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4A’s On Advertising Agency Pitching

June 7, 2022 By Peter Leave a Comment

Some Sage Words From The 4A’s On Advertising Agency Pitching

download 4a'sHere is an interview on advertising agency pitching I did with Tom Finneran, EVP, Agency Management Services at the 4A’s. It’s one of many expert interviews in my book on advertising agency pitching. It comes from the perspective of the 4A’s, its work with hundreds of agencies, and with the ANA – the Association of National Advertisers.

By the way, I am updating the book. Stay tuned. Oh, why update it? Well, let’s just use one newish thing that has revolutionized pitching (to put it mildly) — virtual pitching.

I thought I’d add this interview to my blog for a few reasons. Some to help you and one big one for me.

  • Your agency’s pitch batting average will increase if you have a solid, smart, consistent pitch system.
  • You will win more pitches if you put yourself in the client’s shoes.
  • You should be aware of the 4A’s and ANA agency search guidelines. If fact, share this with the clients you pitch. Here’s a link to an Ad Age article on the guidelines.
  • You’ll help me because I want you to buy the book. It’s not because I make a lot of bucks from sales (although sales are robust and it is nice to get money from Amazon.) No, I want you to buy the book because many agencies that read the book, see that I actually know what I am talking about, and turn into my consultancy’s business development clients. Duh coming: Books help make people and even agencies look and sound like experts.

On To The 4A’s Interview That Will Help You Win More Pitches

Warning. This is a long interview. Long as in over 3,000 words. Read it if you want to win more new business.

Tom Finneran: EVP, Agency Management Services – The 4A’s

Tom Finneran leads the 4A’s Agency Management Services team, which provides industry guidance, member consultation, and benchmark information in the areas of new business, agency compensation, agency management, and operations.

Tom’s career includes extensive ad agency and advertiser financial management experience. He was executive Vice president/CFO at Jordan McGrath Case & Partners and Arnold McGrath Worldwide, a unit of Havas. He was also Executive Vice President/COO at Grey’s promotional unit, J. Brown/LMC.

PL: While there’s no one-size-fits-all pitch process, do you think that clients are running more professional pitches today than in the past?

Tom: What we consistently hear is that reviews have become less professional and efficient than in the past. This is important because, to a degree clients have taken in-house some of the review practices that have traditionally been managed by industry consultants who were more adept at running professional pitches.

In terms of the efficiency of reviews, some of the things that are less efficient than they should be are cattle calls. You’ll have clients who are not experienced at doing reviews, and they’ll send information requests to far more agencies than should be included in the initial list.

Some of the other inefficient processes are what I would refer to as RFPs from hell. Here is one example. About a year and a half ago, one of our members called irate about an RFP that had 300 questions. And I said, “You’ve got to be exaggerating. It couldn’t possibly have been 300 questions.” So the person said, “Wait a minute. Let me look at this.” Then she commented, “Okay. You got me, I exaggerated. It’s 293 questions.” So this was an RFP that a client-sourcing group used. The RFP was geared to soliciting responses from ingredient suppliers, research and development firms, and contractors of all types. And woven into the 293 questions were a few marketing-related questions that were kind of like packed in there.

PL: So are you seeing these kinds of issues primarily with larger clients or also medium-sized to smaller clients?

Tom: These tended to be from marketers who did not have dedicated, knowledgeable marketing procurement folks. They were taking people who could source corrugated materials and chemical components and things of that nature.

PL: Is there an agency size factor? Is it affecting your large and small 4A’s members?

Tom: It affects members both small and large. [Read more…] about 4A’s On Advertising Agency Pitching

The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

May 31, 2022 By Peter 36 Comments

Advertising Agency Resource List – Updated Often

advertising agency resourceMy Advertising Agency Resource List is curated often to help advertising, digital, design, and PR agencies easily find the inspiration and industry resources that will help y’all build killer agencies and careers.

If I were you, I’d grab a glass of Larkmead Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 (LOL only $150 or a nice craft beer – a bit less expensive) and check out all of these links. I guarantee that at least one of these websites and/or tools will help you or your team grow your agency.

