ad agency

More Advertising Agency Resources

Peter · August 30, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Even More Advertising Agency Resources – August 2019

Its Friday 30 August, the ‘end‘ of summer, so I thought I’d shoot y’all some new advertising agency resources that could help you grow your agency. Or, at least, provide some much-needed efficiency. I’ll list these here and then add them to my The Big Advertising Agency Resource List.

Side note, thanks to all of the people that send me their favorite resources that I can have my huge staff of resource-munchkins review and pass on.

Go Ahead Play With These

Awesome Screenshot. Awesome Screenshot captures images, the whole image or a selected area, and records my screen so I can put the images on this very blog or use in my white papers and recommendations. For convenience, it sits on my Chrome bar.

Bulk.ly. I use Buffer to schedule and send out (as in LinkedIn and Twitter) my current and best-of past blog posts. But, I have to admit that it can be a pain in the ass to remember to do it on a regular basis. Bulky helps to automate the system and keeps a Buffer queue full-up.

Checkbot. Checkbot check’s your site (or others) to see and fix SEO, speed and security issues. Are you doing better than your competition? How are your clients doing?

ContactOut. I’ll use ContactOut’s words: “Find anyone’s personal email and phone number.” And, “ContacOut is used by recruiters at 30% of the Fortune 500.”

FormSwift. FormSwift has forty or so forms on their website that you can use to create and edit important documents. Documents include employee handbooks; employment contracts, non-competes, lease agreements, balance sheets, and my favorite: a resignation letter.

No Mas Verano

That’s it for summer, well soon. And for today.

Seasonality is interesting. I know from my years of working with advertising agencies on their growth and profitability strategies, that my incoming lead email will light up a bit once the summer passes. While I know that we’ve moved beyond the days when ad agencies got real quiet in the summer, there is still a deep-seated sense that September means that we all should get our business development acts in order. So, go ahead… give me a shout.

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

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

A New Advertising Award

Peter · August 26, 2019 · 1 Comment

Actually, A New Advertising Award And A Pat On My Back

I’m about to digress before I get to the new (to me) advertising award.

I’ve had zillions of conversations with advertising agencies about why their agency blogs get little to no traffic. I have lots of reasons. However, a key one is that essentially, in many cases, nobody wants to read their shit – see what I mean here.

But… There is simply no good reason that agencies should write stuff that either nobody wants to read or is simply a kind of a rehash of what other agencies have already written. Therefore, my award, listed below, is for demonstrating that if you write about things that your target market/audience wants to read, they will actually read your shit.

End of digression.

Award Number One: Ad Stars

I’ve added a new award to my award list. Go check out Ad Stars on my master award list at Top Advertising and Design Awards.

Thanks to my friend Bobby McGill and his must-read branding in asia magazine for alerting me to Ad Stars. As the article says, “Ad Stars wraps up its 12th year with winners chosen from 20,645 entries submitted from 60 countries.”

Here’s the winner’s list.

Go win this award next year. Put it on you ad award list. You have one, right?

Award Number Two: Me

I am giving this award to myself for writing about a subject that appears to be rather dear to the hearts of advertising agencies. The subject is the desire to win an advertising award. I know this because my 2019 blog post, Top Advertising and Design Awards has + 7,400 views as of today.

My point? I deliver valuable information to my prospective clients. I know that you can “own” a subject that matters to your readership. The readership (as in new clients) you really want.

Advertising Agency Recession Freakout

Peter · August 15, 2019 · 1 Comment

Advertising Agency Prosperity During A Recession – Fuhgedaboudit

Is your advertising agency ready for the next recession? Have you been thinking that the current sweet economy that has helped the small and medium-sized advertising agency market to prosper in the past couple of years was going to last forever?

Well, the time has come to fuhgedaboudit.

Early last week a smart agency client of mine asked me about the current volatility of the stock market that is driven by increasingly inept and ill-timed trade war announcements. He mentioned that his clients are getting skittish because they do not have a clear view of the future. Uncertantude is not a harbinger of growth in client marketing, advertising spending and therefore agency security.

Yesterday the stock market dropped 3% on thinking that a global recession is coming. Does this make you feel secure? Even if the market continues its up and down ride, clients will be spooked for awhile.

