the new consultancies eating big agency lunches get this.

Here is a good idea… Three online schools offer courses in marketing analytics. YO CEO: Why not take one of these courses and you can then tell your clients, future clients, and staff, that you now seriously get marketing analytics.

Head over to edX and see what Columbia, Wharton and Berkeley offer.

 

Want even more learning? Let’s talk about growing your business. I mean how to build a real sales and agency management plan.

You are in a hurry, right?

Contact me now and take me up on my impossible to refuse 15-minute Vito Corleone offer. 

 

How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients

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A recent interview in Ad Age’s Ad Lib podcast reveals the insight that even large clients are now very attracted to small agencies. I’d imagine that this might not be a big surprise to you. Expert smaller agencies that deliver specialized services have been on the radar for a few years.

However, you might not know about serious client angst that comes along with working with specialists.

Take a read – in a new window: Ad Age Small Agency Conference Podcast.

A Bit Of Set Up To “How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients”

The book, “What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire” by Daniel Bergner is a best-seller.

The title and reviews like this from The Atlantic, “…Shatters many of our most cherished myths about desire” got me thinking about what the new clients you want desire from an agency. Understanding this can help small agencies win big clients.

So… What do the big clients want to see from smaller agencies and is your agency set up to deliver it?

Mondelez-ImageHuge Client Mondelez And Small Agencies

Maureen Morrison’s AdvertisingAge article, “How a Small Agency Can land A Big Client Like Mondelez” sheds some light on this universal question. The article is an interview with Mondelez International’s agency scout Deb Giampoli. Deb shares her tips on the do’s and dont’s of how to get her attention.

The Truth: Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big

Here are Deb’s tips and my take on her perspective.   [Read more…] about How Small Advertising Agencies Can Win Big Clients