The 5 Things Every Marketing Agency Should Look for in the Client’s Contract
Your marketing agency just got a great new piece of business. Terrific news! The creative team is full of energy and ideas, the account service folks are ready to roll, and billings will start climbing soon. After there’s a contract [...]
Sample travel policies for agencies
It’s a rare agency that does not incur any travel for either themselves or their clients. Because travel norms are very different for everyone, it’s important that the agency have a written travel policy that clearly spells out the processes, [...]
How to Keep Your Agency’s Top Talent Without Breaking the Bank
Agencies can no longer expect to hold onto fantastic writers, designers, or account managers for the next 20 years. In fact, they’re lucky if they can get three years. After surveying almost 1,000 marketing and advertising agencies, I learned that [...]
How we create AMI’s weekly videos
Hey there — folks have been asking me what tools I use to create our weekly videos, so I thought I would spell it out for you. Here’s the equipment I use. My criteria for anything I am using is [...]
Are you offering “the trail blazing benefit”?
In an AMI network meeting last week, the big topic was employee recruitment and retention. If your agency isn’t struggling with this issue, consider yourself one of the lucky few. Agencies (and it seems all businesses) are fighting tooth and [...]
Are You Reaching or Connecting With Potential Clients?
"Thanks for joining my network, Tom! I noticed you work for a recruiting agency. Have you heard about the NEW LinkedIn lead generation?? Let us bring recruited prospects to you on auto-pilot. If you would like to receive an [...]
Timesheets are not optional
I know there are agency consultants who will tell you that timesheets aren’t necessary. Unfortunately, they’re wrong. I totally get it. No one likes doing them. But they are an important management tool for you as you run your agency. [...]
Employee or contractor?
Before the recession (we when utter that phrase, I suspect we look like old men in overalls, smoking a corncob pipe and rocking on our porches but...) there were many agency owners who swore that they would never work with [...]
Who should be your agency’s voice?
If you’ve heard me say it once, you’ve heard me say it 1,000 times — it’s tough to be a generalist out there. In simple terms, it means your competition is everyone from the 16-year-old kid who builds websites, to [...]
What you measure is what matters
When I started my own agency is 1995 I was about 30 and the perfect combination of arrogant and ignorant. “How hard could running an agency be? If you knocked it out of the park for your clients and delivered [...]










