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How To Build An Active Website Contact Page

Peter · August 29, 2024 · 2 Comments

How Powerful Is Your Website’s Contact Page?

I’m updating a 2023 blog post about the good, bad and ugly of advertising agency Contact pages. I’m into this today because I am helping a California agency build a kick-ass (action-oriented) website that sells.

In my journey, I came across the contact page for the “cool” agency Animal. YIKES! They have a contact page without any way to make a fast contact. WHA! Take a look. Their Contact page is the same as their home page sans any contact method other than giving you links to their social media. Two steps are one too many.

OK, To You

You’ve built your advertising or marketing or digital agency. You work on your client’s business. You want more clients. You have a website you hope your lead generation programs drive people to.

Then people go to the website and you hope they get so interested (and in some cases excited) that they go to your contact page and… you sound so lame and passive. Like you say virtually nothing that would make them really want to make contact. Harsh? Yup. True for the majority of advertising / digital agency websites (and, hey, the marketing world in general).

Here are some examples of what NYC and Cleveland agencies say on their Contact page. Would these “words” make you want to make contact?

To send our team a message, please use the form below.
Contact us using the form below and one of our team members will reach out as soon as possible.
Get in touch.
We’d love to hear from you and show you more of our work!
Just fill out the form and one of us will get back to you as soon as possible.
If you want to reach out to us, feel free to do so by email:

These Contact Page “Words” Are So Freakin Passive… Being Passive Sucks

Driving contact from the website visitor is where the rubber meets the road – isn’t this the reason y’all have a website?

My tour of agency websites shows a wide range of contact pages. Most are too weak. Some (most) just provide an email contact. Some contact pages go for it by providing reasons to make contact. These contact pages are much more assertive than just having a passive contact email form.

I am a strong believer that the contact section should be warm and welcoming. Businesslike but friendly. Contact should be an invitation and a metaphorical fist bump.

Bland does not work for me. I need some online hospitality. This is a place to show some personality. Even humor. Even empathy. Try to get past the passive voice. Ask for the order. Gently. Not too Glengarry Glenn Ross.

A quick idea (if you don’t want to read more)… Instead of bland text, why not deliver a 20-second video on why the visitor should talk with you?

An Active Contact Page Drives Action

Given people’s general inertia, go ahead and tell the visitor to make contact. Consider how to give them a good reason to act. Maybe make an offer to capture attention and a reaction. This isn’t a brand-new idea—SaaS companies do this all the time because it works.

Here is what I say on my Contact page:

Three reasons to contact me. I deliver the most creative approach to an advertising agency’s positioning and lead generation.I am the most experienced agency business development coach. Read the “My Story” page. I stole the idea from Austin Kleon. My goal is to make your advertising agency unignorable. Unignorable drives awareness and action. Think of the alternative.

++ I deliver an offer…

Take me up on my free Corleone Godfather offer. This is an offer you can’t—or rather, shouldn’t—refuse. Let’s talk for thirty minutes—just 0.50 on the timesheet—to discuss your agency’s issues and opportunities and how I will help you build a more powerful advertising agency business development plan.

Does my Godfather offer work? Yes.

Does my Gandhi testimonial video at the bottom of the contact page help? Yup, I got Gandhi to give me that fist bump.

Chicago’s Orbit Media website development firm goes a bit further than most agencies. They address the fact that the client might not be immediately ready for them. They have this interactive dialogue-building offer on the Contact page – it keeps the “conversation” going:

Work with Orbit Ready to start a project? Fill out the form and Chris or Stephanie, our Web Strategists, will be in touch with you as soon as possible.Have a project but not quite ready to contact us? See if Orbit is a fit for you.

Last BIG Point.

Do not ask for too much personal information. You do not need the prospect’s date of birth.

