ad agency

The Unignorable Advertising Agency

Peter · May 23, 2016 · 1 Comment

The Unignorable Advertising Agency Wins New Clients

There are lots of ways to win a new account for your advertising agency. You get a referral (the default for many agencies); you have unique expertise (let’s say e-commerce); you are known as a specialist in a category or geography; you have a kick-ass thought leadership program that gets read and passed along; you are an SEO genius and are listed on page one for your Google keywords.

I’ll show you one more approach below.

An Unignorable List

But first, here’s a list of ways to avoid getting a prospective client’s positive attention. Even worse, some profound ways for you to be very very ignored.

Send them a one-off copy-heavy email and hope they respond.
Send them a series of emails about how wonderful your agency is (not them or their issues), and then hope they respond.
Find other special ways to bug the hell out of them. Multiple voicemail messages anyone?
Ensure that your agency sounds exactly like the other agencies trying to get the client’s attention. Here’s a list of me-too advertising agency positionings. Where are you on this list?
Make sure your agency’s website looks just like your competitor’s website. Similar jargon? WordPress templates, anyone?
Hope that the prospects will go on and on to find your position on Google that’s on page 4 of the listings for your competitive agency set.
Start, stop, start, stop, start your inbound and outbound business development program.
Make new business an “oh, we’ll get to that” proposition.

And on and on. I’ll stop so I won’t bore you. Or worse, scare you.

Maybe smarter… here is a way out.

Why Not Try Being Unignorably Creative?

Clients are smart. Clients get social media. Clients can produce their own content these days. Clients understand marketing (sort of). Even worse, many clients think they can bring all of that in-house.

But what they can’t do is be unignorably creative thinkers. Just can’t do that. Not in their DNA. Nope. But it’s in yours, and it is a major reason for your existence (unless you are just data marketing or apps geeks, etc.) and, if used intelligently — your creative secret sauce.

One of the ways that the leading (and famous) agencies get incoming new business inquiries is by being ‘unignorable‘ and you know the usual agency suspects because you hear about them every award season and read about them in AD AGE. The thing is that you know how to be famous too. Many in our industry are chasing technology when they should be chasing and proving their creativity. In the advertising industry, creativity breeds fame.

Chase Unignorable – Canada Style [Read more…] about The Unignorable Advertising Agency

Write Your Advertising Agency Book

Peter · May 7, 2016 · Leave a Comment

My Books Make Me Happy

This post was generated by my smiling at Powell’s Books. See why below.

I’ve written two books. Both are self-published on Amazon as a book-book and eBook. The first, Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide was my training-wheels book. It is about using suicide as a financial planning tool (OK, and a deep discussion of suicide itself).

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. (yes you can learn more about it and then buy it at the top of this page) is a best seller in the narrow category of advertising agency business development books. It has worked hard as a business development tool for me and because it has sold well, it generates some cash, too.

That’s two books. I am already thinking trough book #3. Yes, folks, you can publish books too and should think hard about the value of taking the time to write a book as an agency marketing tool. It isn’t as difficult as you think and an agency is perfectly positioned to get that book out the door..

Here are links to a couple of “how-to’s”….

How to Write An Advertising Agency Book. This post includes a video of my HubSopt book writing presentation.

Yes, You Can Write And Publish A business Book In 6 Months. Yes, you can!

Happy At Powell’s Books

So I am cruising through Portland’s Powell’s City Of Books (it’s the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupies an entire city block and sells over 1 million books.) As a lark, I typed my name into their database and… yup, my book The Levitan Pitch. was listed. This was a surprise because the book is only distributed on Amazon and must have made it to Powell’s as a used book sale. That means that someone in Portland bought the book and then sold it to Powell’s. Cool. Everyone wins.

Here’s what I saw on the screen…

How To Build A Client Prospect list

Peter · May 6, 2016 · Leave a Comment

The Ad Agency Client Prospect List

Update 28 March 2019: I am adding ContactOut to my list of tools that can help you find the work email address and phone numbers of your prospects. You know, the prospects that are on your very focussed short list of clients that want to work with you but do not know you exist. Some smart product language from ContactOut:

ContactOut is a simple browser extension that helps you find email addresses and phone numbers of anyone on LinkedIn. We’ve been around for just over three years and already have thousands of users from a third of the Fortune 500 (like Microsoft, PwC, and Symantec). ContactOut finds emails from 75% of Linkedin users (2x better than the next closest competitor) at a 97% accuracy rate. It’s earned us multiple mentions on the ahrefs blog as one of the best freemium email outreach tools available.

