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The New Business of Advertising

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Should Your Advertising Agency Blog?

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The Advertising Agency Blog? Worth The Effort?

downloadblogYou know all about blogging so I won’t go down the pedantic click-bait road of using a headline like: “24 Unbelievable Reasons That Your Advertising Agency Should Blog”.

But, do you actually know if your advertising agency should blog? Here are the pros and cons and a path beyond running and jumping through the hoops of doing it right… like writing over 7,000 words per month (I made that up, but it’s about right if you want Google to dig you).

Blogging: The Pro’s

Blogging is an incredibly powerful new business attractor tool. Virtually all of my incoming leads and new ad agency clients come to me because I have over 500 well-targeted blog posts… just like this one. It works for me.

What about you?

Your agency blog allows you to self-publish thought leadership on a daily or weekly basis.

Your blog delivers SEO chutzpah to your website that results in more repeat views than your ‘brochure’ website could ever generate.

You have a refined content plan based on agency objectives.

You target the right viewership (as in future clients) with targeted posts.

Your blog is Ta Da… 24/7 national owned media.

Your best blog posts will get shared accross the universe.

Your posts are designed to build your new business pipeline.

Your blog is used to reinforce agency culture and acts as a new employee attractor.

Blogging: The Con’s

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Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google & The Death Of Advertising

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Does Advertising Still Work In The World Of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google?

069c72cAccording to Scott Galloway, professor of Marketing and Brand Strategy at the NYU Stern School of Business, “The Gang of Four” (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon) and the new world of  digital (I actually don’t know what to call user owned media anymore) are killing your advertising agency. Or, at least dramatically decreasing its effectiveness. Watch the video.

By the way, read to the bottom and see how Galloway helped me to grow my agency.

“Advertising is a tax that only poor people pay.”

Yup, he said this. You have some bucks. Do you watch ads unless you put on your agency “I better pay attention” hat? Do you use an ad blocker? Do you record TV shows and skip the ads? Would you rather pay a ‘Netflix tax’ to watch almost anything and avoid the ads? Yes or no, watch this video. Especially at the 3:00 mark where Galloway shows how advertising does not work (or as hard) as it used to, especially for CPG brands. And, of course, note the tepid valuation growth of WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic.

 

Back To Me.

Two things.

One: Pay attention to what’s happening in the macro business universe. Clients are and you need to tailor your sales message to overcome, or better yet, leverage what is happening to advertising today.

Two: OK, how did Galloway help me grow my agency? I stole a very Big idea from his L2. Go here and see what I mean at “An Irresistible New Business Sales Pitch.”. I’ve stolen other great ideas to my advantage. Give me a shout and I’ll show you what I mean.

 

Bing Needs An Advertising Agency

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Microsoft’s Bing and Your Advertising Agency

bingI just took a look at my WordPress referral stats. I was discussing where my referrals come from with the 4A’s ex-Executive VP Michael Donahue who I just interviewed about the world of storytelling agencies. I’ll let you know when I get that up as a guest post on a major advertising news site. By the way, I love guest posting. I also love looking at MY stats.

The stats showed something that I find CRAZY! Back to that in a sec.

Help Bing, Please.

This post is about relevance. I urge all of my agency clients to make sure that when they contact a prospective agency client that they are very clear about how they can help them. I mean help them with some uber smartness that you think will impact an important business issue or opportunity. Your communications should be about how you can help them. Not a random liturgy of how wonderful you are.

Bing Needs Your Help.

What you can easily see from my WordPress chart is that Google rocks and Bing, um, sucks. What could you do with this information?

Well, I’d think about going to Bing and giving them a solution. It won’t be a competitive message, hard to compete with Google. But it could be a Bing-only experience that you won’t get anywhere else. Example? Remember the first time you saw The Wilderness Downtown (which for some of you might be today.) From Chrome Experiments…

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

Note: Bing spent millions a few years ago trying to get you excited about their search platform. Unfortunately, it was way wasted bucks. As you can see.

Really, WTF were they thinking? JWT made this magic.

If you think that this Bing project is worth the effort, then take a read of the PCWorld article. It can’t be surprising that there is more info out there that you can use to craft your pitch. You could even use my website (or yours) as the start of a discussion.

referals

 

My 500th & Most Valuable Advertising Blog Post About Saatchi

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Wowzer – This Is My 500th Blog Post

BLOGI  started blogging a few years ago to help promote my ad agency Citrus. We were early and, I have to admit, the blog world was a bit less crowded in the mid-2000’s. Today with over 3,000 marketing services blogs, agency blogs have to work a lot harder and smarter. I’ve tried to do just that here.

To commemorate this personal milestone, I want to make sure that this 500th post is highly valuable to my readership – that’s you. After I ramble a bit about what I think are some of my most useful advertising agency insights, I am going to discuss the essentials of my blogging system as a final point. This system works for me as virtually all of my business leads come from this blog as well as LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare and guest posting which are tied into the blog. These social media actions are directed by very clear objectives and are focused on targeting ‘you’ via the use of personas. I can tell you that, if used correctly, social media is a highly effective inbound marketing platform. But, you know that.

I believe that many of my past posts have provided value since they have been read over 159,000 times, have been shared across the web and, most importantly, drive those sweet incoming leads from agencies (hopefully like yours) that are looking for growth strategies.

Here Are My Top Posts

As you’ll see, my second most read post at over 9,000! covers the worst advertising pitch and presentation ever.

top posts

“The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever”  is about a Saatchi & Saatchi pitch debacle and was one of the reasons I wrote my book on how to run winning pitches. The outcome of this botched pitch was that Saatchi did not win the global Adidas account and I didn’t get to run the account from my very own Saatchi sports agency. Go ahead, buy the book to see all of our mistakes and how to avoid them from Amazon here.

