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How to Use Content to Position Your Agency as a Thought Leader with Simon Thompson

We all know how important content is for our own agencies and for our clients. And yet, most agencies struggle to actually get it done and done well. We know how to do it in theory.  We understand the audience and the key messaging we need to deliver.  But somehow there is a huge chasm between what we know and what we consistently get done. My podcast guest Simon Thompson, founder of Content Kite, packed our conversation with concrete examples and advice on how to get it done.  He argues that we often write about the wrong things.  We write about us/our clients. Instead, we should be writing about the problems the audience is having first. We shouldn’t fret about how it connects to what you sell. At least not yet. Because if you can’t get their attention the rest is just noise. Simon has decades of experience at major global brands such as L'Oreal, Nissan, BMW, Adidas, Disney, and Mondelez and is now leveraging that experience into great content marketing lessons not just for your clients but for your agency as well. Join Simon and I as we re-examine your content strategy and give you the framework to get it all done by: Keeping your content interesting and on topic for the problems your customers need solving Focusing all your content so it moves toward the same goal Optimizing your content to collect email addresses and then regularly engaging with those people How to effectively repurpose content across multiple mediums The frequency which you must create content How to use content to position your agency as a thought leader in the industry Why you need to spend as much time promoting a piece of [...]

June 23rd, 2017|

The Nuanced Art Of Pricing Agency Services

Pricing agency services is a nuanced art. Priced too high, your target customers won’t be able to afford you. Priced too low, you’ll leave money on the table with each new client or — even worse — run your business into the ground. Many agencies struggle with pricing. Their biggest mistake? Providing only one option, which encourages clients to push back and negotiate. It doesn’t matter how accurate your rate is. If you offer only one price, your client will assume there must be a better deal. The best pricing strategies include multiple tiers. Three is the ideal number and will give the biggest boost to your bottom line. With two tiers, clients will go for the cheaper option without considering the premium one. But when you include three options, the majority of clients will select the middle choice. The trick is to strategically price your middle tier to represent your ideal scenario. A Simple Method for Pricing Agency Services Smartly Building a three-tiered pricing strategy isn’t complicated. Start with the middle tier. This package should take into account a combination of what’s ideal for your business and your client. Charge exactly what you want to earn for providing the best blend of your services. Essentially, the middle tier should reflect what you would charge if you were only offering one option. From there, you’ll be building two packages that exist for the purpose of directing your client to this middle option. Next, create a stripped-down version of your middle tier. This will be option one. It should remove some of your deliverables and offer something basic but still valuable. Price this level between 20 and 25 percent lower than your middle option. Finally, build your premium option by [...]

June 21st, 2017|

Digital Marketing Agency

Own a digital marketing agency? Learn how to keep content interesting and focused on business issues your clients are looking to solve. Simon Thompson is the founder of Content Kite, a content marketing company that helps digital marketing agencies increase their quality and number of leads through content marketing. Simon has held content marketing roles for some of the largest digital publishers in Australia such as Mi9 (Microsoft + Ch9), Daily Mail, and MTV. He’s worked on content projects for major global brands such as L’Oreal, Nissan, BMW, Adidas, Disney, and Mondelez, to name a few. Whilst he was in a good place in his publisher roles in Australia, the entrepreneurial bug eventually took hold, and he decided to go out on his own and start Content Kite. He now runs Content Kite full-time and hasn’t looked back.   What you will learn about a digital marketing agency in this episode: How a digital marketing agency can keep its content interesting and on topic for the business issues and challenges your customers need to solve Focusing all your content so it moves toward the same goal Optimizing your content to collect email addresses and then regularly engaging with those people How a digital marketing agency can effectively repurpose content across multiple mediums The frequency with which you must create content Why you should spend as much time promoting a piece of content as you do in creating it Influencer outreach: how to actually motivate people to share your agency’s content by positioning them as authorities Tools for mapping out an editorial calendar for your digital marketing agency Why you must share a piece of content more than once How Content Kite works with agencies to [...]