Inbound Marketing Is Nice, But…

I am a card-carrying inbound marketer. Most of my advertising agency clients come to me via my inbound efforts that include some decent SEO, hundreds of informative blog posts and SMM (Social Media Manipulation – take that S&M). This is most likely how you found this website.

However, if your marketing an advertising agency that knows what clients it should have based on its brand position, category experience, and skills, inbound alone won’t do the trick. You will need to employ one or more outbound marketing techniques to directly reach those clients and their decision makers. You’ll do this by creating a list. Yes, a duh. But, a critical duh. I do not agree with the idea that B2B direct marketing is dead. Only DM programs that can and should be ignored are dead.

I loved building client prospect lists for my ad agency. The act of list building focused our business development objectives and strategies and provided a very clear trajectory for our outbound and inbound marketing programs. I view the art and science of database building to be a critical element of business development.

I recommend that my advertising agency clients develop a top 25 to 50 company/owner/marketing director business development ‘A’ list. These are those special clients that will be directly and personally targeted via a customized thought-leadership sales program. You will have to go well past cold calling to warm calling to entice these marketers to listen to your message.

At the same time, build a longer list (250 – 1,000) for less intensive outreach via somewhat automated marketing tools like your email program. This list is designed to keep you top-of-mind within a much broader set. Note: My regional agency Citrus had a monthly mailing list of well over 1,500. One of the key values of this large list was that we knew that we needed to stay top-of-mind within a very large group of people who know people. Any of these might wake up needing a new agency. Be active, not too passive.

Prospect List Building Criteria – From Macro To Micro

Establish your ‘A’ list using strategic and realistic client prospect criteria. In the past, I have used the following criteria to build lists for my agency. Of course, your criteria might be different.

First, include any prospects that you already know or you know you from existing lists including your email list (a key reason to have an active blog); past events (like what you should do with all of those collected business cards) and your very own LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook Followers.

Secondly, make a list of all of the clients in your target categories (specific business categories to geographic fit) that currently use competitive agencies. Obvious? Sure. But, you’d be surprised at how few agencies keep this client opportunity list fresh.

Decision-Making Criteria – You Want to get to “Yes.”

Here is a list of primary criteria questions for that ‘A’ list. If the answer is a big ‘no’ you might not want to waste your time with this client. [Read more…] about How To Build A Client Prospect list

The 4 Worst Habits Of Advertising Agency Sales

Peter · April 25, 2016 · Leave a Comment

The 4 Worst Habits Of Advertising Agency Sales

Yes, just 4 ~~worst~~ bad sales habits.

After a few years of digging deep into the business development plans and the daily habits of a range of advertising, PR, design and digital agencies, a few common bad habits rear their heads all too often. Here are what I think are the 4 primary bad habits that can be avoided with sound planning and an ongoing system that yields agency-wide ‘sales consciousness.’

Bad Habits Be Gone

1. No Business Development Plan – I Mean Sales Plan

Over 60% of agencies do not have a detailed market-ready business development plan. This plan must be objectives driven and reflect the changes in market behaviors – how marketers think and the evolving world of marketing tools – that are going on in B2B marketing.

When I say objectives, I mean the business development plan must be a part of a sound business plan. I tell my agency clients that they must start with a business plan – even if it is one page long. One concise page can be a good thing. Admission: I could never get my agency’s plan on one page.

Back to sales. Here are some lean and mean bullet points:

You must know what you are selling. Just saying digital or social is not enough. Some form of specialization is warranted. Read this on agency positioning.
Be able to express why you are unique. I won’t bore you by saying that you need a distinctive brand – you know that. The good news is that most of your competitors are not distinctive. And, most do not have messaging systems that bring the agency positioning alive.
Know how what you are selling will (must) resonate with the needs of your target clients. Obvious point: put yourself in their shoes. Today’s marketing director type is nervous. Help them do their job. Ongoing thought leadership rules in this space. It is also very SEO-friendly. Like, um, that’s probably how you got to this page.
Plan on how your agency, its story, work and thinking will get found via both in and outbound strategies (you will need both).
Be competitive.
Going slow will not win. Here is a great quote from Mario Andretti:

“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

2. Taking The Eye Of The Ball

We all know this one.

