fbpx

Search results for: agency management

Add value first – building relationships also builds your agency with James Carbary

[easy-social-share buttons=”facebook,twitter,google,linkedin,mail” counters=1 counter_pos=”topm” total_counter_pos=”leftbig” style=”icon_hover”] Building genuine relationships in our industry is one of the best parts of being in the business. The point is not to build transactional relationships that will end in a big “payoff” for you. When you focus on real relationships, you wind up bringing people into your life who you actually want to work with, and when you’re really fortunate, end up being good friends. I firmly believe in this philosophy and the value of those relationships, both professionally and personally. These days, relationship-building often starts online. James Carbary has raised LinkedIn updates and interactions to an art form. I wanted to explore his strategy and the benefits he’d seen in this episode. James generously shared some great tips on how to create good content that gets noticed and builds both engagement and relationships online. His LinkedIn prowess grows out of his larger interest in fostering genuine relationships. One of the more fascinating projects James has going on are the B2B Growth Dinners he has launched.  It may be coming to a city near you and if so – be sure to participate. James’ idea was to create an opportunity for six strangers who all worked in tangential fields to have dinner and get to know one another. No agenda, no 30-second elevator pitch. He owns/runs an agency, but James’ passion and gift is as a relationship builder. So, we had a lot to talk about! James Carbary is the founder of Sweet Fish Media, a podcast agency for B2B brands. He’s a contributor to the Huffington Post and Business Insider, and he also co-hosts the B2B Growth Show, a daily podcast dedicated to helping [...]

October 1st, 2018|

Consistency Beats Perfection In Agency Marketing

To make it in business, we need three main things: A viable, valuable product or service that solves a real problem A way to sell and deliver it A defined group of people to sell it to But checking all three boxes will not do anything for your bank account. You must let people know every day that you have a business, that you love what you do and that you want to solve their problems. No agency survives without consistent marketing. So many of us delay sharing about our businesses because we don’t feel ready. We wait for the perfect pitch, platform or process to get started. We wait for our website to be built, or for our About Page to be perfect or for our new head shots to be ready for our fabulous business cards. We wait for the perfect newsletter template before sending an email to our list. Common barriers to consistent agency marketing Here are some common barriers that prevent people from consistent agency marketing that I just gathered from business owners on Facebook: I am too busy delivering services to clients to market my business I don’t know what to do in what order Marketing technology feels too complicated I don’t have my pitch nailed I don’t want to waste my time Boy, do I get it! No one wants to feel sloppy or unorganized. And I am not advocating that you are. Building a clear, effective brand story and agency marketing system takes planning, money and time. But given your current level of information, tools and resources, couldn’t you do something each day that would increase your chance to get ideal clients? Our starting point without a big [...]

September 20th, 2018|

9 Steps to Picking a Niche for Your Digital Agency

As a digital agency owner, you probably tell your clients all the time that they need to refine and focus in on their service or product offerings. But have you applied the same logic to your own digital agency? Finding a niche for your digital agency allows you to connect with your prospects and deliver a unique selling proposition that speaks directly to them. To make this connection with a prospect on the first impression though you must have clear and targeted messaging. If you’re trying to tell ten different stories and appeal to ten different audiences, then you’ll lose them all. This is why you’ve never seen an Asian-Italian-Greek-Burger-Smoothie fusion restaurant. Sounds silly when you think of it like that. So why then are you and your digital agency trying to help so many people, in so many different industries, by providing so many different services? Instead of focusing in on on being really good at one thing and developing a killer value proposition along the way, you’re spreading yourself too thin. Find a niche for your digital agency now. Every day you waste, the competition is getting more focused, more precise, and more skilled at the niche you could be in. However, it’s important to pick the right niche, one that provides enough opportunity for new business without being oversaturated. You need to be able to carve out a unique section for your agency and there needs to be a demand for it. Follow the nine steps below to find your digital agency’s perfect niche and start growing your agency today. 1. Find a niche that is digitally friendly Is the industry digitally friendly? A lot of industries have done as little as [...]