June 19th, 2017|

5 Overlooked Metrics Your Agency Needs to Measure for a Profitable 2017

Running a business takes everything you have. Entrepreneurs pour their creativity, passion, effort, savings -- their everything -- into their work. And five years after they start, half of them are out of business. A decade later, two-thirds have called it quits. But why? For marketing firms, I believe it comes down to a lack of diligent measurement. Sure, measuring and tracking may not be the sexiest part of running an agency, but it's the only way to ensure you're not throwing money away. Commit to tracking these five things in 2017, and you'll have your most profitable year yet. 5 Metrics Your Agency Should Measure in 2017 1) Adjusted Gross Income per Full-Time Equivalent Employee Determining your number of full-time equivalent employees (FTE) is a convenient way to measure labor. To do this, denominate employees into 40-hour-a-week units. A full-time employee is equal to one FTE. A 20-hour-a-week employee is 0.5 FTE. Your target should be $150,000 of adjusted gross income (AGI) for every FTE. That amount should cover salaries, benefits, and overhead while leaving enough profit to reinvest in the business or offer bonuses to high-achieving team members. Years ago, the target AGI for each FTE was $100,000. Inflation accounts for some of the increase, but marketing agencies are also hiring expensive people to fill positions on growing digital teams. In short, the world has changed. It's gotten more expensive. Many marketing agencies haven't adjusted their billing rates to keep up -- and that's a big problem. If you're only earning $100,000 per FTE, your agency likely isn't very profitable. Those thin margins carry extra risk when an unexpected tax bill comes due, equipment breaks down, or you need a retention bonus for [...]

June 16th, 2017|

The Key to Agency Profitability? Good Old-Fashioned Time Sheets

Did you complete your time sheets today? Did your employees? If your answer is “no,” your agency is missing out on a crucial opportunity to increase agency profitability and productivity. There are consultants out there who think agency folks shouldn’t have to do time sheets, but they’re wrong. People are your biggest asset and your biggest resource, but they’re also your biggest expense. Consistent use of time sheets is the only way to know how your employees are spending their time and whether that time is well spent. Without the use of time sheets, you cannot evaluate the performance of your business — both how your assets and resources are being applied and how profitable your clients are with respect to your time investment. More Data, Better Decisions The data you collect through time sheets will make evident what you’re doing well, and it will also demonstrate where there’s room for improvement. Most importantly, it will reveal the profitability of each client by illustrating the time spent on every project. That being said, everyone needs to get on the time sheet train. Yes, that includes you. Every person in your office should be completing a daily time sheet so you can get the best and most accurate picture of your agency. Regardless of whether you’ve never used time sheets or you’ve just gotten lax about completing them, here are a few steps to get the process back on track: 1. Acknowledge It’s Your Fault. This step is the least fun, so we’ll get it out of the way first. Take responsibility for the fact that you’ve allowed the maintenance of time sheets to become sloppy or disappear altogether. It’s now up to you to lead the charge. [...]

June 9th, 2017|

Why Your Agency New Business Plan Needs Consistency with Dave Currie

I know I sound like a broken record but I can’t emphasize enough how vital it is to your agency that business development activity is a daily occurrence. You’ve got to plant seeds while the business is strong and the clients are happy. The day your biggest client hints that they might be leaving is not the day to start your new business program. That’s how you stock your pipeline with prospects that can help you level up your agency. There are very new experts in our field who spend more time thinking about agency new business than my podcast guest Dave Currie. Dave Currie is the CEO of List Partners Inc., the home of: Winmo, Localead, and Catapult and we are on the same page when it comes to the best practices surrounding new business development. I will keep repeating it until you all keep doing it! Dave and I want to show you how to make a plan, use your resources, and then consistently implement that plan. Dig in and be proactive as you learn about: How the List has evolved over the years and what they do today to help agencies grow through their three brands Winmo, Localead, and Catapult The biggest mistake agencies make in their business development efforts: not having a plan List’s CMO tenure study How successful CMOs keep agency relationships longer than their less successful counterparts Why agency-client relationships moving away from AOR engagements is a great opportunity for agencies Separating marketing and sales and giving them their own plans Building sales plans for both growing business with existing customers and bringing in new customers How small agencies can win huge projects Why being the one to implement [...]

