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The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

December 23, 2019 By Peter 22 Comments

Advertising Agency Resource List – Updated Often

#1. An Advertising Agency Survival Guide

Speaking of resources… Here is a comprehensive guide that will help your agency become a winner in today’s market – The Advertising Agency Survival Guide.

#2. Onward.

I want the marketing communications world to be a better place. Therefore, this advertising agency resource list is updated often. Let me know if there is a resource that should be included. – or modified

My advertising agency resource list is curated to help advertising, digital, design and PR agencies easily find the inspiration and industry resources that will help y’all build killer agencies and careers.

As a warm-up to my extensive resource list… I offer a direct link to my best selling book on how to win more new accounts for your agency: The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. I highly recommend that you buy this book. (Of course.)

OK, one more. This Peter Levitan blog has over 650 posts dedicated to helping your marketing communications company grow. I hope that my insights on agency business development, growth and management help you to make more bucks.

I recently added links to:

Website Speed Is Good.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

BROWSEO. We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.

What Are People Searching For?

AnswerThePublic. This is a free visual tool that shows you what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for at Google.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not on Google’s search universe. A look at the top 2019 Google searches may or may not make you a fan of humanity.

Amazon Best Sellers. Here is a list just for you if you want to see what the world is buying.

Social Mention.  Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go. This is what they say (better than I could): Social Mention is a simple, useful tool for monitoring and tracking social media. It helps you see who’s making references to you or your company — or to any topic, for that matter. It aggregates user-generated content from across different social networks, letting you search and analyze it all in one place.

The Advertising Agency Resource List…

Advertising Agency News Sites

Ad Agency Directories

Top Advertising Blogs

Favorite Social Media Tools

Video Marketing Tools & Information

Creative Inspiration & Idea Generation 

Creative Space & Time

Online Advertising Education

Online Legal Resources

Life After Advertising & How To Make $$$

Top Ten Twitter Tools 

Top Advertising And Design Awards

Marketing & Advertising Podcast

Marketing Tool Generators

 

Advertising Agency News Resources

  • Advertising Age. Ad Age delivers the latest news from the world of advertising and marketing agencies.
  • Ad Asia Online. AdAsia Online focuses on automation, advertising technology, and creative technology,
  • AdNews. Australia’s advertising, marketing and media industries news resource.
  • Adweek.  Adweek covers media news, including print, technology, plus.
  • branding in asia. Need to know what’s up in the Asian marketing and advertising world? Sure you do. Check out this comprehensive resource for creative work, news, interviews, and insights. Read it and you just might take the next non-stop to Singapore.
  • Business Insider. Business Insider’s daily take on the ad industry.
  • Campaign Asia. Campaign Asia reports on advertising and emerging media in the Asia Pacific region.
  • Campaign Magazine. Ad industry news from the UK’s advertising industry “bible”.
  • Communication Arts. Print publication offering competitions, forums, feature articles, job bank, graphic design resources and online shopping.
  • Creative. The magazine of promotion and marketing.
  • Digiday. Digiday creates content, services and community that foster change in media and marketing.
  • Direct Marketing News. Provides news, feature articles, columns and special reports on direct marketing.
  • The Drum. The alternative to Campaign. Delivers lots of news and views.
  • MediaPost. Comprehensive advertising and media industry coverage.
  • TechCrunch. Keep up (or try to keep up) with the fast-paced world of startups and VC’s.

Ad Agency Directories

  • Ad Forum. Global agency directory and creative gallery.
  • Advertising Agency Search Consultants. My list of the top 34. Any missing?
  • agency compile. A directory of marketing communications agencies plus a searchable database.
  • Agency Spotter. Super fast search for creative, digital, design, and branding firms.
  • The Creative Ham. A list of who the Ham views as the most creative agencies. You can pay up too.
  • LookBook from Ad Age. Use the LookBook Directory to see ad agencies’ robust offerings and content featured in Advertising Age & Creativity to discover new marketing partners.
  • Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory. An easy to scope out agency directory from yours truly.
  • Redbooks. Information and research on advertising agencies and advertisers worldwide.
  • Dmoz. Long term directory of selected advertising agencies in the United States and Canada. Oooops. DMOZ is gone. But here is link to its history for people interested in, sort of, the early days of search.