September 18th, 2018|

How to Grow a Digital Marketing Agency: Podcasting For Advertising Agencies

If you’re looking for information on how to grow a digital marketing agency, you’re in the business of relationships. Relationships = partnerships, (and therefore sales). The more conversations you have with the right people, the better your business will be for it. If we disagree on this, you may not derive much from this article… If we agree, however, read on! Imagine if you had a way to get a meeting with anyone you wanted to, and build a genuine value-driven relationship with them? At scale. A Tier 1 potential client. A great referral partner. An influencer who could promote you to their audience. What would that do for your agency? In this post, I’m going to detail the exact process for building those relationships at scale, in a very short amount of time, by using a channel that is massively under-utilized by agencies – podcasting for advertising agencies. Podcasting can be the key to how to grow a digital marketing agency. Podcasting For Growing a Digital Marketing Agency It won’t go into detail of how to properly launch a podcast – that’s another post entirely (or you can see this free video workshop here). So with that, let’s get into it. But first, to dispel some myths: Don’t I need to build an audience over 6-12 months before I see results from podcasting? Short answer: no. When most people think of the benefits of podcasting, they think of the primary content marketing benefit. Build an audience of listeners, provide valuable content, give away free education and build trust in the eyes (or ears) of your listeners. Eventually you will get leads, and those leads will be great leads, because they feel like they already [...]

September 11th, 2018|

Agency Owner/leader questions from the mail bag

From our question bag (okay -- from my inbox but you get the reference!).  I've cleaned it up a little to protect the privacy of the agency asking the question. Q: I am trying to understand what makes up the COGS number in order to calculate our AGI. We are a public relations agency. From listening to your webinar on Financial Matters, my takeaway is the one of the items to include in COGS is the cost of freelance contractors. I'm assuming there are other costs like annual subscriptions to services which are used in doing our work for clients should also be included. A: Anything you use or pay to create in service of clients (freelancers, online tools, reference books, printing, photographers, postage, shipping, media placement, mileage to client meetings, influencer fees, etc.) are all COGS.  They are COGS whether you bill the client for them or not.   A way to test this is ask yourself this question.  If we didn't have client XYZ, would we still incur this cost.  If the answer is no -- then it is a COG. The things that should not be included in COGS are agency expenses (w2 people, benefits for those people, auto allowances, lawyer and accountant fees, rent, supplies, professional development, travel (unless it is client related) Q: We also want to look at account level profitability. To calculate the cost per employee, I am including salary/wages, insurance and 401(k) benefits, cost of PTO/company holidays. My research into what percentage to use for overhead markup resulted in a wide range of figures - 80% on the high end; 50% on the low end. Do you have a recommended overhead percentage? A: Well, as you know, this [...]

September 4th, 2018|

The Secret Way to Grow Your Agency Fast

I don’t run an agency, but I do work with agencies to develop a sales process custom-suited for generating repeatable new business opportunities. In the next 5 minutes you spend reading this post, I’m going to share the exact method you could start experimenting with to double the productivity of your agency’s outbound business development. In short, I’m going to share the secret way to grow your agency fast. Really Fast. Fair warning – I am going to talk about the two tools I’ve founded (SellHack and Replify) throughout this article. There are certainly other tools out there that do the same type of work and I’ve mentioned a few throughout the piece. Even if you choose to do all of this manually, it will still work. It’s just a matter of how much time versus money do you want to spend. How to Grow Your Agency Really Fast Step 1 in the process of how to grow your agency really fast relies very much on the word “experiment.” This is a word carefully chosen to describe the mindset your business development team must embrace when hunting for new clients. Some of you are reading this thinking, “Yeah, but most of my business comes from referrals.” Okay, great. Keep asking for referrals. But if you’re serious about how to grow your agency really fast, forget referrals and do what I suggest. Consider a New Channel for Developing Leads Moving away from relying solely on referrals is smart business. So I’m suggesting you consider a new channel for developing leads: An outbound channel. More specifically, I’m talking about automating your prospect list-building, sending cold emails and follow-ups. You can do this manually or you can use [...]

September 4th, 2018|

Agency owner/leader webinar: Keeping Track – Financial Metrics that Matter

This webinar was originally given in summer of 2018 (so the workshop dates of the Money Matters workshop that I mention are accurate for 2018 and this page will always have the most current date for that event so you can make more and keep more of the money you work so hard to earn. Here's a PDF of some of the metrics we discussed during the webinar (and some we couldn't get to). The PDF of my deck The Mac version of the AMI scorecard The PC version of the AMI scorecard Video Replay:  For some reason, we are having trouble with YouTube so for now... here's a Go To Webinar link.  You have to register to view the replay, so sorry about that extra step.  I will swap out the YouTube version once we figure out what is going on: Click here to view Okay -- and now here is the YouTube option as well.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8jSqE3Cfqo

