How To Win New Advertising Agency Business

My thoughts on how to win new advertising agency business from those wonderful clients that you want… was one of the first blog post messages I ran for my advertising agency business development consultancy. I started the consultancy in 2013 after I sold my Portland agency. Whoa: About 850 blog posts ago.

It was a great, useful blog post about, yes, how to win new advertising agency business and got the attention of my ad agency market. The idea is still useful.

“Wait a minute, who are you guys?”

That was the question we got from Harrah’s Las Vegas after they received our iTunes gift card. We told them who we were, thanked them again for their help and a relationship was born. Here’s how we got there.

About 10+ years ago, my Portland ad agency Citrus needed a more distinctive brand positioning. As I suspect you know, finding a new brand position for an advertising agency, especially a “full-service” agency like ours, isn’t easy. While full-service is a highly relevant service offer that many clients seek, it isn’t a particularly distinctive sales proposition in a world with thousands of similar ad agencies. The fact is, full-service sounds rather platitudinous.

There are probably 2,000 advertising agencies called full-service.

Here is how we broke out.

To refresh our brand (and get more notice) we initiated a strategic branding process. We employed the account panning skills of Lynette Xanders, one of the Northwest’s best strategists. Lynette helped us gain a better understanding of the agency’s existing positioning, insights into how our staff perceived the current and future agency, an examination of relevant industry shifts, and a deeper view of our goals and dreams. We added in a competitive review to advance our understanding of what clients need and want from an agency.

Next – We Used A Survey As A How To Win New Advertising Agency Business Sales Tool

Our next step was to create an online survey to show a set of alternative positioning statements to marketing decision-makers – our clients and target companies. We wanted to get past our own internal navel-gazing.

We took the branding exercise and added a new business spin.

We used our new business database to select a list of A-level client prospects and used the positioning research as an introduction to Citrus. The program had 6 low-cost elements.

1. A list of 5 positioning statements were listed in an agency research section on our website. In addition to the survey, this helped us to drive the responders to our larger agency story.
2. A Survey Monkey online survey.
3. An email list compiled from our The List Inc. database. Now WINMO.
4. Three-stage email outreach.The offer of winning a $50 iTunes gift card twas added as an incentive.
5. The prospect group’s response rate was surprisingly high at about 30%. Sometimes if you ask nicely people will want to respond.

Winning Harrah’s

One of the respondents from our outreach list (wanna-be client types) was a corporate marketing manager at Harrah’s (now Caesars Entertainment.) After the manager answered the survey we sent her a nice note and the gift card. Her response was, “Wait a minute. Who are you guys?”

This question led to more emails, phone calls, and a trip to Las Vegas. The meeting resulted in our working on Harrah’s national Las Vegas Meeting’s By Harrah’s program that sells thousands of room nights per year for Harrah’s 8 Las Vegas casinos. Our work included a new website, a direct marketing program, and a print advertising campaign.

This was a rather decent result from sending out a couple of emails, asking for some help, and the delivery of an iTunes gift card. Remember iTunes?

Oh, in addition to a new client, our research also netted a new agency brand positioning.

The Message – If you want to know How To Win New Advertising Agency Business – please be different. Or as I call it… be Unignorable.

Oh… I have written lots about advertising agency brand positions. Here.