Top Advertising Blogs

  • Peter Levitan. Yes, MINE! Over 650 blog posts designed to help you grow your advertising, digital and PR agency. Here’s the list of them all.
  • Agency Post. Jami Oetting’s in-depth HubSpot blog for the agency professional.
  • The Ad Contrarian. Bob Hoffman’s personal unfiltered take on the advertising universe.
  • @adweak. Just laugh. Please.
  • AdFreak. AdWEEK’s daily blog of the best and worst of creativity.
  • AdPulp. Serious juice from the ad biz.
  • Advertising Age Blogs. AdAge’s blogs & columns covering advertising, media, and digital news.
  • Agency Spy. Agency Spy covers the ad agency industry from the inside.
  • Digital Project Manager. Simply put…. “The Digital Project Manager provides project management guidance for the digital wild west where crazy clients, tiny budgets & silly deadlines reign supreme.” Check out their interview with moi.
  • Engagio. Want to grow your advertising agency? Engagio’s Account Based marketing will tell you how to do that.
  • Fuel Lines. Insights from Mr. Gass.
  • Seth Godin. Just because.Social Mention.  Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go. This is what they say (better than I could): Social Mention is a simple, useful tool for monitoring and tracking social media. It helps you see who’s making references to you or your company — or to any topic, for that matter. It aggregates user-generated content from across different social networks, letting you search and analyze it all in one place.
  • Strands of Genius. Follow Rosie & Faris on their voyage to unearth ideas, events, news and who knows. You’ll be smarter.
  • TrinityP3. Like it easy? Just sign up for their Twitter account. Yes, they speak Australian.

Favorite Social Media ++ Tools

  • Amazon Best Sellers. Here is a list just for you if you want to see what the world is buying.
  • AnswerThePublic. This is a free visual tool that shows you what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for at Google.
  • bitly. Bitly shortens URLs and reports on clicks.
  • BROWSEO. We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.
  • Buffer. The fastest way to schedule and share content across social media platforms.
  • Canva. A free tool that makes it easy to create custom graphics to go with your social media posts.
  • ContactOut. ContactOut is a handy way for you to find actual, human email addresses for people on LinkedIn. real email is way better than a LinkedIn message. And, yes folks, email, when done correctly, does work.
  • Google Alerts. Stay ahead of your client, a prospective client (as in category, brand, and people)and industry news by creating a list of Google Alerts.  Frankly, this should be a primary business development t tool.
  • Google Analytics. You want to track your website right?
  • Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.
  • Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.
  • Google Keyword Planner. Find the best keywords for any subject or marketing goal.
  • Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not on Google’s search universe. A look at the top 2019 Google searches may or may not make you a fan of humanity.
  • Grammarly. Check your spelling and grammar right from your browser. I have to have this!
  • Klear. Find influencers on Twitter via Klear’s large database of 60K+ categorized social profiles.
  • K-Meta. A free, just try it, keyword and competitive tool.
  • Long Tail Pro. A keyword tool used by the pros.
  • Snagit. A screen image and video capture plugin that allows you to grab what you see on your computer screen to edit and share.
  • Social Mention.  Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go. This is what they say (better than I could): Social Mention is a simple, useful tool for monitoring and tracking social media. It helps you see who’s making references to you or your company — or to any topic, for that matter. It aggregates user-generated content from across different social networks, letting you search and analyze it all in one place.
  • srproutsocial. A sweet social media tool to manage messages across multiple accounts.
  • tweepi. A fast way to grow your Twitter Follower list.
  • TweetDeck . A desktop Twitter management tool with a nice clean UI.
  • Twitonomy. I love this competitive tool. See what the other guy is up to.
  • Website Grader. Try HubSpot’s Website grader on your website. How do you do? I get a 94.
  • Yoast. The best WordPress SEO plugin.

