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Should agencies be re-inventing themselves?

A recent article by Blair Enns has re-ginited an age-old question: should agencies be re-inventing themselves? My answer is that question is -- of course.  But this isn't a new business development strategy. Agencies have been re-inventing themselves since they started.  Grants, the pace is very different but how an agency works and how it sells have always evolved.  In the beginning we sold signage and shouting.  Stand on the corner and shout the loudest — because your market place was pretty much the reach of your voice. Then, agencies sold cleverness and the ability to be remembered, a la David Ogilvy and his cronies.  In some ways, that was the heyday of branding (at least on the consumer side) and it’s been limping along ever since.  Again — because there wasn’t all that much noise, you could still talk to everyone and hope it stuck. Then in the 70s and 80s, agencies shifted their business development strategy into selling stuff for our clients. We took the cleverness of the era before and made tangible things out of it. Some of it was media assets but a lot of it was printed materials etc. The ideas and cleverness didn’t stick for as long so we also sold a lot more albeit short term ideas and then executed on them. Think about the catchy TV based taglines of that era -- like "Where's the beef" or the theme song for the perfume Enjoli that taught us that a woman can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. I think that’s when the mediums started getting crowded and we began really fighting for eyeballs and attention. Then technology smacked agencies on the rear end — and we became tech experts.  Suddenly we were selling [...]

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Hey agency owner — ask your leadership team this question (agency metrics)

I've been spending a lot of time with agency owners and their leadership teams over the past month or so, talking about agency metrics and strategic planning tools. I'm always a little surprised but in almost every instance, there is a missing component that gets in the way of the leadership team really working cohesively and exceeding the agency's goals for the year. Want to see if your leadership suffers from the same deficiency? Pull your team together and have them each write down the answer to this question: Assume it is December 2015. What are 3 -4 agency metrics would you use to determine if the year has been successful or not. Once everyone has done that -- have everyone read their answers out loud and put them up on the wall. I suspect, fi you are like most agencies -- you will get a wide variety of answers. Many of them will dance around some of the same issues, but you will not get a unified list that consistently reflects the same metrics. That's a problem. Without everyone working towards the exact same goals and monitoring the metrics tied to those goals -- do you really think you're going to get there? Using strategic planning tools such as this one can help you work toward the exact same year-end results. Not only will this help your agency to exceed expectations but it will also help employees to far surpass their own expectations. Your leadership team is filled with good people and they all want to give you 110%. So each of them attaches their talents, resources and skills to what they believe is the agency's #1 priority. It's as if everyone has tied a rope to a little red wagon based [...]

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Hey Agency Owner – How’s Your Thought Leadership Strategy?

We work hard to help our agency clients embrace thought leadership as a way to position themselves as a premiere choice among their competitors. Which means we need to walk our talk, eat our own dog food or whatever cliché you'd like to use to prove that it works. We're very grateful that many other publications seek us out to comment on various aspects of the agency business and we're always excited about sharing what we've learned and try to teach. Rather than making you hop all over the web looking for Agency Management Institute's examples of thought leadership -- we thought we'd give you this handy list. As always -- we'd love to hear your thoughts on any of the topics below. Digital Marketer -- 4 Ways to Build a Better Agency with Smarter Hires The Agency Post -- How to Stop Your Client From Shopping Around B2B Marketing -- 5 Ways to Avoid the Last Minute New Business Crunch Washington Post -- Overstaffing Can Break Your Small Business iMedia Connection -- Why You Need to Stop Billing By the Hour Smart Insights -- How Can Agency Account Managers Build Better Client Relationships Marketing Agency Insider -- 10 Ways to Establish Order in Your Advertising Agency HR.com -- When You Should Hire Full Time Staff Digiday -- Time to Retire the Digital Jedi The Agency Post -- Use Content to Tell Your Agency's Story The Agency Post -- Building An Internal Content Strategy for the Long Haul Score.org -- How to Transition from Corporate Thinking to Small Business Thinking CEO.com -- 4 Ways to Compete With the Big Guys Steamfeed -- One Page: The Short, Simple Way to Plan Your Agency's Future Linked2Leadership -- On Leadership, Workshops and Organizational Health Under 30 CEO -- Why Good Writing Matters and 4 Ways to Teach It to Your Team LinkedIn -- Marketers -- Take Digital Out of Your Vocabulary Washington [...]

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Agency owners: Isn’t it time to get a real agency new business program?

Most agencies believe they don’t have an agency new business program. They say that they their business development strategy just relies on referrals and growing their current clients. And it’s working great. But they’re wrong. They do have one. Here’s how it works. Big client either fires them or notifies them that the account is going up for review. Agency owner wets himself and goes into either a full-blown panic attack or into a catatonic stupor. There’s usually a drink or three consumed. The next day the owner pulls together the leadership team and there’s a flurry of activity to drum up some money. The owner sits in her dark office, putting together “the list” of who will be laid off if the revenue can’t be replaced. The creatives come up with a direct mail campaign and the account service team is tasked with creating or updating the cobweb covered prospect list of about 300 companies. The agency does the new business mad scramble until they either have to lay off some people or score a new account. All of a sudden, they get so busy servicing the clients they have that they don’t have time to keep up whatever new business activity they’d been pursuing. And so the cycle begins again. Want to finally break the chain reaction? Want a business development strategy that you can actually deploy and implement no matter how busy your agency is? You need to create a macro – micro – nano agency new business program. Macro: The macro portion of your agency new business program is aimed at people who have never heard of you or your agency before. There are multiple research studies done with decision makers that hire [...]