Dig growth and sharing? Therefore my friends, go ahead and share this page with your friends, family, and staff.

A kudo from David Ogilvy: “I wish I had this advertising resource list when I was in the ad biz. All I had was my brain.”

OK, one more. This here Peter Levitan blog has over 800 posts dedicated to helping your marketing communications company grow. I hope that my insights on the art and science of agency business development, growth, and management help you to make more bucks. Speaking of resources and advice, take me up on my Corleone offer. 

A Couple Of Quickies:

Website Speed Is Good. A slow website drives down SEO. Check out your website.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

BROWSEO.We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.

And, To help Your Thought Leadership Program: What Are People Searching For?

AnswerThePublic. This is a free visual tool that shows you what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for at Google.

Exploding Topics. Yes, just like it sounds.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not on Google’s search universe. A look at the top 2019 Google searches may or may not make you a fan of humanity.

Social Mention.  Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go.

OK – The Advertising Agency Resource List…

Here are the topics covered:

  • Advertising Agency News Sites
  • Ad Agency Directories
  • Top Advertising Blogs
  • Favorite Social Media Tools
  • Video Marketing Tools & Information
  • Creative Inspiration & Idea Generation
  • Creative Space & Time
  • Online Advertising Education
  • Online Legal Resources
  • Life After Advertising & How To Make $$$
  • Top Twitter Tools
  • Top Advertising And Design Awards
  • Marketing & Advertising Podcast
  • Marketing Tool Generators

Advertising Agency News Resources

  • The Ratti Report. Your agency needs fresh business development leads, right? So check out this website for a daily list of business development opportunities. News you can use to buy that new Tesla Roadster.
  • Advertising Age. Ad Age delivers the latest news from the world of advertising and marketing agencies.
  • Ad Asia Online. AdAsia Online focuses on automation, advertising technology, and creative technology,
  • AdNews. Australia’s advertising, marketing, and media industries news resource.
  • Adweek.  Adweek covers media news, including print, technology, plus.
  • branding in asia. Need to know what’s up in the Asian marketing and advertising world? Sure you do. Check out this comprehensive resource for creative work, news, interviews, and insights. Read it and you just might take the next non-stop to Singapore.
  • Business Insider. Business Insider’s daily take on the ad industry.
  • Campaign Asia. Campaign Asia reports on advertising and emerging media in the Asia Pacific region.
  • Campaign Magazine. Ad industry news from the UK’s advertising industry “bible”.
  • Communication Arts. Print publication offering competitions, forums, feature articles, job bank, graphic design resources and online shopping.
  • Creative. The magazine of promotion and marketing.
  • Digiday. Digiday creates content, services, and community that foster change in media and marketing.
  • Direct Marketing News. Provides news, feature articles, columns, and special reports on direct marketing.
  • The Drum. The alternative to Campaign. Delivers lots of news and views.
  • MediaPost. Comprehensive advertising and media industry coverage.
  • TechCrunch. Keep up (or try to keep up) with the fast-paced world of startups and VCs.

Ad Agency Directories

[Read more…] about The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

May 22, 2022 By Peter Leave a Comment

Optimized Search Engine Blog StrategyI started blogging in the early 2000s. I really cranked it up after I sold my advertising agency and became an advertising agency business development consultant. Below is a list of my blog posts. The subject matter of these hundreds of blog posts reflects my dedication to having an optimized search engine blog strategy. It worked.

My Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy.

I am going to keep this easy. I could ramble on but these are the core elements of my blog strategy.

  • Understand your objectives. Mine is to entice advertising agency leadership to contact me about helping them develop an unignorable business development program. This has worked for me every week.
  • Understand and meet the needs of your market. You are writing for them. Example: My evergreen list that is just for advertising execs… Top Advertising and Design Awards.
  • Use all available SEO tools to help you determine trending subject matter and keywords. There are a bunch of tools listed on my advertising agency resources list.
  • Study your direct competition. What are they writing about? What are their best keywords?
  • Be consistent. As you can see, I have written, on average, over one post per week. In 2013 alone (when I wanted to really drive Google love), I wrote 188 blog posts.
  • Have your very own voice. Write with gusto,
  • Amplify the reach/frequency of your blog posts: post em on LinkedIn; use them in your agency’s email newsletter; send them directly to clients and prospects (even try paper), and on…
  • Go mega amplification. I am going to use some of these very best Levitan blog posts to form the basis of my new book.