Video Marketing Tools & Information

  • ADWEEK. ADWEEK on YouTube video viewability plus a handy infographic.
  • BirdSong Analytics. Pay as you go video and social competitive analytics platform. Se what works for your competition.
  • Cyfe. Track your YouTube channel progress and stats for individual videos.
  • Facebook Video. Facebook’s video marketing guide.
  • Forbes. Why “mobile video advertising will eat the world.”
  • YouTube Into. YouTube’s very own guide to its video ad platform.
  • realSEO. the ultimate site for tips and tricks to grow your video audience.
  • SEO Chat Keyword Suggest Tool. This is a cool tool to easily find a range of keywords for videos.
  • SproutSocial. Vimeo or YouTube… which is best for agency marketing?
  • The Video Ink. A quick look at the pros and cons of video ad platforms.
  • Vimeo. HD videos for all.
  • Visual Measures. Lots of information, stats, and charts for your next video-oriented client meeting.
  • Wistia. A lovely and smart video marketing platform for business. Nice tracking.

Creative Inspiration & Idea Generation

  • Ads Of The World. According to them: Ads of the World is the world’s largest advertising archive.
  • Adland. Ads and more ads.
  • Awwwards. A place to view some of the latest and greatest websites.
  • Brand New. An opinionated look at corporate and brand ID work.
  • Complex. A fine and, yes, complex look at current culture. Hours of fun.
  • Creative Bloq. Got design block? Dive in here.
  • Creative Guerrilla Marketing. The name kinda gives it away.
  • design milk. A full plate of design substances for your body and mind.
  • deMilked. An endless array of posts about what everyone else is doing.
  • Friends Of Type. Even type freaks can be friendly.
  • FWA. An excellent resource to taste some of the best website design.
  • Indie Nudes. Do not spank me for this one. Just make (!) sure you scroll down and look at all of the links. This is a very creative space.
  • Inspiration Room. A global effort designed to influence, affect and involve creative communities. As in, ideas to get you going.
  • KissMetrics Blog. A blog about analytics, marketing, and testing. The real deal to help you help 2016 clients.
  • Packaging Of The World. A sweet searchable database of the global package design universe.
  • Social Media Examiner. Your guide to the social media jungle.

Creative Space & Time

  • Moving To Mexico. I wrote this just for you. Why and how to move to Mexico. I did. I’m very happy.
  • 30/30: An effective productivity app for the procrastinator.
  • Ad Block: OK, OK, I know that this is a major NO-NO. But, stop looking at those Zappos ads!
  • Bose Quiet Comfort Headphones 25. My favorite noise-canceling phones. Airplanes love these.
  • Coffitivity: Stream the sounds of a coffee shop at work. Good training for when you freelance.
  • Duolingo. Fast (up to you) and free online & mobile way to learn languages.
  • Games List: Need a break?
  • Headspace. Just like it sounds. A meditation app for your mobile, available for both iPhone & Android.
  • The Newspaper Club. I have been shooting a global photography series. More portraits of more people on more continents than ever. Grandiose and, yup, fun. You can see the work here. One of the things I do after photographing a community is to make them a “photo newspaper.” I use The Newspaper Club to print a bunch to share. My mommy always told me to say thank you. Think about what your agency could do with paper to get the attention of your next client (yes, paper.)
  • Noisli:Background noise & color generator.
  • Spotify. My streaming system.
  • Timer Tab: A tool to help control your thinking time.
  • toggl. As an agency owner, I needed to keep track of the hours that we all used to meet the needs of our clients. While I think that tracking every minute kinda sucks, we simply have to track our time to help the agency be profitable. toggl is a very simple timer tool.
  • Trello. Keep track of everything & collaborate.