August 15th, 2018|

The Specialist Agency: An Argument For and Against

Earlier this year I had the honor of serving as the morning keynote speaker for PRGN’s semi-annual member summit in Toronto. My topic was on the five indicators of new business success that I consistently see in the agencies I work with (and, likewise, the corresponding indicators of agencies that stay stuck in a feast-or-famine cycle). One of the indicators is a specialist mindset, as opposed to an “all things to all people” approach. This elicited a comment from one of the agency owners in the audience. They tried this specialist agency strategy at his agency and it didn’t work. It had the opposite effect; they couldn’t find enough new business opportunities to sustain the firm. What did I have to say to that? (Gulp) Before I tell you how I responded, let me explain that I’m not a specialist agency hardliner. In fact, this time last year, I wrote about this. To be sure, I see enormous benefits to specializing when it comes to new business. Pitching for new business is a big investment. The more specialized your pitch, the more efficient your investment. That’s because: Generalists seek out clients; specialists are more likely to be sought Generalists differentiate based on price; specialists can afford to charge a premium Generalists will always be tempted to reinvent themselves to suit the nature of the prospect; specialists find it easier to home in on a consistent message that’s effective for the right audience But I also don’t see it as a stark choice. In my piece, I referred to the proverb about the shoemaker’s children who wear no shoes. This is a favorite to describe agencies that can’t seem to take their own advice when it [...]

August 7th, 2018|

Content Marketing For Agencies Workshop (Future proof your agency!)

“I followed the plan I built at the AMI Content workshop in 2018 and we’re on track to land more than $300,000 of new business as a result. I can’t afford to miss the 2019 edition!” Don't miss the workshop that will change the way your agency does business and makes money! This year AMI is teaming up with Robert Rose from The Content Advisory/Content Marketing Institute, and co-author of Killing Marketing (How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Costs into Profit) to teach you how content has changed, how to build your team to scale and profit from the demand and how to leverage these same best practices for your own agency. If you implement what you learn over these two days, you’ll future proof your agency, differentiate yourself from the pack and have a new revenue stream that will keep your clients asking for more. This isn’t a sit and listen lecture — this is a get your hands dirty, leave with a plan and start making money workshop that will leave you a little exhausted but fired up and ready to hit the ground running. Day One: The State of Content Marketing (Level set our definitions and make sure you have the latest in thinking about what Content Marketing is, how it is succeeding, and how it is deployed both for your clients, and your business.) Anatomy of A Strategy Engagement (Learn the detailed methodology of how to deliver a Content Marketing Strategy Engagement and why this will create the follow-on projects that will create long-term clients.) Storytelling for Business (Master the framework and structure for how agencies can help their clients develop better content, that relay better storytelling.) [...]

July 31st, 2018|

3 Steps to Stop Inflicting Help On Your Agency Team

The aroma of vegetable soup wafted up the stairs to my office. Moments later, my wife called, “Dinner’s ready!” “Mmmmm … I love homemade soup,” I thought. Rushing down the stairs and past the pantry, I spied a tube of crackers, grabbed them, and headed for the dining room. My wife sat at the table, waiting for me, smiling. Her smile vanished as she saw the tube of crackers. “Oh, this isn’t good enough? I really tried to get everything you like. I even brought out the oyster crackers …” Confused, I looked at her. Then, I looked at the table. She had arranged a beautiful spread of crackers, sliced cheese, chips & dips, salsa, veggies and grilled sandwiches to go with our soup. And there I stood, tube of crackers in hand, inflicting help. Acting Without Asking Inflicting help occurs when the helper acts in a way they feel as helpful but the recipient does not. It often stems from the helper not asking if, how or when someone would like to be helped. Instead, the helper jumps in and acts without asking. “But, I was only trying to help!” I was trying to comfort her. “I didn’t know you had all this out. I smelled the soup, saw the crackers, and grabbed them to be helpful.” We quickly sorted things out and went on to have a great meal together. Looking back, it was an interesting interaction, and it holds some lessons for agency managers. Because too often, well-meaning agency owners or managers inflict help on their teams. And when we realize what we’ve done, we might exclaim, “But, I was only trying to help!” Step One — Stop and Look Inflicting help is almost [...]

July 31st, 2018|

Need a new search?

If you didn't find what you were looking for, try a new search!

Go to Top