Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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If I Were An Ad Agency Client – I’d Hire Lean Mean Fighting Machine

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I look at lots of ad agency websites. I put them in my agency directory / I look at them because agencies contact me to ask for my help (its amazing how fast you can suss out an agency’s value – like in 7 seconds) and I look at them as if I were a client seeking a new marketing partner.

Most agency websites fail. They are me-too, slow to deliver a message, overloaded, have no personality and don’t sell anything. They are, sadly, 20 years or so after the birth of the graphical browser, dull and oh so boring brochures. So, its so sweet when one comes across an agency  that gets it. And, of course, once again, its the English that have it all figured out.

In this case, its the, of course, lean website from London’s Lean Mean Fighting Machine. Spend time on this website: watch the videos, enjoy the attitude like how they position their blog (“Our Blog: By Employees That Are Forced To Write it”.)

Screen shot 2014-02-07 at 9.49.49 AM

 

Please. Make adjustments to your website. Be different, have fun. Oh, and think sales because, at the end of the very long day, your website should sell (and, if you can, look different that the guy down the street.)

Finally, a sense of humor will go a long way to pre sell. Most clients say that “chemistry” is how they choose an agency.

Advertising Agency Self Promotion #2

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A couple of days ago I wrote about a small advertising program that my Agency Citrus Ralston360 ran 7 years ago. I just took a look at the post and it got me thinking about what else Google had stored in its memory about how we promoted the agency. This led me to an article about a podcasting self promotion we ran for the agency close to ten years ago.

Way back when, I decided that podcasting, because of automated distribution via RSS and inclusion in iTunes, was a platform for the future. If you have been following the world of podcasting, I was both right and wrong. Podcasting is still hot but RSS (Really Simple Syndication) didn’t really take off. Sure, podcasting is out there but the RSS thing was a bit too complicated for most web users. In fact, I think its promise of automated delivery has been taken over by apps. But, that’s another story.

So back in 2000 something, we promoted our expertise in podcasting by 1) having our own marketing interview podcast, Ralston360 View (it had a large following on iTunes); white papers, speaking engagements and a nifty video that was embedded inside an iPod looking gizmo graphic. You spun the interactive FLASH-based dial to select different instructional videos. I wish I still had the videos but they are long gone. This is what it looked like:

360_podcasting

This sweet tool garnered press for the agency and helped us with our very early social media prowess. It burnished our image. We became known for our thought leadership.

I continue to be a major fan of the value of thought leadership when it is targeted to the right audience. I recommend the art of thought leadership as win-win self promotion to my agency clients.

Need some strategic leadership ideas? I’ve got a whole bunch more. Give me a shout.

 

 

 

 

 

How Advertising Agencies Should Find Clients

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The RSW/AgencySearch New Year Outlook Survey is out. It was completed by 150 senior level marketers in December 2013. I haven’t had a chance to review it in detail but I found the section on how clients find agencies (or conversely, how advertising agencies should find clients) particularly relevant to my current agency new business clients.

I had two meetings yesterday where we discussed the balance between inbound and outbound marketing. I can’t see an agency only doing inbound marketing (social media, etc.) as suggested by some of my agency new business colleagues. Is is simply too passive and the great majority of agencies are not so specialized or well-positioned that they get a high level of incoming leads. I believe that its a mistake to put all of an agency’s chips on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. I stress “all.”

The research shows that agencies need to directly target clients and make the “call” — a warm call. Agencies also need to have a referral strategy to stimulate referrals from current and past clients, friends and family. Yes, even cousin George.

I have written about “warm calling” and how to grow referrals. 

Back to the study. As you can see, 32% of marketers find out about agencies from direct contact and 48% use referrals. To not go directly to clients with the right message and not stimulate your referral base would be a huge mistake. You need sound strategies for both.

www.rswagencysearch.com images_and_uploads 2014 RSWAgencySearch Agency Client New Year Outlook Report

Why SlideShare Is A Smart New Business Tool

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According to SlideShare’s 2013 recap, my presentations and white papers were viewed 3,012 times and I uploaded 15 “SlideShares.”