Online Education

  • Codecademy. It is time for you to learn to code. At least, start to sound like you care to your CTO.
  • Coursera. Lots of career advancement courses. Like attending a Wharton course on marketing.
  • Freakonomics. Listen, learn and out-smart your clients.
  • Google Online Marketing. Learn from the leader.
  • The How. Learn from entrepreneurs.
  • HubSpot Inbound Training. Get on the inbound marketing bandwagon or, frankly… be left behind.
  • Khan Academy. Free courses from programming to economics to finance to what you should have learned in the 8th grade.
  • Launch This Year. Get ready to launch your online business — this year.
  • The Lean LaunchPad. How to Build a Startup
  • Lyndia. Yikes! Go forth and learn… 4,354 courses · 169,690 video tutorials
  • Marketing @ TedTalks: Prefer video? Here are the top TedTalks on marketing.
  • Mixergy. Entrepreneurs training other entrepreneurs. Or, how to start your own advertising agency.
  • Skillshare. Courses designed for the creative in you.
  • Startup Notes. Need inspiration? Hear startup founders tell their personal stories.
  • Smart Passive Income. Let Pat help you leave advertising, and go live on a beach while watching your PayPal account grow.
  • Startup Talks. More startup videos.
  • Udemy. You name it, they teach it.

Online Legal Resources

  • Agency Legal Protection. Sharon Toerek answers important legal questions like this: “What should we do to protect the agency during a new business pitch?”
  • Best LLC Services: Need an LLC? Need a guide?
  • Cornell University’s Library. Dig databases? You’ve arrived at a long list of legal databases by subject.
  • Legalzoom. From wills (get one!!!) through incorporation (for your new agency). LegalZoom is the leader in online legal docs. They are an ex-client of my agency and I have been using them for years. Know what, way back when… they were a great client of mine and they loved to eat well in L.A.
  • Docracy. Open source legal documents.
  • Docusign. Legal online signatures. No more inky hands.
  • Find Law UK. Employee rights for UK workers.
  • 4A’s On Compensation Agreements. Read this before you marry that new client. Consider this prenup advice.
  • Right Law. Employee rights explained. Yes, you have rights.

Life After Advertising & How To Make $$$

  • Entrepreneur. How to start a business online. I know you want to.
  • Ferris / Kagen. Seriously – How to create a million-dollar business… This weekend. Do this from your beloved cube.
  • Fizzle.  How can you pass this up? “Excellent courses from real experts and a community of like-minded business builders.”
  • Razor Social. Ian is another genius who will tell you how to make money from your blog. He does!
  • Reddit. Hear your peers hash out what your life after your advertising career looks like.
  • Small Business Association. The SBA to you. Your federal tax dollars want to help you build a business so you can employ your ex-ad agency friends.
  • Smart Passive Income. How to build an online passive income business. Read every word. Listen to the podcasts. Take control of your life.
  • Social Media Monitor. A vast resource for social media advice. use it in your day job too.
  • The Social M’s. How to use guest blogging to help grow your business. I do. Read about it here.
  • The How. Learn from entrepreneurs.