An Above+Beyond Advertising Agency

Peter · June 10, 2022 · Leave a Comment

London’s Above+Beyond Advertising Agency And…

I woke up, I admit it with a bit of a hangover, and saw that London’s Above+Beyond advertising agency hired Shez Lord has joined as creative director to work on the Subway account. Not big news for me but always good for an advertising agency to get press even if just a typical Media Post News type of article.

I used the article as a spark to wake up my brain and to get me to look at the Above+Beyond website.

Things I Like About The Above+Beyond Website. A couple of quick takeaways:

Good Above+Beyond:

I dig the agency’s name. Above+Beyond works on a few levels. Not the least of which is that the name makes me think that these guys will run through walls for a client. Serice, good agency service, is what keeps clients in-house and offers a good angle for pitching and sales. It would be interesting to see how the agency leverages this promise.

I dig the opening statement: Audience Age Creativity For Ambitious Brands. I admit that it took me a couple of seconds to process the term “Audience Age”. However, once I got my fuzzy brain to think, I liked that Above+Beyond recognizes the power of the audience these days and positions the agency dead center in this evolving universe… Oh, and I’ve had personal experience with “ambitious”. I started in the agency business at New York’s largest ad agency — Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (later bought by Saatchi) which had Ambitious Advertising as its ‘motto’.

I like that the agency defines its clients as being ambitious. Most agencies do not define the clients that they want.

The ‘work’ is smart. The Sh*t Just Got Serious client has a nice story about connecting your bum to trees.

A new brand to fight deforestation, one 100% recycled loo-roll at a time.

Serious Tissues was named to insinuate the serious issues our world faces with the devastating effects of climate change. A world where we’re chopping down 27,000 trees a day just to wipe our arses. Literally flushing away 10m trees each year. The proposition was simple and distinct; for every one recycled toilet roll bought from Serious Tissues – one tree is planted.

Nice client list.

A Better Above+Beyond:

I don’t dig that the agency only uses video for its cases. I’d like to get to know the agency leaders… why not a video with them in it? A short but sweet chemistry-building video? Like… tell me who you are. And, why I should hire you vs the other ‘creative’ shop down the street.

I really could use some explanation surrounding the idea of “Audience Age”. Help me want to use the agency in this new world where the consumer rules (even more everyday). Audience-related strategic insights please. Even short and very sweet audience as in consumer interviews. I said short.

Ok, one more. These guys could do a better job of enticing me to make contact. Most agencies do a sh*ty job when it comes to their contact page. Above+Beyond, how about some love? And a hug.

Look at my Contact page.

I have an offer (as in Don Corleone); make contacting me easy and even have a testimonial from a couple of my clients and even even a video testimonial from my boy Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, Gandhi. I got my friend Gandhi to do the video because I am ambitious – like Above+Beyond’s favorite clients.

OOO The Critical Facebook and Instagram Mistake

Peter · October 17, 2021 · Leave a Comment

AH. The Big & Critical Facebook and Instagram Mistake.

I’ve been writing for PetaPixel, a leading photography website with over 7,000,000 page views per month. Here is an article I wrote that I think should be of value, as a thought-starter, for people in the advertising business. Frankly, I see advertising agencies and their clients relying way too much on Facebook and Instagram. That’s why I wrote Don’t Make the Critical Facebook and Instagram Mistake. You can see my PetaPixel work here.

OK, Stop The Mistakes

I have a good friend that uses Facebook as his photography business’s digital platform. I have multiple friends that use Instagram as their portfolio. This also goes for, yes to a lesser degree, using Behance, Tumbler, Model Mayhem, Imgur, and Flickr as a portfolio destination.

The primary issue for all these websites is that you do not own or control them. You are loaning your work to them and must abide by their rules and regulations. And future business model.

Oops

Both Instagram and Facebook recently went down for hours. This meant that beyond not being able to look at photos of your friends’ kids, if your photography world counted on either of these sites, your business and portfolio went down too. It’s like you did not exist. This was painful for millions of businesses, many of which only use Facebook as their business information website. I’d imagine that millions of dollars of sales were lost that day.

