video

Video And An Advertising Agency Sales Pitch

Peter · April 14, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I’m in L.A. doing some work with agencies and a local micro-photo-series for my global The People project. While waiting to get started shooting on Venice Beach, I hit up the Social Media Marketing podcast – one of my long-term get-smarter podcasts. I landed on a really good one. I highly recommend that you listen to “How to Create Video Ad Funnels That Work.”

I guarantee that the learning here could be applied to both your clients and your agency’s own sales program. Video rules – if done correctly. Here’s the podcast pitch from the host Michael Stelzner:

Thinking about creating more video ads? Wondering how to produce more effective social media video ads?

To explore how to create video ad funnels that work, I interview video ads expert Travis Chambers. His company, Chamber Media, specializes in creating scalable social video ads for clients such as Turkish Airlines, NordicTrack, and Yahoo.

I urge you to check it out. Especially if you want to learn from an ‘advertising agency’ that has separated itself from the mega-pack of zillions other advertising agencies.

But wait, there’s more…

The Chamber Media Website

The more is that I want to quickly highlight Chamber Media’s website.

They do a few things very right.

They have an unambiguous agency positioning that meets a clear market need.
I dig their concise opening sales pitch and so would potential clients: DRIVE MILLIONS IN PROFITABLE SALES WITH SCALABLE SOCIAL VIDEO ADS. They deliver the right words: millions, profitable sales, scalable and video ads.
They immediately go for the ask. The home page Work With Us button and the We’re Excited To Chat (as in friendly) contact page is aimed at driving leads. Chamber might ask a bit too many questions, but these are not required and helps the agency weed out low-spend low-value clients.
The Home Page goes right to strong cases and (!!!) results + ROI. ROI is in… pretty pictures, kinda, out.
They say what they do, list their clients, testimonials and show some very good press. How could you not say, “Yup, these guys are for real?”

It’s About Sales Baby

Way too many advertising agency websites do not sell. If you need some sales inspiration, head over to Chamber Media.

Me

A personal note: I am just getting started on my The People photo project. My goal is to shoot more portraits of more people on more continents than any other photographer. I will discuss this in detail in a future post. So far, I have over 300 portraits all shot with the same look = outside against a portable white background. I’ve now shot in China, Mexico, Selma, and L.A. Here are two from this week’s Venice Beach series. I think I’ll head back to Mexico with over 60 new portraits.

See How Advertising Agency Humor Can Sell You

Peter · January 29, 2019 · Leave a Comment

When I owned my Portland advertising agency I was always looking for a way to really grab the attention of a business development prospect the second they hit our home page.

I mean grab them. Excite them. Hold them. Sell them.

An approach that I considered over and over was to have a stand-up comedian do one or more video sets about advertising issues, the issues that our agency would solve plus toss in some self-deprecating agency humor. The key here was to immediately capture home page attention, look different and find a way to deliver our sales pitch via laughs. For some reason, I never made the decision to go this route and I kinda regret at least testing it.

A new liquor company looking for marketing help approached me last week. As I was starting to think through their objectives, product line and target market opportunities, I began a search for what is currently considered smart liquor advertising. One of my advertising agency clients pointed me to the Deadpool actor Ryan Reynold’s Aviation Gin. I’ll get back to him in a minute. [Read more…] about See How Advertising Agency Humor Can Sell You

Just Watch This L2 Video

Peter · January 11, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Watch, Please

I hope you pay attention to L2. Great thinking, delivery and they got bought. There is learning here for any advertising agency that has something of value to share, wants to grow, make good bucks, stand out and get bought someday.

Here are L2’s 2018 predictions. Advertising is in there about 1/2 way.

Does Your Ad Agency Get Its Marketing Right?

Peter · January 8, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Getting It Right

Here’s a look at some agencies that get their business development marketing right care of a request from Todd Foutz of Virgina’s NDP agency.He asked me if I could point to advertising agencies that looked like they had their business development act together. This post attempts to answer Todd’s question via some smart examples and asks you… “Does your ad agency get its marketing right?”

I told Todd that I could take a good look at and report on what is visible to the world, but could not comment on marketing that is not visible – read that as being 1:1 agency to client prospect direct marketing.

A quick bit of biz dev history.

When I returned from Saatchi & Saatchi London to New York, I was tasked with running business development across our North American offices. Early on, I happened to meet with Jon Bond of the hot agency Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners. KB had some small accounts like BMW, Citi and Victoria’s Secret. I asked him what the agency did for new business marketing. He said, “I never know what works so, we do everything.” I got it. But, that was in 1994 before time chewing digital marketing and its tracking capabilities. Today’s advertising agency cannot do everything. There is simply too much everything. So, I’ll lead with one point: focus. Work on doing just one or two marketing programs right. If they don’t work (after you’ve given them time), adjust or move on.

Not Visible

As you might expect, I cannot see agency to client direct communications (except for what my clients do and I’ll keep that confidential). It is unfortunate that I can’t see what everyone is doing since direct contact should be a key element of any agency’s outbound marketing and it would be very cool to be able to have a look.

That said, this is what I do know:

I’ve discussed that there are three primary ways that agencies drive leads. These include the all-mighty referral (an unmanaged default for way too many agencies), inbound searches (i.e. SEO and content marketing) and via direct outbound.

Outbound, which used to be called sales (OK, still is), has been revved up in recent years via the “new” idea of Account-Based Marketing. This means that an agency utilizes a very strategic managed approach to capture the attention of a prospective client.

Most agencies do direct outreach (possibly too much, too often or much worse, very poorly done). As I am sure you know, there is a great deal of client marketing research that supports the fact that all sorts of agencies hammer prospective clients all day long. It is a barrage that makes it difficult for most agencies to get noticed. To this point, Atlanta’s digital agency Cardinal has a very smart / strategic video on their website where they show one of their clients talking about how many times they get hit up by Cardinal’s competitive agencies – and are not interested in switching.

So, to hammer my point… outbound marketing is critical to agency success. However, poorly delivered outbound does not work, full stop. Super compelling well-targeted insights will break through the clutter to get the attention of the clients you want.

Good news for agencies: most of their agency competitors do not have a clue about how to look and sound trully attractive.

Bad news: these unattractive agencies that hammer clients without any productive, interesting sales pitch or all-important relevant insights help ruin communications for the agencies that actually have their marketing shit together.

Some Agency Biz Dev Research [Read more…] about Does Your Ad Agency Get Its Marketing Right?