Our unwavering desire to please our clients means that they most often come first. OK, I get it. But, the fact is that running a healthy profitable agency with positive skilled employees has to come before client service. If you don’t have a well-run agency that is financially secure, the idea of paying attention to client needs will be a doomed effort. Your company comes first because the client hired your wonderfulness in the first place.

In my opinion, the only way that you can get to well-run is to have a very positive cash flow and ROI. You’ll get there two ways. 1. Build a service package (agency management, pricing and costs) that helps to make your P&L sing. 2. Run a very smart 24/7 new business program that gets the right clients (you must clearly define right for your agency) in the door. As you know, older clients will walk out the back door. So keeping your front door top of mind is rather important.

3. You Do Not Have A Business Development Sales Culture

First, a point. We call it business development. But, it is sales. And getting it right inside of your company that lives in one of the most competitive service categories is critical. Just imagine a category where your competition are all expert marketers and have super articulate glib management that usually dresses real well. That’s your sales universe.

Yikes, I’ll repeat the obvious: Business development can be daunting. It is a team sport.

It is essential that everyone at the agency understands that growth is a primary objective and that they play a role in agency sales. They will be asked to help with marketing programs, RFP’s and pitches. They need to be aware of any opportunity that floats by via friends, ex-clients and reading the press. It is all about instilling a culture of sales- consciousness. Much of this will come from agency management’s focus on new business efforts, talking to the agency about what is going on in and outside the agency and by acting as a positive role model.

4. You Hire A Business Development Director And Cross Your Fingers

One of the first things agencies say to me is that they have not had a positive business development director experience. Having been Saatchi’s business development director, running two internet firms and my own agency that had sales staff, I have a few thoughts on why this happens.

First of all, reread the first 3 bad habits. If you do not have a sales plan, an agency with the will and time to execute, and an agency that recognizes that growth is critical and is to a certain degree, everyone’s job, virtually any good sales person will fail.

I have a couple of important blog posts on the business development function and how to help make them successful. Here you go:

Is Your Agency Business Development Director Doomed?

As you might expect, the answer is no.

How To Aim Your Agency Business Development Director.

This is the blog post with a sample contract.

That’s it. No, No! That Isn’t It.

Read my best-read blog posts – they are all about advertising agency sales. I’ve designed them to help you win. And, hey, while you are at it, why not call me? You might have nothing to lose except one or two nasty habits.

Top 11 Marketing Podcasts

Peter · April 13, 2016 · Leave a Comment

My Favorite 11 Marketing Podcasts

This blog post is the latest installment of my growing Advertising Agency Resources list. I’ll get to the Top 11 essential marketing podcasts below. But, first, a bit of my personal podcasting history. I’ve been hot – then cold – then hot on this subject.

I was early into the podcasting arena starting a series of podcasts for my Oregon agency Ralston360 (it eventually became Citrus) the mid-2000’s. I fell in love with podcasting because a producing a weekly audio podcast series was relatively easy and being early into podcasting made our agency look like we were ahead of the curve. Sometimes I get ahead of the market – I think we were in the case of podcasting. It was one of my ‘shiny pennies’.

Our audio content included 1:1 interviews and episodes based on our thought leadership white papers. I liked that the podcasts could be delivered via RSS and it got my agency on the global iTunes platform. It also gave the agency something fairly new to talk about to our clients and prospects – looking like you have your agency’s finger on the digital pulse is a very good thing.

Here’s a review on how we promoted our podcasting skills from a 2006 article on our program from BuzzSonic.

Podcasting FAQ Via the Virtual iPod

Here’s a clever idea. Marketing and design specialists Ralston360 have come up with a great angle to market their services, a streaming video that explains all the basics of podcasting all wrapped up in a ‘virtual ipod’.

There’s also a free 14 page whitepaper, ‘Podcasting-the Pod Has Landed’ (in PDF format) on the website (in exchange for your email, natch!) which explains a bit more. They also have another free download, ‘To Blog or Not to Blog’ which kind of speaks for itself but is worth a look for newbies if you’re thinking of starting your own.