The worst ever pitch blog post is also the reason I put the word Saatchi in this headline. “Saatchi” is serious blog post headline click bait. More on click bait, or better yet, targeted keyword rich blog headlines a bit later.

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Six Ways Ad Agencies Are Winning New Business

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Six Ways Ad Agencies Are Winning New Business

download adHere is a headline from a 2009 Advertising Age article:

By the way, am I the only one confused by AdvertisingAge / AdAge branding. Which is it?

“Six Ways Ad Agencies Are Reeling in New Business Now  Some Novel and Tried-and-True Tricks to Snag Accounts in Recession”

I found the article searching for ways that advertising agencies are winning new accounts. Since the article was from the dark days of the recession, I thought… hey maybe there are some insights that are applicable to today’s agency world. Here’s the Ad Age article and my take.

“Client cutbacks amid the recession have placed intense pressure on agencies, who are clamoring to hold on to the clients they have and starved to add new business where they can. “When times are tight, even the huge agencies go after the tiniest of accounts,” said Ann Billock, a principal at consultancy Ark Advisors in New York. Below, Ad Age shares some of the ways agencies are managing to still snag business.

NETWORK INNOVATIVELY

Having an ample Rolodex is essential to growing your agency, but networking doesn’t have to be about three-martini lunches. Via Group, Portland, Maine, has developed a clever way of drumming up new business. Once a month, founder-CEO John Coleman organizes a get-together of eight to 10 marketing executives to discuss topics such as “technology’s role on the evolution of society and culture.” 

Yes! Create events, face-to-face events that attract your most cherished client prospects. My Portland agency Citrus ran events about new marketing trends in the late 2000’s for clients and prospects. We were able to get folks from LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Microsoft to come to Portland and discuss the newish world of digital and each company’s advertising products. This was a no-brainer for us. We initially ran these in our lobby and when the attendance grew, we rented a big rock hall to add a bit of hipster. Your agency can do this easily. Start small… rent a bar at happy hour and drink and talk. You’ll look smart and cool and sell face-to-face. Beats cold-calling.

SHOW YOUR SOCIAL-MEDIA SAVVY

Having an influencer on your team is a huge asset. Take Dave Armano, VP-experience design at digital agency Critical Mass, or Steve Rubel, senior VP-director of insights for Edelman Digital (and an Ad Age columnist). These are new-business people on social-networking steroids. 

I suggest that your agency designate a partner (reasoning to follow) to author and be the face of your social media. Get out there and do a really great and powerful and consistent job in social because it works (see my recent article on how social works hard for my brand and… because if you can’t look good in social media (!!), how the heck can a client think that you have the chops to ever recommend any social programs to them.? Do unto others, baby.

OK, why a partner? Do you really want to build an employee’s brand and then watch them go across town? This happens. I don’t thin AdvertisingAge gets this one: “Sure, the thoughts they share are their own and not their employers.’ But in the end, the agency wins with talent that is active in consumer conversations.”

ADOPT A RECOGNIZABLE PLATFORM

Agency-positioning efforts such as Kevin Roberts’ “Lovemarks” platform (he really siuggests that a consumer can learn to LOVE their tootpaste) at Saatchi may not be new, but they really can work. One of the more recent platforms to emerge is Publicis Groupe’s “Contagious Ideas”…

“It’s not just some abstract theory,” said Mark Hider, exec VP-director of engagement strategy for Publicis USA. “There is a conversation going on about brands whether we like it or not,” and the key is to “monetize brand conversations, and then alter them in your favor.”

Obvious, right? Um, no. Most agencies don’t look all that different than the shop down the street. It is very easy to look and sound different. Don’t believe me? Call me.

BE WILLING TO CONTORT

Every client seeks flexibility in a partner, but increasingly that requires taking it one step further to build custom-made solutions. There’s WPP’s Enfatico, the agency it built from the ground up for Dell, and more recently DDB Entertainment, a dedicated agency unit at Omnicom for Blockbuster. 

LOL. Blockbuster!!! Guess this article was from the olden days (I bet you have employees that have no clue what Blockbuster was.) OK, here is a better point than AdAge’s building a brand new agency – clearly a point for the holding companies.

You a smaller agency? Why not create niche agency service for a category like Louisiana’s Innovative Advertising did when they offered the restaurant category their specialized website The Fridge. Innovative’s kicking it for their beer client Abita and other edibles, why not isolate this sales message?

WRITE A BOOK

Mitchell Levy, CEO and author at Happy About, says books are the new calling card. According to Mr. Levy, the author is the one asked to speak at conferences and events, and books are a great networking tool when sent to both existing customers and new prospects. 

Um again. I wrote a book on agency pitching and because of that, I have given presentations about how agencies should write books. Please do this for your agancy and follow my directions on how you can make it  a painless process. A link: Yes, You Can Write and Publish A Business Book in 6 Months

OFFER A DIRECT LINE TO THE CEO

Personal attention goes a long way. Anyone who knows Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based agency honcho Jordan Zimmerman knows he is not only accessible to clients 24 hours a day, he’s checking in with them on a daily basis. It’s no coincidence that the shop in the past two years has grown its operation by leaps and bounds, winning an astounding 85% of pitches.

Really, daily? LOL. Do you know a client that wants to talk to an agency CEO daily? Does your cousin want to catch up daily? Ok, the real point is that a small to medium agency CEO’s should be up front and center and accessible with clients and prospects. Why not put the CEO’s contact in the Contact section of your website? What else should the CEO be doing?

That’s it. Know what?

What worked during the recession works today. I always tell my agency clients… Have a bias for action! Want me to tell that to you — lets talk.