Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

marketing

Advertising Websites Only Get 8 Seconds

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Let’s start this post with an admission… I don’t have informational graphics on every page of my site (some, but not a lot.) But.. stay tuned cause I have ten cartoons coming from my friend Steve and his The Cartoon Agency  that will support my new book’s discussion of the top ten pitch-killing mistakes that even super smart advertising agencies (that’s you amigos) make when they pitch.

8 Seconds, Only

One of the most important discussions I have with my advertising agency clients is about gauging the marketing power of their websites. I start the talk by telling them that I know that critiquing their website is like discussing their kid’s soccer moves. That said, the agencies are paying me to be honest, so I am.

I begin the review process by telling them that their visitors only give them 7 seconds of examination before they stay to learn more or  move on. Agencies… you better hook ’em in 7 seconds. I just found out that I am wrong. According to the smart Neil Patel its 8 seconds (more on him later):

goldfish

“How long do you think your attention span is? Maybe a minute or even two, right? Sadly, your attention span is 8 seconds. That’s one second shorter than that of a goldfish.”

What does that mean for your advertising agency websites? It means that you better pay lots of attention to attention deficit clients that may be looking at ten, twenty or more agency websites before they land on a few to contact. 8 seconds. Keep this in mind and make getting to a point an objective when you build or rebuild your websites. If you want to see how some agencies get this job done, or not, take a look at my set of San Francisco agencies and how they handle their 8 seconds.

Here is how Neil helps us visualize visualization by using his “This Is Your Brain On Visualization” infographic. There is a lot of information here for you and your clients.

Back To Niel Patel

I dig Neil because he provides great insights and is a serial self-promoter worth watching. His stuff works works. His Quicksprout website has a page rank of 5 and he has 1110,000+ Twitter Followers. From Neil’s bio:

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

Yeah, this is a bit crazy for a 29 year-old. But, he is surly working it. Check out his outrageously unrelenting promotions. Yes, a bit too many popups and forms for most advertising agency websites, but these is a lot of benchmark sales learning in there.

Last point. He walks his talk. See his visual bio.

 

Do Advertising Agencies Have Business Plans?

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This post is is based on my personal SEO experience and is meant to be instructive for all small, medium and large advertising agencies that want high search results for their websites. That’s you, right?

I am in Mexico working. Just for the hell of it, I took a look at where my site ranks in the Google results for “advertising agency business plan.” Since my business is helping advertising (and design and digital) agencies position and market themselves for growth (and actually write a smart / active new business plan), I figured I’d see where I rank on this particular search. Well, I come in on page 1 (that’s sweetly good) – but, only at position number 8.

advertising agency business plan Google Search

Now, considering that I am preceded by some famous and huge names…

Bplans / Fuel Lines / Wiki How / Inc. / Forbes and Entrepreneur, I am not feeling too bad.

However, I have over 250 blog posts related to this subject and I think that I should rank higher. Note: my competitor Fuel Lines started his industry blog in 2008 (wow!) and I didn’t start blogging about new business until January 2012…  I shouldn’t be feeing too bad.

An important fact: I only have four blog posts with “business plan” in the headline. Lame… well, five including this new post.

So, here is what I am going to do about growing my Google position:

I will write more posts like this that have the keywords “advertising” and “business plans” in the headline and of course, include these keywords (but not too many) in the body copy.

I am also linking from this page to 3 past posts with these words in the headline. Note: most of this website is about new business after all. Here you go:

Your Advertising Agency New Business Plan

How To Write An Ad Agency Business Plan

Why Don’t Advertising And Digital Agencies Have A Business Plan?

Another factoid that answers the question… do agencies have business plans?

After talking with dozens of agencies, I figure, at best, 20% have up-to-date business plans and about 50% (I am being kind) have well-thought-out business development plans. Given that there are over 4,000 advertising agencies around the world, my market opportunity is huge / and so is yours if you have a plan.

Finally, I am going to ask you to contact me. I get about 3 qualified incoming inquiries from agencies a week. I’ll tell you how this happens. It isn’t magic and there is absolutely no reason that you can’t get lots-o incoming as well.

By the way, sign up below for my weekly newsletter.

 

Inbound Content Marketing & Ad Agency New Business

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Here is a sweet chart from a study on content marketing from Eloqua. The bottom line… create smart, targeted, strategic content (think blogs, white papers, SlideShare presentations, etc.) that will work as inbound marketing tools and client magnets. Content marketing works for me. That’s how I get my qualified leads. Here is the chart.

www.oracle.com webfolder mediaeloqua documents Content Marketing Kapost Eloqua ebook

Easy Plan

Here is a fast micro plan for how to do it. Of course, the devil is in the details.

  • Go get a blank media / creative brief and write it like you would do for a new client program:
  • Determine who your target audience is. Is it any client with over $1,000,000 to spend? The dentist down the street? The entire automative category?It probably isn’t the art director at the competitive agency so stop writing the 7,000th blog post on responsive design with keywords only a web developer will be interested in.
  • Determine what you want your target audience to do. Like, call you up. Or, join your mailing list.
  • Create a two – three month content plan. Think like an editor. What will  the subjects be that will be of interest to your audience? What are the keywords they use to search for information?
  • Assign someone to mange and at least a couple of people to write the blog.
  • Start with at least 15 blog posts of from 500 to 1,000 words.
  • Keep at it. As the chart shows, it takes a loooong time to get up to speed.
  • Tie the blog automatically to Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

Then…kiss your new clients.

 

From X Rated to 4 Skins

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Last week I got to deliver my first X Rated blog post.

This week I get to point you to one of my favorite (WTF?) brand names: 4 Skins Wine.  Hmmm. I don’t even know where to begin or should I just cut myself off?

I found this brand while doing some competitive agency research for a great Canadian agency client. Competitive research can be a bit boring but when you find such an exciting, attention generating, scrumptious sounding and mouth watering  brand name, you just have to tell the world. Here it is care of Halifax’s Spectacle Group. Enjoy!

4 Skins Our Work Spectacle Group

Coca-Cola And The Future of Advertising Agencies

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download (1)Today’s Wall Street Journal article, A New Marketing World Requires New Skills, gives us a sweet opportunity to get into the head of Joe Tripoldi, Coca-Cola’s Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer. Joe shares what he expects from his marketing organization as the world of marketing makes some dramatic and fast-paced shifts from old-fashioned brand-building to digital marketing.

This deep look also provides client-side direction for advertising and digital agencies to better understand where the world of marketing is headed. Not that any of this informations should be news. However, it is reinforcement for the way all agencies should be thinking in March, 2014. Thinking means designing agency services and hiring the right talent for the future. If Coke wants analytics, digital, social, mobile and gamification expertise — all clients will eventually want this and agencies need to plan accordingly.

“The biggest issue for CMOs today is the critical need to ‘re-skill’ their marketing organizations and build new capabilities in areas like big data/analytics, digital, social, mobile, gamification and design.

“This is not just about hiring a few subject-matter experts, but building a depth of knowledge leaders and practitioners in these critical new competencies. If they don’t, marketing organizations will be stuck with traditional 1980s and ’90s brand-building skills in a 21st-century world of an ‘always on’ consumer. The times, they are a-changing.

“You cannot slide over people in your current organization because they have loosely dabbled in these areas. You need to go to the millennial marketplace for ‘natives’ who have lived and breathed these disciplines for much of their lives. Individuals who have passion for connecting brands with people in new ways.

“The talent is out in the marketplace, you just have to be creative to source it in nontraditional ways through communities or networks. Then you have to understand that you may only retain these people for a short time, but the positive, disruptive impact and the knowledge they can impart on your organization is game changing.”