While this event was a Facebook server issue, are you sure that Facebook and Instagram, as we know them today, will be here in their current formats forever?

Forever, as in the place that you want to show your work – forever?

Remember Myspace?

For a few years, Myspace was the ultimate destination for musicians to share their work and build reputations. From 2005 to 2008 it was the largest social media site.

Popular musicians like Arctic Monkeys and Calvin Harris made their names on Myspace. Unfortunately trusting Myspace turned out to be a rather bad idea. From a Myspace press release:

As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience.

“Inconvenience.” Really?

At that time, CNN reported that “Andy Baio, a tech expert and former chief technology officer of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, warned that the music of up to up 14 million artists may have been lost.”

Own Your Work

Other than morality issues, I am sure that having your work on Facebook and Instagram is a good idea. Each platform reaches zillions and, in the case of Instagram, is known as a photography destination. Plus, you get the dopamine hit from all those cherished ‘likes.’

However, trusting these third-party platforms as your primary and forever marketing resource is a BAD idea.

I’ll state the obvious. Add your own website to your marketing mix. Yes, I know that this is obvious. However, in the case of Instagram, too many photographers trust it as their little photo universe. They may have a real website, but because they view updating as a pain in the rear, they do not keep it updated. Updating is in the eye of the beholder. Do you really have to show every photograph you take? Editing is a good thing.

A side note related to marketing: both of these sites are trending older. If reaching the under-35 crowd is important, you might be missing a sizable audience.

Your Partners Include Mark Zuckerberg

The Biggest Advertising Agency New Business Secret

Peter · February 28, 2021 · Leave a Comment

The Biggest, Most Important Advertising Agency New Business Secret.

It’s Sales Stupid.

Back in 1992, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist said, “It’s the economy, stupid” to make sure the Clinton campaign remembered what was critically important to the American electorate. So, taking my cue from James, I offer that “It’s sales stupid” is the biggest, most important advertising agency new business secret.

An advertising, design, PR agency new business program, marketing materials, presentations (even daily conversations with existing clients), and new business pitches are all about sales. Sounds obvious, right? The problem is that ‘sales’ can be a dirty word at some ‘creative’ agencies. If you think that I am overstating this, take a look at a few agency websites, and ask yourself if they are designed to be high-octane sales experiences that drive leads or just well-designed agency brochures. I think that the Contact page is a number one offender. Contact copy like, “Give us a call” is simply not a romantic way to begin a relationship.

An Advertising Agency New Business Secret

A discussion of how to use the science of salesmanship in an agency presentation could fill a book. I’ll be brief and hit what I think are the most effective techniques we can learn from the masters of salesmanship. Allow me a brief detour first.

I left advertising in 1995 to put a group of New Jersey newspapers online for Advance Internet (the digital newspaper arm of the Newhouse Media Group – you know them as the owner of Condé Nast). In addition to inventing New Jersey Online’s digital newspaper editorial persona, we also had to build an early online sales program that included the design of new advertising units and a sales pitch for this new Internet platform. To help me, Advance brought in Jim Hagaman from the Miami Herald. Jim was easily one of the savviest media salespeople I had ever met.

Within a few days, I had gone from thinking that I knew how to sell (i.e. running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi), to jettisoning much that I had learned, to watching a master actually make sales in the nascent Internet marketplace. Much of what you see below came from Jim.

One of his more interesting sales insights came when I said that we needed to go pitch New Jersey Online to New York advertising agencies. He said, whoa boy. In his experience, agencies always mucked up the sale. They wanted to put their own stamp on the sales message, usually got the details wrong, and always slowed down the process. He said that we were going directly to the clients to explain the benefits of digital media. As I eventually witnessed, he was right.

Actually, here is one more super insightful story that will introduce my next point, which I admit might be a “duh” for some of you.

You have to understand your client’s mindset, needs, pain points, rationale, and emotional motivations before you can ever craft an effective sales pitch.

