Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Too many advertising agencies are afraid to say “sales”.
Here’s my take on getting it ‘getting it on’ on LinkedIn.
Visit Ogilvy’s quick take… But, don’t blink!
Thinking about that very special someone? You know, your agency’s CEO? What to give them for Xmas??? How to make them smile for just a few quid? Here you go:
A post on today’s Agency Post blog got me thinking about the value of guest posting for ad agency new business. In fact, I’ve written on this subject before.
Here: 2 New Levitan Guest Posts on Agency Post and Advertising Week
And, here: Thanks To HubSpot, Ad Contrarian & Advertising Week
Once again, my relationship with Agency Post nets me awareness via my posts to their large and growing audience. Here is a post from Agency Post that includes a quote and shoutout from them about me. This one is about why I think that advertising agencies should write books. Here’s the paragraph:
“Advertising agencies should seriously consider writing books for four reasons: the credibility factor, to stand out because their competition isn’t, the physical nature of books (yes, physical objects are a good thing), and agencies have all of the elements to make it happen –something to say, writers, art directors, and the digital marketing chops to drive awareness,” said Peter Levitan, the author of The Levitan Pitch who spoke at the 2014 INBOUND conference on how agencies can write a book in six months.
The post provides a sweet list of ad agency books.
Note that one of the best agency books is inadvertently missing from the list. I heartedly recommend that you read Mitch Joel’s Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It. Mitch is President of Canada’s ad agency Twist Image and one the all time leaders in leveraging social media for the agency’s awareness and thought leadership via his blog, podcast and books. This is one prolific dude.
OK, one more guest post: Here is my take on writing advertising agency books via an interview with Beau Fraser, president of the agency The Gate Worldwide. Should Your Advertising Agency Write A Book? (FYI: Beau’s book is mentioned in today’s Agency Post article.)
Agencies that put themselves out in the social universe drive agency awareness and targeted inbound traffic to their messaging.
My advice that I give to all of my agency clients is to write strategic blogs (blogs written for their target markets and not other agencies) / post on other blogs for awareness / post on Twitter / publish on LinkedIn / play with Facebook / consider Pinterest and Instagram (if you are up for that) / write books (or zines if you want to get out fast) / put your thoughts up on SlideShare / speak at conferences and use the world of social media tools to learn about your potential clients and what your agency competition is doing in the social space.
All it takes is a smart business development and social media plan and a bias for action. Oh, and my help to get this done in early 2015. How? Take me up on my Vito Corleone offer.
I came across the revealing ad agency business development infographic below on the RSW/US website. The infographic highlights some of the findings from RSW/US’s 2014 Agency Marketer New Business Report.
The infographic sucks. Um, no. The infographic doesn’t suck, but it points out one critical agency fail that… SUCKS!
What? 66%! Having run ‘sales’ (sorry, it is sales) at Saatchi, my own agency and two Internet companies, I know that a company that has something to sell in the B2B marketplace cannot succeed without a biz dev plan and implementation methodology. Cannot, full-stop. No methodology means no plan and no plan means no growth no growth means lower income. So, let’s solve this problem. [Read more…] about Ad Agency: Why No Sales Methodology?
You might want to start at Part One. Part One also tells you, based on my own personal perspective of myself, why you might want to believe most, if not all, of what I am about to tell you.
13. Grow your digital assets faster. Bring on more technologists to leapfrog even early-adopter digital agencies. A lot of agencies are now behind simply because they didn’t start hiring more geeks sooner.
14. Pick a growth area. It’s not too late to become the smartest video or mobile agency (no one is yet.) Not even the big boys have mobile figured out. However, it may be too late to be known as the best “social media agency” given the sea of social experts. One more digital point, and I know that you know this — digital agencies have a higher multiple than full-service agencies. If you want to sell in the next three years, you best add valuable digital skill-sets.
15. Provide exceptional client service. All AE’s must know how to think like a client in order to anticipate client needs and address any potential issues before they materialize and metastasize. Consider sending your AE’s to an AE class. The worst call I could ever imagine is a client telling me that our account service sucked. It’s just too easy to fix. Fixing creativity is much harder.
16. Create an agency work process that is dedicated to profitability. Then stick with it. The ever-elastic creative process must be tamed. If you need a work process template ask me and I’ll shoot you one. [Read more…] about How To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency (2 of 2)
I’ve been working as a senior executive and owner in the advertising, digital and Internet startup worlds since the golden 1980’s. My global and regional clients and new business wins include General Mills, Harrah’s, J&J, Intel, Microsoft, Nabisco, Northwest Airlines and Nike. And, many smaller regional clients you might never have heard of unless you are on the west coast.
Over the years, I’ve made hundreds of business decisions. Some were brilliant and some were ‘learning experiences’. I’ve decided to share my top 25 business-building lessons with you. No, I am not so crazy to think that these will instantly make your agency the next 72andSunny. But, I do know that most of these lessons represent best practices that, if followed, can help make you be more successful.
The path that got me here included sixteen years at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide as Business Development Director North America, General Manager Minneapolis, European Director in London and Management Director in New York. After I discovered the Internet browser in 1994, I left advertising for seven years to be CEO and founder of two Internet publishing and technology startups. One was one of the first major online newspapers. The other company created technology that allowed people to have meaningful conversations with a computer – Microsoft bought the technology in 2005. If you were online in the early 2000’s you might have talked with our SmarterChild bot on instant messaging platforms. Over 20 million people did.
After my digital sojourn, I moved from New York to Oregon in 2002 to buy the advertising agency RalstonGroup. In the ten years that I ran the agency, we bought the sports marketing agency Citrus, took their name and added clients like Dr. Martens, Legalzoom, Montana Lottery, Nike’s AOR college and Major League Baseball accounts and the U.N.
I understand the advertising industry from the perspective of huge to small agencies and have sat on the client side of the table.
By the way, I now run an agency consultation business that specializes in business development. I help agencies find their positioning sweet spot and build action-oriented business development plans. I just published my second book, The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. This book is a very detailed how-to about how to manage and create business-winning new business pitches.
My experience as a consultant and the opportunity to look under the hood of many agencies has confirmed that the following ideas can help add value to most, if not all, agencies.
I hope that by now you think that I must know what I am talking about. If so, here you go…
[Read more…] about How To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency (1 of 2)