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Hey agency owner – are you competing against the big guys?

In this era of instant access to just about anything, clients are seeking out not only a good product but a personalized experience and human connection. Mass produced options may be convenient for customers and cost effective for corporations, but with so many more options available via the internet and reinforced in social media, the door has been opened for small business to score some real success stories. I wrote the following article for CEO.com about how that small businesses can not only compete with their larger counterparts, but can develop the tools to win.  Tell me what you think.

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State of the Agency

Some interesting stats on this infographic created by Levelwing.com.  They tell quite a story.  How close to your story is it?            

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Agency owners need to trust their gut

I talk to advertising agency owners all day long.  We talk about staffing issues, new business challenges and the angst that comes with clients.  My job is to listen, ask good questions and try to help the agency owner sort things out and plan next steps. Truth be told -- it's an easy job.  Because in most cases, the owner already knows the answer.  But they don't want it to be right.  Agency owners need to stop ignoring that nagging feeling.  Agency owners need to trust their gut. Do you think one of your employees is poaching clients and getting ready to start their own agency?  They probably are. Are you worried that your new business efforts are too haphazard?  They probably are. Concerned that your best client is about to fire you.  Yup, it's coming. After almost 20 years of owning my own agency, I think it takes a unique breed to choose that path.  I think you have to possess a healthy ego, a sales mentality and you have to be an eternal optimist.  You need to see the possibilities and the up side that's right around the corner.  But that can do, things will be good attitude can also blind an agency owner to the truth.   Especially if it is a truth you don't want to face. So let me ask you this -- has your gut been nagging at you about something lately?  Do you find yourself worrying about the same thing over and over?  I think it's time to pay attention.  Odds are, whatever you're thinking (good or bad) is right on the money. You've earned that gut instinct through decades of doing business.  Don't dismiss it or ignore [...]

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Ad Agency Principals: Tired of being treated like a vendor?

<A guest post by Rosemary Breehl> Smart Ad Agency principals are getting a seat at the CEO’s table and they’re doing it by building client relationships. It’s a new day out there for all of us. Competition is tougher. There are now “ten marketing dogs chasing that one corporate car.” CEO’s today are under terrible pressure to deliver revenues, so the last thing they want is another marketing firm trying to ‘sell’ them something. In their mind, marketing is an expense and the ad agency/marketing firm is just another vendor. Agency principals have been trying to change that perception for years. Interestingly enough, now is the perfect time to do it … with a new client or even better yet, with an existing one. When times are tough, CEO’s are looking for ‘game changers’. So they are more willing to listen. In a recent interview Jim Perdue, CEO of Perdue Farms said his expectations of marketing were: “First and foremost, marketing is the keeper of the brand’s health” … he goes on to say that “the health of the brand is critical to the success of the company and … marketing expenditures are not viewed simply as an expense but rather as an investment requiring a measurable rate of return.” And yet, you’re still doing brochures for your client. You need to up your game and start thinking strategically when building client relationships. You need to become a strategic partner and trusted advisor to your client … and not an expense. As long as you are still only delivering tactics, you don’t have a chance. You must act and sound different than your competitors. So, how do you get out of that rut and position yourself [...]

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Hey agency owner – how innovative are you?

How often has a prospect or client come to you asking for a brochure, app or some other tactic when it’s actually not what they need? The truth is — clients often don’t know what they need, but they know they have a problem.  They don’t know how to ask for it but what they’re looking for are  solutions to real business issues.  Your job as their agency is to be as innovative as possible in partnership with your client to develop those answers based on your expertise.  But how do you build that kind of trusting relationship?  And how do you grow your team so they’re capable of that kind of innovative thinking as well? I dug into that topic for Smart Insights to give a few ways that you can broaden your knowledge of your client’s business, increase the trust between you and your client, and expand your ability to offer the solutions your client needs.  Take a look at the article.  I’d love to hear some of the ways you’ve managed your client relationships to increase your ability to innovate.

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Agencies need to behave like consultancies

At Agency Management Roundtable (AMR) we've been preaching this for years.  Agencies need to get out of the "making stuff" business and get into the business problem solving business. Agencies need to behave like consultancies. We need to shift from doing to thinking. Our clients expect us to help them hit their goals and dodge their challenges.  We don't do that by just making a brochure or video. We do it by sitting at the strategy table with them and digging into their business, asking smarter questions and helping them think bigger, better and faster. Business consultant Amber Naslund wrote an insightful blog post that outlines how to build a strong consulting practice.  Interestingly -- she could have been writing about how to build a successful agency in the 21st century.  Her points about not billing by the hour, value pricing, asking better questions etc. are right out of the AMR handbook! Read her post and heed her words.  Whether she knows it or not my agency owner friends -- she is talking to you.

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