I learned this lesson at my first agency pitch for New Jersey Online. I figured I’d start with my very own ex, the New York office of Saatchi & Saatchi. I knew the agency inside and out and had worked with their Executive Media Director Allen Banks for years. My pitch included a 1996 hockey puck graph of projected Internet usage and a discussion of digital advertising that touted our newfound ability to track how website visitors viewed and interacted with online advertising. Was Allen smiling? No. His reaction?

“Are you f*cking kidding me? We have made a fortune not really knowing how, when and for how long consumers have been looking at our ads. I manage hundreds of millions in advertising media placement. Knowing how much of it doesn’t work will kill our golden goose.”

My point in telling you this story is that I didn’t think through Allen’s motivations before I delivered my early online advertising sales pitch. By the way, he was right. The Internet sure seems like it killed some parts of the golden advertising goose.

More Sales Advice

I Stole From Gary Vaynerchuk And Mahatma Gandhi

Peter · June 7, 2020 · 2 Comments

I stole from Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Burden, Derek Sivers, and Mahatma Gandhi.

Let me explain. I “stole” a few of the design elements of this new Peter Levitan website. Some of the core elements are from the Gary Vaynerchuk home page. Stealing, art that is, is OK. Picasso said I could do it.

And, don’t tell the Judges at award ceremonies that most of the great advertising ideas were “borrowed”. No, I am not being pissy. Ideas regenerate. Keep reading.

What I Stole From Gary Vaynerchuk. Go To My Home Page.

If you look at the Gary Vaynerchuk website next to mine, you will see similarities. Each website leads with a chest-beating video (always a good thing) and then a clear benefit statement (even better). Both websites are very clean and direct. Thank you, Gary.

Why steal from Gary Vaynerchuk? He is a dude that gets personal brand marketing right. Need more?

What I Stole From Chris Burden? Go To My Home Page.

Chris Burden was a genius performance, sculpture, and installation artist. He is very well known in the art world for instillations like the rows of lampposts outside of L.A.’s LACMA museum and got his first taste of major-league art fame when he was shot in the arm in his “Shoot” performance video. Shot by accident by the way.

I stole the idea for my lead video from Chris’s 1970s TV commercial. Just so you know, I am not the only person to have stolen Burden’s idea. To state the obvious, the video is all about name association: Van Gogh and Burden. Droga and Levitan. Look at Chris’s video interview – the idea I stole is at the 4:50 mark. How did I do?

What I Stole From Derek Sivers. See My About Page.

I have been wrestling with how to tell the story of my 30-year advertising; digital; internet startup; and advertising agency business consultation career. It could take a long time. Too long.

I finally figured out how to do it from Derek Siver’s website. Derek is the founder of CD Baby. This is what Esquire said:

“Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold. A musicians’ savior. One of the last music-business folk heroes.”

Derek covers his extensive and very cool career with his home page help-the-reader bio subheads: Me In Ten Seconds?; Me in Ten Minutes? What I Am Doing Now? Concise, fast, easy to absorb. I needed this degree of simplicity, so I stole his idea.

What I Stole From Mahatma Gandhi. See My Contact Page.

Do I have to say this? Sure, why not.

“Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the nationalist movement against the British rule of India. As such, he came to be considered the father of his country. Gandhi is internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent protest to achieve political and social progress.”

I spent the month of January 2020 in India. I visited Gandhi’s home in Mumbai. I picked up on his vibe and wanted to have him do a testimonial. Of course, it has been over 40 years since his assassination. So, I found a modern-day Gandhi to deliver the testimonial.

You can see what I mean when you scroll down my Contact page.

By the way, I also stole from Donald Trump – he is at the bottom of my home page. I admit it, I am a bit less proud of that theft.

Ok, OK… I Also Stole From Austin Kleon.

In this case, Austin’s best-selling book “Steal Like An Artist” – buy it at the great Powell’s Books. He told me to steal. As Austin points out…

Picasso said, “Art Is Theft.”

I hope you enjoy your own art of stealing.