When I look an agency owner in the eye and ask, “what’s your business succession plan?” it’s amazing what I see in their eyes. I work with 150 or so small to mid-sized (1 employee to 150 employees) privately held agencies every year. These are smart business owners who are successfully running profitable businesses that [...]
Business trends including changes in salaries and benefits can make or break an agency’s profitability from one year to the next. That’s why we conduct a comprehensive annual salary and benefits survey and we’ve just wrapped up our 2015 edition (you can buy the 40-page final report here). The results are quite insightful. First [...]
We’ve talked about the advertising industry’s love for gross billings. But again, gross billings is a misleading metric. So much of your result is impacted by the kind of services you’re offering your client and what the cost of goods for those services is. Clearly we need to find a better way to monitor and [...]
In the past, agencies billing by the hourly billing made sense, but times have changed. The way business is delivered, the way clients see their agencies and the way agencies see themselves is significantly different. The good news is that there are options that make much more sense for the way agencies operate today. iMedia [...]
I have found that most agency owners are very generous people. They love the people they work with and want to create an amazing working environment. They are also very slow when it comes to firing an employee – whether it’s because the person isn’t performing at the right level or because billings have dropped [...]
As a lawyer who advises ad and marketing professionals, I’m regularly reminded by clients that excessive legal fees are not a fun way to spend marketing dollars. This is understandable, and to me it’s also a somewhat welcome point of view. If that sounds like an unusual perspective coming from “legal,” hear me out: it [...]
How much money do marketing agencies make? Learning how to move your advertising agency to value based pricing means you’ll need to talk a little differently to both your internal staff and your clients. It’s going to take some effort and time to make the shift. Earlier I talked about why value pricing should matter [...]
Value pricing strategy for advertising agencies? Yes -- the time has come. At several of our AMR network meetings, we've had Ron Baker, author of Implementing Value Pricing come speak. Agency owners are fired up after being exposed to Ron's ideas and leave, ready to either start or continue their transition to value pricing. The [...]
I have never met an agency owner who believes they don't leave money on the table when it comes to a change order request. No agency is great at change orders and most -- are abismal. You have to get a mindset when you are working with changes. When the work has been approved by [...]
Be honest agency owner, you know that your account executive team is great. But sometimes they struggle when it comes to actual sales. Enter our account executive sales training workshop. 67% of an agency's new business revenue comes from existing clients (on average). The people who are (or sadly -- are not) going to bring [...]
