Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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Advertising Agency New Business: A Personal Update

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PL-logo-no-tag-hi - subway

Here is a quick update on my business life. I’ll be on a mini-vacation for a few days

I started to spin my advertising agency new business consultancy in late February by loading up my blog with keyword-rich “advertising agency new business / business development” content. Around 15,000 words or so in a bunch of evergreen posts. I supported that with tweets for both my posts and retweets of related content.

I continued the inbound marketing program and now have 184 posts.

These include some posts for my book, “Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide.”

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I supplemented this blog activity with guest posts on the highly visited  AdPulp and Agency Post blogs to start to build authority for peterlevitan.com. I am about to start a series on how clients find and choose advertising agencies for Advertising Week.

I built my agency directory on Pinterest using outsourced help from a great assistant in the Philippines via Odesk. Agencies now send me information on their new websites.

I wrote a couple of white papers on how Seattle and Portland agencies use (or overuse) social media on their websites. I sent Seattle Advertising and Digital Agencies and Their Love Of Social Media and a Portland version to Seattle and Portland agencies. Despite how brilliant the white papers are, I wasn’t surprised that I only got a 5% response (as in, thanks.) Why? I don’t think most agencies are sufficiently curious about virtually anything but their own navel. (I only write this because people tell me they enjoy my honesty.)

I built “The Good, Bad & Ugly”, a review of advertising agency websites and how agencies do or do not do a good job with their interent marketing programs. I gave the presentation in New York to a group of agency CEO’s. I’ve also presented this in Seattle and Portland.

I just ran a Portland Advertising Federation event about how advertising agencies could / should work with startups. I interviewed folks from Wieden+Kennedy, Nike+ Accelerator, Upstart Labs and Opal, a very smart startup that a Portland agency launched. I’ll put up a video of the event soon.

The net.. you may be wondering…

I’ve got agency clients in Portland, New York, Milan and hopefully Mexico (care of a recent discussion.) I’ve worked on agency positioning, agency Internet marketing, the whole enchilada advertising agency new business plan and RFP management. I have been helpful. Or, so they say.

So far so good.

Nerds.com

In the past couple of weeks a team from the USA (that’s me plus one more), Budapest, Scotland and soon Thailand launched a new business based on the power of Nerds (its now in alpha for testing purposes.) Nerds will be a website plus for nerds and the people interested in the nerd lifestyle. Here is a great stat… there are over 2.2 million monthly broad matches for the term “nerds” on Google. This is huge. The goal of the business is to “own” the idea of nerd and monetize it. I’d like to think of the business as becoming a Fab meets Betches Love This.

Cartoon / comics characters might play a large role. We are meeting with a LARGE animation company this week in California. Who knows.

This is my third internet start-up.

Stay way tuned.

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?

2 Must Have Social Media Tools

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“Must have” Social Media Tools… “Must Have”, really? Well, ya know, directive copy like that just may have gotten you to click on this post – so there. OK, on to the meat.

Social media is a very hard working marketing tool. But, authoring social media is time consuming and we need to make sure that we are efficient  Now that’s an understatement. Here are a couple of tools that will make your social media campaigns work harder and look better.

Twylah

Get a free Twitter Brand Assessment Action Plan Twylah

Here is a nice freebie. Go to Twylah and get a free brand assessment of your Twitter activity. I filled out the form and a day later got a very revealing report that told me that I was not creating twitter copy that delivered on my core strategy of letting the world know that I am a master at helping ad and digital agencies grow. Oops. I learned a lot. Here is what Twylah says on their website…

YOUR BRAND ASSESSMENT REVEALS

  • Your true brand identity (it may not be what you think!)
  • Which of your brand topics are resonating with your audience and which are not!
  • The simplest and quickest way possible to create branded content that showcases your unique brand and business value

PicMonkey

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PicMonkey is an online photo editor that rivals the basics of Photoshop without your needing to go to Photoshop academy. I’ve been using Photoshop for years but know that I probably only use 15% of its features. PicMonkey gives me that 15% and its way easier and faster to use. This is a great tool for editing, and adding copy, to your social media images.

Don’t forget to visit my Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory. Is your agency on it?

Pinterest: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site With Pinterest

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Pinterest works for my marketing. It should work for you. My best advice… get in early. It is still early with only 10 -15% male usage.

Social media marketing podcast 38, in this episode Melanie Duncan shares why marketers should use Pinterest to help drive more traffic to their website and increase sales.

Read more from the source: socialmediaexaminer.com

And, take a look at my Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory (Is your agency missing?)

Pinterest Growth & Men – A Missed Opportunity

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Its nice to be special. Seems I am. I’m a member of the 5% of men that use Pinterest (see my Advertising Agency Directory.)

I’ve got to imagine that the number of men using Pinterest will increase due to Pinterest’s ease of use and visual backbone (I recently stumbled upon a London escort agency that uses Pinterest!) Beyond escorting, Pinterest is now a major source of referral traffic — beating out even Twitter. Here is a chart from eMarketer on Pinterest demographics and one from  Shareaholic on Pinterest’s growth.

With the rush to social media, why aren’t more advertising guys using Pinterest…. or, just checking it out? I bet your client knows more about it than you do.

emarketer pinterest demos

 

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