Top Seven Twitter Tools

  • Bit.ly. With a 140 character limit, you have to shorten any URL’s posted to Twitter. Bit.ly does a bit more cool stuff. But shortening alone means you need to have this built into your browser.
  • Buffer. Buffer is my number one easy to use scheduling system, it is connected to my WordPress blog to automatically send my blog post URL’s and a snippet to Twitter (and LinkedIn and Facebook). Importantly because I need to save time, it also allows me to schedule a set of  Tweets into the future.
  • Canva. According to the Gods of social media, having a graphic will increase your clicks and retweets by something like over 1 million times, or was it a billion. Or, some crazy number like a trillion. Canva is a very easy to use web-based graphics tool that edits images that you’ll use in your Tweets and can even be used by your CEO.
  • Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media dashboard that allows you to work on and monitor Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, WordPress from one place. It goes deeper so head over if you are looking for a ‘total’ solution.
  • HubSpot. HubSpot is a very big boy. Its inbound software will help your agency attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. And, you can use it to woo new clients with your supreme inbound marketing expertise. As in, using HubSpot will make your agency a social media expert that actually has tools it can resell.
  • Klear. Klear (formerly Twtrland) delivers social monitoring, influencer marketing, and competitive intelligence. Try it out for free. The full plate is a bit expensive. But, it works as a smart business development tool. You gotta spend money to make money.
  • Twitonomy. Use Twitter as a competitive wrench. As Twitonomy says, “Get detailed and visual analytics on anyone’s tweets, retweets, replies, mentions, hashtags… Browse, search, filter and get insights on the people you follow and those who follow you.” Damn, go forth and use your competitor’s data against them, um, for you!

Top Advertising And Design Awards

  • ADDY Awards. This is the largest award program with over 5 million entries – local agencies love this one because it can level the playing field vs. the mega shops. The competition includes three levels of judging: local, regional, and national. Winning an ADDY at each level qualifies the work to progress to the next higher level.
  • Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The big boy and, if you like acting as if you are a major playa, it’s a great excuse to use up your expense account. The seven-day festival that includes the coveted Lions award is held yearly in Cannes (that’s France to you). Win this and you’ll get a big bonus.
  • The Clio Awards. Another big international award that should get you a round of drinks at your local. Time Magazine described the event as the world’s most recognizable international advertising awards. Even your mum will smile.
  • Communication Arts Annuals. Communication Arts puts out a series of publications that highlight the best in advertising and design. Believe me, you want to have your work highlighted in The Illustration Annual, The Interactive Annual, The Advertising Annual, The Typography Annual or The Design Annual. These are nice mags to send out to your prospects.
  • The Effie Awards. The Effies honors the most effective marketing programs. That means, your work actually moved the sales dial and not just the right (as in the creative) side of another Creative Director’s brain. Clients dig this one.
  • The One Club. The One Club produces four annual award competitions: One Show, One Show Design, One Show Interactive, and One Show Entertainment. The One Club pencil award will fit nicely on your shelf.
  • The D&AD (Design & Art Direction). A British award that, according to the D&AD “…exists to stimulate, enable and award creative excellence in design and advertising.”
  • OMMA. Media Post’s OMMA Awards honor agencies and advertisers that push the potential of digital advertising.
  • Rosey Awards. Portland just might be the most creative city in America (on a per capita basis that is). The Rosey Awards competition is run annually by the Portland Advertising Federation – the oldest ad club in America. Good news… Wieden & Kennedy has stiff competition.
  • The Webby Award. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences’ Webby Awards is all about honoring excellence in digital and Internet marketing. Categories include brand content, DIY videos, and over 30 categories in Advertising & Media.

Marketing & Advertising Podcasts

  • Build A Better Agency. Drew Mclellan’s series is dedicated to the art of advertising agency management and new business. Listen up.
  • Neil Patel. Just go here now.
  • 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.

Marketing Tool Generators

  • Canva. What more could I say? The easiest to use design program in the world
  • Says-It.com. Need a sign? Easy to use list of options.
  • Brand Genie. Your new brand in minutes.
  • Hipster Logo Generator.  OK, you don’t live in Portland yet. But you can have a hip Ripcity logo.
  • 13 Creative Ways To Find Blog Post Ideas. Super smart list from Authority Hacker.
  • HubSpot Blog Topic Generator. Need some topics…?
  • Meme Generator. The first.
  • Icon Fonts Generator. Need fonts, icons, no time? Here you go.
  • Noisli. Background noise & color generator.
  • Invoicely. You want to get paid, right? Here is the easy way to craft that invoice.
  • Ookla SpeedTest. I travel a lot so I am often in strange places with somewhat scattered Internet service. Um, like my house in Mexico. To check speeds, I use Ookla’s Speed test.

