Are Your New Business Programs Invisible?
How do your future clients find you… or not? Here are 28 rather basic questions you should be asking yourself — often: [Read more…] about Is Your Advertising Agency New Business Invisible?
new business
Does You Agency Ask For The Order?
I had an advertising exec friend read the manuscript of my new book on pitching* — its still being edited. She mentioned that I should add that advertising agencies should ASK for the deal when they are closing their presentation.
Ask For The Order
You know, ask for the order. I know that most agencies do not. Interesting, right?
Think about it… they responded to an RFI / then an RFP and then worked their tail off creating a super fine presentation. They delivered their best, smiled and walked out of the room without asking for the account. Most of the time, an agency thinks that their effort alone is serious proof that they want the business. Well, they are right. Any savvy client would realize that the agency is serious.
But, why not add a bit of passion to the end and politely ask for the the account? Or, as Zig Ziglar, one of the leading sales gurus says… A.A.F.T.O. Always ask for the order.
Need more sales inspiration? Here is a SlideShare presentation by Viru Nigam, an MBA student that I bet has spent more time on Ziglar’s sales techniques than most of us smart, cool agency folk. Take a look. Oh, slide 9 is all A.A.F.T.O.
[slideshare id=33435810&doc=theartofselling-140412001838-phpapp02]
*Oh, my book’s title:
The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.
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Does Size Matter In Advertising?
By now we’ve all yawned at the failure of the Omnicom / Publicis merger.
Here is how Bloomberg reported the snoozer and a link to an insightful interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse” with London Advertising’s CEO Michael Moszynski. Michael manages to offer a perspective that only the English could enunciate clearly — and he gets some great PR for his agency. And… manages to also squeeze in London’s One Brilliant Idea pitch – sweet:
“LONDON is an international advertising agency built for today. We create One Brilliant Idea that can work in any media, anywhere in the world.”
Not a bad PR days work.
So Does Size Matter?
No.
But, of course, many clients like it big. Microsoft as of last week thinks that having a mega-sized agency is a must have for a major brand that lives across the globe and, I assume, a cure all for past marketing ills. From Advertising Age:
Microsoft is moving its multibillion-dollar ad and media business, indicating a fresh-start approach under newly appointed CMO Chris Capossela.
The tech giant has selected Interpublic Group as agency of record for advertising and global deployment while Dentsu Argis will handle media planning, media buying and search advertising, the company said in a statement.
You want big?
Interpublic has 43,000 employees and dentsu 7,500. Does Microsoft, a notoriously lame, directionless marketer, need an agency resource with over 50,000 scattered strangers or does it need one really smart agency that can manage some global TLC? Smart being the operative word.
Sure Microsoft (and thier new CMO) thinks MSFT needs lots of dots on a map and I know that this perspective, in addition to ego, drove a search for a large humongus agency base. But, what Microsoft really needs more than a BIG agency is A BIG STRATEGIC IDEA to help create a big, sustainable, compelling brand proposition for all of their B2C and B2B brands? You know, a Master Brand position to start and then run with. Apple, a notoriously not lame or directionless company, never went mega agency. Nuf said.
And, at the moment I think that Google is creating some of the best tech advertising. Can you name their huge agency?
But, really does size matter? That’s why I want you to watch the Bloomberg video. Michael answers the question.
[Truth be told, I sold the idea of dots on the map when I ran business development at Saatchi. So, I get that approach. But, it feels so 1990’s.]
How Advertising Agencies Publish On LinkedIn
I’ve begun to test LinkedIn’s new content publishing platform. It allows all of us (the platform is currently rolling out) to publish long posts on LinkedIn — just like Mark Cuban. Importantly, your posts will be seen outside your own network. This is the big benefit. Here is LinkedIn’s announcement.
“Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers. Members can continue to share their expertise by posting photos, images, videos and their original presentations on SlideShare”
I posted two very short posts last week to see how the system works. The posts were simply repurposed content from this blog — easy! I can’t say that I am overwhelmed at the numbers but I like that I could track my stats immediately and that I amassed, well here are the stats as of yesterday (they are up another 12 as of this morning):
My goal is to continue to test the publishing platform and to see how longer posts about broader subjects perform. I am sure that the art of headline writing will make a big difference.
Take away: even small agencies can now broadcast their brilliance to the entire Linkedin network.
Why Are Aren’t Advertising Agencies Using Pinterest?
Pinterest just added Guided Search. It makes it easier to find pins and boards on the desktop and in the mobile world.
Pinterest is huge and they wanted to make it easier to find what their users are looking for (I’ll come back to why this matters to agencies in a second.) According to Mashable:
Part of what made the expanded search necessary is the total number of pins on the platform. Silbermann (Ben, the CEO) says that Pinterest users have created 750 million boards, and pinned more than 30 billion items. Those numbers have grown 50% in the last six months alone, he says.
OK, zillions of people search Pinterest. Some are your future clients. If so, why are two of the leading results for the term “advertising agencies” advertising agency new business consultants – Michael Gass and me? Shouldn’t it be advertising agencies or the huge networks like WPP or Publicis leading the way? What if a client thinks of using Pinterest to do an agency search? Hint: some are.
Take a look below. And, while you are at it, here is a link to my set of Pinterest posts.