June 2nd, 2017|

The Top Agency Trends of 2017 (Part 1)

Every year, we’re blessed to work with 250+ agencies and that gives us a chance to develop a serious micro and macro view of the business. While every agency is unique – there are certainly some trends that impact (or are going to impact) us all. Every year, I identify the top agency trends that I expect will have the biggest influence on our business and in this podcast, I walk you through the first half (9 of 19). I’ll pick up the back half in my solocast for June. Grab your notebook and see what your agency can do to get ahead of these trends to make the most of them: Why agency owners are confident again and why new business is easier to come by right now The trend where talent inside agencies has become a scarce resource What to do about having to hire under-skilled employees The challenge of providing clients with the right data Having an answer when clients ask agencies about diversity Opportunities for agencies with old school media Why you have to be great at marketing automation And a few more! Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year, give him a unique perspective on running an agency today. AMI works with agency owners by: Leading agency owner peer groups Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams Offering AE bootcamps Conducting individual agency owner coaching Doing on site consulting Offering online courses in agency new business and account service Because [...]

May 26th, 2017|

The Top Agency Trends of 2017 (Part 1), with Drew McLellan.

[easy-social-share buttons=”facebook,twitter,google,linkedin,mail” counters=1 counter_pos=”topm” total_counter_pos=”leftbig” style=”icon_hover”] Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year, give him a unique perspective on running an agency today. AMI works with agency owners by: Leading agency owner peer groups Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams Offering AE bootcamps Conducting individual agency owner coaching Doing on-site consulting Offering online courses in agency new business and account service Because he works with those 250+ agencies every year — he has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”     What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why agency owners are confident again and why new business is easier to come by right now The trend where talent inside agencies has become a scarce resource What to do about having to hire underskilled employees The challenge of providing clients with the right data Having an answer when clients ask agencies about diversity Opportunities for agencies with old school media Why you have to be great at marketing automation   The Golden Nugget: […]

May 22nd, 2017|

Hey agency owner — are you protecting your partnership?

Are you protecting your partnership? No one buys homeowners insurance because they actually expect to have a fire at their house.  But they know if they want until there’s a fire, it’s too late.  So, on the very first day they buy their house — they buy the insurance as well, hoping they never have to use it. For some reason, agency owners don’t always apply this same logic to their business.  If you have any sort of partner (minority, silent, 50/50, etc.) you need to have insurance in case that partnership goes south.  Hopefully it will never happen but an illness, a divorce, a midlife crisis or a myriad of other things could put your business in harm’s way.  Without the proper partnership documents that outline how you handle any threat to the agency — you can be left holding the bag. Your partnership agreement should cover these aspects of partnership: Decision making: As a business owner, you made many decisions every day. What are the rules around that? How will you and your partner make decisions, especially in those cases when it's an important topic and you don’t agree? Be sure to specifically deal with: Contracts: Does each partner have the authority to sign contracts on behalf of the business? If so, those contracts will bind all partners. Debt: Is the business going to have a credit card, credit line, a loan?  Keep in mind here that, depending on the business structure that you choose, each partner may be personally liable for this. Spending: Does a partner have the ability to make purchases without consulting the other partners?  Generally, there is a limit that is set in the agreement above which point the [...]

May 8th, 2017|

Hey agency owner — measure what matters

Want more money in your pocket -- measure what matters. Many agency owners want their agency to be more stable, more profitable and more predictable.  The truth is -- you can have all of that but it doesn't happen by accident.  You've heard the expression "if you want it to matter, measure it" and that's absolutely true. Here are some metrics you should consider tracking on a consistent basis as you grow your agency. Weekly: Timesheets completed (all time, billable and non-billable): Your goal should be 95% or better.  This means yours too, agency owner. Monthly: Gross billings: No specific metric but measure it against your annual goals. AGI: No specific metric but measure it against your annual goals. AGI ratios: Your AGI should be spent in this approximate ratio 55-60% People (all expenses tied to your staff. Salaries, benefits, payroll taxes etc.) 20-25% Overhead (Day to day operating expenses like rent, travel, professional fees, etc.) 20% Profit (EBITA) Profitability by client (It’s reasonable to shoot for a 10% minimum) AGI/FTE (your goal is $150K in AGI for every FTE) Write up/offs (are you adding profit to jobs or writing off time. Track both) Billable % (Overall staff billability should be 75% or higher) Utilization – what you actually billed (Overall staff utilization should be 60% or higher) Quarterly: Employee Satisfaction (On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend working at the agency to a friend?) New revenue ratios (70% of new revenue should come from current clients) New clients/sales: No specific metric but measure it against your annual goals. Average spend per client (you should set a minimum acceptable quarterly spend) Annually: Client retention (Goal should be 80% or higher) Employee [...]

March 12th, 2017|

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