digital marketing

Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

August 13, 2019 By Peter 8 Comments

Is It Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

I’ve updated my 2017 blog post about the power of the advertising agency blog and the question of should y’all continue to go for it or kill it.

I think that this is a big question that should be reviewed every year. Another question. Would anyone miss your blog?

To help answer these, I am going to discuss the pros and cons of advertising agency blogging. The kind of content creation that has been considered an integral element in an agency’s business development program. Blogging has been a key element of an agency’s Attraction Strategy.

Me

I have been consistently blogging since the early 2000’s. I started blogging as the CEO of my Oregon agency Citrus (I covered both advertising issues and the late 2000 recession’s effect on marketing).

The advertising agency business development blog you are currently reading has over 650 blog posts and acts as the core of my inbound marketing program. Good news for me, it fills my new client pipeline. Blogging has been very good to me.

But, but… my opinion about blogging, well at least for low volume advertising agency blogs, is that they are losing their power to attract a targeted audience, as in client leads. I see a few reasons for this.

There are zillions of blogs and blog posts every day. There has been a dramatic increase in the last five years.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of advertising agency blog posts and insights posted every week.
Most agencies write about the same subjects over and over.
Many agencies do not use online SEO tools to determine what blog post subjects will attract the most readership. I great way to do this is to look at what works for your most successful competitors.
Most agency blogs are boring.
Many client prospects are moving to podcasts and videos for their marketing information.

OK, Back To You. Should You Maintain Your Advertising Agency Blog? Or, Get Real And Just Kill It.

I look at a lot of advertising agency websites and their blogs. Many of the blogs are informative and brand building. However, way too many are just me-too blogs that actually deliver very little benefit to the agency.

The benefits should, stress should include the generation of incoming new client interest, showing that the agency Thinks Different (in a world of thousands of agency and advertising services options), help sell the agency as being on top of the advertising market, reinforces current client perceptions, demonstrates that the agency get content marketing, and demonstrates some personality and chutzpah. I call the chutzpah part… being Unignorable.

Start Here: Some Huge Blog Stats

The world really does not need another blog. As Steven Pressfield says in the title of his must-read book: “Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It”.

To help put blogging in perspective, here are some numbers.

How many blogs are there? From Hosting Tribunal: To date, there are over 1.6 billion websites in the world and more than 500 milion are recognized as blogs. Their authors account for over 2 million blog posts daily.

WordPress states that “Over 409 million people view more than 21.5 billion pages each month” and “Users produce about 84.9 million new posts and 45.2 million new comments each month.” And, that’s just on the WordPress platform.

Google delivered 1768,000 results when I searched on “advertising agency blog.”

The Best Podcasts In The World

July 15, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Yikes, “the best podcasts in the world” — How is that headline for click-bait? Maybe a 7 on a scale of 10? OK, a 6? Really, how lame are the click-bait headlines we all get sucker punched into launching?

Ok, Ok… Now on to a couple of podcast recommendations.

I have an agency client that is training for her first marathon and she asked me for some podcast recommendations. I’ll share my recommendations with you.

Side note: I have often been ahead of the digital curve. In case you think I am bragging, I was too early, which means ill-timed and not smart about the market. I like those ‘shiny’ pennies. I had my first podcast in 2006.

The Best Podcast Player

I use the podcast app Pocket Cast to organize my podcasts on my iPad and iPhone. It has a decent search tool by subject. Here is how they sell themselves:

A podcast player by listeners, for listeners.

Pocket Casts is the world’s most powerful podcast platform. Our podcast player provides next-level listening, search and discovery tools. Find your next obsession with our hand-curated podcast recommendations for easy discovery, and seamlessly enjoy your favorite shows without the hassle of subscribin

Some Of My Favorite Podcasts

– General smart about the digital, news, etc. industry: Pivot, Recode Media, Recode Decode from VOX (just do this)

– Daily News: The Daily from NYT, The Daily 202 from the Washington Post (these two depress me every morning), and Marketplace

– Smartest guy in the room: Stay Tuned with Preet (smart enough to get fired by the prez)

– Music: All Songs Considered and Switched On Pop (you will be hipper than the kid down the street)

– Internet marketing: Marketing School, Social Media Marketing, Marketing Geeks (hours of insights on how to do your business)

– Advertising: AdAge Ad Lib, Advertising Influencers (frankly a bit boring, but, hey, you are probably in the biz)

– Branding: Real-World Branding is a podcast for and about brand and business building hosted by Bill Gullan, President of Philadelphia’s Finch Brands.

– General: anything by Malcolm Gladwell, Against The Rules Michael Lewis, This American Life, The Chernobyl Podcast (after you’ve seen this great 5-part series.)

– Art: Art Tactic, A Piece of Work (aging but smart)

There are more. I’ll spare you.

The History Of Podcasting

Just as an FYI, here is my older blog post, number 600!, on The History of Podcasting.

11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

June 8, 2019 By Peter 10 Comments

11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools (Updated From 2014).

NOTE: I first wrote this 11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools blog post at the very end of 2014 and a few minutes ago the website checker app Checkbot pointed out that this post has a couple of dead links. (4.5 years later and it is interesting to see what tools have survivied). So, I thought that I’d repost and make things work. I suspect a reason for the broken links is that some of these tools are history. Here is what I found.

Back to 2014 – it is still worth the read… Blog post Consistency, actually the lack of it, is one of the most pressing issues that reduces the effectiveness of most advertising agency new business programs. So… Here are some ad agency business development tools that I recommend to keep your agency’s new business and content development program on track. (Tweet this.)

These tools (and there is a big world of tools out there these days) will help your efficiency and, more importantly, make you look like a subject matter expert because you are on that ball. Even better, as you use these tools for your own business development efforts, you will be gaining social media expertise that will dazzle your client prospects.

Clients (the ones you do not have yet) need your help according to this research from Ascend2.

Almost half of the clients surveyed have significant social media obstacles to overcome. You can help them by helping yourself.

This list of 11 tools is my first set of recommended online social media management tools. There will be more coming. [Read more…] about 11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

Advertising Agencies, Nerds And Digital Marketing

February 11, 2019 By Peter 1 Comment

This is a post about advertising agencies and the ongoing move to digital marketing and as a result, the need for more nerds. In this case, I mean a single-minded person that is highly focused on a technical field, like mobile advertising; programmatic media, database marketing or, well you get it. Stick with me on this one.

There is some personal history here and yes, the name dropping is important. I am trying to make a point and can use all the help I can get.

History

I “discovered” digital marketing in 1994 when I came home to the U.S.A. from Saatchi London where no one had a computer on their desk. I returned to work as Business Development Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising New York and as it turned out, it was my 16th and last year at the agency.

My eventual move out of advertising was stimulated by my discovery of and fascination with the new world of interactivity via CD-ROMs and a life-changing conversation I had with Ted Leonsis who, at that time ran Florida’s Redgate Communications. Redgate was very early digital agency founded in 1987. I found Ted through the 4A’s Michael Donahue another early digerati (you could say this word then without cringing). Using my Saatchi credential, I met with Ted and he told me two very interesting things. One, his company had just been bought by America Online and two, this advice,

“Get the hell out of advertising, it is going to die. Move into digital.”

Well, after the meeting I did two things – one a mistake and the other, the smart one: I listened.

The mistake was that I didn’t buy America Online stock (its stock rose 600 percent in 1998). Had I, I might be sorta near (well, kinda near) where Ted wound up. Today, he is the owner of Washington D.C.’s Capitals, Wizards and Mystics. [Read more…] about Advertising Agencies, Nerds And Digital Marketing