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My 500th & Most Valuable Advertising Blog Post About Saatchi

December 10, 2015 By Peter Leave a Comment

Wowzer – This Is My 500^th Blog Post

I started blogging a few years ago to help promote my ad agency Citrus. We were early and, I have to admit, the blog world was a bit less crowded in the mid-2000’s. Today with over 3,000 marketing services blogs, agency blogs have to work a lot harder and smarter. I’ve tried to do just that here.

To commemorate this personal milestone, I want to make sure that this 500th post is highly valuable to my readership – that’s you. After I ramble a bit about what I think are some of my most useful advertising agency insights, I am going to discuss the essentials of my blogging system as a final point. This system works for me as virtually all of my business leads come from this blog as well as LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare and guest posting which are tied into the blog. These social media actions are directed by very clear objectives and are focused on targeting ‘you’ via the use of personas. I can tell you that, if used correctly, social media is a highly effective inbound marketing platform. But, you know that.

I believe that many of my past posts have provided value since they have been read over 159,000 times, have been shared across the web and, most importantly, drive those sweet incoming leads from agencies (hopefully like yours) that are looking for growth strategies.

Here Are My Top Posts

As you’ll see, my second most read post at over 9,000! covers the worst advertising pitch and presentation ever.

“The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever” is about a Saatchi & Saatchi pitch debacle and was one of the reasons I wrote my book on how to run winning pitches. The outcome of this botched pitch was that Saatchi did not win the global Adidas account and I didn’t get to run the account from my very own Saatchi sports agency. Go ahead, buy the book to see all of our mistakes and how to avoid them from Amazon here.

The worst ever pitch blog post is also the reason I put the word Saatchi in this headline. “Saatchi” is serious blog post headline click bait. More on click bait, or better yet, targeted keyword rich blog headlines a bit later.

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5 Things Ad Agency CEO’S Need To Do

May 13, 2013 By Peter Leave a Comment

Just 5 Things (To Start)

A few years ago, long after Google’s AdWords started to eat ad dollars, I asked a few ad agency CEO’s if they had ever placed an online Google ad. The unanimous answer was… no.

Two nights ago, I asked a similar group if they had ever used a CMS tool like WordPress. The answer… (OK, getting better) was about 30%. (Um, that might be a bit optimistic).

30% is good but not great. I think that this lack of CEO curiosity and hands-on experience is a significant problem. How can CEO’s talk social media, digital media and advertising disruption if they haven’t used the disrupting technology themselves?

So, what should these CEO’s do? Pick a rainy weekend day and play with the Internet.

Go Forth And Tweet

Open a Twitter account, create a simple profile (look at mine for example @peterlevitan) and seriously post for a couple of weeks. Find out what is involved in creating this real-time marketing tool. It isn’t that difficult and you can even use a publishing system like Buffer or a RSS reader like Feedly.com to automatically Tweet about websites that you find. It couldn’t be easier. Use key words and hash tags to drive views (these are those #’s that can look like #advertising for example if you want to actually target Twitter users that follow advertising.) If after a couple of weeks you love it, sense that you might want to participate in your agency’s Twitter feed then work on your Twitter plan. If you just wanted to see what Twitter felt like, then close your account and now your can truthfully tell people that you really get Twitter.

Blog On

Ask your blog meister to show you how to create blog posts using your CMS system. CMS stands for content management system, but you already knew that. You’d be surprised how easy posting is. The hard part is doing it with consistency and having an actual agency blog strategy that results in a blog that drives agency business. This process should help you gain insight into the strategic opportunities that an agency blog offers. Ask yourself if your agency blog is targeting prospective clients, your industry, your staff or…. well, given how much time blogging takes, figure just who is the target audience after all?

Place A Google Ad

Ask virtually anyone in the agency to take you through the process of creating and targeting a Google AdWords text ad. Google AdWords was the major source of Google’s $42.5 billion in 2012 ad revenues. You really should understand all about this advertising channel. The only way to really get a handle on it is to place an ad. A suggestion. Pick a prospective client and target them. See what happens.

Try Facebook Or LinkedIn

Both Facebook and LinkedIn have very easy to use self-serve advertising tools. Within minutes you could create and place a targeted an ad for your agency that links back to your Facebook, LinkedIn or agency website. You’ll see what works by using their analytical tools. The dry cleaner down the block does this. You can too – believe me.

Go Geek

Speaking of analytics, I’ll assume that your agency website uses an analytical tool like Google Analytics. There is a lot of learning residing in your traffic data. Take a look who is visiting your website, where they are coming from, if they are using a computer or mobile device (this can be surprising), what keywords they used to find you, how much time they are spending on the website and so much more. Its strangely addictive and very revealing and you’ll be on your way to becoming an SEO genius.

There are more things that you, and I mean you, could be doing. But, just start here and you’ll sound brilliant at lunch with your colleagues or next agency network meeting.

By the way, I can help you figure out your social media strategy. Well, what I mean is help you create a plan that uses social media to actually drive agency new business. Talk to me.

OK, OK… Here Is Oner More

Guest blog on high traffic websites to get your agency and yourself out there much fur=ther than you could on your advertising agency blog.

I did and it got me: more new agency clients; speaking gigs; fame and cash. Here is a post on why guest blogging is for you (even if you use a ghost writer).

The Advertising Resource List…

Hey, go here to see lots of online resources you can use to grow your business and personal brand right here…