Remember, Please Let Me Know If This Advertising Agency Resource List Needs To Be Updated

Need a Human Resource? Let’s talk about growing your advertising agency. You are in a hurry, right?

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

Is Domino’s Delivery Insurance Bad Advertising?

December 2, 2019 By Peter 4 Comments

A quick note before I get to Domino’s and their Delivery Insurance advertising… We’ve all seen the, mostly consternation, at the husband who buys his wife a Peloton bike for Christmas. The issues: husband type gives beautiful wife an exercise bike; she (at 120 LBs kicks into gear and by the end drops three LBs.) PC issues here. People go crazy. Spoof TV commercial goes very viral. But, for comparison on the PC scale, I discuss worker exploitation that stars in a Domino’s TV commercial. Did this ad get anyone’s attention? Well, a bit. But not at the level of Peloton.

I am sitting in front of my TV in Mexico watching Sunday NFL football games. Domino’s is spending some big bucks to show me a commercial about its “Delivery Insurance” where their employees freak out, run around the kitchen, drive fast and run down the street and walkways to deliver pizzas that quite possibly had arrived earlier without the right topping. Holy shit, who can live without their pepperoni?

Domino’s Advertising Problem

Like you, I have seen numerous articles in the past couple of months about how Amazon’s hourly-wage employees suffer injury trying to get you that new pair of headphones within 24 hours. Some parts of Amazon’s warehouses look like slave-driven machines. This hasn’t been a good PR season for Bezos.

Given the Amazon press, do you think that Domino’s Kate Trumbull, VP of advertising and Hispanic marketing has been paying attention to how a major corporation can damage its employees in a quest for speed? Does Domino’s ad agency pay attention?

Take a look at this commercial. Take a look at how the hourly-wage employees, note – average hourly wage at Domino’s is $6 to $11 per hour for a delivery driver (I’ll do the math for you – that’s about $20,000 per year) – is hustling like a fucking NASCAR whirling dervish to get you that missing dipping sauce.

I guess the next question is… does the TV viewer care about the insane Domino’s work system as long as they get their sausage?

Am I being too sensitive?

How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

July 17, 2019 By Peter 23 Comments

shark

An Advertising Agency New Business Survival Guide

Speaking of advertising agency new business… Here is a comprehensive guide that will help your agency become a winner in today’s market – The Advertising Agency Survival Guide.https://peterlevitan.com/an-advertising-agency-survival-guide-11030/

Onward

This is a 2019 UPDATE of 2016’s initial “How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program” blog post. Advertising agency business development is now a 24/7 operation. Here is some advice on how to deliver.

By the way, this post currently has over 34,000 views. The post’s popularity is due to three key factors:

1. It directly addresses a major advertising agency pain point: how to build a winning and efficient new business plan.

2. The post is well optimized for search engines and, therefore…

3. Google loves it. FYI, my number two trafficked post is, “How To Name Your Advertising Agency – Part One” at 30,000 + views. While always rethinking their website, advertising agencies also obsess about their name. by the way, this post is also a very good cheat sheet on naming that you can steal if a client ever needs a new brand name.

“How To Build…” is all about the most important thing an advertising agency can do (while it is nurturing its current clients)… run a new business program that ensures that the agency will keep growing. Agencies are like sharks. They must keep moving forward to eat or else.

Your potential clients have over 4,000 marketing communications ‘agency’ options (other agencies, new consultancies, freelancers, even your ex-creative director…).

Therefore, any form of business development passivity on your part – sucks. If you think you are doing everything right, you probably are not. How can I say this? I never thought that all was well whilst running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi and when I owned my own agency.