Beyond these general stats, I can’t make a direct correlation between SlideShare and my new business leads. But, I’ll gladly take 3,012 views since I can’t imagine that my advertising industry targeted documents are being viewed casually. I’ll take the inherent branding as a positive.

Given SlideShare’s ease of use and LinkedIn relationship, why wouldn’t you want to add SlideShare to your personal or advertising agency content-based business development program? SlideShare obviously drives message reach. Here is a portion of my personal SlideShare report. You will see an uptick in October. I tested what would happen if I did a bit of promotion on my blog and Twitter feed. It worked. I love the smell of social media synergy in the morning.

Peter levitan s year 2013 on SlideShare

Need More Reasons To Use SlideShare For Advertising Agency New Business

Slideshare is the world’s largest content-sharing community for professionals. Here is how SlideShare puts it on their SlideShare 101 page.

With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million page views, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

Here is another fact. I put up my presentation “24 Advertising Agency Positions For New Business Development” about 3 months ago and it has been viewed by over 900 people. Not too shabby for an easy upload and distribution of an existing presentation. The presentation is a repurposed use of Part III of my series on how to position advertising agencies. Here are other reasons why I use (and love) SlideShare…

  • It’s content marketing, baby.
  • It has that huge audience. According to comScore, SlideShare has 5 times more traffic from business owners than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn (which now owns SlideShare).
  • SlideShare is primarily a business tool and has deep reach into my advertising industry target market.
  • Google loves SlideShare and SlideShare presentations and PDF’s get indexed immediately.
  • My SlideShare presentations and documents are automatically shared across LinkedIn.

So, without further ado, my “best selling” 2013 SlideShare presentation…

Need some more facts? Here’s an infographic on SlideShare from Column Five Media.

Slideshare_Giant_c5

 

 

10 New Year’s Resolutions For Advertising Agencies

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babyNew Year’s resolutions work. Well, at least some do. The bottom line: at least give them a chance.

Here are ten 2014 resolutions for advertising agencies that I think your agency should make. I mean… really do if you want to grow your advertising agency and your bottom line.

1. We will strive to create an agency brand position or business model that stands out from our competition. This will be designed to give prospective clients a compelling reason to want to work with us. Let me help you out here.

2. We will write and execute an annual business development plan that uses both inbound and outbound marketing. In fact, we will start by updating our master business plan. Too much has changed in the past twelve months to not revisit all of our assumptions and objectives.

3. We will manage and run our business development program with consistency. We will not start and stop. It is too late to restart a new business program after loosing a large client.

4. We will not pitch every account that comes our way. The pitch process is simply too costly. Before we pitch any account we will work hard to determine if the prospective client is a good fit for the agency based on a set of predetermined criteria. Here is a start. Is the client famous? Do they respect marketing? Do they want us to do brilliant work? Will they pay well? Are they a cultural fit? Hopefully you can say yes to two or three of these.

5. We will establish a recommended agency compensation plan and will share this with current and perspective clients. This plan will include cost-plus, fixed fees and performance-based remuneration based on a client’s performance metrics and an annual agency review. I’d like to se agencies get out in front of this issue.

6. We will ensure that we provide more value to all existing clients than we did in 2013. We will make sure we know how to prove our value.

7. We will give our people the time to fully explore the marketing value of new media or communications technologies. Some savvy agencies jumped on Vine when it was introduced and used it to build agency awareness.

8. We will work to grow our expertise in mobile and video marketing, the two fastest growing segments. To not do this will kill us.

9. We will write the book we want to read. I stole this line from Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like An Artist.” I wrote about why advertising agencies like The Gate Worldwide write books to grow their awareness for the blog Agency Post.

10. Have Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Go for it this year. I firmly believe that without BHAG’s agencies will wither away.

-> Here’s a bonus resolution:

We will call Peter Levitan and take him up on his Vito Corleone offer. We have nothing to lose and so much to gain from his new business insights. No, I don’t think that humility is a business-building attribute.

While you are at it… Don’t miss any of my brilliant (LOL, but I mean it) thoughts on new business.

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