The Advertising Agency and Recessions

Recessions breed fear and loathing within client ranks. I know this having gone through some major recessions where worried clients lower budgets, stop programs and begin to fire and change agencies. You do not need to hear my personal history. But you should remember the ‘great recession’ of December 2007 through June 2009. The USA GDP dropped by 5.1%.

To be direct, that recession fucked the advertising industry and I am not sure that the industry, as in what it can charge clients, has ever recovered. I won’t go into detail about the recession. But, if you need a memory nudge, watch these two movies again: The Big Short and The Queen Of Versaille.

What Can You Do? Think Business Development Baby.

You know what happens to client spending and loyalty during an advertising recession. What can you do about it other the tried and mostly failed attempts of trying to convince clients that recessions are exactly the time to increase advertising branding and spending.

Well, you should now up your agency to prospect B2B marketing and spending. Get that account-based marketing program off the shelf. That means it is time to market your agency because:

One or more of your best clients will exit through the back door.
You’ve been too complacent. When business is good, advertising agencies think the good time will roll on. Not.
Sorry, referrals will not sustain any agency growth during a recession.
Good news, your competitive advertising, digital and PR agencies have been somnolent as well. They’ve given you a big marketing gap to fill.
“Consultants” like Accenture are smarter than agencies when it comes to managing recessions. They will eat up some business.

The recession is coming. Tomorrow? Next year? Who knows. But, I do know it is coming.

It is time to up your advertising agency marketing game. By the way, this is not my first rodeo. Here is an older blog post on recessions.

My recession marketing reading list. Go forth.

My Recession Reading List…

How To Outsource Linkedin Business Development

Peter · June 27, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Is It Time To Outsource Your Advertising Agency’s LinkedIn Marketing?

Advertising agencies often ask me if I can help them outsource their business development operations. This happens with such frequency that I thought I’d occasionally point to a quality third-party resource. Here is a company that can help you outsource your Linkedin marketing.

Lead Cookie & Linkedin Leads

I recently spoke with Isaac Marsh of Lead Cookie which bills itself on its website as…

Lead Cookie is a done-for-you LinkedIn Lead Generation service. We manage your profile for you and help you generate leads on LinkedIn.

We manage your Linkedin profile and start warm conversations between you and your ideal customers.

On average our customers book 3-8 qualified calls per month as a result of our service.

Simply put, Lead Cookie provides an outreach service that can manage your advertising agency’s LinkedIn marketing program. The service is designed to make new-targeted contacts for your agency that result in quality leads.

How It Works

A Lead Cookie strategist works with you to hone your positioning and messaging and helps you create customized messaging.

Lead Cookie manages your LinkedIn profile and sends out connection requests to your targeted prospective clients.

They manage the connection, make an intelligent introduction and ask to connect. This leads to asking for a meeting, and if necessary, will create a drip sales sequence to keep the conversation moving along.

Goal: hand off the connection, the new business lead, to the advertising agency.

For a more detailed explanation of Lead Cookie’s system, head over to its founder’s how-to market B2B business on Linkedin guide.

I recommend that you also explore Lead Cookie’s resources page (you will get much smarter about how to use LinkedIn as a prospecting tool even before you give Lead Cookie a call).

If you are wondering if I have a business relationship with Lead Cookie, I do not. But, I have a goal of helping agencies grow and find ways to manage the hard task of 24/7 business development.

Why Do This? Sorry, Your Advertising Agency Will Get Fired.

Many advertising agencies tell me that they are too busy to run a 24/7 business development program. Excuses include:

We are too busy with current clients

We really do not have a plan;

We are poor at execution

We just let our biz dev director go

It is very difficult to keep up with the ongoing changes in social media platforms

Sorry guys, there is absolutely no good reason, or excuse, for not to running an active business development program.

I wrote about the need for business development in this article: Your Advertising Agency Will get Fired.

Simply put, clients will walk out the back door. You need new ones to continuously run in the front door.

Outsourcing some of your biz dev work to a quality provider makes sense.

Find the right resource and give it a go. Why not start here: outsource Linkedin marketing.

Here Is A Self-Serving Message:

Speaking of outsourcing. Give me a shout and we can discuss your agency’s business development program. I’ll give you a smart idea in 15 minutes. I have worked with over one hundred agencies to help them grow and prosper and smile. Take me up on my Vito Corleone offer.