Here’s my “ad”: I suggest that you give me a shout and take me up on my Corleone offer – It’s hard to refuse.

OK, Let’s Go… The 24/7 Business Development Plan

I moved from New York to Bend Oregon in 202 to buy a very successful advertising agency (and raise a family in the outdoors).

Citrus grew to add a Portland office and national accounts. I woke up every day as if a client like Nike was going to walk out the back door along with its revenues. I bet as an ad agency owner or manager you have rough nights too. One of the things I knew I could and should do was to manage this back-door issue was to have an active, I stress active, new business plan in place.

Here are some (I stress some) of the elements of my marketing plan. They helped me grow my agency Citrus (with new clients like Harrah’s, LegalZoom, Nike and the Montana Lottery). I hope my insights help you grow your agency.

Execution Rules.

When I set out to write this advertising agency new business post I didn’t think that it would be this long – a warning to the ADHD types. But, advertising agency new business planning is complex and is getting more complex every day due to the rapid changes in our industry and technology. That said, the devil in business development, you know what’s coming, is in the detail. Success is all about execution.

For example, running a successful inbound biz dev program that attracts market attention must be based on a sound strategy and smart agency process if you want to run a 24/7 sales program. Staying the course is critical.

The Advertising Agency Business Plan. First Things First.

[Read more…] about How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

10 Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency

March 27, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Do you advertise your advertising agency?

Based on my industry experience, most do not. This means that agencies are not aiming and tailoring their primary sales messages to their target audiences.

This post offers 10 ways to advertise your advertising agency as well as the why you should to it, like, yesterday.

Caveat: You should seriously consider advertising your advertising agency. However, you should first run a smart, consistent account-based marketing program to directly drive agency awareness to your best prospects.

Advertising – A Definition

Just for the heck of it, and to get us all on the same page, here is a definition of advertising. I use ‘advertising’ as a universal term for marketing communications companies.

Advertising is a means of communication with the users (or, non-users) of a product or service. Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them, as defined by the Advertising Association of the UK.

Why An Advertising Agency Should Advertise

There are four reasons an agency should advertise.

  1. You want to be where prospective clients look for agencies.
  2. You want to put your agency right in front of the right prospects (and even busy agency search consultants like Laura Bajkowski) 24/7.
  3. You want to borrow the interest that on and offline publications can deliver.
  4. You want to prove that you believe in advertising and that you are super creative.

10 Advertising Platforms Your Agency Should Consider

WARNING: Most likely, your agency cannot create and run efforts on all of these platforms. Roll them out based on your marketing plan.

TEST: Test everything. Do more of what works and less of what does not. Yeah, I’m being very obvious. But, testing is the mantra. Your clients want ROI. You do too and running your own programs may make you a better judge of how to judge success across advertising channels.

In addition to listing the ad platforms, I am also giving some, not all, of the reasons that a local/regional agency and an expert agency (example, lead gen B2B agency) should choose the platform. This is meant as food for thought. There are too many types of agencies for me to give every iteration. But, you get it.

Update: It is five hours after I wrote this. I now have number 11. It’s at the bottom of the list.

1. Google AdWords.

Every client in need of a new agency searches on Google. If you are not on page one for the search, buy the position.

Do keyword research and buy the keywords that meet your reach objectives.

Local/regional agency. It would be insane to not try to be on Google’s page one for your location. Example: if you are based in Seattle, buy ‘Seattle advertising agency’ or ‘Seattle SEO agency.’

Expert. Buy ‘Lead generation agency’ or ‘high tech leads agency.’ Do you want Purina as a client? Think about what their marketing team searches on.

2. YouTube.

I have an agency client that produces an interview with marketing leaders every month. They blast them out in emails, on their blog and… yup, leverage the power of the number two search engine to aim their videos at their audience. The agency also retargets. Since there are fewer results on YouTube than on Google, the agency gets more attention (and, yup, these videos also turn high up in Google searches.)