OK – Here You Go… Levitan’s 750 Plus Blog Post Archive

[Read more…] about An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

Bob Hoffman | The Ad Contrarian On Advertising Agency Presentations And Pitching

April 13, 2022 By Peter Leave a Comment

In This Podcast, Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian, Delivers His View On How To Make Smarter Advertising Agency Presentations and Pitching For That New Account.

A slight update to an older post about my Bob Hoffman interview as a way to point out one of my primary expertise zones – how to create winning advertising agency presentations… we are supposed to be a bit self-loving, right?

I have a prospective agency client in Europe. She has a new business pitch to nail before we are going to talk about my services so I sent her a list of my writings on pitching and am telling her to buy my book, The Levitan Pitch (see it at the top of this page).

To help YOU win more business, go to this omnibus page loaded with my pitch thinking and while drinking a milkshake, arak, or a nice red wine, scroll through the list and as I say, Win More Pitches.

Back To Bob and Building Smarter Advertising Agency Presentations

In this podcast interview, we share the A.I. version of Bob Hoffman’s interview with me about the advertising agency pitch process. Bob tells it like it is. He is not known for being tepid. The interview is from my extremely best-selling book, “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.”

Bob Hoffman is the Chief Aggravation Officer at The Type A Group, and much more. I’ll just save some time and let Bob tell you about himself:

“Bob is the author of five Amazon #1 selling books about advertising. He is also one of the most sought-after international speakers on advertising and marketing. One of his books, “BadMen: How Advertising Went From A Minor Annoyance To A Major Menace” exposed many of the dangerous data abuse practices that are now making international headlines. It was selected “Best of Marketing 2017.”

He is the creator of the popular “The Ad Contrarian” newsletter, named one of the world’s most influential marketing and advertising voices by Business Insider.”

SHOW LINKS

Bob Hoffman’s Website

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

Do not forget to subscribe to Advertising Stories whenever you Listen To Podcasts. See the handy links to podcast players.

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has already recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

The 9 Best Consumer Insight Definitions

March 31, 2022 By Peter Leave a Comment

What Is a Consumer Insight? Some Definitions.

Importantly, Why the Use of Insights Is Critical to Advertising Agency New Business.

Consumer insightWhatever you want to call it… a consumer insight, marketing insight, brand insight or research insight, the idea of developing Ah-Ha insights is a primary driver of brand and revenue growth. The Ah-Ha element is critical to creating a powerful consumer insight. This is true for advertising agency B2B new business gains as well. Opening a conversation with a prospective new client with an Ah-Ha insight will get their attention, will quickly begin to help them realize that you understand their market, create a marketing opportunity and that, yup, you are smart.

Appearing smart at the start of a new business conversation delivers the Holy Grail of prospective clients’ needs –  BIG word coming… confidence.

I will be writing in the coming about the wonderful world of insights and – importantly – the tools to get you there. However, I thought that it might make a bit of sense to provide a quick list of various definitions of just want a consumer insight is. As I move forward, I’ll give you examples of insights that have driven business growth (like the MAN). I’ll highlight how I think and actually know how a consumer insight can help an advertising agency win new business. Even win the pitch in the first minute.

9 Consumer Insight Definitions

Oxford Dictionary

“The capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing.”

Merriam Webster

1: The power or act of seeing into a situation: PENETRATION

2: The act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively

McKinsey

“Insights into consumers and how they think can help companies spark innovation, uncover the most promising (though not always most intuitive) sources of growth, and develop or maintain successful products and brands.

Generating customer insights through qualitative research. Qualitative research helps bring customers to life. It illuminates their needs, their decision-making processes, and their reactions to companies and brands.”

[Read more…] about The 9 Best Consumer Insight Definitions

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