social media

Google And Your Advertising Agency Podcast

Peter · September 6, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Do you have an advertising agency podcast? Yes? Cool. If not, Google might give you a new reason to consider having one.

You know that Google wants to eat your advertising agency’s lunch. How? By moving their considerable power to a no click environment. That means in an ever-increasing search universe, many searchers, your Google target market, are getting all the information they need from the Google home page or directly from a Google service. Ever search for flights on Google? Chances are the first thing you did was to go to Google’s own flight search.

Big Time Google Advertising Agency Podcast SEO Benefits

Now Google wants to get on the podcast wagon. They’ll deliver podcast information directly in search results. Like, why search beyond Google on podcast platforms for podcasts. What do I mean? Here is some copy from Google itself.

“Starting today, when you’re searching for a podcast about a topic on Google – such as “podcasts about Awkwafina” or “Instant Pot recipe podcasts” – we’ll show you playable episodes in Search results alongside web pages, news, images and videos. We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s understanding of what’s being talked about on a podcast, so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form.”

And from SEO-Hacker:

With podcasts becoming present in Google search results, this makes promoting podcasts much easier, while making them more accessible to a wider audience thanks to the increased searchability. The increased convenience helps make the listening experience more efficient while making more users discover new podcasts without having to browse and search through hosting platforms.

I’ll keep it simple:

Google will highlight information about individual podcasts in related searches. Example: Do you want to own an advertising-related podcast about “Instagram video advertising”? Google will find you.

Google will also transcribe some podcasts into text. Yikes!

This can be good stuff for your advertising agency podcast.

Ready? Go.

Beat the agency down the street to podcast subject ownership.

Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

Peter · August 13, 2019 · 2 Comments

Is It Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

I’ve updated my 2017 blog post about the power of the advertising agency blog and the question of should y’all continue to go for it or kill it. To blog or not?

I think that this is a big question that should be reviewed every year. Another question. Would anyone miss your blog?

To help answer these, I am going to discuss the pros and cons of advertising agency blogging. The kind of content creation that has been considered an integral element in an agency’s business development program. Blogging has been a key element of an agency’s Attraction Strategy.

Me

I have been consistently blogging since the early 2000’s. I started blogging as the CEO of my Oregon agency Citrus (I covered both advertising issues and the late 2000 recession’s effect on marketing).

The advertising agency business development blog you are currently reading has over 650 blog posts and acts as the core of my inbound marketing program. Good news for me, it fills my new client pipeline. Blogging has been very good to me.

But, but… my opinion about blogging, well at least for low volume advertising agency blogs, is that they are losing their power to attract a targeted audience, as in client leads. I see a few reasons for this.

There are zillions of blogs and blog posts every day. There has been a dramatic increase in the last five years.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of advertising agency blog posts and insights posted every week.
Most agencies write about the same subjects over and over.
Many agencies do not use online SEO tools to determine what blog post subjects will attract the most readership. I great way to do this is to look at what works for your most successful competitors.
Most agency blogs are boring.
Many client prospects are moving to podcasts and videos for their marketing information.

OK, Back To You. Should You Maintain Your Advertising Agency Blog? Or, Get Real And Just Kill It.

I look at a lot of advertising agency websites and their blogs. Many of the blogs are informative and brand building. However, way too many are just me-too blogs that actually deliver very little benefit to the agency.

The benefits should, stress should include the generation of incoming new client interest, showing that the agency Thinks Different (in a world of thousands of agency and advertising services options), help sell the agency as being on top of the advertising market, reinforces current client perceptions, demonstrates that the agency get content marketing, and demonstrates some personality and chutzpah. I call the chutzpah part… being Unignorable.

Start Here: Some Huge Blog Stats

The world really does not need another blog. As Steven Pressfield says in the title of his must-read book: “Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It”. [Read more…] about Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

Does B2B Social Media Still Work?

Peter · June 11, 2019 · 2 Comments

Does B2B social media marketing still work for advertising agencies?

I’ll get to that answer in a minute.

Background: I have been thinking of writing a book on the why, how, when and when to move overseas. Thinking about this is a result of my being asked every week about the how and why I moved from Portland, OR to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 2016. My book would be crammed with facts by country, the personal side of living overseas (with many interviews with digital nomads and expats) and associated benfits and costs.

I mentioned this new idea to my wife and she asked me… why not a blog? It has an ongoing life and gets written in manageable chunks vs. a static book. Plus a blog can be monetized. Publishing books in 2019 is a pain in the ass – for both traditional publishers and self-published authors (I know, I’ve published four books).

Of course, like so many business endeavors, the rubber hits the road when one starts to figure out how to market the blog or book. That is how I got to starting to think about how to grow an audience.

Me

This blog has gotten between 75 and 60 thousand visitors a year. I’m happy – these are strong numbers for a focussed blog about advertising agency business development.

I know that growth has come from a small set of factors.

I started in 2012 when there were significantly fewer blogs in general and a smaller set of advertising agency consultants.
I have strong SEO skills that have helped me to live on page one for the right Google searches.
I did a lot of guest posting from 2014 to 2016. This got my name and URL out there.

However, like many of my marketing friends and agency clients, I am seeing a reduction in traffic. I believe that this is a result of market shifts:

Competition for B2B eyeballs is much stronger.
Organic reach is tanking. Google is less friendly (for many reasons).
Mobile viewership continues to grow (smaller screens do not help me get shares and convert – this might be an arguable point).

Spend Money

Many of the agencies that thought that all they had to do is to spend the time writing brilliant blogs posts to build audience are not getting the traction they had hoped for.

The solution… you must market your social media programs. Even $100 a month marketing budget can help your company’s social media program reach its prospects. Passive is way too passive in today’s competitive social universe.