We promoted our podcast skill set via a website that featured an interactive iPod that you could scroll to get to various ‘how to’ sections. That’s the scrollable iPod to the left. It was one of the agency’s coolest and best promotional efforts and got us lots of attention. Here is a link to the podcasting white paper on SlideShare mentioned above. Remember, this was written over ten years ago.

The Shiny Penny Has Landed: Podcasting is Hot

Podcasting has seen a recent surge. Much of it, unlike the olden days, is now slickly produced by large media companies like NPR. Here are a couple of resources that help to explain the current positive interest in podcasting. That said, take a look at the Six Degrees of Separation podcast below. There is at least one major agency cranking these out on a very consistent basis.

TechCrunch.

TechCrunch’s article “The Future Of Podcasting” is a smart article on where podcasting is going and why. As you can see from their chart, podcasting is rising after a fall from grace (remember my shiny penny dates) in the mid-2000’s.

PEW.

Additionally, PEW Research center published its Podcasting factsheet in 2015 that shows the growth of podcasting.

In the fall of 2014, the medium of podcasting achieved a milestone moment. The podcast Serial – which reinvestigated the 1999 murder of Maryland high school student Hae Min Lee – became the fastest podcast to reach 5 million streams or downloads in iTunes history. Although the success of Serial – a spinoff of WBEZ’s This American Life – clearly represented a new peak in the popularity of podcasts, Pew Research Center data show that the medium has, in fact, been steadily growing its audience over the past two years.

Read the factsheet here.

11 Best Advertising and Marketing Podcasts

Finally…the list of the top 11 advertising related podcasts. Like most of you, I listen in my car or at the health club. I was a major listener when I lived in New York and had a lovely hour-long commute. My Portland commute is now only ten minutes. This has severely reduced the amount of time I listen. I wonder if the use of podcasting is higher where people spend more time in their cars = Los Angeles and even Montana or on the subway.

Build A Better Agency. Drew Mclellan’s series is dedicated to the art of advertising agency management and new business. Listen up.

Tim Ferris. I became a Tim Ferris addict after reading his brilliantly titled best seller, “The Four Hour Work Week.” Tim combines a very active and curious mind, an effervescent talent for self-promotion in the best sense and a very long list of talented friends to interview. I find at least 75% of his podcasts (and blog posts) to fall in the zone of high mental stimulation. Of course, one of his recent interviews is with Seth Godin.

Duct Tape Marketing. Another serious and broad look at the tools and techniques marketers are employing today.

Foundr Magazine. Nathan Chan interviews some of the most successful founders in the world to find out what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. Go for the osmosis.

TED Radio Hour. If you don’t have the time to watch TED Talks, then listen to them via their podcast.

Six Pixels Of Separation. A secret… Leverage the power of social media to grow your agency. One of the most active advertising agency leaders using social media is Canada’s Mitch Joel (CEO of WPP’s Mirum) and his Six Pixels Of Separation podcast which, as of today, get this, has 508 podcasts. Clearly a record and what should be an inspiration to any agency CEO who values the marketing power of looking smart and building fame for his agency. Oh, you’ll see just one of the reasons why I love this podcast by clicking on the link.

Sound Opinions. Now that we’ve killed the record / CD store, it seems like it is more difficult (as in time consuming) to know what’s going on in music. I get my fix from MBEZ’s Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis. Listen to this and have something other than Steph Curry to talk about at those client dinners.

Freakonomics Radio. The Freakonomics team explores “the hidden side of everything”. From the economy, headline news to pop culture. A great example is the “Economics of Sleep” show.

#ASKGARYVEE. Best-selling books, one of the fastest growing advertising agencies, and a renowned wine business. Gary is the energizer bunny of agency CEO’s. Listen to this show about how to accelerate business growth. Your clients are probably listening to him.

Smart Passive Income. This podcast series from Pat Flynn will do two things for you. 1. It will make you much smarter about the universe of digital strategies and tactics (even how to do a podcast series). But, more importantly, 2. It will help you figure out how to make money by building your own online business. Pat made over $171,000 last month – not working for the MAN and he will tell you how. A way to get past advertising.

Social Media Marketing. Michael Stelzner’s podcast is designed to deliver the latest news and perspectives on social media. There is a very good chance your clients listen, so you better too. Need an up to date Facebook strategy? Listen to this show.

More & More Online Resources

This post is just one more element of my Big Advertising Agency Resource List. Let me know if I am missing anything.