Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

digital marketing

How Do Clients Find Your Advertising Agency?

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How Do Clients Find Your Advertising Agency?

Let’s start with some defining and extremely important questions that you should be asking at least twice a year. OK, every month. In this case, I am aiming these questions at your advertising agency website.

  • How do potential clients find you? What was the path?
  • When they found your website, what did they look at?
  • What percentage of your visitors contacted you?
  • What percentage made some other actions like signing up for a newsletter or downloading a white paper?
  • Are you happy? Are the right clients making contact? Need to make adjustments? What’s your success metric?

Let’s break these down a bit.

How do potential clients find you?

First, let’s get referrals out of the way. Advertising agency business development research has indicated that referrals can account for over 80% of agency new client inquiries. While I love referrals and have written about the importance of having a documented active referral strategy, there is no question that referrals have become the default new business attractor because most agencies are not doing a stellar in or outbound sales job. Referrals then must drive the majority of leads. Not that there is anything wrong with referrals. They work. But, they can be a bit random.

The easiest way to determine how prospects found you is to ask them. Of course, many people will have forgotten their first intro to your world. They simply forgot or they used multiple ways in including a search, your LinkedIn page, that conference you spoke at, your tennis buddy, etc. But always ask this question – quickly before you get lost in sales speak.

Second, in respect to your website, use your Google or WordPress analytics to see where they came from. On Wednesday, 30 April, my individual visitors came to me via Google 116; direct 47 (where a user probably entered the URL); LinkedIn 5 and Bing 1 and other 9.

These numbers suggest that my content-oriented inbound sales strategy is working. Most people find me on Google because I have dedicated the past five years to writing over six hundred blog posts on the specific subject of advertising agency new business.

What did they look at? Did you help them get to the good stuff? Do you have a funneling plan?

Using Google and WordPress analytics, I know exactly what people are looking at on this website. Obviously, since my blog is so focused on one subject, my visitors are looking at my posts about ad agency business development. I mix this up occasionally by promoting edgier posts, like Gary Vaynerchuck Is Full Of Shit. But, the bottom line is that I am slavish to one subject. Frankly, most agencies have some trouble with being this focused and keyword conscious. It would also help if they had a focused positioning. Here are some thoughts on that rather important goal.

The typical advertising and communications agency website has a defining Home Page; an About page; Our Work; News or a Blog and a contact page. Is there a flow you want the visitor to take? A place you want them to end up? Are you funneling them towards an action? If they get lost or bail, are you tracking your exit pages?

If you are a B2B marketer, and that folks, is what an ad agency business development program is, you need to funnel the visitor to your contact page. Or, at least, have them ask for something like that brilliant white paper on a subject that supports your agency positioning and sales proposition. I build my mailing list via an offer of this paper: “22 Ways To Run A Highly Profitable Agency”. I admit that it comes to you via an ugly home page pop up. But, again, hey, it works.

What percentage contacted you and what’s your success metric?

Do the basic math. How well do you convert your visitors into sales prospects? Frankly, when I look at the number of visitors I get every day, I could get worried that I am not converting as many as I should. However, here is what I know:

First, I give a lot of information and insights away for free. Many agencies tell me that they often get all they can eat just by reading my stuff. This drives good vibes.

Second, I know that my sales cycle takes a long time. Many of my clients tell me that they have been reading my stuff for over a year. It takes most advertising agencies a long time to admit that they need business development advice.

Third, I am meeting my personal sales goals. Sure, I could dial up my website. But, it works. I am a lone ranger consultant. Given your agency’s overhead, you should be way focused on delivering a website experience that drives a high volume of the right leads.

What is your success metric? Without a metric, you will never know that your website is working.

So, give me a shout. Maybe its time for you to get some outside expert advice.

 

Frozen Emails And Business Development

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How Not To Freeze Your Business Development Emails

I’m not a big fan of cold calls, cold emails, or cold anything (a key reason I live in Mexico.)

However, in the land of lead generation, there are times when a cold “Hi There” email might simply be the only option. Or, better yet, a smart element of a master plan.

A cold email, a smart cold email, can, if done well, create awareness of your advertising, design or PR agency and, more importantly, begin to seed the idea that you are an insightful marketer that is worth paying attention to. In the best of all possible worlds, the smart “intro” email becomes a much warmer email because it delivers a relevant and hopefully “must read” business insight. If part of a strategic sales plan, the email will become just one element in a longer, more consistent, business development campaign.

Who Gets The “Warm” Email?

