agency success Archives - Agency Management Institute

How to Position Your Agency for Success
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How to Position Your Agency for Success

Agency leadership, Agency Management, Agency Operations, Agency Smarts

How to Position Your Agency for Success

Every day across the globe, agencies are working hard to differentiate their clients and help drive their clients’ growth. These agencies use the art and science of positioning to help their clients stand out from competition in an important and authentic manner. Sadly, most of the agencies doing this fine work have not worked the same positioning magic for themselves, in spite of the fact that they compete with dozens—if not hundreds—of other agencies on a daily basis. There is an abundance of talented and effective agencies who have failed to differentiate themselves. As a result, they are missing out on the significant (and very profitable) growth opportunities triggered by a compelling brand position. So, how to position your agency for success? Let’s talk about it. The Challenges of Agency Growth As you no doubt know, there are numerous challenges when it comes to growing an agency today. These challenges include: • More competition • Greater complexity • Difficulty expressing the uniqueness of your agency • A more educated and informed buyer who does his/her agency research without your knowledge Most agencies face these challenges. There is, however, an opportunity to address these challenges by positioning your agency in a truly unique, compelling and differentiated fashion. In this paper we will share the learning we have regarding how to create such a differentiated position for any agency by leveraging best practices that we have learned from our 28 years of agency related consulting. The Great Agencies of Old Most agencies today face the challenge of how to effectively position their firm and how to present their agency in a compelling, client-centric manner. It was not always like this! The great agencies of old stood for [...]

By Steve Boehler|

The Secret to Success for Agencies—The Sales Playbook
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The Secret to Success for Agencies—The Sales Playbook

Account Team

The Secret to Success for Agencies—The Sales Playbook

One of the first areas that many ad agency owners look to delegate is sales. Maybe they started their own firm because they liked the creativity and not the business side. Maybe they enjoy sales but it just takes up too much of their time. Or maybe they just aren't very good at it. The secret to success for agencies is the sales playbook. Why the sales playbook? Let’s take a look. It's common for owners to want to pass on the sales activities (and headaches) to someone else. Having a robust sales team—whether it's one person or ten—can be a key ingredient for successful agencies, and a sales playbook is an integral part of the process. Why? There are two things you have to keep in mind: As the head of your organization, you will always have some sales responsibilities—and that's the way it should be. You care more than anyone else, and you likely have the reputation, conviction, and authority that no one else in your organization does. If you just hire a salesperson, point them at a list of potential clients, and say, "Go get 'em!"... there’s a good chance they will fail, and an equally good chance your organization will struggle. Without a sales playbook, you are sending them out blind, expecting them to just figure things out on their own, which is rarely a recipe for success. Why Agencies Struggle to Develop Sales Systems When expanding to bring on salespeople, most agency owners think that when they hire a salesperson, he or she will ride in like a knight on a white horse and save the day—and they don’t really want to be involved in the process. They want to [...]

By Dave Fisher|

How to Differentiate Your Agency From All the Rest
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How to Differentiate Your Agency From All the Rest

Agency Operations

How to Differentiate Your Agency From All the Rest

Despite their best efforts to stand out, nearly every agency looks, sounds, and acts just like every other one. We all think we have figured out how to differentiate ourselves using catchy taglines and clever techniques, but from the outside looking in, it’s hard to tell the difference from one to the next. Don’t believe me? See whether any of these phrases ring a bell: “We are a full-service integrated marketing agency.” “We partner with our clients.” “We’ve been in business for X years and have more than X years of experience.” Sound familiar? These phrases might sound like good differentiators, but in reality, they just muddy the waters and make it more difficult to discern what makes one agency better than another. Don’t Please Everyone All the Time Looking across the landscape of agencies we work with, the ones that struggle to stay afloat are the generalists. I know how scary it can be to neglect part of what looks like an appealing market, but agencies today must find and attack specific niches to survive. New avenues of competition are part of the reason for this. Agencies are now commodities competing with freelancers and others who take advantage of low barriers to entry. Differentiating your agency from the masses requires clearly defined areas of expertise. Clients want specialists, not indistinguishable, cookie-cutter generalists. According to our research, one of the biggest factors for clients choosing an agency is industry-specific expertise, which they define as having 25-50% of the agency’s business in one industry. Differentiate Your Agency (For Real) Although most agencies struggle to stand out, differentiating isn’t as hard as it seems. These four strategies help the most successful agencies split from the pack and [...]

By Drew McLellan|