Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

marketing

The Top 11 Elements of Advertising Agency Success

· · 1 Comment

As an agency owner my biggest fear was that I might have more billings walking out the back door than walking in the front. This thought kept me up many nights and it forced me to really think through what it takes to be a successful agency. Here is a list of 11 elements that I think are essential for building a sustainable agency.

Note that this list does not include some of the advertising industries more critical decisions like how to design a cool office, figuring out where to place the creative awards, choosing between a ping pong or foosball table, or what kind of holiday card to send out.

Here are my 11 elements or goals for agency success… And a good night’s sleep.

  1. The absolute bottom line for achieving all of your goals is that you view your agency as a business that is driven by the pursuit of profit. Yes, running an agency is fun. But, it is a business first. A failing business isn’t fun.
  2. You should end the year with at least a 15% net profit and 4+ months of cash in the bank to cover any unforeseen problems – like losing a big account.
  3. You will have a clear, competitive agency brand position and efficient marketing program designed to set you apart from your competition and generate incoming leads.
  4.  You will be known for delivering business building creative, strategic thinking, tech savvy and superior account service.
  5. You will have an ongoing active new business plan to drive agency awareness and to get your sales proposition out 24/7.
  6. You will get paid what you are worth and will not give away your brains for free. Nothing rankles me, and I suspect you, more than giving away valuable ideas to prove that you are brilliant. Yes, I know about procurement and bending over. But, lets try to get past that evil.
  7. You will have the right staff, expertise and thought-leadership to stay ahead of the rapidly evolving market. You understand that you may have to cut some dead wood. I’ll admit that I was occasionally slow in building for the future by making necessary cuts.
  8. Your management team and most important employees will be paid at or higher than industry averages. I continuously studied industry salary stats. I know that my employees did too.
  9. The best people in the business will call up and ask to work with you.
  10.  Everyone at the agency will have fun and will love to come to work in the morning.
  11. The desirable clients you want will call up and ask to work with you. These clients will deliver at least two of the following: they pay very well (this means very profitable); they understand and want great work; they are famous brands that beget other famous brands.

Just to pile on, allow me to end with a quote that has influenced my personal business decisions and need for speed.

“If everything seems under control you are just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti

–> There are more elements, lets discuss how to grow your agency.

How I Wrote And Published My First Book In Three Months: Length

· · 2 Comments

I am not a writer. Well, I was (I have been writing business related documents and white papers for years) and wasn’t (as in an eBook or “real” book writer) until I committed to writing a book (actually at least two non-fiction books per year.)

Back to not being a writer. One of the issues I had to deal with was how long of a book to write. I needed a target to to have some sense of when I had what I would consider a book-length manuscript. I am not super prolific and believe strongly that most people do not need the 250-page non-fiction book. In fact, according to Kindle statistics, yes Amazon knows abut your reading habits, most people don’t finish their business books (see “Your E-Book is reading You” from the Wall Street Journal.) Frankly, I think that most non-fiction can be a bit word-padded (I just made that term up) to get to a marketable page count to satisfy traditional publishers. Once upon a time, I even thought that I would create a series of short books under a form of imprint related to attention deficit disorder. Imagine, “ADD Books.” Books for the millions of the unfocussed.

Back to length. There are no rules. However, research indicates that most fiction books seem to fall into the following range: Books are about 60,000 to 125,000 words or 200 to 500 pages at 250-350 words per page. Most fiction starts at about 80,000 words.

However, non-fiction books run the gamut and can be much smaller. My favorite non-fiction, especially for business books, tends to be punchier and designed to be quicker reads (think of Seth Godin.)

“Boomercide”, my non-fiction book, is topping out at about 20,000 words or 80 to 90 pages at 6”X9”. This works for me as the book is intended to be very direct. No fluff. I am trying to get to the point.

So, how long should a book be? Depends… as usual.