I’ll discuss email techniques in a bit. But first, who are you targeting? If your plan is to reach the right people, then you need to figure out who the right people are. Yup a duh. But, you’d be surprised, and competitively delighted, to know that many agencies don’t really know who (is it whom?) they want to reach.

Get your lists right first

Direct to prospect Email is an outbound tool. I recommend using it to reach two target buckets. These groups come from understanding your agency’s brand positioning, its sales proposition, what potential clients will truly be interested in your message and your ability to stand out and be Unignorable.

The Big List

I’m thinking about targeting your agency’s master lead gen list. The longer one. This might sound insane, but my agency had a 1,000-decision maker mailing list. This was our ‘reminder’ list. Our objective was to create awareness of our chops just in case the client needed us that day or month. Note: our strategic list rarely had unsubs since we were slavish to delivering value. This large list is hard to personalize (beyond customizing the right fields). But, you can segment it so you don’t send useless emails that will make you look and sound lame. The key, as usual, is to deliver relevant marketing insights.

The Small List

In this case, I’m referring to a hot list of say 25 to 50 client candidates. These folks, who should without question be your client (example: you are a baby boomer specialist agency and your client target group sell laxatives – LOL). For this must-get group, you’ll need a much more direct, human and, again, highly relevant, super-sharp insight-driven program.

Your List Building

Buy a list. Yes, just drop the coin on this one.

Build a hand-built list using a low-cost intern.

Use email finder tools like Hunter.io, Skrapp, and Anymail. There are more. Just ask Google.

Get the event list from that industry event you just attended.

OK, The Cold Email

This is a well covered subject area, so I suggest that you take a couple of hours and do a Google search to better understand best practices. However, here are some thought starters and a bit of guidance.

  • Understand that your target market is inundated with emails. Many marketing people get over 100 a day. You have to break through. Within milliseconds. Subject Line is KEY!
  • Testing a range of email options to get to the most opens is critical. Examples: test subject lines; who From; copy length; graphics; timing (as in the day of the week and time of day); the timing of follow-up emails; your call to action and even the ‘hooks’ you use like what micro cases or research you use to get people’s attention.

For your very personalized emails (the ones sent to your hot list) do the following.

  • Spend the time researching the person. Get into their head.
  • Understand their key pain points and figure out how to address them. No, not every pain point, but one or two key ones.
  • Make the subject line personal. Let’s say you are that baby boomer specialist and you want to target Schwab’s marketing director. Use a line like this: “New Research For Schwab: Baby Boomer to Millennial Inheritance”.

 ……. Want to hear other ways to grow your agency? Have you called me yet?

Does Search Engine Optimization Work?

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Guess What… Search Engine Optimization Does Work

The chart above is from WordPress analytics on the source of my incoming traffic. Yup, Search Engine Optimization works. Just look at all the traffic I get from search engines. And, note how many searches come from just Google. In one month… 2,538!

When I ask agencies that contact me how they found me… the answer is always via a search engine (OK, sometimes because they read my book on pitching – know what, go up top and buy it.)

The Drill

So, here’s the drill. I’ve been blogging on one subject, ad / advertising agency business development for five or so years. I’ve got over 600 super well targeted and keyword optimized blog posts. I support these with amplified mentions, emails to over 2,000 subscribers, posts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. As you can see, Google wins hands down.

What can your agency learn from this?

  • Be single-minded. Find your competitive agency positioning and blog accordingly.
  • Use the right keywords that your audience wants to read.
  • Blog often.
  • Have long posts. Yes, its ok to have short ones like this. But, Google likes loooong posts.
  • Work to get people to link to you.

You know this stuff. So, just do it. If you want incoming, you have to work at it.

But…

I know, you are very busy. And, you only have 17 blog posts. And, your best writers don’t want to blog. And, you worry about being too dedicated to one subject. Then, I advise my clients to do a range of other tactics.

One is to guest blog on much busier sites.

Wowzer Content Marketing & How To Own TripAdvisor

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Content Marketing Delivers London’s #1 Restaurant

This week, please watch this crazy video from Vice. Content marketing at its finest or, maybe, worst. Funny and scary.

Nonetheless, wowzer!

BIG QUESTION… If this guy can market (ok, with a bit of cheek) his way to number one, why can’t you market your agency to be perceived as number one?

(By the way… did you watch last week’s L2 video?)

Just Watch This L2 Video

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Watch, Please

I hope you pay attention to L2. Great thinking, delivery and they got bought. There is learning here for any advertising agency that has something of value to share, wants to grow, make good bucks, stand out and get bought someday.

Here are L2’s 2018 predictions. Advertising is in there about 1/2 way.