But… writing blog posts and managing LinkedIn and Instagram and even more costs money and time itself.

My solution is at the bottom.

Daunting Social Media Facts

Here are some facts about social media platforms in 2019 that might cause a marketer to really think hard about the competition for eyeballs. Simply put, given the growth in all social media platforms, can your blog and other social media efforts ever deliver the audience you seek? I come to this question via both my personal journey and watching dozens of advertising agencies fail at driving interest via social media.

Blogs: There are over 500 million blogs. WordPress alone estimates that there are 60 million WordPress blogs.
LinkedIn’s monthly active user base is over 260 million (Apptopia).
Instagram: Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users. More than 500 million use the platform every day (Statista).
Facebook: Over 2 billion active users (Statista).
YouTube: Total number of YouTube monthly viewers worldwide – 149 million (Statista).
Twitter: From the Washington Post – “Twitter claimed 321 million monthly users, down 9 million, or more than 2 percent from the same time last year.”

Repeated Point Coming

(!) The solution… you must market your social media programs. Even $100 a month marketing budget can help your company’s social media program reach its prospects. Passive is way too passive in today’s competitive universe.

(!) Something else to consider – really grow your account based marketing program. Go beyond social media marketing to doing more direct marketing to your list to make sure your sales message is delivered.

Oh, try this: Talk to me.

11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

Peter · June 8, 2019 · 1 Comment

11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools (Updated From 2014).

NOTE: I first wrote this 11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools blog post at the very end of 2014 and a few minutes ago the website checker app Checkbot pointed out that this post has a couple of dead links. (4.5 years later and it is interesting to see what tools have survivied). So, I thought that I’d repost and make things work. I suspect a reason for the broken links is that some of these tools are history. Here is what I found.

Back to 2014 – it is still worth the read… Blog post Consistency, actually the lack of it, is one of the most pressing issues that reduces the effectiveness of most advertising agency new business programs. So… Here are some ad agency business development tools that I recommend to keep your agency’s new business and content development program on track. (Tweet this.)

These tools (and there is a big world of tools out there these days) will help your efficiency and, more importantly, make you look like a subject matter expert because you are on that ball. Even better, as you use these tools for your own business development efforts, you will be gaining social media expertise that will dazzle your client prospects.

Clients (the ones you do not have yet) need your help according to this research from Ascend2.

Almost half of the clients surveyed have significant social media obstacles to overcome. You can help them by helping yourself.

This list of 11 tools is my first set of recommended online social media management tools. There will be more coming. [Read more…] about 11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling

Peter · March 5, 2019 · 1 Comment

Eeeew, Advertising Agency Cold Calling

One of my advertising agency business development clients asked me today if cold calling was better than doing nothing.

I responded that cold calling is so ineffectual that he might just want to do nothing. Of course, we had a more in-depth conversation about objectives, strategy and tactics — but his question points out that many agency people still employ cold calling. They must think it works.

Cold Facts About Cold Calling

I took these facts from the 2018 ZoomInfo blog about B2B cold calling:

63% of salespeople say cold calling is what they dislike most about their jobs
Cold calling is ineffective 90.9% of the time
Less than 2% of cold calls actually result in a meeting
Less than 1% of cold calls lead to a sale
In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts

Don’t make cold calling an important element of your biz dev program. But, you know that.

Cold Information

One more serious point about make-believe B2B marketing. All you have to do to get Sales Qualified leads is to do content or inbound marketing.

As you traverse the world of business development thinkers, you will find people that tell you that inbound is the only way to go – even going so far as saying that if you are brilliant and narrowly focussed you will never have to pitch for business. Sorry, not true.

Today, as has been the case for years, you need to exercise all of your business development muscles and tactics to win.

Don’t make content marketing the only element of your biz dev program. But, you know that.

In and Out

Hey, I have no issue with inbound and social media marketing as I have built my global consultancy on inbound – I get it. My 650+ blog posts get Google, LinkedIn and Twitter action.

This has worked for me because when I get a call from my very (very!) narrow target audience of advertising, PR, and digital agencies, they most likely found me because I am on page one of most ad agency business development related searches. Now really, do you think your agency will be on page one for a search of PPC or PR or general, even local, agencies? Probably not. That’s why you also need to be very smart about outbound marketing. Or, as it is now called Account Based Marketing. Which simply means… find a set of companies that you want to work with and go after them with a very smart, well researched, insight-driven marketing program.

LOL. For years, we’ve called this ‘sales.’

As pointed out earlier, a ‘nerve-racking’ element of outbound marketing is the cold call. I prefer to call it / make it warm calling.

Just the mere mention of cold calling strikes fear in the hearts of the most accomplished advertising agency CEO’s and business development directors. Let’s face it, who really likes to pick up the phone to call a stranger and ask them for something… like their advertising or design account? Um, chances are rather good that it’s not you.

Because of this painful fact, we now have an entire industry of social media experts telling you that all you have to do today to win at business development is inbound marketing. You know, if you blog, Tweet, leverage Linkedin and Facebook, the business will just come knocking at your door.

Really? I don’t think so.

Please note, I am not telling you that a refined agency positioning plus the strategic use of social media coupled with targeted insight-driven content marketing won’t deliver incoming leads. I am just saying that inbound alone is a bit too passive for most aggressive (in a good way to be aggressive) sales programs.

I am sure you know what accounts that you’d like to work for and why they should think about you. OK? So, go get them. But, do not wait for the looong social media cycle to get them to find you. Will attracting the attention of the specific clients you want to work with take time? Yes. But I’d rather be intelligently pro-active than 24/7 passive. [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling