Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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8 Vine Ideas For Ad Agency New Business

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I’ve written about the opportunity for an ad, digital or PR agency to leverage the growing awareness and use of Twitter’s Vine, its short-form (as in 6 seconds) video service that runs on iOS and Android, as a new business tool.

I suggested that there has to be an ad agency out there that sees the potential of becoming the first 6-Second ad agency. No, you don’t have to shut down your other services. Just create a Vine division. I think that this could take about 2 hours. Hey, your agency’s new business program probably needs something new to talk about.

Well, here is more fuel. Vines are now shared more often that Instagram photos.

Instagram-vs-VineFrom Memeburn: “According to insights from Twitter-certified analytics partner Topsy the number of Vine posts shared on the site passed the number of Instagram posts late last week, just days after the previously iOS-only Vine launched on Android. It’s an interesting trend, considering the fact that Vine has a much smaller user base than Instagram — it has just 13-million registered users against Instagram’s 100-million active users.For all I know, an agency is doing this.But, I bet that there is still room to grab this tool and run with it. Here are a few thought starters.”

So to help you get going, here are:

8 Ideas For Using Vine For Ad Agency Business Development

  1. Write about Vine on your agency Blog.
  2. Write a Vine (and video marketing) white paper and send it to current and prospective clients.
  3. Run a micro-information-oriented Vine Twitter strategy. Do 3 to 5 Tweets a day for a couple of weeks and watch the stats.
  4. Create a Vine Pinterest site. Think “Best of Vine.”
  5. Do some sample Vine “ads” for client types.
  6. Hire a local comedian to do 6-second comedy skits for your agency.
  7. Get your Vine out: do Vine local reviews of anything: products, services, bars, clubs, bands, dogs, cats (people love dogs and cats.)
  8. Do a Vine about everyone in your agency and add it to your website.

I could keep going but… I’ll save more ideas for my agency clients.

Oh, just in case you need a bit more info, here is today’s infographic.

introducing-vine_5155dc0b885cc

 

 

 

HubSpot, Inbound Marketing & Pinterest

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Only a small fraction of advertising agencies have taped into the power of Pinterest marketing to increase the reach of their business development efforts. More should. To help the advertising world (magnanimous, yes?) I’ve written about the power of Pinterest as an advertising agency business development tool in the past.

HubSpot & Inbound Marketing & Pinterest

HubSpot hubspot on PinterestI was on the HubSpot site today looking for a blog post (Three Ways Foundering Agencies Find Growth) from Agency Post’s Jami Oetting that quoted me – I’ve been getting traffic off the mention –  and I stumbled on HubSpot’s Pinterest site. Its a big deep one. The HubSpot folks, who are clearly dedicated to the power of inbound marketing, do an excellent job of using Pinterest for the distribution of information and as a branding device. I suggest that you take a look at how they are using the site to support their business development program.

The fast, easy to use, visual nature of the site really helps to search for and find some of the tons of social media content that the HubSpot team produces. I think that Pinterest makes it much easier to find what you are looking for and also helps to stumble on the unexpected. Here are some of my favorites:

WonderfulWebinars (especially those of Dan Zarrella and Rand Fishkin)

Marketing Data

Promotion for their INBOUND Conference (including a promotional video that includes Cyndi Lauper)

And…. a review of some smart marketing campaigns (some great charts that you could steal)

The use of Pinterest for business is booming. There are some good ideas here. If your at all flummoxed about Pinterest, give me a shout. Note: This is my Pinterest-based advertising agency directory — are you in it?

A Critical Ad Agency New Business Mistake

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MistakenThrough my agency consultancy, I have been able to look under the hood of lots of advertising, digital and video agencies. One of the most apparent mistakes that some, not all, just some, are making is to not step back and take a hard look at their current assets.

Here’s one mistake.

Online and mobile video marketing is booming. By now we should all know the power of YouTube as a business development tool (well, maybe I should write about this more) and the astonishing growth of video marketing across all of our screens – especially on mobile devices. With all of this activity and daily press, I cannot understand why advertising agencies are not using video marketing in greater numbers as a business development tool. Agency clients are looking for video solutions but most agencies are not leading with their video skill set.

The mistake isn’t that the agencies aren’t using video. The BIG mistake is that they are perfectly positioned to produce quality video but don’t. Huh? Well, if you are a full-service agency then you know how to make videos because you have been producing commercials, and telling short-form stories, for eons. Yet, most of these TV savvy agencies haven’t used video to tell their agency stories on their websites, build compelling YouTube channels, emailed out videos or used new tools like Vine. This is a crazy and a serious missed opportunity.

Here is just one video factoid: Forrester Research reported…

85% of people choose to watch a video about a company online rather than read the rest of the website.

Here is a great example of how to promote your agency using video from London Advertising. Note that their video is up front and way center. It’s the first thing that London wants you to see. It is one of the agency’s primary new business tools.

There is more on online video and that some agencies get it right here.

Does Your Advertising Agency Know Google’s Matt Cutts?

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matt cuttsChances are, and this is the interesting part, if you work in advertising or digital design or mobile marketing there is a good chance that you do not know who Google’s Matt Cutts is. You should because he is one of the most powerful people in global marketing and advertising.

Matt is the head of the webspam team at Goggle. That means that he controls some of the more important methods that Google uses to rank web pages. He and his team can make or break your SEO plans and strategies via updates like Panda and Penguin to Google’s search algorithms (here is some history from SEOMOZ.)  Is this really that important? Is it important that your agency is listed high in a Google search for your keywords (i.e., “advertising agency Atlanta” or “storytelling social media agency”)?

Sorry for this Duh but I want to make a point… Is the SEO work you are doing for your clients well rewarded and wouldn’t be if they were served up on page 4? While I understand that you may leave SEO up to an expert, I think that it’s wise to actually have some understanding about the Google team that decides how Google ranks web pages.

Here is a video from Matt on what is coming up. Yes it is way esoteric. But so are many of the elements of digital marketing.

If you’d like a quick take on Matt’s video pointers, visit The Short Cutts for, well, short cuts.

Since early 2009 Google’s Matt Cutts has recorded a superhuman number of videos to help struggling site owners understand their site in search. While the videos are great, sometimes the guy just needs to get to the point. With that in mind we’ve done the hard work and watched every Matt Cutts video to pull out simple, concise versions of his answers: The Short Cutts!

I may not be a SEO specialist but I have been building websites that rank high and drive organic traffic for 18 years. If you need some high level strategic insights into how to integrate your business development strategy with smart SEO…. well, give me a shout.

 

I’m Off To Visit With The Dalai Lama In Portland

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WOW!

(Up date from after 7 hours with His Holiness… this dude is the DUDE. One of the greatest laughers ever. Maybe my coolest – natural high – experiences ever. I Tweeted a great Vine video. Check it out… @peterlevitan) (Sorry, for some reason beyond my sentient being I can’t seem to embed it)

Dalai