It would real easy for a local agency, most are, to ‘own’ their town’s video world. How about a weekly where to eat in Kansas City series shot on an iPhone?

Need inspiration? Here is john st.’s rather viral video (as of writing it has 2,447,266 views) about the power of Catvertising. Frankly, has any other agency ever had over 2 million views?

3. Advertising Agency Directories.

This is a serious no-brainer that many agencies do not take advantage of. In many cases, an agency directory is on Google’s page one and lists your competitors.

Make sure you are every relevant agency directory and spend the cash if it nets you a higher position or allows you to deliver more information (i.e. your work) and, especially, a link back to your website. [Read more…] about 10 Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency

Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling

March 5, 2019 By Peter 2 Comments

The ‘not so cold’ call works better Web to Print and Sales Tips by PagePathEeeew, Advertising Agency Cold Calling

One of my advertising agency business development clients asked me today if cold calling was better than doing nothing.

I responded that cold calling is so ineffectual that he might just want to do nothing. Of course, we had a more in-depth conversation about objectives, strategy and tactics — but his question points out that many agency people still employ cold calling. They must think it works.

Cold Facts About Cold Calling

I took these facts from the 2018 ZoomInfo blog about B2B cold calling:

  • 63% of salespeople say cold calling is what they dislike most about their jobs
  • Cold calling is ineffective 90.9% of the time
  • Less than 2% of cold calls actually result in a meeting
  • Less than 1% of cold calls lead to a sale
  • In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts

Don’t make cold calling an important element of your biz dev program. But, you know that.

Cold Information

One more serious point about make-believe B2B marketing. All you have to do to get Sales Qualified leads is to do content or inbound marketing.

As you traverse the world of business development thinkers, you will find people that tell you that inbound is the only way to go – even going so far as saying that if you are brilliant and narrowly focussed you will never have to pitch for business. Sorry, not true.

Today, as has been the case for years, you need to exercise all of your business development muscles and tactics to win.

Don’t make content marketing the only element of your biz dev program. But, you know that.

In and Out

Hey, I have no issue with inbound and social media marketing as I have built my global consultancy on inbound – I get it. My 650+ blog posts get Google, LinkedIn and Twitter action.

This has worked for me because when I get a call from my very (very!) narrow target audience of advertising, PR, and digital agencies, they most likely found me because I am on page one of most ad agency business development related searches. Now really, do you think your agency will be on page one for a search of PPC or PR or general, even local, agencies? Probably not. That’s why you also need to be very smart about outbound marketing. Or, as it is now called Account Based Marketing. Which simply means… find a set of companies that you want to work with and go after them with a very smart, well researched, insight-driven marketing program.

LOL. For years, we’ve called this ‘sales.’

As pointed out earlier, a ‘nerve-racking’ element of outbound marketing is the cold call. I prefer to call it / make it warm calling.

Just the mere mention of cold calling strikes fear in the hearts of the most accomplished advertising agency CEO’s and business development directors. Let’s face it, who really likes to pick up the phone to call a stranger and ask them for something… like their advertising or design account? Um, chances are rather good that it’s not you.

Because of this painful fact, we now have an entire industry of social media experts telling you that all you have to do today to win at business development is inbound marketing. You know, if you blog, Tweet, leverage Linkedin and Facebook, the business will just come knocking at your door.

Really? I don’t think so.

Please note, I am not telling you that a refined agency positioning plus the strategic use of social media coupled with targeted insight-driven content marketing won’t deliver incoming leads. I am just saying that inbound alone is a bit too passive for most aggressive (in a good way to be aggressive) sales programs.

I am sure you know what accounts that you’d like to work for and why they should think about you. OK? So, go get them. But, do not wait for the looong social media cycle to get them to find you. Will attracting the attention of the specific clients you want to work with take time? Yes. But I’d rather be intelligently pro-active than 24/7 passive. [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling

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