Podcasts

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic but many agency owners wonder how, exactly, it can benefit their shop. They get how it works but they think that either a) they don’t understand it enough to deliver on it for clients or b) they can’t afford the AI tools out there for agencies. The truth is – now is the time to experiment. Most agencies are at the infancy stages of learning about AI and how to use it to serve clients better. But we have to get up to speed or we will find ourselves left behind. The good news? It’s within your grasp.

Back in the good old days (pre great recession) agencies used research to make their work smarter and more effective. But it became a luxury we trimmed out as we had to squeeze budgets. As we emerged from the recession, we dismissed research as expensive and didn’t build it into our recommendations as often as we should. But what if we could benefit from the insights research provides without busting the budget?

One of the biggest bottlenecks in many agencies is that the agency owner is the only person who can develop strategies for clients or new business pitches. As you know, this causes a host of problems, not the least of which is then the agency owner can’t focus on doing his/her job. Most owners feel stuck – believing that strategic thinking is not something you can teach. But what if you could?

Over the last couple of years, many agencies have started reaping the benefits of embedding an account executive in a client’s office. By that I mean someone from the agency team literally has a desk or office in a client’s business for a set amount of time every week. This trend was growing prior to the pandemic and actually held its own during the work from home period of 2020. Now that more agencies and clients have returned to the office, this becomes a very viable option again. In this episode, I want to talk about what this means, how to do it well, and both the risks and value of doing it.

Who is responsible for keeping the agency’s work on time and on budget? That is an oft debated topic among agency owners. At AMI we believe that a specific role (Project Manager, Traffic Manager, etc.) to keep everyone and everything on track is a luxury if you have fewer than 10 employees and by the time you’re at 15-20 employees, it’s usually a necessity if you want to keep your team and clients happy. But who you hire and how they go about implementing a traffic system is a challenge many agency owners struggle with.

The reality is, we spend so much time thinking and worrying about business development, and in most cases that exuberance is not really matched with the same level of excitement for our existing clients. Which is crazy because we all know that clients get much more profitable the longer we keep them. Despite knowing that – we keep making the same mistakes and jeopardizing our most important client relationships. What if we could avoid those mistakes?

Leadership can feel like a loaded word. We often think about leadership as defining how you run your business but, to me, that refers to how you manage, not how you lead. Leadership is how you show up, and great leadership isn’t just about getting people to do what you want, it’s about inspiring them to WANT to do what you are asking because they are invested, emotionally and otherwise, in your goals and the goals of the agency. In this podcast, we’re going to explore how we can get to be that kind of leader.

Think about how you build out journey maps or of journey maps you’ve seen if that isn’t something your agency does. They chart out how a potential customer goes from not being aware of the product or service to the point of purchase. Typically, we’re building this journey map to coincide with our work in helping our clients increase their sales. In that way, it makes sense that the map would end at the sale. That’s our job is to get them to that point. But the customer’s experience has really just begun. The real journey begins once you’re in a relationship with the customer and how you nourish and grow the trust and connection with the client moving forward.

As we celebrate the most anticipated New Year’s Day in any of our lifetimes, we also find ourselves planning, goal settings, and making resolutions for the new year. Whenever I ask an agency owner what goals they’ve set for their shop, without exception, the first goal (and often the only goal) they can come up with is a revenue goal. I absolutely want you to set revenue goals for this year but you shouldn’t limit your thinking to that one metric. There are other growth goals that are as important, if not more so, than what your gross revenue is for the year.

As marketers we understand the power and influence of a brand. We know that every buying decision we make is based on emotion. This helps explain why some brands garner a cult-like fan base. They understand the power of their emotional triggers. As agencies, we should be brilliant at discerning and leveraging a brand’s specific emotional triggers. But sometimes it’s difficult to help a client see the value in what can appear a bit ethereal. But what if there was a tool to help you validate what you know about your clients’ (or your) brand?