A couple of months ago I spent two days sequestered in a conference room with 45 agency employees that all have “digital” in their job description, their daily work or on their long list of responsibilities. They were from 20+ different AMI agencies and the reason we were all together was that they wanted to [...]
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 signed, of course. Soon enough, there’s an email with your client’s standard (and very lengthy) [...]
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, boundaries and expectations that come along side that employee’s travel on behalf of the company. [...]
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 just about every agency is facing similar turnover problems. Agencies are struggling to find and [...]
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 that it has to be durable, reasonable small, and lightweight because every week, I am [...]
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 nail to find and keep productive, committed employees. Many of you are looking for so [...]
"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 infographic on how it works, please let me know and I'll send it your way. [...]
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. It has nothing to do with how you bill clients or if you’re still billing [...]
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 outside contractors. They believed that the quality and integrity of their work relied on having [...]
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 every freelancer, to 99 designs, to every other agency within your prospect’s knowledge base. I [...]