 

 

 

How I Wrote And Published My First Book In Three Months: “Why”

· · 1 Comment

Decide Why You Are Writing Your Book.

If it’s to get rich, you better look elsewhere. Sure, you might become the next Tim Ferris. But, it ain’t that easy.  Bowker, the company that issues ISBN numbers, more on this later, estimates that they will issue 15,000,000 ISBN numbers for individual books in 2012.

Your odds? 15,000,000 : 1. Maybe less as many books are simply garbage.

OK, so despite this competitive headwind, I decided to write a book. Why? Two reasons.

First:

I did some my-life scenario planning. I considered what I’d like to be doing in a couple of years and thought that it would be great to maintain my home-base in Portland but be able to have a very portable means of generating income while traveling around the world. Writing, combined with the growing ease of self-publishing and expanding eBook market, looked like a plausible path. Now, I am not oblivious to the fact that this won’t be easy. But, I think that if I apply my marketing background to writing books I should succeed.

Second: I think that I have a very compelling proposition for my first book. I am going to commit suicide to help add some control to my financial planning; I’ve picked the date and how to do it. My book, Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide, covers this journey, my view that I am not going to be the only Baby Boomer to do this (Baby Boomer have the highest suicide rates) and the details of the subject of suicide. Additionally, I am a 30-year marketer and know how to do my research and apply it to a rich subject. My smartest friends, strangers and some book editors have vetted the book’s premise.  All think that Boomercide is a powerful subject.

Now you:

Why DO you want to write? I recommend really getting this objective-driven rationale down so you can really focus. Hey, writing can just be for fun. Maybe you’ve had that idea in your head for years and want to get it down on ePaper. Maybe you really want to launch a writing career. Maybe you want to leave something for your kids and grand-kids. Maybe you see the value in writing a book to polish your personal brand to help your career. There are lots of reasons. But, be clear about this and then just start typing.

Everyone is going to approach the act of writing differently. People with full-time jobs have to go to work; dads and moms have to take care of the kids. Finding the time is hard. That said, find it and get going. It feels great. And, your friends will envy you.

There is lots of advice on the web — start here at Joanna Penn’s site The Creative Penn — about how to attack a writing project. Go Google and drive yourself crazy. But, just start and devote whatever time you can. Maybe its time to give up the NFL or Ellen or even Yoga for awhile. Yes, stop and feed the kids but get going on your eBook.

Introduction: How I Wrote And Published My First Book In Three Months

· · 1 Comment

I am going to do a series of posts about my experience writing my first eBook. It has been, so far, a very fulfilling experience.  The eBook and a print-on-demand paperback will be published using Amazon’s digital platform in the next couple of weeks. I started in late June. So, it’s been about three months from idea to birth. The book is 21,000 words. Research shows that this is a good length for ADD-type people like me (it seems, according to Kindle research, that most people do not finish non-fiction books.) I didn’t want to write one of those 75,000 word books (think 250 pages) that repeats itself in order to deliver a “marketable” page count.

During this process, I’ve learned that I have a big idea for the book; that I am a fairly good writer; that writing takes real effort, concentration and time; that I needed partners (editor, cover and book designers, supportive wife); lots of coffee; that there are costs involved; that I need a very smart marketing plan (critical, more on this later); that there is a huge growing world of digital publishing (I kinda knew this but actually getting down to business showed me that its booming.)

The book:

I had been thinking about the concept of committing what I call rational suicide as soon as I left my financial planner’s office. His advice that I had three variables to consider when planning my financial future didn’t sit right. After all, as he said, I could control my income (to a certain extent) and my budget but not how long I would live. This one variable, a significant one, as in longevity, “what if I lived to 95, how could I support myself?” was simply too variable. That idea was the genesis of the book. As I began writing, the book morphed into adding a detailed discussion of the act of suicide, the world of physician-assisted suicide and the retirement saving deficit – a major issue for all of us.

Stay tuned.